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- The ad in question: https://imgur.com/NQuGvDo https://imgur.com/NQuGvDo - Nazi concentration camp symbols explained: https://imgur.com/8xo1Bv2 https://imgur.
by bduerst 6y ago
- The ad in question: https://imgur.com/NQuGvDo https://imgur.com/NQuGvDo
- Nazi concentration camp symbols explained: https://imgur.com/8xo1Bv2 https://imgur.com/8xo1Bv2
Associating leftist organizations with this fascist political symbol is almost guaranteed to be intentional.
Edit: Some people seem to be trying to defend this by saying it's similar, though not the same, to a symbol used by a small group in Utrecht, Netherlands. Do you think the president's campaign was really trying to mimic (rather than just use) an unknown Netherlands based symbol on a U.S. based ad campaign? Just a day after a National Security Advisor said the president supported the Chinese Muslim concentration camps?
Or the fact that they ran exactly 88 ads with the symbol?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_(number)#In_white_nationalism_and_supremacism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_(number)#In_white_nationali...
- _bxg1 6y agoJesus Christ.
- saltedonion 6y agoWow. Never knew. This is incredibly bold of the campaign.
- Aachen 6y agoWhy was this downvoted, is it fake or otherwise misleading? I'm not using Facebook or from the USA so I'm out of the loop on the original and wouldn't be able to tell. I'd like to see the ad in question but this makes me wonder what's up with this (helpful seeming) comment.
- pera 6y agoThis entire comment section was grayed out a few minutes ago :/
- krapp 6y agoThe pro-Trump and right-wing contingent on this site tends to be very good with deflection, suppression and damage control.
- robotron 6y agoYep, on their way to taking over HN in my opinion.
- ModernMech 6y agoI used to think this about HN, but then I went over to /. after being absent for about 15 years. If you had any questions about the job that mods do here, just spend some time there and you'll appreciate it here more. For example, see their discussion about this topic: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/06/18/207204/facebook-takes-down-trump-ads-featuring-symbol-used-by-nazis-to-mark-political-prisoners#comments https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/06/18/207204/facebook-tak...
- subsection1h 6y agoThank you for the link. I haven't been to Slashdot in years. Notice how high the apologists' user IDs are. Eternal September seems to have hit Slashdot painfully hard. I thought HN was getting bad (e.g., see s_y_n_t_a_x in this thread), but some of the comments in that Slashdot discussion are Stormfront-level material, especially when displaying most of the comments.
- ModernMech 6y agoAnd it's not just the comments. Here, topics like this are flagged and removed from the front page. There, stories like this are purposefully added by a team of moderators.
- onei 6y agoMy question as well. I can only assume the points are so damning that someone is trying to erase it.
- user982 6y ago>> "Why is this reply being downvoted? It is merely informative." > "It shows the actual words, which are hard to spin. If we keep what was done vague, we can spin it any way we please." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347313
- s_y_n_t_a_x 6y agoIt's wrong, there are Antifa groups that use an upside down red triangle: https://www.facebook.com/antifautrecht/ https://www.facebook.com/antifautrecht/ https://afanl.wordpress.com/2018/01/30/english-3-2-2018-antifa-conference-amsterdam-program/ https://afanl.wordpress.com/2018/01/30/english-3-2-2018-anti... Seems like Facebook jumped the gun on this and assumed the worst. -- reply @ GP edit -- > Rather than making the association that this leftist group deserves to have political concentration camp tag? Yeah I believe your hypothesis is crazy and needs more evidence before jumping to such a wild assumption. That's why you word vomit with events that loosely relate to concentration camps and 88 words to support your already loose conspiracy theory. Ironic that NOW this symbol will be used against socialists since the WSJ and Facebook just made it mainstream and assumed that connection. No one would have never thought of this connection if FB wouldn't have flagged it and the WSJ didn't immediately report it. Can you honestly say you had this holocaust knowledge? To assume that on everyone and to go further and assume malicious intent is even more dishonest. People wanted this to be so true, but you are all conspiracy theorists today.
- Miner49er 6y agoI'm antifa, and I've never seen this symbol used by antifascists, in the US anyway. Even if they do, it's likely as a way to subvert the symbol used by the Nazis. To use it to attack antifa is to use it like the Nazis did. It's like how black people can use the n-word, but not white people.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 6y agoThank you for your anecdote, but I've posted two examples, one active FB group. It seems to be mainly a European usage, but it exists. I don't see how pointing out a symbol a group uses is attacking them. I also don't think equating yourself and antifa to the struggle of the holocaust and slavery is going to win any minds over.
