7 ms·

People reliably will come out to defend white nationalists in every topic it comes up here. And people denouncing white nationalists will be voted down.

Ghjklov 6y ago
Somehow we have the opposite experience. One day, I'll see people claim HN is a safespace for socialists/communist lefties and another day it's a white nationalist haven. Which is it? :P
- skinkestek 6y ago
  dang has commented on this a lot lately and he says it is because we see the other side much easier than our own side. I agree with him to a large degree: I personally see mostly problematic content from the left[0] but I guess that is partly my bias. [0]: for example this comment earlier today that I thought[1] was absolutely crazy "I don't want to participate in spaces where religious white nationalists feel safe" - just try to turn that phrase around to "I don't want to participate in spaces where atheistic colored globalists feel safe" and see if it wouldn't be flagged to death immediately by everyone including me.) [1]: someone had to tell me that this is basically an euphemism for nazi, to which I had to reply that I would prefer if we just said nazi then because then I could join in despising it.
  - Ghjklov 6y ago
    While it's a euphemism for nazi, I hope you don't just assume that it's appropriate to use "white nationalist" to mean "nazi". Just because other people are being stupid doesn't mean we have to. A white nationalist could be from any political faction and could have different ideas for economic policy. A National Socialist is a very specific kind of person.
    - skinkestek 6y ago
      Totally agree in case there should be any doubt. I prefer to call nazis "nazis". It is short and simple and we can all agree that we don't like them.
      - user982 6y ago
        But then they reply that "whoever you think are Nazis are not Nazis" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14034920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14034920).
        SuoDuanDao 6y ago
        Well, it's a fair point - if the only people who get banned are actual Nazis, everyone will get called a Nazi before too long. Actual Nazis are rare. They were rare during WW2 and they're really rare now.
  - ggus 6y ago
    > "I don't want to participate in spaces where religious white nationalists feel safe" VS > "I don't want to participate in spaces where atheistic colored globalists feel safe" The weight there is different though, in the groups you analyse the violence has historically flown in one direction more than in the other. I am inclined to think that there have been historically much less concerns of safety for "religious white nationalists" than for "theistic colored globalists"
    - skinkestek 6y ago
      > The weight there is different though, in the groups you analyse the violence has historically flown in one direction more than in the other. I think you are wildly underestimating the violence of a number of non-religious groups: recommended reading includes the reign of terror, Stalin and Khmer Rouge. ... and also non-whites by the way.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Religious white nationalists want me deported or killed. Of course I don't want to be in a space where they are safe. People say white nationalist instead of Nazi because white nationalists will always deny being Nazis. Someone being nationalist for a race should immediately bring up red flags. There are also small differences. For example some white nationalists are not necessarily antisemitic, which is a characteristic of Nazis, or might even support Israel (though you can be pro-Israel and antisemitic of course), instead focusing their hate on black people, Muslims, etc...
    - skinkestek 6y ago
      > Religious white nationalists want me deported or killed. Where do you get that religious thing from? Because for all their faults all major variants of the mainstream religion in US and Europe is pretty clear about not supporting that -to the point that a number of clergy got in real trouble with nazi Germany.
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        I'm taking the religious part from the OP. Also yes, while a lot of religious people are very good, the religious people that also happen to be white nationalists tend to be even worse than the garden variety white nationalist.
      - genoapol 6y ago
        The Catholic church was in bed with Nazis, the only Nazi officer excommunicated from the Catholic Church during the holocaust (Joseph Geobbels) was kicked out for marrying a Protestant. - Says I'm posting too fast, so here is the response to your reply: You sidestepped my main point to focus on irrelevant nonsense. Was Geobells the only Nazi officer excommunicated? Yes. Were 95% of Germans Christians during the Nazi years? Yes. Was the Nazi party started in majority Catholic Munich? Yes. Did these Catholics enthusiastically embrace Nazism after centuries of Anti-Jewish teachings blaming Jews for the death of Jesus? Yes, especially after 1933. Not only is this historical fact, I vividly remember Hitchens making this same case, with many references, during a debate with Dinesh Disouza at a major Catholic Church before he died... I'm delivering this Hitchslap for him in his absence.
skinkestek 6y ago
>People reliably will come out to defend white nationalists in every topic it comes up here. ...and they will be voted down quickly. > And people denouncing white nationalists will be voted down. Examples please :-) The closest thing I can come up with is when I kind of reliably get downvoted every time I say I'd support a ban on nazis but that seems to be die hard free speech people, not nazis.
- empath75 6y ago
  People are voting up people defending molyneux _in this thread_!
- user982 6y ago
  > Examples please :-) The post you replied to was downvoted and flagkilled until I vouched for it. Every post from me in this thread is or has been graytext. Too many other examples just in this thread to enumerate or counteract.
- phs318u 6y ago
