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> do not underestimate the destructive power of lies When people are unwilling to hold fast to truth, that is when terrible things happen. When someone tells

> do not underestimate the destructive power of lies When people are unwilling to hold fast to truth, that is when terrible things happen. When someone tells a lie, for example, "the reason you don't have a job and things are bad is because of those Jews". Or, "those Jews are not human - we have to protect ourselves". That is when people who would not normally do bad things do bad things. They can believe they are saving their country from destruction by sub-humans. They can believe that they are in fact performing a heroic action. Some of the labeling heard today seems to be coming close to this, and with terrible consequences. People are losing their jobs, their careers, their ability to express their views, and their ability to practice their religious beliefs - all for the "greater good". Instead of respecting a person's inalienable rights - because they are a human that always deserves this respect - some people are telling themselves that it is OK to disrespect others to achieve some utopian state. This is the biggest lie.

danharaj 8y ago
> Some of the labeling heard today What do you have in mind, in particular?
- happytoexplain 8y ago
  Spreading hatred for groups of people via labels and encouraging their treatment as sub-human is popular rhetoric among nationalist extremists and political conspiracy theorists, but to satisfy the final condition (to be subjected in practice to a significant amount of suppression based on deceitful rhetoric), I think an easy argument could be made to put immigrants in that category, and maybe also homosexuals/trans people. You have to be mindful of that last condition though, since if you dropped it, nearly any group of people, sadly, would qualify as being subjected to such behavior.
  - tajen 8y ago
    That’s all common prejudices you have about right-wing people. But you’re right on one thing: It’s very dangerous. You’re encouraging people to have prejudices to the point of being ok with killing or justifying the killing of white people. Example: White people getting expropriated and killed in South Africa hurts no-one’s feelings, unfortunately. The real question here is not the ethnicities, but sorting lies from truth, moral from amoral. And the killing of people is amoral in ALL cases. Even if the victim is white or male. And that’s what the right-wing have been saying all along, despites layers of lies that are spread over them. It is a real, big big big problem that whites and males are disparaged today to the point of being fired from Google when they protest for illegal mistreatment or put errorneously in prison in UK for reporting on crimes performed by the protected classes, and encouraging the disparaging of people who say just-that is what 52% of the population are fed up with.
  - tomohawk 8y ago
    It's also popular among communists. The idea of getting rid of anyone who stands in the way of some ideology or belief so that a utopia can be established. Mao killed 45 - 100 million people. Many were starved to death, with food allocated such that anyone who opposed his ideals did not get food. Stalin and Lenin killed their millions, too. Not an athiest? Off to the gulag! Successful farmer or landowner? Off to the gulag! Too successful or competent? Off to the gulag! In today's China, the government is operating concentration camps to "reeducate" people into proper belief systems - presumably so that the communist party's utopia can be achieved. It is estimated as many as a million may be in these camps.
    - jsonne 8y ago
      For what it's worth in the article he brings up Soviet atrocities as well. No place on the political spectrum has the monopoly on being righteous, nor committing terrible crimes.
      - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
        What many forget are the dead bodies of capitalism. That isn't mentioned normally, not is it in this first hand account. Capitalism has its roots in the idea that only those who produce get resources. If you are unable/unwilling, you do not deserve anything. And that anything includes: a home, food, water, bathroom, medicine, surgery, dentistry, or all the other essentials needed to live. Along with that, our unique US capitalism also allows for slavery when charged with a crime. We call the Russian and Chinese detention centers "gulags" - we have enshrined their usage in our Constitution. Mao and Stalin killed X millions. I'll accept that without research. How many people has the US killed with lack of health care? How many union strikers were murdered by the National Guard? How many African Americans were killed under lynching and 'police discretion'? How many people were killed because they didn't make enough money to matter? How many communities were poisoned with lead and other environmental pollutants because their community was impoverished? In the end, Capitalists can crow one solid phrase to absolve their 'sins'. And that is, "They brought their suffering and death upon themselves by not choosing better". Am I advocating communism or socialism? No. They have been shown to not work in the previous incarnations around the world. Capitalism works, until people slip through the cracks... And those cracks day by day get ever so larger. I don't know the name of the thing I think of. Maybe its a mashup between socialism and capitalism, so that we all grow together, and that nobody is left behind.
