Breaking The Liberal Echo Chamber article review
In her Huffington Post article Breaking The Liberal Echo Chamber Adrienne Klasa, explains how liberals in the west have insulated themselves from social and political reality by maintaining an intolerant circle of views on liberal platforms that don’t allow for alternative views, especially from conservatives. Julia Ebner, on the other hand, accuses conservatives and the far right of doing the same in her Guardian article titled The far right thrives on global networks. They must be fought online and off, which illustrates the extent these groups will go to in a bid to amplify their extreme views.
Ms. Klasa accuses the liberals of using self-curated social media feeds and liberal media outlets to amplify only liberal stories and ideas to the exclusion of others, especially conservative ones. This exclusion also extends to family and friends as well as opinion shapers and leaders that liberals choose to listen to in public forums and other places. At the same time, Ms. Ebner highlights how far right proponents are taking their hatred for Muslims and liberals into the criminal territory by doing hate crimes and radicalizing the gullible. She also points out that online hate speech against minorities is approaching record levels with the metropolitan police warning that far-right hate groups pose a threat to society that is as bad as jihadist factions.
She further illustrates how these extremists groups, are combining forces online to buttress each other’s efforts, capitalizing on globalization opportunities to distribute their anti-globalist views around the world and propagate intolerance. Nationalists from Britain are now collaborating with French and Austrian far righters who in turn are working with German and polish neo-Nazis to spread their messages of prejudice and discrimination. Ms. Ebner points out how little the social media companies are doing to fight hate crimes propagated on their platforms or safeguard users from bullying, abuse, harassment and the promotion of violent behavior. A home affairs report shows that far-right groups are gaining influence in every sector where they work including among white supremacist terror groups, neo-Nazi factions, and alt-right pressure groups.
At the same time, left-wing media platforms like Vox are mimicking the strategies of far-right media like Breitbart News to propagate extreme opinions and insight their audience with partisan opinions sometimes presented as fact. The media on both sides of the political divide are taking increasingly extreme approaches to handling discourse and this always involves completely ignoring the contrary opinions or belittling it whenever it’s mentioned.
From the foregoing, Ebner and Klasa are really saying that the hate figures and messages on both sides of the political divide are the same. The only difference is that they are coming from opposite sides of the spectrum but they use the same strategies and methods to whip up support from the moderates in society.
In conclusion, Ms. Klasa suggests liberals move beyond their cocoon or as she says, ‘break out of the liberal echo chamber’ in order to interact with opposing views for the sake of the country. The liberal cocoon she says is the reason why extreme movements such as Donald Trump’s nationalists and the Brexit group in England have ascended to power, to the chagrin of leftists. Ms. Ebner, on the other hand, suggests that breaking reciprocal radicalization is the key to ending the vicious circle of self-perpetuating hate speech. This is best achieved by supporting civil society efforts to propagate nuanced alternatives to the binary views that the far right and left promotes.