  I'm sorry but this very discussion contains the reverse of what you're saying. In a post suggesting that SM isn't racist, he's only concerned for the welfare of black children, I posted a link clearly highlighting the many instances of SM's racism. My post got downvoted, the parent didn't.
pjc50 6y ago
Not exactly .. people will come out to defend "free speech". But somehow the cause in question is nearly always far right.
- baddox 6y ago
  Lots of people seem to conflate how bad someone's speech is with how "free" it is.
  - Karunamon 6y ago
    There's an entirely innocuous reason for that: free speech isn't a concern for things that nobody is bothered by.
- skinkestek 6y ago
  partly because we mostly agree about the rest of it so then there's no need to remind people about free speech.
  - UncleMeat 6y ago
    Given the amount of state violence used against left wing protestors over the last month and the number of active political leaders championing that violence... I really don't agree. Leftist speech is silenced with guns. And the free speech supporters sit silent.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > And the free speech supporters sit silent. Many of the people who raise objections based on “free speech” every time a private entity declines to actively participate in amplifying right wing speech have been actively cheering the events you describe, and arguing they need to be intensified, not sitting silent.
- fzeroracer 6y ago
  I did some very small experiments on such a thing a while ago. One was an example of someone being unjustly detained in violation of their rights [1] and another was an actual example of government censorship [2]. The first one was flagged and killed immediately, the second received zero response. On HN, all of the 'free speech' stories I see always pertain to the far-right and/or incredibly vitriolic individuals getting removed from platforms. They receive massive amounts of votes and spur on large flamewars. HackerNews unfortunately is just as prone to falling into certain narrative traps as other websites and one of them that seems to come up more and more frequently is free speech and individual rights but only as it pertains to the far-right. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20504332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20504332 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19976398 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19976398
phonypc 6y ago
I don't think I've even seen an explicitly racist post here, despite having dead comments turned on, maybe excepting obvious trolling or spam. Implicitly racist posts are usually downvoted. I have seen downvoted replies that nonsensically infer racism in a post. I suspect that's how I would describe what you're thinking of.
- cryptoz 6y ago
  > I don't think I've even seen an explicitly racist post here, despite having dead comments turned on, maybe excepting obvious trolling or spam. This is self-contradictory. You state that you have never seen explicitly racists posts here, but then you state the exceptions of "obvious trolling or spam". How does a racist post being "obvious trolling" make it not-racist? How does a racist post being spam make it not-racist? Racism abounds in trolling and spam. Spam and trolling are similarly havens for racism. > Implicitly racist posts are usually downvoted. That's not my experience.
  - phonypc 6y ago
    The spam and trolling is racist, but it's flagged and downvoted to hell immediately. I was responding to someone saying the opposite voting trends exist for racist content.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Because they're not explicitly racist. It's dogwhistling, or talking points, which almost always indicates racism. Someone saying that black communities should be more policed by dogwhistling that disproportionate crime warrants "assertion of police presence and predictive policing" by willfully misinterpreting statistics is racist, even if it doesn't explicitly say that black people should be harassed by police.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - camelite 6y ago
    Does it bother you that some of the people most in favor of increased police presence in crime ridden communities are themselves black. Is it more likely that they are racist too, or that their material concerns for their safety are more legitimate than your racism dog whistle detector?
skinkestek 6y ago
Can this be because your group of "white nationalists" is getting very big and possibly includes a good number of innocent people? Someone wrote something really interesting here somewhere a couple of days ago: every time a non-racist says something not correct enough or God forbid even wrong (e.g. on twitter), they are ejected into the other camp. Eventually the other camp's grown from a fringe phenomenon to being noticeably large and everyone laments. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23664418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23664418
- user982 6y ago
  This is a thread topic about white nationalists being banned from YouTube. It has 700+ comments, many of them in defense of the banned. Which of the banned people being defended are not actually white supremacists, but innocents caught in a too-broad dragnet?
  - SuoDuanDao 6y ago
    Stephen Molyneux is a single-minded crusader against corporal punishment of children. He cites IQ and demographic statistics as evidence that the high incidents of corporal punishment among African-Americans is harmful to the population. But untangling that ball of wax is a lot harder than calling him a racist and getting on with life isn't it?
    - user982 6y ago
      It's this benevolent concern for the welfare of black children that underlies his complaint that 'relentless propaganda for "white women with black men" would serve to lower the average IQ of the offspring'?
    - phs318u 6y ago
      https://tracinskiletter.com/2016/10/02/a-libertarian-icons-descent-into-racist-pseudoscience/ https://tracinskiletter.com/2016/10/02/a-libertarian-icons-d...
    - tptacek 6y ago
cryptoz 6y ago
This is my experience here.
tptacek 6y ago
The opposite thing is true of HN.

