On the idea of ATS being a right wing echo chamber

We often see the claim made on ATS that it is a right wing echo chamber (or some more childish ways of putting that), and this is a bad thing.

Events in the past several weeks have made me think about whether or not this is true, why it is the way it is, and what are the effects of this.

To start with, is it even true that ATS is a right wing echo chamber?

I don't think that is an adequate descriptor. To me, that would imply that no other ideas from the center ot left would be tolerated, or that at the very least they just aren't around. That is clearly not the case, as some of my favorite posters are left or center leaning people.

In addition, there are many threads dissing Trump or other Republicans that can be seen quite often.

The real question then is are right wings views over represented even if they aren't an echo chamber?

To me we have to look at this in context of the greater media landscape. In a world where all of our cultural institutions of power are dominated by establishment democrat sympathizers (silicon valley, the msm, the entertainment industry, academia) it seems by default that voices that don't fit in with their will find communities in the only place they can; smaller online sites.

The idea of right wing people being on a conspiracy site, particularly one that has a lot of content around politics, seems almost natural in that case. The very nature of a conspiratorial minded person would tend to lead them to question those with power, and seeing as how all of the cultural institutions are dominated by left leaning ideas, its inevitable that conspiratorial minded right wing people would seek a place to come together and discuss this.

However, this changes over time. I remember when Bush was in office, and most of the political stuff on ATS was why he and his intel community were lying to go to war, and stripping us of our rights via surveillance. At that point, this could have been considered "left wing" positions merely because Bush was right wing.

In other words, to me its less about ATS being dominated by Trump lovers, and more about a conspiracy forum that deals with politics naturally attracting people who are against big government, secrecy, trampling of rights, and censorship. Those positions tend to be against the establishment left or democratic party, and thus those the people having these positrions arev hear in greater numbers and labeled right wing, when I think many of them would disagree with that label.

(more on next post)

Despite all of this, there was no doubt both before the 2016 election and in the immediate aftermath, we had many people who posted a lot of material that were very critical of trump, and could have been (either accurately or not) been labeled left wing (or at least not right wing) as a result of that.

It is only anecdotal on my part, but I do believe these posters have declined in number. Thus where much of the criticism I see about ATS becoming a right wing or trump echo chamber come from.

Those making this claim often imply that it is Trump supporters or right wing peoples unwillingness to hear different opinions that led to this exodus.

There could be partial truth to this, but I feel the reason for these people leaving is much simpler.

I think its because many of the claims made by these people, many times with the upmost confidence in their accuracy, claim to not turn out to be true.

There were hosts of people 100% positive Trump would lose. The same with people who knew the Steele dossier was almost all true and would be confirmed. The same with the fact that Mueller would show Russian collusion and Don Jr would be arrested. And so forth.

I myself participated in heated debates with many of these people.

The problem is its human nature to just stop being as involved with something when your wrong, or your "team" loses. So if I am watching the NHL playoffs and on boards talking about how my Penguins will dominate, and they go down three games in the first round, I am probably spending less time on those boards. The bigger the know it all I was, the more likely I am to just stop posting.

I will make a prediction that this Thursday when we see the Mueller report, and it know doubt has things in it that don't look great for Trump, we will see many people who dislike trump who were pretty quiet on the no collusion finding all of the sudden spring back to life and discuss obstruction.

And really lets be honest, had Mueller showed absolute definitive proof that no one could deny of Trump engaging in criminal activity with Russians to effect the election, many trump supporters would have posted far less.

All of this is a long winded way of saying this;

I don't think there are less anti trump people because of the bull headedness of trump supporters on this site, I think its just because there hasn't been good news for the anti trump crowd recently. Eventually the tides will turn and these posters or others like them will be back.

a reply to: Grambler

Huh. I always saw it as a divide between the mature and less mature... j/k... well, maybe not so much.

Truth is I've lost track of what qualifies as right or left wing. The left used to champion things like due process, privacy, free speech and equal protection. That doesn't appear to be largely the case anymore.

Fun times.

The idea is promulgated only by people with a short memory or those who have not been here long. As I remember it both Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders have large, loud followers here. I expect the pro-Bernie fellows to start picking up steam here shortly. It's just that they have been out of the limelight recently.

Lastly, I do want to stress the importance of having diverse opinions.

Lets be honest, threads where everyone agree are boring. Aside from obvious trolls, I enjoy reading people who disagree with me more than those that agree with me quite often, because it makes me think more deeply on my position and gives me something to respond to.

So I want more people of all ideologies to participate to grow the community, and that's why I try to encourage disagreement (though obviously I suck and fail at this all the time by being too confrontational).

And honestly, I feel some of the best left wing posters have stuck around, and continue to have good content.

So despite recent posts saying ATS is just a right wing echo chamber, I disagree and feel that there are reasonable explanations for why there are seemingly more right wing voices (even if that label is inaccurate and clumsy), but do hope that we will see more participation from people of all political opinions.

a reply to: Grambler

I'd say i fall somewhere in the middle, more left on some matters, but honestly, if ATS is a right wing circlejerk or whatever, i prefer that to the left wing circlejerk sites.

Ats has always had a high number of conservative people. For the most part though, they tend to be pretty reasonable people on the end. Even if i don't alwaya agree with the predominate opinions people have with thi.gs here, they're still enjoyable to talk to. Meanwhile, sites dominated by liberal politics, you can't talk to people unless you share their viewpoints on everything exactly.

It feels odd being called a liberal on ats, then to turn around and have someone call me a nazi on another site. At least on ats you're still free to speak and don't just get quietly shadow banned.

For a bunch of conservative leaning people, the people herw tend to be far more opened minded about many things.

