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The kids are alt-right: Teachers know the warning signs when students are radicalized by online hate movements. They just don’t know how to stop it — or if it’s a power struggle they can ever win
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- Title
- The Kids Are Alt-Right: When Your Star Pupil Gets Red-Pilled
- Authors
- Madeleine Holden
- Published
- Aug 13 2020
- Word count
- 1642 words
I can confirm this. I've had alt-right students. Before Trump's election, I had to shut down a group of white students who were chanting "build the wall" at brown students any chance they got. I've had alt-right parents of students. Sometimes it's hard to disentangle where the kid's beliefs end and where the parents' begin. I'll occasionally get questions from students about difficult topics where they'll ask about something their parents have said, and I have to walk a very fine line in responding.
The teacher in the article who got backlash for teaching "Before Common Era" instead of "Before Christ"? Or the one who countered her flat-earther student? I've been in similar situations, as have most of my coworkers. I worked with a teacher who was asked about Trump's conduct by a student, and the teacher simply said in response that she "felt he had mistreated women". She left it at that, without elaboration, but a student in the same class told their parents, who then contacted the principal and asked that their child be removed from her classroom on account of "indoctrination". She said nothing of his policies or beliefs and hedged her judgment with an "I feel" statement, but their response was forceful all the same.
One of the precautions I take at my job is knowing that anything I say to students likely makes it home in a different form. It's like the game of "telephone", where a message gets distorted as it gets passed along, only mine is happening in parallel, across 20+ students at any given time, who are then sharing it with parents and family members hours later, by their own retelling, from the perspective of a child. There are so many ways that things could go wrong along that chain, so I make sure that I am incredibly, judiciously careful and strategic about what I say at all times.
I will say that I'm surprised this article didn't say anything about memes. In the words of Christopher Cantwell: "memes are just a gateway drug to the alt-right". Seemingly all my students love memes because they're entertaining. Because they're entertaining, they seem harmless. This makes the ones that aren't fly under the radar. Dark and damaging beliefs masquerade as light, pointless irreverence.
As the students get older, it becomes less about entertainment and more about information and insight. The memes are no longer just funny but they're incisive. They cut through to a core of truth that the rest of the world has seemingly ignored or discarded, and they do it in such a clear, obvious way that the rest of the world simply has to be lying, right? They make everything else seem performative and constructed. Edgy memes let them feel like they're in on a secret; like they're seeing behind the curtain for the first time.
Like the teachers in the article, I've found that direct counters don't really work. Someone who's primed to trust memes and not teachers isn't going to particularly care what I have to say in response. Instead, what I've found works is articulations of harm. So, when something hateful surfaces in my class, I stop and I talk about how what was just said/done hurts me. I don't tell them they can't say it unless it's outright inappropriate, but usually they do things that intentionally skirt the line because they know it won't be met with forceful accountability. Instead, I simply say something to the effect of "what I want you to understand is what I hear and feel when you say that". Students at large seem to respond better to this than direct counters, and while some are certainly only changing their behavior for me specifically rather than at large, I'm at least trying to lay the groundwork for an empathy that I hope will later take root.
How often do you encounter a radicalized kid? Are they a minority or is it an epidemic?
I was once radicalized and I can relate to what you are saying. I don't know what exact effect memes have, but yeah memes were one of the main factor that kept me there. Memes make it easier to cope with the reality and to stay in the comfort zone, also to forms opinion on things without putting the effort of reading or real life encounters of the situation.
Im not white but I have a similar situation, my dad is a Hindu nationalist. But as I step out of the bubble my parents had created for me and became more aware of the reality lot of things I believed stopped making sense, there were also times when I saw horrible repercussions of my beliefs like the Christchurch shootings. So, I believe most of these kids would grow out of it.
It's hard to know how many of my students have been radicalized, particularly because by the age I start working with them, students are already very good at compartmentalizing and hiding things from adults. Social media lets them operate in a space largely independent of adult oversight, so they've learned to tailor their behavior to different audiences and often show me a different face than they would to their peers simply because I'm an adult and so the expectations for how to act and what to say change when I'm in the picture. As such, I don't necessarily see many of my students' "true colors".