Ghjklov 6y ago

Somehow we have the opposite experience. One day, I'll see people claim HN is a safespace for socialists/communist lefties and another day it's a white nationalist haven. Which is it? :P

skinkestek 6y ago
dang has commented on this a lot lately and he says it is because we see the other side much easier than our own side. I agree with him to a large degree: I personally see mostly problematic content from the left[0] but I guess that is partly my bias. [0]: for example this comment earlier today that I thought[1] was absolutely crazy "I don't want to participate in spaces where religious white nationalists feel safe" - just try to turn that phrase around to "I don't want to participate in spaces where atheistic colored globalists feel safe" and see if it wouldn't be flagged to death immediately by everyone including me.) [1]: someone had to tell me that this is basically an euphemism for nazi, to which I had to reply that I would prefer if we just said nazi then because then I could join in despising it.
- Ghjklov 6y ago
  While it's a euphemism for nazi, I hope you don't just assume that it's appropriate to use "white nationalist" to mean "nazi". Just because other people are being stupid doesn't mean we have to. A white nationalist could be from any political faction and could have different ideas for economic policy. A National Socialist is a very specific kind of person.
  - skinkestek 6y ago
    Totally agree in case there should be any doubt. I prefer to call nazis "nazis". It is short and simple and we can all agree that we don't like them.
    - user982 6y ago
      But then they reply that "whoever you think are Nazis are not Nazis" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14034920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14034920).
      - SuoDuanDao 6y ago
        Well, it's a fair point - if the only people who get banned are actual Nazis, everyone will get called a Nazi before too long. Actual Nazis are rare. They were rare during WW2 and they're really rare now.
- ggus 6y ago
  > "I don't want to participate in spaces where religious white nationalists feel safe" VS > "I don't want to participate in spaces where atheistic colored globalists feel safe" The weight there is different though, in the groups you analyse the violence has historically flown in one direction more than in the other. I am inclined to think that there have been historically much less concerns of safety for "religious white nationalists" than for "theistic colored globalists"
  - skinkestek 6y ago
    > The weight there is different though, in the groups you analyse the violence has historically flown in one direction more than in the other. I think you are wildly underestimating the violence of a number of non-religious groups: recommended reading includes the reign of terror, Stalin and Khmer Rouge. ... and also non-whites by the way.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Religious white nationalists want me deported or killed. Of course I don't want to be in a space where they are safe. People say white nationalist instead of Nazi because white nationalists will always deny being Nazis. Someone being nationalist for a race should immediately bring up red flags. There are also small differences. For example some white nationalists are not necessarily antisemitic, which is a characteristic of Nazis, or might even support Israel (though you can be pro-Israel and antisemitic of course), instead focusing their hate on black people, Muslims, etc...
  - skinkestek 6y ago
    > Religious white nationalists want me deported or killed. Where do you get that religious thing from? Because for all their faults all major variants of the mainstream religion in US and Europe is pretty clear about not supporting that -to the point that a number of clergy got in real trouble with nazi Germany.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      I'm taking the religious part from the OP. Also yes, while a lot of religious people are very good, the religious people that also happen to be white nationalists tend to be even worse than the garden variety white nationalist.
    - genoapol 6y ago
      The Catholic church was in bed with Nazis, the only Nazi officer excommunicated from the Catholic Church during the holocaust (Joseph Geobbels) was kicked out for marrying a Protestant. - Says I'm posting too fast, so here is the response to your reply: You sidestepped my main point to focus on irrelevant nonsense. Was Geobells the only Nazi officer excommunicated? Yes. Were 95% of Germans Christians during the Nazi years? Yes. Was the Nazi party started in majority Catholic Munich? Yes. Did these Catholics enthusiastically embrace Nazism after centuries of Anti-Jewish teachings blaming Jews for the death of Jesus? Yes, especially after 1933. Not only is this historical fact, I vividly remember Hitchens making this same case, with many references, during a debate with Dinesh Disouza at a major Catholic Church before he died... I'm delivering this Hitchslap for him in his absence.

skinkestek 6y ago

>People reliably will come out to defend white nationalists in every topic it comes up here. ...and they will be voted down quickly. > And people denouncing white nationalists will be voted down. Examples please :-) The closest thing I can come up with is when I kind of reliably get downvoted every time I say I'd support a ban on nazis but that seems to be die hard free speech people, not nazis.

empath75 6y ago
People are voting up people defending molyneux _in this thread_!
user982 6y ago
> Examples please :-) The post you replied to was downvoted and flagkilled until I vouched for it. Every post from me in this thread is or has been graytext. Too many other examples just in this thread to enumerate or counteract.
phs318u 6y ago
I'm sorry but this very discussion contains the reverse of what you're saying. In a post suggesting that SM isn't racist, he's only concerned for the welfare of black children, I posted a link clearly highlighting the many instances of SM's racism. My post got downvoted, the parent didn't.