- user982 6y ago> You also lost me on your n-word logic. Quelle surprise.
- taurath 6y agoI've never seen comments get downvoted so quickly on HN. I'd be curious if the admins have seen any interesting patterns lately.
- mc32 6y agoFor context Act Up coöpted one of those symbols by upturning it. So it’s not that it hasn’t been used politically before.
- bduerst 6y agoThe point isn't that it's been referenced politically before. Act Up intentionally upended the symbol as an act of defiance, the same way you would upend a flag. The symbol in the president's ad is used as is, with an intentional association with what the symbol means historically.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mmanfrin 6y agoJudging by how your relevant, informative, and constructive comment has been downvoted, HN has its fair share of white supremacists. I sincerely hope the moderation team takes a look at what's going on here rather than nuking this submission for being 'too political', sweeping this under the rug.
- chowells 6y agoThe white supremacist contingent on HN is organized and very active. And for some reason, their organized bad-faith activity isn't being responded to by the moderators. In fact, they can't even distinguish it from "natural" responses, given previous remarks they've made. I wish they made a bit more of an effort to understand the patterns of organized white supremacist action.
- sillysaurusx 6y agoIf I know one thing about Dan, I know for a fact that he does actively look into stuff like this. I've had my disagreements with his moderation, but him being lazy (or incompetent, as your comment implies) isn't among the criticisms. This is yet another mistaken comment about moderation with no evidence to back it up.
- krapp 6y agoTheir initial statement remains true, regardless of their opinion about moderation response to it. You just have to follow dang's account and see how often he has to point out that nationalistic and race-war content isn't allowed (and, every now and then ban someone dumb enough to go full Nazi.)
- sillysaurusx 6y agoPerhaps it's true that this site is particularly whitewashed. But it's also home to some of the most compelling arguments I've seen for why inclusiveness matters, how and why you should support minorities in tech, and so on. "The exact opposite of white supremacist positions." So if you're going to claim that it's particularly supremacist, you'll also have to claim it's particularly leftist. It's probably more reasonable to suggest that the site is used by many, many people, each of which has a slightly different perspective. You're also probably remembering the outliers. Doubly so by reading Dan's comments, which are necessarily outliers.
- toto444 6y agoThe symbol is the emoji On Windows it looks exactly like the ad.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- thih9 6y agoI know that you want to describe how the symbol looks to others. But I noticed that some people use this as a tactic, saying "it's an emoji, so it must be ok to use this". I'm writing to remind that sadly we've seen emojis used in offensive context (e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_gesture#White_power_symbol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_gesture#White_power_symbol ) and this is one more example.
- happytoexplain 6y agoI'm not sure if you're saying something like "it's just being used as an arrow symbol", as some others are, but the White House claims that it is an antifa symbol, which pretty much throws that idea out the window. The argument then is what it was really intended to symbolize, since we already know it was chosen to symbolize something besides a pointer.
- ihumanable 6y agoI made a similar informative comment and also received a barrage of downvotes. An upvote for you.
- sillysaurusx 6y agoI had the opposite reaction. The ad is saying "Put your name below" and has a big red arrow pointing "down." Sure, it's possible it's intentional nazi symbolism. Or, y'know, it's a red arrow pointing down.
- robotron 6y agoThat looks like an arrow? I must be in a parallel dimension.
- sillysaurusx 6y agoSure. Another commenter pointed out it's literally "emoji " which, you can see for yourself, is identical to the ad on Windows: https://emojipedia.org/red-triangle-pointed-down/ https://emojipedia.org/red-triangle-pointed-down/
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- happytoexplain 6y agoI don't understand how the existence of a downward red triangle as an emoji serves as evidence that they wanted to use it only as an arrow. All this says to me is that they wanted to use a downward red triangle, which is the entire point. Edit: Also, we know already that it has a deeper meaning, since the White House has told us that.
- sillysaurusx 6y agoI get where you're coming from. But I mean, it's a downward red triangle. I could see myself accidentally using it like this. Googling "red down emoji arrow" gives that red triangle as the first result.
- ceejayoz 6y agoIf you used it in a UI as a "volume down" button, no one would bat an eye. > The ads targeted the far left group Antifa, calling on Trump supporters to back the President's calls to designate the group a terrorist organization. Context matters.
- epr 6y agofrom the hacker news guidelines: > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
- asdff 6y agoI found it interesting to know that there are people on HN who would downvote these sort of posts. Kind of disturbing more than interesting, though.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]