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Well assuming you looked it up, clicked on the first Google result, and read Fourteen Words, 14, or 14/88, is a reference to the fourteen-word slogan "

Well assuming you looked it up, clicked on the first Google result, and read Fourteen Words, 14, or 14/88, is a reference to the fourteen-word slogan "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children, "[1] or the less commonly used "Because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the earth."[2] The slogans were originally coined by white supremacist David Lane,[3] a founding member of the terrorist organization The Order[4] and serve as a rallying cry for militant white nationalists across the globe." ... how are you still struggling?

Kaiyou 6y ago
Are you saying we should propagate white genocide? If not, than how are those fourteen words not a pretty reasonable thing to say? Don't you want a future for white children? How is this a far-right belief? It boggles the mind.
- augustt 6y ago
  Either you are being disingenuous or you have a very naive understanding of the quote. I could just as easily say: "work sets you free" doesn't sound so unreasonable! How could anyone take issue with that?!
  - Kaiyou 6y ago
    That work sets you free is an unsubstantiated claim. I'm working and I don't think that this set me free. On the contrary, I think it's pretty shackling. What would be a not naive understanding of the quote? I think it is reasonable to want a future for your own children. How are we living in a world where this is controversial?
    - Nursie 6y ago
      You can't be this naive? Please search for "arbeit macht frei" and get back to us.
      - Kaiyou 6y ago
        I'm from Germany, I know that slogan. Like I said, I think it's inherently wrong. Work is something that shackles you. Your reply doesn't address my questions.
    - meheleventyone 6y ago
      It's not a future for "your own children" it's a future for "white children" generally that needs to be "secured" (from whom?) spoken in the context of white supremacy. If it was "I want a nice future for my own children" that would be uncontroversial.
      - Kaiyou 6y ago
        There's no difference between your own children and white children, if you are white, is there? Generally speaking, the future is something that needs securing. If you don't secure your future, you might not have any. One way to secure your future is by learning a valuable skill another one is to marry into a wealthy family. There doesn't have to be a boogeyman threatening your future. Just missing out on opportunities or wasting your life away in idleness can be a big enough blow to ruin your future.
        meheleventyone 6y ago
        You'd probably do better not avoiding the elephant sized context in the room here. It makes your replies look deeply disingenuous. To answer your point if I'm white there is still 50% of the equation that might not be. So my children are not necessarily "white" nor would the be considered so by white supremacists. My children might be adopted. My children might have some sort of genetic disorder that causes skin pigmentation changes. I might deeply consider my cats to be my children. Which is without even considering the deeper implications of whether it is simple to define "whiteness". There are plenty of reasons why my own children and "white children" might not be part of the same set.
        monocasa 6y ago
        Does it apply to your children's children? What if they're not white?
        dang 6y ago
        You can't troll HN like you did in this thread. We warned you once already. I've banned this account. Please don't create accounts to break HN's guidelines with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - timerol 6y ago
      Here's a personal claim: Meine Ehre heißt Treue. (My honour is called loyalty.) Seems like a upstanding thing to say, but it's banned as a slogan in Austria and Germany, because of its relation to the SS. The words chosen are relatively vague and could mean a number of things, but in context both this and the 14 words are clearly part of the white supremacist movement. You can't ignore the history and context of language.
      - int_19h 6y ago
        > Meine Ehre heißt Treue. (My honour is called loyalty.) Seems like a upstanding thing to say Not at all. It's literally boasting that one will blindly follow orders, even those that would be considered dishonorable.