  - baud147258 8y ago
    > among nationalist extremists and political conspiracy theorists Not only from them, other groups are doing it too, but since they are not writing in English, no one cares.
- GW150914 8y ago
  > Some of the labeling heard today What do you have in mind, in particular? They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. From the man who is now the president of the country with the world’s largest economy and military. I’m sorry if this bothers people because it’s political, but it’s a fair answer to the weak question asked.
  - mattnewton 8y ago
    Don’t know what’s political about answering that question directly except that it’s from a Trump quote. I suppose most people would prefer everyone just not answer here - in which case I wonder what this article is doing on hacker news at all if we don’t want to have this discussion here.
    - masonic 8y ago
      Except that's not the actual quote.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - evgen 8y ago
        The actual lines are: "They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." Explain how prior comment differs significantly from the actual quote.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        Seems accurate to me: https://youtu.be/Jaz1J0s-cL4?t=27s https://youtu.be/Jaz1J0s-cL4?t=27s
  - jerf 8y ago
    HN is at least 90% anti-Trump. If you're getting downvoted for a Trump criticism, you've screwed up somewhere other than pissing off the three people on HN who have voting privileges and like Trump.
- sheepmullet 8y ago
  The demonization of white men.
delbel 8y ago
> People are losing their jobs, their careers, their ability to express their views, and their ability to practice their religious beliefs - all for the "greater good". > ... to achieve some utopian state. This is the biggest lie. This is happening on a daily basis on youtube's platform Edit: LOL, your comment just got exposed as insincere argument, hurts doesn't it?
yesenadam 8y ago
Do you know the difference between a lie and a falsehood? I think it does a lot of damage in the world, people labelling things as lies when they merely think they're not true. It's very inflammatory. "That's a lie!" says not only "That's not true" but "and you know it". Which often is itself not true. Thus you could be accused of lying yourself. Very often people are lied to in the media[0], then adopt false beliefs, which they then repeat - but they're not lying when they do so, they believe these things. It poisons communication when this word 'lies' is thrown around loosely. People disagree about a lot of things. It usually doesn't mean they're lying about it. Usually you have no idea whether people you don't know are lying or saying false things they believe. How could you know that with certainty. It's not even possible for a sentence to be a lie, in the way you seem to believe. A sentence uttered by a person, yes, but detach it as you did from any speaker, and it can only be true or false. A lie requires specific knowledge in the mind of the particular person uttering the sentence. [0]Whoops - see, I even did it myself. I don't know if that's right.
- mikeash 8y ago
  The converse is also true: it’s extremely dangerous to avoid the word “lie” when it actually fits. A certain nameless American president constantly gets a free pass on this from news organizations.
- omegaworks 8y ago
  >A lie requires specific knowledge in the mind of the particular person uttering the sentence. Can you clarify? Are you saying it is impossible to ascertain the intent of the speaker? I appreciate the distinction you are making, it is an important one. To lie is to speak a false statement, coupled with the intent to deceive. What is missing from your assertion is whether we can gage intent and how we do so. Intent is critical to understanding the degree to which we apply a corrective measure. It's the difference between manslaughter and murder.
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    Are you saying it is impossible to ascertain the intent of the speaker? No, not at all. Just that for something to be a lie it needs 1. to be not true, and 2. for the person uttering it to know that it's not true. Hopefully that's entirely uncontroversial. Yes, how to find out what people know, desire, plan, intend etc is another question entirely. Another thing - I don't think you can always neatly divide people's utterances into something they know/believe vs something they don't. e.g. believing in god or not - some have varying levels of belief, depends on mood, some aren't sure what they believe etc, it's often not a simple, unchanging binary 'on or off' situation.