That said, I generally can get a good read on my kids based on my interactions with and observations of them over the course of a year. Not only is their compartmentalization imperfect, but character shines through over time. I would say that openly radicalized kids that will bring talking points up in class and try to debate teachers on things are genuinely quite rare. More common are the ones that sort of "keep it to themselves". Even they aren't the norm, but they are more prevalent. They're the ones we worry a lot about and do a lot to try and reach, because it often manifests as a social/academic withdrawal that, for teachers, indicates the idea that something is wrong and the child is in need of help.
I'm glad to hear that you've been able to gain some perspective and step away from the radicalization you've experienced. If you're willing to share more about it, I'd love to hear about your experiences. I think an inside perspective on this issue is particularly valuable.
It’s the weirdest trend. This reminds me of that article about a woman whose 13 year old son became an alt-right mod on reddit.
It’s breaking my brain to try and make sense of it. It can’t be that the right just discovered a new trick over night and suddenly conquered the internet, can it? The closest thing to an explanation I have is that the left has entered a position of relative power in small but significant parts of society (journalism, entertainment, university campuses, big cities,...) and the “counter-culture”, the way to “rebel” now shifts to the right? These kids who would have become hippies or punks decades ago now become alt-righters. Or flat-earthers. Who knows if that makes any sense.
But what’s more important is the solution. Clearly it’s a “drag them down to their level and best them with experience” kind of situation, so getting involved seems futile (you can’t argue hundreds of hours of YouTube in the 10 minutes between actual classes). I have no idea how to win this battle.
My theory on this: these kids are brought up with pretty religious views. Exploring the internet their inherited religious views (and associated values) and often looked down on and they feel alienated from the mainstream sites. Then they find a place that embraces their religious values and expands (and, unbeknowest to them, corrupts) it to create a somewhat coherent world view: the alt-right. They might explore this a little more and pretty soon they are consumed by the echo chamber of alt-right YouTube channels, forums and news. Such places demonize other media outlets and forums so they stay within the alt-right and, faling to receive any counter argument which cant be dismissed by 'fake news', leaving doesn't become easy.
An example of how this might play out: A kid is brought up being told, for religious reasons, that abortion is definitely wrong. He joins reddit. Despite finding contrary abortion views our kid retains his strongly held values and wonders how so many other people are so wrong. Then he finds an answer to his wonders: reddit is controlled by the liberal media, a cabal of elistists manipulating your view on abortion from the truth. Curious, he explores this further with a completley open mind. Soon he 'realises' that all non-altright media are secretly manipulating the world. To him, everything in his altright bubble is true and everything else is false. He soon adopts the rest of the altright's beliefs.
Solution: Always be humble and never dismissive of fundamental values someone else holds. Not only is it often disengenious and assholish to do so, you will never persuade someone by tearing down their belief system. Approach an issue on their level, and from their perspective. Remember the username you're replying to might be a 13-year-old who doesn't know better. If you are genuine, humble and kind to someone, not only are you being the furthest from an asshole you also have the best chance of changing their mind (and entire belief system). If you see someone spouting altright bullshit dont attempt to destroy their ideas. Just be genuine, humble and nice and everything else will follow.
I was more attempting to explain how a kid might get radicalised online, and how this can be averted online rather then how a teacher should deal with this.
I suppose that a teacher with a student constantly parroting right-wing views has two options; either engage with the student and attempt to dissuade him or attempt to ignore or shut up and potentially discipline the student. The first option has serious flaws, class is disrupted and the stated views are legitimised. The latter option might give the appearence credence to false claims of censorship, bias and indotrination.
The situation the teacher is put in honestly seems completley awful. Having to compete for the minds of your students against 'redpilling' is not a scenario I could envy. Honestly I think the best response to a student questioning whether the earth is flat while learning about gravity would be to laugh it off, and if the problem continues to the detrement of other students, remove the student from the class. But responding to something like that is incredibly tricky.
The point I was trying to make in my earlier comment is that students don't randomly become radicalised. They fall into a hole of the internet. And as a random commenter on the internet it is both possible to prevent someone from falling into that hole and help them get out or to (unintentionally) push them in deeper.
To throw another wrench into this, there's a disturbing amount of alt-right and misogynistic belief among the new athiest movement too. I remember seeing that slowly grow during the early 2000s, and then became more pronounced during the early 2010s, though I think part of it had to do with GamerGate and the general overlap of interests on the internet.
The entire alt-right world view is centred around the premise that the news, the media and the internet are dominated entirely by 'liberals' forcing their agenda on the world. To them that 95% of what they see isn't altright is just further proof that is being manipulated. And all the people they know who don't agree with you--well of course they think, that's what the media is telling them to think.
