17 ms·

Too many people support the development of powerful weapons without considering what happens when their enemies get a hold of them.

illirik 6y ago
The “weapon” here is just basic conscientiousness. A publisher decided to stop publishing some books because they denigrate people, and eBay decided that they did not want to be facilitating the sale of books that denigrate people. We are not talking about an H-bomb - there is no power structure wielding a “cancel button” here.
- stef25 6y ago
  > there is no power structure wielding a “cancel button” here There absolutely is. Ebay is nipping in the bud a potential social media lynching. One misstep nowadays and the CEO spends weeks grovelling about how they're still learning and are determined to do better and thank you Twitter mob for pointing this out. You can't buy Doctor Seuss, but you can buy "The Anarchist Arsenal", hydrogen peroxide, acetone and a few pounds of screws in the same cart. Edited typo by / buy
  - legutierr 6y ago
    I hope the irony isn’t lost on you that you are using the word “lynching”—which in its literal, non-metaphorical usage refers to the terroristic murder of racial minorities in the United States—to refer to the non-violent use of cultural power by members of those same minority groups to demand respect from institutions and powerful individuals. You may think that some of these demands have gone too far, and you may believe that some institutions have been too obsequious in adhering to these demands, but surely you must admit that the use of the word “lynching” in this context is offensive, no?
    - pm90 6y ago
      I can’t help but point out the incredible situation where you are engaging in precisely the kind of behavior that the person you’re replying to seems to have issue against : )
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - legutierr 6y ago
        And what behavior is that, precisely? Pointing out that certain usage of language can be offensive? That we shouldn’t be unintentional when causing offense? That if we cause offense intentionally, we shouldn’t be surprised by the reaction of the party we have purposely insulted?
        moduspol 6y ago
        We haven't seen evidence anyone has been offended yet. Only that you are concerned others might be. A surprisingly common phenomenon.
        legutierr 6y ago
        Perhaps I was offended and was trying to point that out politely. I wasn’t badly offended. I was offended enough to take the time to write these comments. Keep in mind that on HN, rude and offensive comments are down-voted all the time. There is a politeness standard on this website, and perhaps that standard should incorporate the use of language like this!
        moduspol 6y ago
        Controlling the language people use under the premise of someone arguably being offended is rarely really about "politeness," though. Perhaps it's better if we all act like adults capable of understanding nuance in a discussion.
        6y ago
    - stef25 6y ago
      Thanks for pointing this out. I'm still learning and am determined to do better next time.
      - legutierr 6y ago
        There’s a Spanish idiom that describes your reply here really well, I think. It doesn’t occur to me what the comparable phrase in English would be. Es una cachetada con guante blanco. I disagree with you, but I have to say, well done. Point made.
    - manigandham 6y ago
      No, because it's not the same context. That's the point. These extreme reaches are the same as banning "master" as the name of a branch in git repos as if it has anything to do with social history.
      - legutierr 6y ago
        To the contrary. The context here is the same, as I explained in my original comment. The connection between the literal and metaphorical use of the word here is too close, which is what makes it rude and offensive. This is different than using the word “master” to describe the trunk branch of a repository, because when we are talking about a “master branch” it is not in the context of a discussion of offensive racial caricatures being removed from eBay’s website.
        manigandham 6y ago
        No, I disagree, along with many others. Nothing is rude and offensive on its own, nor do you know what everyone else thinks. What you really mean is it's offensive to you, in which case you should exercise your personal freedoms and rights by reading something else instead of worrying about the rest of us. As a member of a "minority group* myself, there's no connection to "minority groups demanding respect" here, just the typical outrage over the wildest reaches by those who feel they represent everyone else. By the way, treating people as monolithic groups is where bigotry comes from in the first place so why don't we just stop doing that all together?