danharaj 8y ago

> Some of the labeling heard today What do you have in mind, in particular?

happytoexplain 8y ago
Spreading hatred for groups of people via labels and encouraging their treatment as sub-human is popular rhetoric among nationalist extremists and political conspiracy theorists, but to satisfy the final condition (to be subjected in practice to a significant amount of suppression based on deceitful rhetoric), I think an easy argument could be made to put immigrants in that category, and maybe also homosexuals/trans people. You have to be mindful of that last condition though, since if you dropped it, nearly any group of people, sadly, would qualify as being subjected to such behavior.
- tajen 8y ago
  That’s all common prejudices you have about right-wing people. But you’re right on one thing: It’s very dangerous. You’re encouraging people to have prejudices to the point of being ok with killing or justifying the killing of white people. Example: White people getting expropriated and killed in South Africa hurts no-one’s feelings, unfortunately. The real question here is not the ethnicities, but sorting lies from truth, moral from amoral. And the killing of people is amoral in ALL cases. Even if the victim is white or male. And that’s what the right-wing have been saying all along, despites layers of lies that are spread over them. It is a real, big big big problem that whites and males are disparaged today to the point of being fired from Google when they protest for illegal mistreatment or put errorneously in prison in UK for reporting on crimes performed by the protected classes, and encouraging the disparaging of people who say just-that is what 52% of the population are fed up with.
- tomohawk 8y ago
  It's also popular among communists. The idea of getting rid of anyone who stands in the way of some ideology or belief so that a utopia can be established. Mao killed 45 - 100 million people. Many were starved to death, with food allocated such that anyone who opposed his ideals did not get food. Stalin and Lenin killed their millions, too. Not an athiest? Off to the gulag! Successful farmer or landowner? Off to the gulag! Too successful or competent? Off to the gulag! In today's China, the government is operating concentration camps to "reeducate" people into proper belief systems - presumably so that the communist party's utopia can be achieved. It is estimated as many as a million may be in these camps.
  - jsonne 8y ago
    For what it's worth in the article he brings up Soviet atrocities as well. No place on the political spectrum has the monopoly on being righteous, nor committing terrible crimes.
    - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
      What many forget are the dead bodies of capitalism. That isn't mentioned normally, not is it in this first hand account. Capitalism has its roots in the idea that only those who produce get resources. If you are unable/unwilling, you do not deserve anything. And that anything includes: a home, food, water, bathroom, medicine, surgery, dentistry, or all the other essentials needed to live. Along with that, our unique US capitalism also allows for slavery when charged with a crime. We call the Russian and Chinese detention centers "gulags" - we have enshrined their usage in our Constitution. Mao and Stalin killed X millions. I'll accept that without research. How many people has the US killed with lack of health care? How many union strikers were murdered by the National Guard? How many African Americans were killed under lynching and 'police discretion'? How many people were killed because they didn't make enough money to matter? How many communities were poisoned with lead and other environmental pollutants because their community was impoverished? In the end, Capitalists can crow one solid phrase to absolve their 'sins'. And that is, "They brought their suffering and death upon themselves by not choosing better". Am I advocating communism or socialism? No. They have been shown to not work in the previous incarnations around the world. Capitalism works, until people slip through the cracks... And those cracks day by day get ever so larger. I don't know the name of the thing I think of. Maybe its a mashup between socialism and capitalism, so that we all grow together, and that nobody is left behind.
- baud147258 8y ago
  > among nationalist extremists and political conspiracy theorists Not only from them, other groups are doing it too, but since they are not writing in English, no one cares.
GW150914 8y ago
> Some of the labeling heard today What do you have in mind, in particular? They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. From the man who is now the president of the country with the world’s largest economy and military. I’m sorry if this bothers people because it’s political, but it’s a fair answer to the weak question asked.
- mattnewton 8y ago
  Don’t know what’s political about answering that question directly except that it’s from a Trump quote. I suppose most people would prefer everyone just not answer here - in which case I wonder what this article is doing on hacker news at all if we don’t want to have this discussion here.
  - masonic 8y ago
    Except that's not the actual quote.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - evgen 8y ago
      The actual lines are: "They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." Explain how prior comment differs significantly from the actual quote.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      Seems accurate to me: https://youtu.be/Jaz1J0s-cL4?t=27s https://youtu.be/Jaz1J0s-cL4?t=27s
- jerf 8y ago
  HN is at least 90% anti-Trump. If you're getting downvoted for a Trump criticism, you've screwed up somewhere other than pissing off the three people on HN who have voting privileges and like Trump.
sheepmullet 8y ago
The demonization of white men.

delbel 8y ago

> People are losing their jobs, their careers, their ability to express their views, and their ability to practice their religious beliefs - all for the "greater good". > ... to achieve some utopian state. This is the biggest lie. This is happening on a daily basis on youtube's platform Edit: LOL, your comment just got exposed as insincere argument, hurts doesn't it?

yesenadam 8y ago

Do you know the difference between a lie and a falsehood? I think it does a lot of damage in the world, people labelling things as lies when they merely think they're not true. It's very inflammatory. "That's a lie!" says not only "That's not true" but "and you know it". Which often is itself not true. Thus you could be accused of lying yourself. Very often people are lied to in the media[0], then adopt false beliefs, which they then repeat - but they're not lying when they do so, they believe these things. It poisons communication when this word 'lies' is thrown around loosely. People disagree about a lot of things. It usually doesn't mean they're lying about it. Usually you have no idea whether people you don't know are lying or saying false things they believe. How could you know that with certainty. It's not even possible for a sentence to be a lie, in the way you seem to believe. A sentence uttered by a person, yes, but detach it as you did from any speaker, and it can only be true or false. A lie requires specific knowledge in the mind of the particular person uttering the sentence. [0]Whoops - see, I even did it myself. I don't know if that's right.

mikeash 8y ago
The converse is also true: it’s extremely dangerous to avoid the word “lie” when it actually fits. A certain nameless American president constantly gets a free pass on this from news organizations.
omegaworks 8y ago
>A lie requires specific knowledge in the mind of the particular person uttering the sentence. Can you clarify? Are you saying it is impossible to ascertain the intent of the speaker? I appreciate the distinction you are making, it is an important one. To lie is to speak a false statement, coupled with the intent to deceive. What is missing from your assertion is whether we can gage intent and how we do so. Intent is critical to understanding the degree to which we apply a corrective measure. It's the difference between manslaughter and murder.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  Are you saying it is impossible to ascertain the intent of the speaker? No, not at all. Just that for something to be a lie it needs 1. to be not true, and 2. for the person uttering it to know that it's not true. Hopefully that's entirely uncontroversial. Yes, how to find out what people know, desire, plan, intend etc is another question entirely. Another thing - I don't think you can always neatly divide people's utterances into something they know/believe vs something they don't. e.g. believing in god or not - some have varying levels of belief, depends on mood, some aren't sure what they believe etc, it's often not a simple, unchanging binary 'on or off' situation.