I have recently been reading r/conservative to try to get a better idea of how people believe what they do and one thing I can tell you from this experiment is that they have a number of different news sources. The thing is that most of those sources are not high quality, to put things politely. Often they are just regurgitating stories from more reputable outlets, with subtle corruptions - generally in the form of removing facts and inserting oppinions.
The irony, of course, is that they often site the sources with a direct link, so people can very easily learn the truth. The problem is that they simply don't care about objective truth. They only care about their subjective viewpoints.
My sister in law is an 'otherkin.' It's some weird shit bordering on mental disorder.
You can't call them out on it anymore, because they see at as their identity. In reality, it's likely a poor coping mechanism trigggred by trauma and they need real therapy.
Its fosteted by the fact that no matter how weird or wrong your beliefs are, you can find a community of like-minded (or people pretending to exploit) people which will perpetuate it.
It's the worse with the alt-right, but extends to other areas as well.
I don't think your example is at all the same as being in the Nazi pipeline. Being an otherkin doesn't hurt anyone and it doesn't deserve being called out. Therapy, maybe, depending on the situation, but being called out implies not trying to help the person in good faith. You shouldn't be calling her out regardless of whether it's considered ok by society or not. Your sister in law probably doesn't have perceived enemies who she wants to kill. I get what you're saying and as far as it applies to the alt-right and people getting roped into it it makes sense, I just had to speak up about the comparison you're making.
Called out is the wrong phrase perhaps. I was using it as shorthand for being able to tell them 'no, you're in an unhealthy internet rabbithole which is about as useful for treating your mental health as drinking your pain away' without you being dismissed as a bigot is a big problem. They're using this identity echo chamber as self-validation, and even if their therapist recognizes they're doing so, they have to tread extremely carefully, because if they bring it up, they'll defend this identity the same way a narcissist would.
I agree there are probably various otherkin that treat it as D&D, and that's largely fine. But the trauma victims get sucked in deep. If I (diagnosed as Bipolar II) were to act in the manner my SIL does, I would be involentarily committed.
I like this article, which ends with:
The otherkin rabbithole on Tumblr operates in the same way the alt-right does (did?) on 4chan. While it is not in itself directly harmful, they have the same root cause: Internet echo chambers that will validate any and every crazy thought that pops in your head.
If I, in a manic state, went online believing I could control space and time because we're in the Matrix, I would find a community to validate these thoughts instead of seeking help. It would then be harder to to keep me from dismissing these thoughts.
If somebody goes online with a racist thought in their head and does the same, the alt-right gets a new recruit.
The alt-right may be more nefarious, but their 'foot in the door' is the same.
Alright, that's fair. I still kind of feel uncomfortable about it because I was once told by someone that I care about that I was only trans because I was influenced by people on the internet, but I get what you're saying. I'm sorry that you have to deal with that in real life.
It shows the double edged sword. Finding a community can be genuinely helpful for those in need, we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
How do we foster safe communities while keeping unsavory ones from developing? It's a tricky problem with no viable solutions that I can see. Heavy-handed moderation can work if the community remains small, but even that isn't a safegaurd against a heavily moderated toxic community.
You're not wrong that there's a difference, but that's also not a distinction a lot of people make, and I don't think you can draw a broad conclusion about internet communities because of it. And to kind of circle back around to the original topic, there's probably more to people who say they're an anthropomorphic dragon than mental illness the same way that we don't (or shouldn't) say that Nazis and the alt-right are mentally ill.
I don't think right and wrong really matter how many people believe in each. It's the quality of the evidence that should hold the most weight. It's a fallacy (argumentum ad populum), and shouldn't really be the core of any argument.
Atheists make up a tiny percentage of the population, but when placed vs "believers" they could easily fall into that 5% vs 95%. Does that make them wrong?
I think the right just has an easier job in many ways. The average person has no idea what good fiscal policy is, what good foreign policy is, or even what good governance looks like. On these types of items, the average person is a blank slate.
However, on cultural issues, the average person has a very easy time thinking "a man is a man and can't be a woman" and vice versa, or that being gay is unnatural, or that certain other races are inferior, and this makes it very easy for right wing cultural/social issues to take root first and at a young age. This natural leads to right wing economic/governance views since one foot is already in the door and they already trust people on this side.