        legutierr 6y ago
        > No, I disagree, along with many others. If I were trying to win any popularity contests, I wouldn't be discussing this topic on HN. It's risky business! > Nothing is rude and offensive on its own, nor do you know what everyone else thinks. I'm not purporting to know what everyone else thinks, only that given the context, the usage of this particular word in this particular situation is offensive. It's a strange thing for you to insinuate that I feel that I "represent everyone else." Is it not enough for me to be speaking for myself? And what's wrong with users of this website speaking up to negotiate the standards of discourse we all follow here? As I've commented elsewhere, there is a standard of civility, respect and politeness that we all expect from interactions on HN. What that standard comprises should be discussed from time to time. > As a member of a "minority group myself, there's no connection to "minority groups demanding respect" here..* If you are going to quote me, then please quote me accurately. I didn't equate OP's "social media lynching" with "minority groups demanding respect". The language I used referred to specific (albeit hypothetical) individuals doing a specific thing. I wrote that "members of those same minority groups" were using "cultural power...to demand respect". It is you who are talking about monolithic groups here—I'm talking about individuals. If you are a member of one of the minority groups in the US that were historically terrorized by lynch mobs, or were ridiculed in the popular press by the kinds of caricatures that are referenced by the article, then absolutely your opinions on this matter are salient. It shouldn't require membership in any particular group to view the juxtaposition within OP's metaphor as offensive, however. The "potential social media lynching" that OP accused eBay of kowtowing to must by its nature be perpetrated by individuals who don't want denigrating, racist caricatures to be promoted and popularized. This is a straw-man in OP's argument, so we don't know precisely who OP would be referring to, but it's not too big a stretch to interpret OP's comment as referring to individuals whose ethnicities are being ridiculed in these books, including African, Native American, Chinese and Arab ethnicities. In fact, a brief search of media reports regarding this controversy would reveal that many prominent commentators on the subject have been African-American and Hispanic educators. Most of this actual commentary has been well-reasoned and civilized, however, and is not at all mob-like. In contrast, "lynching" in the United States primarily existed as a tool by which white mobs terrorized non-white communities into social, economic and political subservience, by murdering people. Take a look at some of the pictures, and read some of the history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States Lynching is not just some better-forgotten historical grievance. It was a tool for genocide and white supremacy—a tool used to rob Mexican and indigenous landowners of their property, and to keep black people subjugated and to deprive them of political power and economic independence. The last known lynching in the United States took place less than 40 years ago—within my own lifetime. The downstream effects of this violence persist today. Lynching was also part of a continuum of white supremacist culture that included ethnic caricatures that were intended to ridicule subjugated people, and which had the effect of dehumanizing those people. Dehumanization is a necessary precursor to mob violence, and lynchings would not have been possible without the cruel, dehumanizing propaganda that promoted white-supremacy in the United States for more than 100 years after the civil war. OP's metaphorical lynch mob would include individuals whose ancestors were terrorized by actual lynch mobs. To convert metaphor to simile, OP was saying that these individuals whose ancestors were terrorized by lynch mobs are themselves like a lynch mob when they complain about the on-going, present-day publication of imagery that was originally created to promote the persecution of those same ancestors. Is this not offensive on its face? Even if you disagree with these people, how can you not see OP's metaphor as demeaning towards them? And even if you don't care about offending people in the wider world, what about those of us on this website who also fit the same description? Is it not rude to us? Look, I don't want anyone to be shamed, punished, penalized or "canceled" here. That would be ridiculous. I wasn't even looking for any kind of apology. I'm just hoping that the standards of civility and respect followed by members of the HN community can incorporate an awareness of what this kind of language really means to some of us. There are some things that no civilized person will say in polite society—that idea, I think, is not controversial. Let this particular use of the word "lynching" be one of those things.
    - Dirlewanger 6y ago
      You sound like someone who'd have a problem with someone because their last name is Lynch.
    - Amezarak 6y ago
      While Black people were disproportionately victims of lynching, lynching was not in itself a racial phenomenon, even if racists frequently employed it. People of all races were commonly lynched by people of all races. It's a legacy from a time when mob justice was common, in part because of the limitations of the legal system. So his usage seems quite correct.
    - mariusor 6y ago
      With all due respect (and with apologies for going off topic) but the meaning of "lynching" is not restricted to the US. This colonialist attitude towards the English language from US speakers is quite distasteful when it's used to bludgeon the country's racial problems into any discussion. Please stop.
      - dang 6y ago
        Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic hell on top of the ideological hell we are all enduring with topics like this. If you want to make a point about international variations in language, that's fine, but turning it into a whole separate flamewar is not cool. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        mariusor 6y ago
        Apologies again. I will not be offended if the post is scraped.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  I mean if a message goes across a distributed network and all the different nodes of the network independently decide to change their operation then there is no centralized power structure saying do this, even though it is effectively the same.
