They could build those things if they built their own society, which is what I fear the right will try to do one way or another. And I think our options are to split the country and manifest the divide early or wait for some sort of civil conflict.
There’s no practical or ideological need to create a separate society—or really a separate anything—simply because of a difference in political opinion. The left and right are technically in agreement on a huge number of issues and could easily compromise on many others. There has always been room for these discussions within civil society.
A major issue seems to be literal lies and disinformation spreading over social media which makes that divide appear
to be much greater than it actually is. If these blatant lies can be prevented then the left and right will have a much easier time coming to political compromises when running the country. Having shared primary ballots would also help a lot to prevent the most radical wings of each party from dominating, because then each party’s candidate would have to appeal to all voters rather than their own.
I agree that the amount of "blatant lies" adhered to by large chunks of American citizens is causing/exacerbating our socio-political issues. But I also agree that changing social media is probably not enough. American politics has become an arms race of increasingly polarizing ideologies none of which are particularly appealing/helpful to normal people.
Shared primary ballots is a good start, but it seems like the most meaningful change to our political system would be implementing a system of ranked voting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting). Among other things, that would help break the two-party nightmare cased by first-past-the-post voting.
The practical reason is that people are extremely agitated and even if they're a fraction of the country that's still enough people for civil conflict. I think you're being a little dismissive of the fact that people are emotionally engaged and FAANG taking down parler is not only further agitating angry people but drawing more people, especially those of whom who hate and distrust "big tech", into the political divide. This isn't a knock against their decision to decouple themselves from parler, but just an observation that these actions are making people angrier than they already were. When you have two spouses who hate each others' guts and haven't been able to stand each other for years, with no improvement in sight, divorce is probably the right decision.
I think the lies and conspiracies are just a manifestation or side effect of the social and political divide. Its like imagining someone you already hate. "They're plotting against me", "they're going to get me", "they probably spilled that milk on purpose to piss me off", etc. And I think there is some substance to the hate, not to the conspiracy, but I see that our society has gotten to this point for real reasons and disagreements that can't be compromised on
The problem isn't that they have to build their own, to me it's clear they want to. The problem is that they feel they're being shut down or invaded or whatever, when they attempt to build their own services and communities. Their responses has been to double down and create even broader spaces going from small groups to alternative social media, and I think, eventually an alternate society and political system. At that point the legitimacy of the US government will be challenged, and that's already beginning to happen, and we may have a civil conflict.
They've been creating smaller more exclusive communities for years. They have their own youtube news and fan/media channels, they have their own internet personalities and figureheads even among the mainstream (like dr disrespect, who seemed to be popular with right-leaning gamers I know), they tend to congregate in various indie games (especially war and FPS games), they have their own forums and online spaces (e.g. private discords; thedonald reddit clone, alternate subreddits; parler; 4chan, which is older than any of this but decidedly more right wing nowadays than I remember 10 years ago), and so forth. The problem is that they feel these spaces and communities are under attack. Parler, while I don't disagree with the right of FAANG companies to decouple from parler, is just the latest space that's "under attack".
This isn't unique to Parler, I've seen the right complain about this in gaming, movies and comics (like Star Wars), tabletop games, etc. for years and I know people who were otherwise apolitical but shifted to the right because they felt their hobbies and fanbases were being (unfairly) criticized and changed by outsiders specifically from the left-wing who don't appreciate the original characteristics. And I even agree to some degree that it's hard to have your own space without being attacked. For example, recently I am somewhat aware that Hololive idols, basically asian/japanese game and lifestyle streamers using 3D avatars, have been under (what I think is) undue scrutiny from some feminists for being sexist, pandering to pedophiles, and fueling misogyny. I've seen similar attacks on anime and on some games. Personally I think there's more of a racial element, given western phobia towards asians, in a lot of these attacks and criticisms because extra criticism seem to be targeted at japanese or asian media, but in any case, people on the right think it's mostly political and the political divide has not only worsened it's caused people to take sides and move from a localized feuds (fighting over media like anime and Star Wars) to a broader battle (politics, values, belief systems). And as far as I've observed, this tracks with their attempts and successes at creating increasingly broader alternative platforms. From having their own spaces within larger communities to creating alternative platforms, like parler, or hijacking sites like 4chan, and actually making them viable, unlike earlier attempts (like voat). As of January 6 I think we've come to the point where enough people have aligned politically on the right that they're going to want their own real world society, and not just an online one. Shutting down parler is just going to accelerate the sentiment imo, because as far as I've seen people kind of quantize their world views when (they believe) they're under attack, and group up. They don't become more understanding and broader minded, they become more tribal.