Additionally, on the governance issues, Republicans have a much easier task than Democrats. Republicans can tell the truth about what they're going to do and only have to lie about what the effects will be. It's very easy for Republicans to claim to be pro-business, pro-tax cuts for the rich, pro-deregulation, etc. and they have the voting record to prove it. They only have to lie about what the effects of it will be, and when those effects are bad, it is easy to deflect and blame on Democrats.
On the other hand, Democrats can be honest about what their proposed policies will do and how they'll help the middle class, but then they have to lie about whether or not they'll actually do those things. It's quite easy to prove that such and such Democrat campaigned on issues X, Y, Z but then ultimately voted against them when a vote came up, making them look like disingenuous liars.
It's very easy to look honest by campaigning on a strong military and having a voting record that matches. It's very hard to look honest when you campaign on ending wars and decreasing the defense budget when you have a years long record of voting to increase the defense budget.
My theory is, and I can be completely wrong and I'm sure plenty of holes can be poked in it but: "counter-culture" is always a reaction to previous generations. Up until this point in time, the older generation has been mostly conservative, if not moderate. Millennials seem to have broken that streak. Now that they are grown and the adult figures, the predominant political stance skews much more to the left. Kids see this and don't want to be like the adults they see and are looking for a way to rebel.
I think a lot of it is just teenage edginess, because there is more than enough edginess on the alt-right to go around. I think a lot of people are still under the impression these are kids growing up in religious, conservative households but I honestly think this is a deprecated way of thinking. As a younger millennial, that's how/why my friends would have created their hippy/punk/rebel/whatever identity. They were rebelling against parents who matched that religious/conservative lifestyle. Nowadays, these kids are living a predominantly white, suburban, middle class lifestyle. Their parents don't have strong political views, but skew to the left and they don't go to church every Sunday. They are literally just looking for a way to distance their identity from their parents.
Again, this is just my shitty, half thought out theory based on anecdotal evidence.
I think a lot of what you said is close to the mark but doesn't tell the whole story. Yes, a lot of Gen-Z do not think millennials are cool or funny. To extremely online/radicalized teenagers (on both the left and the right) this manifests almost to the point of the millennial spirit being despised. (For 4chan replace the word millennial with "Reddit" or things considered "Reddit.") Despised for the general "quirkiness," the neoliberal politics, everything in this
guys who make faces like this (and their beards)...
But I don't think it's the whole story.
IMO, a significant part of it comes from privileged entitlement and ignorance. The hidden, neo-segregation brought on by class differences and zoning laws mean that many midwestern, upper-middle class boys might go to a high-school with 6 total black kids. Never getting to know them as individuals, to realize on a subconscious level they're just regular people too, to understand their perspective. To many of them, when they hear black lives matter, what they hear is "ONLY black lives matter" and nobody is there to correct them.
They see feminism as gotten out of hand, they aren't getting to know women and seeing their lack of sex as being the fault of "bitchy" women. The word "feminist" is used as an insult (seen as stupid, man-hating and/or annoying).
This, combined with the general teenage disdain for caring or people caring about anything makes modern "leftism" look...lame, and to many white boys as if it's going after them—or at least it's pretty easy for the right voices online to convince them. It's only natural that the easy, perfect (on the surface) solutions proposed by the Alt-Right start to look appealing.
Finally being told "no, you're right, the world has gotten out of hand, everyone is out to get you." is intoxicating to many (especially the more "incel"-minded/bullied/lonely kids).
I don't know, those are just my (loosely organized) thoughts. Sorry for how long the comment is, it wasn't on purpose 🙃
It's weird being hated on by the kids. I don't fit any of those stereotypes that you shared (I think) and I'm not a fan of some of those things myself but I still feel a connection to it because it's my group. We've already been hated on by the adults by a decade, but as somewaffles said, I guess we're the adults too now.
The internet feels like a meaner, more hostile place than it did when I was an impressionable teenager and I don't think it's all nostalgia. I feel bad for all the kids who are constantly subjected to the agendas of powerful groups and most of them probably don't even know it.
I highly recommend The Alt-Right Playbook video series as a way to understand what's happening. It won't give you all the answers, but I think his framing of the issues can be particularly insightful.
As far as what to do about it in general and with teachers specifically. Those are both extremely difficult problems. The internet is absolutely infested with this shit, and given the other constraints teachers are under, that compounds the problems exponentially.