  - captainredbeard 6y ago
    In the gospel of wokeness, there must be an oppressing power structure
- deleted 6y ago
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- deleted 6y ago
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- Number157 6y ago
  The weapon is censorship. Dictatorial governments supported by control over information have killed far more people than H-bombs.
  - illirik 6y ago
    What information in these children's books is undermining dictatorial governments? The government isn't censoring e.g. Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States or Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago - these are literally just picture books with racist caricatures in them. You have no right to shout "fire" in a crowded theater, and you have no right to denigrate your fellow man.
    - throwawayfrauds 6y ago
      You’re actually wrong about rights in the United States. You have every right to do all of the things you claim you don’t: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
      - illirik 6y ago
        The laws in the United States are pretty convoluted, and I don't think they align with human rights all that well, especially given the treatment of imprisoned folks or asylum seekers. However, I do think that causing mass hysteria for kicks (shouting fire...) is wrong and you should not do it. I'm curious: do you believe that there is anything that one does not have the right to say?
        throwawayfrauds 6y ago
        Nope. And every other country in the world is available for someone to move to if they don’t like the US free speech laws.
        illirik 6y ago
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  Using the word "denigrate" would be a reason to cancel you for some very conscientious minds. It sounds too similar to, ya know. And you aren't even talking Chinese [1] [1] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/09/08/professor-suspended-saying-chinese-word-sounds-english-slur https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/09/08/professor-sus...
  - godelski 6y ago
    This one was weird as it's saying that English has ownership over sounds. If it sounds similar to a bad English word then it's also bad, even if context is given.
    - inglor_cz 6y ago
      Magical thinking at its best. The Middle Ages are back. You are not allowed to pronounce anything similar to the powerful incantation, lest the demons emerge. Regardless of context. Of course, in practice, the demons are regular people with stones in their hands ...
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        So videoconference calls are modern seances ("Is anyone there?", "Can you hear me?"...), you tweet of the Devil and He doth retweets, ... ... we've managed to turn magic and superstition into reality, just not in a way we expected.
        inglor_cz 6y ago
        This is a very funny perspective, thank you :-)
      - pineaux 6y ago
        Or, and this might be something to consider: this restructuring of of culture into groups of "good and bad culture" is something that happens each generation. Like the hippies against the old ideals, the 80 kids/punkers against the hippies, the smooth millennials against the 80-kids. Every generation did their own thing. We are getting old and do not subscribe to the new future. We are losing our childhood loves. They will disappear into the fold of history. Just like we will.
- PontifexMinimus 6y ago
  > there is no power structure wielding a “cancel button” here This is hardly an isolated occurrance, as you well know. So we have all of Big Tech acting in concert to ban what they deem wrongthink -- but, oh no, that's definitely not a power structure! Nothing to see here, folks!
  - pm90 6y ago
    Yes, because it’s certainly plausible that the leadership of Big Tech that are always at each other’s throats to dominate their corner of the digital market would want to put aside any such differences in direction, and decide that this is the one issue that they could show a United front on because this after all is what affects their goals of market dominance. It’s this that dominates the meeting of their leadership, who are always just hanging out with each other, combing through a list of things to cancel, put together a coordinated plan to cancel the thing, and then — in secret, nobody should know! - execute on that. Because what else could they possibly be bothered with?
- coldtea 6y ago
  >The “weapon” here is just basic conscientiousness No, it's predominantly white-driven top-down (upper 20% income bracket) classism run amok, proping up specialist careers and pretending to be about "caring" and "wokeness". >there is no power structure wielding a “cancel button” here. Yeah, no "power structure", just the mainstream media, the corporate world, ad agencies, governments, government agencies, web-mobs, FAANG - the biggest tech companies in the world plus Clouldflare and others, payment processors, the "good society" class wise and so on, with an increasing number of BS laws on their side too...
  - illirik 6y ago
    > No, it's predominantly white-driven top-down (upper 20% income bracket) classism run amok, proping up specialist careers and pretending to be about "caring" and "wokeness". I'm pretty sure most people are in agreement that racist caricatures are bad. > Yeah, no "power structure", just the mainstream media, the corporate world, ad agencies, governments, government agencies, web-mobs, FAANG - the biggest tech companies in the world plus Clouldflare and others, payment processors, the "good society" class wise and so on, with an increasing number of BS laws on their side too... My wording could have been better, but my meaning was that this "cancellation" (which is really just people acknowledging that something is bad) is not applied by some power structure, and is certainly not a weapon that can be aimed at arbitrary concepts at will. I agree that free speech is important, but hate speech is not.