pjc50 6y ago

Not exactly .. people will come out to defend "free speech". But somehow the cause in question is nearly always far right.

baddox 6y ago
Lots of people seem to conflate how bad someone's speech is with how "free" it is.
- Karunamon 6y ago
  There's an entirely innocuous reason for that: free speech isn't a concern for things that nobody is bothered by.
skinkestek 6y ago
partly because we mostly agree about the rest of it so then there's no need to remind people about free speech.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  Given the amount of state violence used against left wing protestors over the last month and the number of active political leaders championing that violence... I really don't agree. Leftist speech is silenced with guns. And the free speech supporters sit silent.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > And the free speech supporters sit silent. Many of the people who raise objections based on “free speech” every time a private entity declines to actively participate in amplifying right wing speech have been actively cheering the events you describe, and arguing they need to be intensified, not sitting silent.
fzeroracer 6y ago
I did some very small experiments on such a thing a while ago. One was an example of someone being unjustly detained in violation of their rights [1] and another was an actual example of government censorship [2]. The first one was flagged and killed immediately, the second received zero response. On HN, all of the 'free speech' stories I see always pertain to the far-right and/or incredibly vitriolic individuals getting removed from platforms. They receive massive amounts of votes and spur on large flamewars. HackerNews unfortunately is just as prone to falling into certain narrative traps as other websites and one of them that seems to come up more and more frequently is free speech and individual rights but only as it pertains to the far-right. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20504332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20504332 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19976398 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19976398

phonypc 6y ago

I don't think I've even seen an explicitly racist post here, despite having dead comments turned on, maybe excepting obvious trolling or spam. Implicitly racist posts are usually downvoted. I have seen downvoted replies that nonsensically infer racism in a post. I suspect that's how I would describe what you're thinking of.

cryptoz 6y ago
> I don't think I've even seen an explicitly racist post here, despite having dead comments turned on, maybe excepting obvious trolling or spam. This is self-contradictory. You state that you have never seen explicitly racists posts here, but then you state the exceptions of "obvious trolling or spam". How does a racist post being "obvious trolling" make it not-racist? How does a racist post being spam make it not-racist? Racism abounds in trolling and spam. Spam and trolling are similarly havens for racism. > Implicitly racist posts are usually downvoted. That's not my experience.
- phonypc 6y ago
  The spam and trolling is racist, but it's flagged and downvoted to hell immediately. I was responding to someone saying the opposite voting trends exist for racist content.
sudosysgen 6y ago
Because they're not explicitly racist. It's dogwhistling, or talking points, which almost always indicates racism. Someone saying that black communities should be more policed by dogwhistling that disproportionate crime warrants "assertion of police presence and predictive policing" by willfully misinterpreting statistics is racist, even if it doesn't explicitly say that black people should be harassed by police.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- camelite 6y ago
  Does it bother you that some of the people most in favor of increased police presence in crime ridden communities are themselves black. Is it more likely that they are racist too, or that their material concerns for their safety are more legitimate than your racism dog whistle detector?

skinkestek 6y ago

Can this be because your group of "white nationalists" is getting very big and possibly includes a good number of innocent people? Someone wrote something really interesting here somewhere a couple of days ago: every time a non-racist says something not correct enough or God forbid even wrong (e.g. on twitter), they are ejected into the other camp. Eventually the other camp's grown from a fringe phenomenon to being noticeably large and everyone laments. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23664418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23664418

user982 6y ago
This is a thread topic about white nationalists being banned from YouTube. It has 700+ comments, many of them in defense of the banned. Which of the banned people being defended are not actually white supremacists, but innocents caught in a too-broad dragnet?
- SuoDuanDao 6y ago
  Stephen Molyneux is a single-minded crusader against corporal punishment of children. He cites IQ and demographic statistics as evidence that the high incidents of corporal punishment among African-Americans is harmful to the population. But untangling that ball of wax is a lot harder than calling him a racist and getting on with life isn't it?
  - user982 6y ago
    It's this benevolent concern for the welfare of black children that underlies his complaint that 'relentless propaganda for "white women with black men" would serve to lower the average IQ of the offspring'?
  - phs318u 6y ago
    https://tracinskiletter.com/2016/10/02/a-libertarian-icons-descent-into-racist-pseudoscience/ https://tracinskiletter.com/2016/10/02/a-libertarian-icons-d...
  - tptacek 6y ago

cryptoz 6y ago

This is my experience here.

tptacek 6y ago

The opposite thing is true of HN.