6 ms·

What can we do, as a community, to limit the spread of fascism? It seems that it's quite a problem.

s5300 6y ago
Well, some may say to promote ideas of anti-fascism... However, it would appear the people in the places that matter definitely don't want that happening and have no issue associating ideas of anti-fascism with terrorism. So, I think that the correct answer to your question may be "nothing" - unfortunately, it's already too late.
collegecamp293 6y ago
You've done enough. People who have said "All lives matter" on their FB pages have been fired from their jobs this week. This is what counts as "fascism" now.
- deminature 6y ago
  Is there any evidence anyone has actually been fired over this? Also 'all lives matter' is a dogwhistle, and people posting it must know this, or be alarmingly unaware.
  - collegecamp293 6y ago
    Grant Napear, announcer for the Sacramento Kings, was fired for saying "All lives matter. Every single one".
    - wpietri 6y ago
      Just so people know the context, NBA player DeMarcus Cousins asked him on Twitter, "@GrantNapearshow what’s your take on BLM?" [1] Napear responded: "Haven't heard from you in years. ALL LIVES MATTER...EVERY SINGLE ONE!!!" Later in an interview Napear claimed to not know what that meant. "I’m not as educated on BLM as I thought I was. I had no idea that when I said ‘All Lives Matter’ that it was counter to what BLM was trying to get across." The guy has had a sports talk show for years. Black Lives Matter was founded in 2013, and even if Napear had never made it out of the sports section in the news, should have known about it via issues like Kaepernick. it is absolutely implausible that Napear didn't know what his one-tweet, all-caps reply meant. If I were his bosses, I would have fired him just for being bad at lying. And even if he were somehow being honest, that is a) admitting to an incredible level of ignorance for a guy whose job is covering a sport where 75% of the players are black, and b) incredibly poor judgement to jump into the top political issue of the moment without even knowing what he was saying. [1] https://twitter.com/boogiecousins/status/1267271720282415104 https://twitter.com/boogiecousins/status/1267271720282415104
  - rayiner 6y ago
    I have family members saying “All lives matter.” It might be a bit ignorant, but for most people—who don’t live in big urban areas and who aren’t exposed to all the back and forth on these subjects—it’s not a dog whistle. What exactly is someone who spent their whole life in coastal Oregon or rural Iowa supposed to do when they see rioting and looting in Seattle, Portland, Chicago, etc., and then hear people say we can’t condemn it because of structural racism. They’ve never seen the block-by-block segregation in Chicago. They’ve never lived in east coast cities where highways were built where cities had previously been divided on segregationist lines. They certainly didn’t vote for the municipal governments that hired the cops that killed black property with impunity for decades. Their experience with the police, meanwhile, is with small town cops, not big city police departments with body armor and armored vehicles conducting no-knock raids. I happen to agree that people in Osceola County Iowa (where my wife grew up, and which according to the census has six black people in a county of 6,000) should educate themselves about what’s going on in the rest of the country. But saying they’re using “dog whistles” is ascribing to them a state of mind that’s completely unwarranted.
    - pen2l 6y ago
      > I have family members saying “All lives matter.” Oh come on, at this point you have to be living under a rock to think that "Black lives matter" means other lives don't matter. At this point, that is just not excusable and the folks who say 'All lives matter' are unbelievably insensitive in saying so, and they are very much a part of the problem. And we have a president with a penchant for dogwhistling thanks in part to folks like those from rural Iowa, so we really shouldn't cut them any slack (that's no knock on you/your family personally, I'm just sayin').
      - rayiner 6y ago
        > Oh come on, at this point you have to be living under a rock to think that "Black lives matter" means other lives don't matter. There have been multiple people killed as a result of the riots, including two police officers, but nobody on the news is talking about those deaths. Instead, people are talking about how those riots are justified. Every single store on the block in DC where my wife has an office had its windows smashed in. But the mayor of DC is focused in painting a giant “black lives matter” sign on the street. How are people supposed to take all that, other than as an assertion that “other lives don’t matter?” One of the great virtues of Americans is that they don’t condone social upheaval. It’s not like the country where I’m from, where they have strikes and violent rioting after every election. You need some really grave to justify rioting in America. I think there is a strong argument that the oppression of black people in America is that grave. But it’s really asking a lot for people to appreciate why based entirely on some clips they see in the news, and assertions from talking heads in the news that they don’t otherwise trust. I’ve got two cops who live within a couple of blocks. One just had a baby boy. Our closest neighbor friend is a former cop. Wonderful guy, knows everything about being a dad. The last time I live in a predominantly white largely suburban/exurban county. The last time I personally got pulled over by a cop, the officer was almost apologetic, explaining that he was pulling people over because some folks in the neighborhood had complained about people speeding through on the way to the freeway interchange. We have a few officer involved deaths every year, and it’s usually a mentally ill old white guy. But I’ve lived in Chicago, New York, Philly, Baltimore, DC, and Atlanta. Over the years, being constantly faced with the economic disparity between blacks and whites was crushing. It’s so bad and so wrong and we are so woefully far from fixing it. There is a pit in my gut that counteracts my natural instinct to condemn what I’d otherwise perceive as a grave attack on the social fabric. But would I feel this way if I didn’t see the injustice first hand? What if I had only lived somewhere where all the homeless people are white? Could I really even begin to understand just by being told or reading about it?