Unfortunately engaging with these sort of folks can backfire. Their goal isn't to understand truth, it's to pummel you into submission and make you look stupid or get angry. If you look stupid or lose your cool, then they look smart. If they look smart, they must be right. They can accomplish their goal without ever having to justify their own position by being constantly on the attack.
That being said, engaging with them is extremely difficult. If you want to beat them with 'logic' you need to know a tremendous amount about a wide range of subjects and you need to be able to confidently explain it and convince your audience that you're correct. For instance, we've known for literally hundreds of years that the earth is round. It just is, it's not worth debating. But the math behind why difficult to explain and most people couldn't do it off the cuff, even if they've studied it. And even if you do happen to know it, they can always just ask you to prove more. Like a child constantly asking 'why?'.
"The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it." AKA the bullshit asymmetry principle. They're using it against you even if they don't know it by parroting the arguments of folks who are using it intentionally.
There are only a few methods I know of to deal with this type of horseshit.
1)Shut it down, just don't engage. This is nonsense. blocked. Or in the case of teachers give them detention. Depending on the situation this can backfire, and you absolutely need to stay calm and collected while you do it. If they get you to lose your cool they win by default. But this is by far the safest and easiest method
2)Turn the tables. They're relying on you to provide all the answers their bullshit. Instead make them demonstrate why their nonsense is true and make them actually nail down a position. What does the flat Earth look like? Does it have an edge? Does it go on forever? If it has an edge can I go to the edge? If it goes on forever can I travel to an unclaimed region and start my own country?
3)Deconstruct the methods they're using. Explain to the audience what a Gish Gallop is. Explain how the person you're debating isn't actually justifying anything and isn't defending a specific position while insisting that you do so. Explain the difference between philosophy and science, particularly in response to human rights. Talk about the fallacies they're using and why they're nonsense (IMO understanding the 'naturalistic fallacy' is particularly useful)
"Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon; it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory." The same applies when dealing with any sort of anti-intellectual movement.
I will say, never shut down a child asking you why. Dismissing it can and will deteriorate their curiousity.
My preferred method, after giving sufficient answers, is to say: 'Could you tell me what I've said so far?' It tends to break them out of the 'why' loop and make them actually listen instead of playing games.
Not sure how it would work with someone arguing in bad faith, but it's a start.
The way I break my nephew out of the "why" loop is to ask him "why do you think?", then listen to his answers (which are often hilarious and surprisingly insightful), and afterwards help steer him towards the "correct" answer (if there is one) with more questions. I like to think that doing it that way helps him learn to think critically on his own, but it's also just entertaining to hear his answers to the questions. :)
p.s. Also not sure how it would work with someone arguing in bad faith, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I like that, stealing it for later.
I think the core idea is 're-engage critical thinking in a positve manner.'
We figure how to do that on the internet and we solve a lot of the world's problems.
I'm not sure if this is the right place to post, but it seems in line with what a lot of the article is talking about: one of my early 20s coworkers is an alt-righter. I'm not sure if he knows that I know what that is, but the writing is on the wall: false rape accusations, QAnon, craniology as a justification for racial superiority, Joe Rogan, you name it. He's constantly attempting to derail conversations by talking about the "low-IQ Africans" we work with (his words not mine), the "cabal," things he heard on JRE therefore they must be true, Holocaust denial, shit like that. I think most of us have called him an outright racist at least once (including my store owner overhearing him), but I don't think it phased him. Do I confront this? What should I do?
I've never actually had to talk someone down from that sort of thing, so take this with a grain of salt. My inclination is that a good way to do it is to show them that race isn't really a thing. The way I always like to think about it is that Jason Kidd and Barack Obama both have a black dad and a white mom, but if you didn't know that you'd perceive Jason Kidd as white and Barack Obama as black. People like your coworker place a lot of importance on genetics, but how do they reconcile that two people with the exact same configuration of parents of difference races look completely different? Presumably they're making assumptions about people based on their appearance when it's not that simple.
On top of that, how do you expect those strict racial boxes to be maintained? If Spaniards and Moroccans are in separate boxes, do you not think those people have interacted with each other since time immemorial? The people who live in those places have fought, traded, lived, and mixed together. How can you set two neighbors in different boxes?
At the end of the day the phrenology is just a justification for what they already believe, not the other way around, but maybe you can break through this way.