    - crististm 6y ago
      I find your comment offensive
    - krona 6y ago
      The discussion is not about whether racism occured, but how did it manifest. Unless something is specifically anti-racist, it is bad. Therefore all culture is bad. QED.
      - illirik 6y ago
        We're having difficulties getting consensus around the idea that racism is bad, which is a prerequisite for discussion
- imgabe 6y ago
  Hey, can I come look through your house to make sure there are no books there that offend me? It would be incredibly rude of you to consume any content that random strangers might object to. I'll be over in an hour. This has nothing to do with conscientiousness. Buying a book to read at home by yourself is not the business of anyone else and neither eBay nor anyone else should be dictating what you're allowed to read.
  - spamizbad 6y ago
    Actually you have the property rights angle all wrong: People who control the publishing rights and the intellectual property behind an ecommerce platform to distribute things have both decided they don't want to sell certain works for whatever reason. A stupid one IMO. But it's within their rights as we currently understand corporate power. Perhaps we shouldn't be so willing to indulge liberal market freedoms as they can be a double-edged sword - property owners can "censor" cultural touchstones thanks to powerful intellectual property laws. To fix your analogy: Someone comes to YOUR house and demands you release a "problematic" work of fiction to the public from your private collection because people are censoring it and people need to see its no big deal. You refuse, because it's yours and you don't feel like it... maybe you agree with the rabble? Either way... you know your rights. If you want to defeat cancel culture you should advocate for LESS property rights, less market "freedom", and strong labor protections. This whole idea that you can somehow defeat a moral panic with some sort of counter moral panic (or backlash) has been tried for over 40 years - it's not working.
    - imgabe 6y ago
      > Someone comes to YOUR house and demands you release a "problematic" work of fiction to the public from your private collection because people are censoring it and people need to see its no big deal. You refuse, because it's yours and you don't feel like it... maybe you agree with the rabble? Either way... you know your rights. Not really. It's more like Person A wants to sell a book. Person B wants to buy a book. Persons C through Z, who are not involved, haven't read the book, have no intention of ever having anything to do with the book, but saw a tweet that said it was bad, interject themselves and decide that persons A and B are not allowed to conduct their transaction.
- Veen 6y ago
  And yet, eBay does sell a crap load of Mein Kampf editions and gollywogs. The motivation seems to be corporate virtue signalling rather than any commitment to a principle.
  - pm90 6y ago
    This argument seems really silly to me, have you thought this through? It appears to be a “talking point” as a few other right wing sites seem to be making the exact same argument. The flaw in the argument is that Mein Kampf is not a children’s book. If hitler wrote a popular racist book series for kids, eBay would likely delist that too.
  - tibbydudeza 6y ago
    Yep no doubt due to recent CPAC conference and too early for a "War on Xmas " so they needed to focus on the nemesis of "cancel" culture rather than the disaster of Covid-19 deaths.
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      Don't worry, they'll focus on that disaster soon enough. They'll want to blame Biden for the 650k who will die of covid this year, just like they didn't want to blame Trump for the 350k who died of covid last year.
- bawolff 6y ago
  Ah yes, mein kampf is ok [1], but dr suess is a bridge too far. [Before anyone makes assumptions about my political views, i'm fine with publishers no longer publishing if tastes change, but i can't abide banning the sale of books in general. I don't really care what the content is] [1] https://www.ebay.ca/itm/MEIN-KAMPF-1939-Complete-Unabridged-Annotated-Reynal-Hitchcock/373479460581?hash=item56f51c4ee5:g:NMUAAOSwrAFgPBn3 https://www.ebay.ca/itm/MEIN-KAMPF-1939-Complete-Unabridged-...
  - pineaux 6y ago
    Nobody banned the sale of these books. The only argument any of the people who are crying their eyes out could make here is: we need open source decentralized bookselling to ensure that people who don't care about the bad feelings people have about these books can still buy these books. Every other argument is just weak and quite frankly, herdmentality of the right wing political sphere.