  - idownvoted 6y ago
    Stan Wichnowsky, the top editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, working at the paper for 20 years, "resigned" after publishing a headline "Buildings Matter, Too" - does this count? https://www.inquirer.com/news/stan-wischnowski-resigns-philadelphia-inquirer-20200606.html https://www.inquirer.com/news/stan-wischnowski-resigns-phila...
- ChrisLomont 6y ago
  Who has been fired for only saying "All lives matter" on FB?
JKCalhoun 6y ago
As a start: Education. People need to believe justice is applied equally: white as well as black, rich as well as poor. Close the extreme and growing wealth gap in the country.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  I'm always confused by the suggestion that education is some sort of panacea for totalitarian ideology. Someone who is racist or fascist by definition rejects the notion that justice ought to be applied equally and just about anything else that you would likely consider moral or proper. And fascism also is not a function of wealth inequality. Fascism has historically grown out of the middle-class. Seymour Martin Lipset identified fascism as "Extremismus der Mitte" in Germany. It's well at home in the petite bourgeoisie or in the US I guess you'd say the suburban middle class.
  - x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
    People like throwing education out there because it's less politically charged than anything meaningful.
    - krapp 6y ago
      Also to push the false dichotomy that we have to choose one or the other, but can't do both.
    - JKCalhoun 6y ago
      Not really. I see fear behind most of the worst behavior in our modern politics. Education goes a long way to address fear. Want politically charged? I suspect the reason the U.S. has its current president is due in part to a emasculated voting class lashing out from feelings of powerlessness. Education would have gone a long way to making them feel more relevant in a constantly changing economy/society.
  - jibal 6y ago
    "as a start" != "panacea", and education was only offered as one of three items.
rayiner 6y ago
What exactly is the “fascism” that we’re worried about spreading?
- supercanuck 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
  - rayiner 6y ago
    > Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete and regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties. So that means fighting against the Green New Deal and people like AOC?
    - kennywinker 6y ago
      You can fight against a green new deal without being fascist. But if you fight it by doing or allowing people to do things that undermine democracy, like say... withholding aid funds to coerce other nations to do things that hurt your political opponents... yeah, that leans towards fascism.
      - rayiner 6y ago
        No, I’m saying that, according to your link, fascism attacks liberal democracy and advocates for the “complete mobilization of society” to a single end. That’s exactly what the Green New Deal is.
        supercanuck 6y ago
        The link is to wikipedia, if you think it is wrong, you could edit and submit that for review. You also add your insight on the Green New Deal being an example of facism.
        6y ago
wayoutthere 6y ago
"Boogaloo" isn't exclusively fascist; it's kind of a weird convergence of the militant ultra-right and ultra-left. The ultra-right wants to unironically kill everyone who isn't a white evangelical christian and create a white ethno-state, while the ultra-left wants to unironically kill the rich and end capitalism. The only thing they agree on is they want to exploit heightened tensions to start a civil war with the belief they would eliminate the other side.
- Avicebron 6y ago
  the ultra left does not want to kill the rich and end capitalism, see neo-liberal policies. It's outdated to say the left are for the people anymore, unless they live in coastal elite cities with extremely well paid jobs making their situation so out of touch with the rest of the country/world they now play fascist. The most obvious sign of evil is when it eats something and takes it's face
  - idownvoted 6y ago
    the ultra left does not want to kill the rich Just from the top of my hat, the latest example of a hundred-plus years worth of statements/actions that disprove that statement: https://www.n-tv.de/mediathek/videos/politik/Linken-Mitglied-spricht-von-Reiche-erschiessen-article21617778.html https://www.n-tv.de/mediathek/videos/politik/Linken-Mitglied... Shown there, a statement caught on tape at a strategy-summit of the German far-left party Die Linke (I freely translate): "...regarding Energiewende [German Green New Deal]… after the revolution, when the 1% has been shot, we still want to heat our homes…" To which the party chairman, Bernd Riexinger, present on the same stage replied: "We're not gonna shoot them, we're going to put them to good use"
    - Avicebron 6y ago
      You're cherry picking idownvote. Look at the current manufacturing and economic/workplace protection/maneuverability between class situation (not the stock market, the people) the US has been faced with. Do you really think this is working for everyone?
dang 6y ago
Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20ideolog&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... This thread was entirely predictably awful. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Well, some may say to promote ideas of anti-fascism... However, it would appear the people in the places that matter definitely don't want that happening and have no issue associating ideas of anti-fascism with terrorism. So, I think that the correct answer to your question may be "nothing" - unfortunately, it's already too late.

