Re: Our experiments taught us why people troll + ‘Alternative facts’: A psychiatrist’s guide to twisted relationships to truth

[Steve Kinney]

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On 03/02/2017 08:01 AM, Marina Brown wrote:

> Question - why are today's trolls always nazis or various forms of 
> fascist ? It would be nice to have left wing trolls. ...not the
> garden variety liberal troll but some real leftie trolls.
> 
> THAT would be fun ;-)

Ideologically pure followers of the Right and Left both troll
non-stop; first themselves, then others.  The differences between
political leaders on the Right and Left are matters of style, not
substance.

In Identity Politics game, the Left's victory condition is to prove
oneself morally superior, while the Right's victory condition is to
stomp someone else down.  This seems to fit with the observed behavior
of inmates of the Left and Right ideologies, consistent with the
personality types targeted by political indoctrination campaigns:  The
Left package is marketed to people with a strong predisposition to
confidence and cooperation in social contexts, the Right package is
marketed to those with a predisposition for fear and the use of force
in social contexts.  About ten years ago there were some press notices
of psychological studies confirming a model where Liberal and
Conservative "political preferences" are strongly consistent with
baseline preconscious emotional and cognitive predispositions as per
above.

This evaluation of Left and Right Identity Politics may not make sense
to some people, especially those who have been sold the Left/Right
conflict as some kind of "ideological battle" based on the validity or
utility of political and economic theories, and believe the outcomes
of such debates in the public sphere affect State political and
economic policy.  But in a context where acquiring and preserving
power for its own sake by any means necessary is the only "ideology"
of an economic ruling class, the Left/Right divide is more a matter of
style than substance:  A basis for popularity contests among political
representatives of ruling class factions whose action agendas overlap
by 90% or more, in a context where public policy always serves the
entire ruling class at everyone else's expense.  I call Left/Right
Identity Politics a "divide the conquered" strategy.

:o/

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