Also, as much as politics and religious stuff tends to lean fairly conservatively, there seems to be more open mindedness towards science and other things you'd never find on a straightup right wing platform.

Go to twitter or late night television or hollywood or listen to any new music. The echo chamber is outside of ATS, not inside.

ATS welcomes views from all over the political spectrum, and has never done otherwise. Those who have left because they don't like the so-called "right-wing echo chamber" surely didn't have to walk very far to find an echo chamber of their very own.

a reply to: Grambler

right wing echo chamber

I've been here since 2003 original account (SOLIDSNAKE).

Don't try to convince me that ATS is not housed full of batsh*t crazies! Trust me, things have come down now, back in the days it was too extreme!

I don’t think ATS is right wing at all. I do value the opinion of the members predominantly for two reasons. #1 you make me think. #2 the membership, at least to me, are some of the most intelligent and interesting minds on the web.

a reply to: Grambler

yeah i think it is going that direction for sure

you have members starting the same thread in 5 different forums with the same fake edited crap all in a day

people basically saying they are cool with certain members of congress being assassinated

people crying that the FBI needs to get involved over t shirts for sale on facebook

yes.
i most definitely think it is going that direction



how many times did we see TDS TDS orange man bad when someone talked # about trump eat ice cream or some other lame thing only to have the same few people start a thread over every little thing AOC or Omar does?

the site is a large circle jerk these days

you are smart enough to see the tone of the posts man

a reply to: TinySickTears

It's literally the Daily Stormer.

a reply to: Grambler

I agree that many on the left don't post as much as they once did. It was fairly even, until the Trump collusion narrative turned out to be a wild goose chase, supported, for the most part, my the MSM, and dem talking points.

There are still some that won't let it go, but I think many realize that beating a dead horse makes one look foolish.

I wouldn't call it a right wing echo chamber. I would call it a place where people who have realized how corrupt the left wing has been, gather and discuss the true events and actions of politics and the world. People on the left HATE to hear the truth (I know, I went through this for 20+ years and they throw tantrums when confronted with facts that destroy their lies) and will denigrate anyone who speaks the truth and will mock anyone who does this.

Just look back to 2008 and you will see A LOT of Bush bashing, probably by a lot of people who now support Trump. The reason for this is b/c Bush seemed like a NWO stooge. Many of the Trump supporters were probably semi supportive of Obama during the election b/c he had very little history and everything that was controversial was said to be a lie (by the conservatives) or burried and not revealed yet.

The reason it is an "echo chamber" is because things are finally being done that benefit the country instead of tearing it down piece by piece. People are going to support what is right for the country if they don't have TDS.

Forget what the whiny brats say about an echo chamber. If anything the leftist MSM is the epitome of an echo chamber - there is non larger and that includes Google (with their manipulated search results), FB & Twitter (with their bans & censorship).

a reply to: TinySickTears

I explained in the OP why I feel the tone seems shifted to the right. All of the Trump ice cream, trump telling kids Santa isn't real, trump hiring hookers to pee on a bed stories turned out to back fire,.

Yes, there still are ridiculous threads from trump supporters, and others. I see many trump supporters such as myself call out those threads.

But merely commenting on AOC or Omar isn't unjustified. Not saying this is you, but I love the msm calling out the right for focusing on aoc or omar as unjustified, while they put the on every magazine cover and talk about them endlessly. Now to even criticize them is "inciting violence"

The truth is the anti trump people don't post as much because there conspiracy about him being a Russian agent that mueller was going to bring down was a lie that was parroted from the deep state and their msm allies.

originally posted by: Grambler


The truth is the anti trump people don't post as much because there conspiracy about him being a Russian agent that mueller was going to bring down was a lie that was parroted from the deep state and their msm allies.

that is one possibility

the other possibility is they are tired of dealing with it and have found other places to frequent

you cant know why they dropped off

you can't deny this site has become very political in the last couple years

more so than ever before

there was never a mudpit up until a couple years ago

it has been gradual but it is happening

skeptic and springer basically dipped out
got the pit


its changing

my opinion

a reply to: TinySickTears

The mud pit may explain why people in general have been turned off.

But I doubt the people posting daily about trump being a Russian stooge, many of which posts they made were on the mud pit, left because they were upset about the mudpit.

I find the cries that this is a right wing echo chamber with inflexible or ridiculous right wing posters to conveniently leave out that poster of all sides have had ridiculous posts.

It just seems like many of these ridiculous political posts from one side have turned out to be false, and those people haven't been posting as much.

a reply to: TinySickTears

Go try to be even slightly right leaning on reddit and come back and tell me if ats is toxic to the left.

I think it is only natural for ATS, as a conspiracy site full of people that are meant to question the age in which they are living, to be moving more right as our society shifts more left. The center-right has become the new counter-culture. And I'm not even sure "right-wing" is even the proper term here. Frankly, the counter-culture is more about calling out B.S. when you see it other than prescribing to a particular ideology over another. I think it just gets labeled "right-wing" because it is in stark opposition to the trendy identitarian (and authoritarian) left movement of the moment which is loud and obnoxious and has an overabundance of B.S. to unpack. Just as the old identitarian right did before it (and still does today) when it was challenged by a perceived left-leaning faction. Then, like now, was always more about evidence and reason or fact vs. fiction than left vs. right or republican vs. democrat.

EDIT:

I'd also like to add that the identitarian left is more of a religious philosophy than a political one. If you listen to them speak on matters it is always "my morality is superior to your morality". Morality is subjective and you cannot legislate it. The left not only used to understand this fact, but championed it avidly. My heart weeps for what has become of the modern day democrat party.