collegecamp293 6y ago

You've done enough. People who have said "All lives matter" on their FB pages have been fired from their jobs this week. This is what counts as "fascism" now.

deminature 6y ago
Is there any evidence anyone has actually been fired over this? Also 'all lives matter' is a dogwhistle, and people posting it must know this, or be alarmingly unaware.
- collegecamp293 6y ago
  Grant Napear, announcer for the Sacramento Kings, was fired for saying "All lives matter. Every single one".
  - wpietri 6y ago
    Just so people know the context, NBA player DeMarcus Cousins asked him on Twitter, "@GrantNapearshow what’s your take on BLM?" [1] Napear responded: "Haven't heard from you in years. ALL LIVES MATTER...EVERY SINGLE ONE!!!" Later in an interview Napear claimed to not know what that meant. "I’m not as educated on BLM as I thought I was. I had no idea that when I said ‘All Lives Matter’ that it was counter to what BLM was trying to get across." The guy has had a sports talk show for years. Black Lives Matter was founded in 2013, and even if Napear had never made it out of the sports section in the news, should have known about it via issues like Kaepernick. it is absolutely implausible that Napear didn't know what his one-tweet, all-caps reply meant. If I were his bosses, I would have fired him just for being bad at lying. And even if he were somehow being honest, that is a) admitting to an incredible level of ignorance for a guy whose job is covering a sport where 75% of the players are black, and b) incredibly poor judgement to jump into the top political issue of the moment without even knowing what he was saying. [1] https://twitter.com/boogiecousins/status/1267271720282415104 https://twitter.com/boogiecousins/status/1267271720282415104
- rayiner 6y ago
  I have family members saying “All lives matter.” It might be a bit ignorant, but for most people—who don’t live in big urban areas and who aren’t exposed to all the back and forth on these subjects—it’s not a dog whistle. What exactly is someone who spent their whole life in coastal Oregon or rural Iowa supposed to do when they see rioting and looting in Seattle, Portland, Chicago, etc., and then hear people say we can’t condemn it because of structural racism. They’ve never seen the block-by-block segregation in Chicago. They’ve never lived in east coast cities where highways were built where cities had previously been divided on segregationist lines. They certainly didn’t vote for the municipal governments that hired the cops that killed black property with impunity for decades. Their experience with the police, meanwhile, is with small town cops, not big city police departments with body armor and armored vehicles conducting no-knock raids. I happen to agree that people in Osceola County Iowa (where my wife grew up, and which according to the census has six black people in a county of 6,000) should educate themselves about what’s going on in the rest of the country. But saying they’re using “dog whistles” is ascribing to them a state of mind that’s completely unwarranted.
  - pen2l 6y ago
    > I have family members saying “All lives matter.” Oh come on, at this point you have to be living under a rock to think that "Black lives matter" means other lives don't matter. At this point, that is just not excusable and the folks who say 'All lives matter' are unbelievably insensitive in saying so, and they are very much a part of the problem. And we have a president with a penchant for dogwhistling thanks in part to folks like those from rural Iowa, so we really shouldn't cut them any slack (that's no knock on you/your family personally, I'm just sayin').
    - rayiner 6y ago
      > Oh come on, at this point you have to be living under a rock to think that "Black lives matter" means other lives don't matter. There have been multiple people killed as a result of the riots, including two police officers, but nobody on the news is talking about those deaths. Instead, people are talking about how those riots are justified. Every single store on the block in DC where my wife has an office had its windows smashed in. But the mayor of DC is focused in painting a giant “black lives matter” sign on the street. How are people supposed to take all that, other than as an assertion that “other lives don’t matter?” One of the great virtues of Americans is that they don’t condone social upheaval. It’s not like the country where I’m from, where they have strikes and violent rioting after every election. You need some really grave to justify rioting in America. I think there is a strong argument that the oppression of black people in America is that grave. But it’s really asking a lot for people to appreciate why based entirely on some clips they see in the news, and assertions from talking heads in the news that they don’t otherwise trust. I’ve got two cops who live within a couple of blocks. One just had a baby boy. Our closest neighbor friend is a former cop. Wonderful guy, knows everything about being a dad. The last time I live in a predominantly white largely suburban/exurban county. The last time I personally got pulled over by a cop, the officer was almost apologetic, explaining that he was pulling people over because some folks in the neighborhood had complained about people speeding through on the way to the freeway interchange. We have a few officer involved deaths every year, and it’s usually a mentally ill old white guy. But I’ve lived in Chicago, New York, Philly, Baltimore, DC, and Atlanta. Over the years, being constantly faced with the economic disparity between blacks and whites was crushing. It’s so bad and so wrong and we are so woefully far from fixing it. There is a pit in my gut that counteracts my natural instinct to condemn what I’d otherwise perceive as a grave attack on the social fabric. But would I feel this way if I didn’t see the injustice first hand? What if I had only lived somewhere where all the homeless people are white? Could I really even begin to understand just by being told or reading about it?
- idownvoted 6y ago
  Stan Wichnowsky, the top editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, working at the paper for 20 years, "resigned" after publishing a headline "Buildings Matter, Too" - does this count? https://www.inquirer.com/news/stan-wischnowski-resigns-philadelphia-inquirer-20200606.html https://www.inquirer.com/news/stan-wischnowski-resigns-phila...
ChrisLomont 6y ago
Who has been fired for only saying "All lives matter" on FB?