So if the right wants their own society just let them have it before internet fights become real ones. Personally I think it's still a small amount of people, my experiences are just anecdotal based on what I've seen in communities I was part of and people I know, but I think the sentiment is growing rapidly and trying to shut things down isn't working, at best it's a roadblock that pushes problems down the road, at worst it makes people go underground and become more competent at hiding in plain sight.
edit: My fear in particular is that they'll resort to wide scale political, maybe racial, violence. Not that they want right-wing spaces. I'm asian, a lot of us already kind of self-segregate and I don't see any issue with it to be frank. I know integration is important in the US but I don't see a problem with people wanting their own safe space where they're left alone, although it's sad it's come to the point where people attack the capitol.
It's probably impossible for the right-wing to create their own society, because they're geographically and economically mixed in with the rest of the country. The most salient political dividing line is ~800 people per square mile.
Social media platforms already long ago decided not to allow groups such as ISIS to propagandize and organize online. Why would they allow any other terrorist groups? Those calling for the usurpation of democracy through insurrection and violence are equivalent.
>So if the right wants their own society just let them have it before internet fights become real ones.
We've already seen many instances of right-wing terroristic violence in the form of bombings (attempted and successful), mass shootings, etc.; many of these have been organized online in extreme right-wing spaces. It's an easy case to be made that allowing such spaces to proliferate will lead to more violence.
But to equate all right-wing speech with terrorism seems to be succumbing to a self-fulfilling prophecy while at the same time justifying the very actions you're opposing.
If we truly want inclusive political discourse, we need to acknowledge the validity of traditional conservative viewpoints while drawing a clear distinction between those viewpoints and reactionary terroristic violence. With this understanding in mind, newspapers such as the NYTimes have long featured conservative columnists with critical viewpoints. Perhaps such mainstream publications should try harder to do this.
There is plenty of room for intelligent discourse, but hateful attacks (verbal and otherwise), simply have no place in a healthy society.
I don't think we necessarily disagree, I just want to address this.
But to equate all right-wing speech with terrorism seems to be succumbing to a self-fulfilling prophecy while at the same time justifying the very actions you're opposing.
I'm not equating it to terrorism, I'm saying that they have indicated they want separate systems and, really, a separate society. If you take right-wing talking points at face value, what we have now is a shaky middle ground, a society wherein the powers that be both reject them and also employ regulations that make it difficult for newcomers to make their own banks, lay internet cables, etc. which is why you see right wing memes about "make your own google, make your own banks, etc". And these aren't new talking points, one of Trump's promises going into his presidency was to get rid of as many regulations as he could in general: financial and economic, environmental, governance, etc. and democrats/the left are usually blamed for loving regulations. So if that's the case, split the country and let them do what they want with their government, from scratch. It's not like I'm saying we should go around and take all their belongings and march them down to Florida or something and leave them like cavemen. I make it sound trivial because I'm not an expert or anything, but for the purposes of this discussion I think it's a better alternative to civil conflict and I don't see how we're going to fix the divide.
If we truly want inclusive political discourse, we need to acknowledge the validity of traditional conservative viewpoints while drawing a clear distinction between those viewpoints and reactionary terroristic violence. With this understanding in mind, newspapers such as the NYTimes have long featured conservative columnists with critical viewpoints. Perhaps such mainstream publications should try harder to do this.
I'm not really disagreeing but I think we're past the point where publications matter. Social media has created this new world where you're able to discover people you didn't even know existed. In the past you might know your neighbors and accordingly, you'd move to a neighborhood that suited your tastes. For example, that's basically what white flight was (I'm trying to be brief, not insensitive), it's real, that's how people act. And they'd remain in their local bubble and only have a vague idea of the rest of the world, neatly summarized by the news. People would get mad at ideas and vague demographics, and occasionally figureheads like politicians and public businessmen.
Now, on "public" social media like twitter, you can find virtually anyone who has a certain belief or is a certain way and just yell at them for existing or thinking a certain way. You and your friends can pick them out for doing something and mob them on social media, dox them and get them fired, and attack every social aspect of their life. This isn't even unique to politics per se, this happened to a woman who made a terrible joke about AIDS and Africa, among many other people for non-political reasons like being accused of crimes or plagiarizing art. And this is in ADDITION to getting mad at ideas and demographics and figureheads. So the divide that used to be vague has been refined to an individual level, and to make things worse people categorize each other and place them into enemy tribes based on beliefs and people they follow on social media. You follow Biden on twitter? You're a "demoncrat" and you're the enemy. If you follow Trump you're a "nazi" and you're the enemy. You liked some youtuber personality that's this way or another and you're automatically a SJW or a white supremacist, etc. It's borderline impossible to escape and you don't even have to be a part of social media anymore, it's become somewhat normalized to pick individuals out for their wrong doings and have an online mob use any means of communication they can, not just the internet, to attack you. You're unfortunately suspected of being the Boston Bomber because some guy saw bad photos and created a psychotic conspiracy that put you in the middle? A literal international mob from around the world is coming to harass your family and make them miserable even though you'd been dead before the event occurred. Now, mobs certainly happened in the past at smaller, local levels, and they did target individuals often to even worse effect (e.g. lynching), but the digital space has made discovery of individuals easier than ever before and made it borderline impossible to hide your presence.
