re: #307 Hecuba’s daughter

In the recent tragedy where a teen-age Nazi murdered his girl friend’s parents before killing himself, the parents had forbid the relationship because their daughter started spouting Nazi memes. Nazis are actively recruiting and, given the lack of historical knowledge prevalent among Americans, in this world of Twitter and Facebook and Internet sites, people often see only those sites that confirm their biases or what their friends promote. In the old days, we got our news from the big 3 — now every site is given equal weight by consumers most of whom don’t know how to investigate for themselves.

This is why I’m not dismissing Yglesias’ tweet as much as others seem to be. I don’t know how much confirmation bias is involved in it, but it really does feel like the radicalism is a spiking problem in my generation and under and only getting worse. We’ve seen outright Nazi-ism being re-mainstreamed, and it’s been on the backs of white millennials in particular, mostly because they’re the first generation really drowning in the white supremacist online outreach.