JKCalhoun 6y ago

As a start: Education. People need to believe justice is applied equally: white as well as black, rich as well as poor. Close the extreme and growing wealth gap in the country.

Barrin92 6y ago
I'm always confused by the suggestion that education is some sort of panacea for totalitarian ideology. Someone who is racist or fascist by definition rejects the notion that justice ought to be applied equally and just about anything else that you would likely consider moral or proper. And fascism also is not a function of wealth inequality. Fascism has historically grown out of the middle-class. Seymour Martin Lipset identified fascism as "Extremismus der Mitte" in Germany. It's well at home in the petite bourgeoisie or in the US I guess you'd say the suburban middle class.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
  People like throwing education out there because it's less politically charged than anything meaningful.
  - krapp 6y ago
    Also to push the false dichotomy that we have to choose one or the other, but can't do both.
  - JKCalhoun 6y ago
    Not really. I see fear behind most of the worst behavior in our modern politics. Education goes a long way to address fear. Want politically charged? I suspect the reason the U.S. has its current president is due in part to a emasculated voting class lashing out from feelings of powerlessness. Education would have gone a long way to making them feel more relevant in a constantly changing economy/society.
- jibal 6y ago
  "as a start" != "panacea", and education was only offered as one of three items.

rayiner 6y ago

What exactly is the “fascism” that we’re worried about spreading?

supercanuck 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
- rayiner 6y ago
  > Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete and regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties. So that means fighting against the Green New Deal and people like AOC?
  - kennywinker 6y ago
    You can fight against a green new deal without being fascist. But if you fight it by doing or allowing people to do things that undermine democracy, like say... withholding aid funds to coerce other nations to do things that hurt your political opponents... yeah, that leans towards fascism.
    - rayiner 6y ago
      No, I’m saying that, according to your link, fascism attacks liberal democracy and advocates for the “complete mobilization of society” to a single end. That’s exactly what the Green New Deal is.
      - supercanuck 6y ago
        The link is to wikipedia, if you think it is wrong, you could edit and submit that for review. You also add your insight on the Green New Deal being an example of facism.
      - 6y ago

wayoutthere 6y ago

"Boogaloo" isn't exclusively fascist; it's kind of a weird convergence of the militant ultra-right and ultra-left. The ultra-right wants to unironically kill everyone who isn't a white evangelical christian and create a white ethno-state, while the ultra-left wants to unironically kill the rich and end capitalism. The only thing they agree on is they want to exploit heightened tensions to start a civil war with the belief they would eliminate the other side.

Avicebron 6y ago
the ultra left does not want to kill the rich and end capitalism, see neo-liberal policies. It's outdated to say the left are for the people anymore, unless they live in coastal elite cities with extremely well paid jobs making their situation so out of touch with the rest of the country/world they now play fascist. The most obvious sign of evil is when it eats something and takes it's face
- idownvoted 6y ago
  the ultra left does not want to kill the rich Just from the top of my hat, the latest example of a hundred-plus years worth of statements/actions that disprove that statement: https://www.n-tv.de/mediathek/videos/politik/Linken-Mitglied-spricht-von-Reiche-erschiessen-article21617778.html https://www.n-tv.de/mediathek/videos/politik/Linken-Mitglied... Shown there, a statement caught on tape at a strategy-summit of the German far-left party Die Linke (I freely translate): "...regarding Energiewende [German Green New Deal]… after the revolution, when the 1% has been shot, we still want to heat our homes…" To which the party chairman, Bernd Riexinger, present on the same stage replied: "We're not gonna shoot them, we're going to put them to good use"
  - Avicebron 6y ago
    You're cherry picking idownvote. Look at the current manufacturing and economic/workplace protection/maneuverability between class situation (not the stock market, the people) the US has been faced with. Do you really think this is working for everyone?

dang 6y ago

Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20ideolog&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... This thread was entirely predictably awful. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html