    - morlockabove 6y ago
      When there's one company (due to network effects) that does something, that company's a de facto arm of government for that thing. So yes, we do need distributed everything.
      - pineaux 6y ago
        So. You think all the companies in the world are defacto arms of the government? I don't get what you are saying
        morlockabove 6y ago
        Monopolies are de-facto government bodies. It isn't that Ebay is administered by USG (although I'm sure Ebay has an NSA/DHS detachment); it's that it makes no difference to the user whether a government bans the sale of books on online flea markets or the only practical online flea market does. If the only store within a 2-hour drive is walmart, walmart is your equivalent of the soviet centrally-planned economy.
- erhk 6y ago
  >eBay decided that they did not want to be facilitating the sale of books that denigrate people Objectively false. eBay responded to a headline and will continue to permit the sale of many works of similar nature because it is ultimately apathetic
- bzbarsky 6y ago
  eBay has no problem facilitating the sale of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", or "Mein Kampf", or "laddie magazines", or cartoons of Muhammad, or any of a variety of other things that "denigrate people". So let's not pretend like this is a principled stand of some sort by eBay. Leaving aside the question of whether the books in question actually denigrate people, what makes this case so special that eBay takes action? eBay is losing money by not allowing sales of the books; presumably they either feel like they would lose even more money if they did allow it or feel that the books are morally repugnant enough to be worth the loss. Any other options? The second option does not seem to hold water given all the other things eBay allows. The first option leaves the question of why they would lose money. Digging into that is where you find the power structure you are refusing to see.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

illirik 6y ago

The “weapon” here is just basic conscientiousness. A publisher decided to stop publishing some books because they denigrate people, and eBay decided that they did not want to be facilitating the sale of books that denigrate people. We are not talking about an H-bomb - there is no power structure wielding a “cancel button” here.

stef25 6y ago
> there is no power structure wielding a “cancel button” here There absolutely is. Ebay is nipping in the bud a potential social media lynching. One misstep nowadays and the CEO spends weeks grovelling about how they're still learning and are determined to do better and thank you Twitter mob for pointing this out. You can't buy Doctor Seuss, but you can buy "The Anarchist Arsenal", hydrogen peroxide, acetone and a few pounds of screws in the same cart. Edited typo by / buy
- legutierr 6y ago
  I hope the irony isn’t lost on you that you are using the word “lynching”—which in its literal, non-metaphorical usage refers to the terroristic murder of racial minorities in the United States—to refer to the non-violent use of cultural power by members of those same minority groups to demand respect from institutions and powerful individuals. You may think that some of these demands have gone too far, and you may believe that some institutions have been too obsequious in adhering to these demands, but surely you must admit that the use of the word “lynching” in this context is offensive, no?
  - pm90 6y ago
    I can’t help but point out the incredible situation where you are engaging in precisely the kind of behavior that the person you’re replying to seems to have issue against : )
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - legutierr 6y ago
      And what behavior is that, precisely? Pointing out that certain usage of language can be offensive? That we shouldn’t be unintentional when causing offense? That if we cause offense intentionally, we shouldn’t be surprised by the reaction of the party we have purposely insulted?
      - moduspol 6y ago
        We haven't seen evidence anyone has been offended yet. Only that you are concerned others might be. A surprisingly common phenomenon.
        legutierr 6y ago
        Perhaps I was offended and was trying to point that out politely. I wasn’t badly offended. I was offended enough to take the time to write these comments. Keep in mind that on HN, rude and offensive comments are down-voted all the time. There is a politeness standard on this website, and perhaps that standard should incorporate the use of language like this!
        moduspol 6y ago
        Controlling the language people use under the premise of someone arguably being offended is rarely really about "politeness," though. Perhaps it's better if we all act like adults capable of understanding nuance in a discussion.
        6y ago
  - stef25 6y ago
    Thanks for pointing this out. I'm still learning and am determined to do better next time.
    - legutierr 6y ago
      There’s a Spanish idiom that describes your reply here really well, I think. It doesn’t occur to me what the comparable phrase in English would be. Es una cachetada con guante blanco. I disagree with you, but I have to say, well done. Point made.
  - manigandham 6y ago
    No, because it's not the same context. That's the point. These extreme reaches are the same as banning "master" as the name of a branch in git repos as if it has anything to do with social history.