- linguistbreaker 6y ago
  I think context is the important thing here. Taken out of context, the quote is reasonable. I had never heard of this but if you replace "white" with "black" it seems pretty acceptable right? In context it sort of means repress and kill everyone else though.
  - Kaiyou 6y ago
    And how do you get from this quote to the context of genociding other people? That's a pretty big non-sequitur. The quote is about securing a future, not to "kill all infidels".
    - mos_basik 6y ago
      I just got back from reading a blogpost [0] by another commenter (presumably also German, if you are, in fact, German) in this thread about how Americans are so steeped in euphemism that they don't notice how much they respond to what they think their conversational parter is implying and not to what the partner is actually saying. I admit that I am American and the blogpost resonates with my experience. That being said, you've just made a very interesting sequence of comments in this subthread that, taken as a whole, can be interpreted in at least a couple of quite different ways - and the more comments you make, the more your (probably predominately American) readers are going to build up a mental model of what you might be implying. Personally, as an American who maybe has spent too much time on the internet, my interpretation of your comments in this subthread is that they are essentially a piece of performance art. Also personally, I am enjoying the performance quite a lot. I'll make no comment about whether or not the performance is appropriate to the spirit of this website as revealed to us by dang. But! Maybe it's good for me to practice responding to what people actually say. And I think your logic slipped a little: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924541 (GP) said: >Taken out of context, the quote is reasonable. [Taken in context], it... means repress and kill everyone [but whites]. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924684 (you) said: >How do you get from this quote to the context of genociding other people? The issue is that GP said "There is a context that the quote was made in, and that context turns the quote bad" and you non-sequitured by asking "How does one, starting from these words, derive the bad-making context?" You're right, you can't. The literal words are fine by themselves. But the words are not all there is (at least to an American audience in the current year, which the audience I'm most qualified to have an opinion on). This is why when you tell an American "allahu ackbar" they think "suicide bomber". Or "it's time for a change" means "the boundless optimism of a young black presidential candiate". Or "planned parenthood" could mean either "women finally gaining control over their own bodies" or "state subsidy of immoral behavior" instead of, you know, literally planning whether/when one wants to have children. Americans wouldn't tattoo 1488 on themselves if there were no additional, metatextual information that they wanted to convey to a viewer, so it seems kind of naive to interpret that kind of thing in the literal manner you've been exploring. I don't think you're suggesting they should be interpreted literally, though; I think you're lamenting that some humans have gotten to a place where they see terrible concepts in words that are intrinsically innocuous. I think that's just a part of being human, but I'm American so maybe it's just a part of being American. I lament it also. 0: https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
seph-reed 6y ago
It honestly seems like we should be able to say: "Hey white-nationalist, I see that you really like white people and that's okay. You want white kids to be happy, go for it. If someone else wants green kids to be happy, they should do that too. Just don't be a dick to everyone else." If they're directing their energy towards anything good at all, it's probably best to recognize the validity there, while doing your best to devalidate things they shouldn't be doing. It's not like "fuck everything about you white nationalist" is paying off... it's kind of how we got Trump IMO.
- seph-reed 6y ago
  EDIT: or, you know, we could just keep throwing fuel into a flame war and then pretend it's not our fault because we didn't start the fire.

Kaiyou 6y ago

Are you saying we should propagate white genocide? If not, than how are those fourteen words not a pretty reasonable thing to say? Don't you want a future for white children? How is this a far-right belief? It boggles the mind.

augustt 6y ago
Either you are being disingenuous or you have a very naive understanding of the quote. I could just as easily say: "work sets you free" doesn't sound so unreasonable! How could anyone take issue with that?!
- Kaiyou 6y ago
  That work sets you free is an unsubstantiated claim. I'm working and I don't think that this set me free. On the contrary, I think it's pretty shackling. What would be a not naive understanding of the quote? I think it is reasonable to want a future for your own children. How are we living in a world where this is controversial?
  - Nursie 6y ago
    You can't be this naive? Please search for "arbeit macht frei" and get back to us.
    - Kaiyou 6y ago
      I'm from Germany, I know that slogan. Like I said, I think it's inherently wrong. Work is something that shackles you. Your reply doesn't address my questions.
  - meheleventyone 6y ago
    It's not a future for "your own children" it's a future for "white children" generally that needs to be "secured" (from whom?) spoken in the context of white supremacy. If it was "I want a nice future for my own children" that would be uncontroversial.
    - Kaiyou 6y ago
      There's no difference between your own children and white children, if you are white, is there? Generally speaking, the future is something that needs securing. If you don't secure your future, you might not have any. One way to secure your future is by learning a valuable skill another one is to marry into a wealthy family. There doesn't have to be a boogeyman threatening your future. Just missing out on opportunities or wasting your life away in idleness can be a big enough blow to ruin your future.
      - meheleventyone 6y ago
        You'd probably do better not avoiding the elephant sized context in the room here. It makes your replies look deeply disingenuous. To answer your point if I'm white there is still 50% of the equation that might not be. So my children are not necessarily "white" nor would the be considered so by white supremacists. My children might be adopted. My children might have some sort of genetic disorder that causes skin pigmentation changes. I might deeply consider my cats to be my children. Which is without even considering the deeper implications of whether it is simple to define "whiteness". There are plenty of reasons why my own children and "white children" might not be part of the same set.
      - monocasa 6y ago
        Does it apply to your children's children? What if they're not white?
      - dang 6y ago
        You can't troll HN like you did in this thread. We warned you once already. I've banned this account. Please don't create accounts to break HN's guidelines with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - timerol 6y ago
    Here's a personal claim: Meine Ehre heißt Treue. (My honour is called loyalty.) Seems like a upstanding thing to say, but it's banned as a slogan in Austria and Germany, because of its relation to the SS. The words chosen are relatively vague and could mean a number of things, but in context both this and the 14 words are clearly part of the white supremacist movement. You can't ignore the history and context of language.
    - int_19h 6y ago
      > Meine Ehre heißt Treue. (My honour is called loyalty.) Seems like a upstanding thing to say Not at all. It's literally boasting that one will blindly follow orders, even those that would be considered dishonorable.
linguistbreaker 6y ago
I think context is the important thing here. Taken out of context, the quote is reasonable. I had never heard of this but if you replace "white" with "black" it seems pretty acceptable right? In context it sort of means repress and kill everyone else though.
- Kaiyou 6y ago
  And how do you get from this quote to the context of genociding other people? That's a pretty big non-sequitur. The quote is about securing a future, not to "kill all infidels".
  - mos_basik 6y ago
    I just got back from reading a blogpost [0] by another commenter (presumably also German, if you are, in fact, German) in this thread about how Americans are so steeped in euphemism that they don't notice how much they respond to what they think their conversational parter is implying and not to what the partner is actually saying. I admit that I am American and the blogpost resonates with my experience. That being said, you've just made a very interesting sequence of comments in this subthread that, taken as a whole, can be interpreted in at least a couple of quite different ways - and the more comments you make, the more your (probably predominately American) readers are going to build up a mental model of what you might be implying. Personally, as an American who maybe has spent too much time on the internet, my interpretation of your comments in this subthread is that they are essentially a piece of performance art. Also personally, I am enjoying the performance quite a lot. I'll make no comment about whether or not the performance is appropriate to the spirit of this website as revealed to us by dang. But! Maybe it's good for me to practice responding to what people actually say. And I think your logic slipped a little: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924541 (GP) said: >Taken out of context, the quote is reasonable. [Taken in context], it... means repress and kill everyone [but whites]. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22924684 (you) said: >How do you get from this quote to the context of genociding other people? The issue is that GP said "There is a context that the quote was made in, and that context turns the quote bad" and you non-sequitured by asking "How does one, starting from these words, derive the bad-making context?" You're right, you can't. The literal words are fine by themselves. But the words are not all there is (at least to an American audience in the current year, which the audience I'm most qualified to have an opinion on). This is why when you tell an American "allahu ackbar" they think "suicide bomber". Or "it's time for a change" means "the boundless optimism of a young black presidential candiate". Or "planned parenthood" could mean either "women finally gaining control over their own bodies" or "state subsidy of immoral behavior" instead of, you know, literally planning whether/when one wants to have children. Americans wouldn't tattoo 1488 on themselves if there were no additional, metatextual information that they wanted to convey to a viewer, so it seems kind of naive to interpret that kind of thing in the literal manner you've been exploring. I don't think you're suggesting they should be interpreted literally, though; I think you're lamenting that some humans have gotten to a place where they see terrible concepts in words that are intrinsically innocuous. I think that's just a part of being human, but I'm American so maybe it's just a part of being American. I lament it also. 0: https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

seph-reed 6y ago

It honestly seems like we should be able to say: "Hey white-nationalist, I see that you really like white people and that's okay. You want white kids to be happy, go for it. If someone else wants green kids to be happy, they should do that too. Just don't be a dick to everyone else." If they're directing their energy towards anything good at all, it's probably best to recognize the validity there, while doing your best to devalidate things they shouldn't be doing. It's not like "fuck everything about you white nationalist" is paying off... it's kind of how we got Trump IMO.

seph-reed 6y ago
EDIT: or, you know, we could just keep throwing fuel into a flame war and then pretend it's not our fault because we didn't start the fire.