    - legutierr 6y ago
      To the contrary. The context here is the same, as I explained in my original comment. The connection between the literal and metaphorical use of the word here is too close, which is what makes it rude and offensive. This is different than using the word “master” to describe the trunk branch of a repository, because when we are talking about a “master branch” it is not in the context of a discussion of offensive racial caricatures being removed from eBay’s website.
      - manigandham 6y ago
        No, I disagree, along with many others. Nothing is rude and offensive on its own, nor do you know what everyone else thinks. What you really mean is it's offensive to you, in which case you should exercise your personal freedoms and rights by reading something else instead of worrying about the rest of us. As a member of a "minority group* myself, there's no connection to "minority groups demanding respect" here, just the typical outrage over the wildest reaches by those who feel they represent everyone else. By the way, treating people as monolithic groups is where bigotry comes from in the first place so why don't we just stop doing that all together?
        legutierr 6y ago
        > No, I disagree, along with many others. If I were trying to win any popularity contests, I wouldn't be discussing this topic on HN. It's risky business! > Nothing is rude and offensive on its own, nor do you know what everyone else thinks. I'm not purporting to know what everyone else thinks, only that given the context, the usage of this particular word in this particular situation is offensive. It's a strange thing for you to insinuate that I feel that I "represent everyone else." Is it not enough for me to be speaking for myself? And what's wrong with users of this website speaking up to negotiate the standards of discourse we all follow here? As I've commented elsewhere, there is a standard of civility, respect and politeness that we all expect from interactions on HN. What that standard comprises should be discussed from time to time. > As a member of a "minority group myself, there's no connection to "minority groups demanding respect" here..* If you are going to quote me, then please quote me accurately. I didn't equate OP's "social media lynching" with "minority groups demanding respect". The language I used referred to specific (albeit hypothetical) individuals doing a specific thing. I wrote that "members of those same minority groups" were using "cultural power...to demand respect". It is you who are talking about monolithic groups here—I'm talking about individuals. If you are a member of one of the minority groups in the US that were historically terrorized by lynch mobs, or were ridiculed in the popular press by the kinds of caricatures that are referenced by the article, then absolutely your opinions on this matter are salient. It shouldn't require membership in any particular group to view the juxtaposition within OP's metaphor as offensive, however. The "potential social media lynching" that OP accused eBay of kowtowing to must by its nature be perpetrated by individuals who don't want denigrating, racist caricatures to be promoted and popularized. This is a straw-man in OP's argument, so we don't know precisely who OP would be referring to, but it's not too big a stretch to interpret OP's comment as referring to individuals whose ethnicities are being ridiculed in these books, including African, Native American, Chinese and Arab ethnicities. In fact, a brief search of media reports regarding this controversy would reveal that many prominent commentators on the subject have been African-American and Hispanic educators. Most of this actual commentary has been well-reasoned and civilized, however, and is not at all mob-like. In contrast, "lynching" in the United States primarily existed as a tool by which white mobs terrorized non-white communities into social, economic and political subservience, by murdering people. Take a look at some of the pictures, and read some of the history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States Lynching is not just some better-forgotten historical grievance. It was a tool for genocide and white supremacy—a tool used to rob Mexican and indigenous landowners of their property, and to keep black people subjugated and to deprive them of political power and economic independence. The last known lynching in the United States took place less than 40 years ago—within my own lifetime. The downstream effects of this violence persist today. Lynching was also part of a continuum of white supremacist culture that included ethnic caricatures that were intended to ridicule subjugated people, and which had the effect of dehumanizing those people. Dehumanization is a necessary precursor to mob violence, and lynchings would not have been possible without the cruel, dehumanizing propaganda that promoted white-supremacy in the United States for more than 100 years after the civil war. OP's metaphorical lynch mob would include individuals whose ancestors were terrorized by actual lynch mobs. To convert metaphor to simile, OP was saying that these individuals whose ancestors were terrorized by lynch mobs are themselves like a lynch mob when they complain about the on-going, present-day publication of imagery that was originally created to promote the persecution of those same ancestors. Is this not offensive on its face? Even if you disagree with these people, how can you not see OP's metaphor as demeaning towards them? And even if you don't care about offending people in the wider world, what about those of us on this website who also fit the same description? Is it not rude to us? Look, I don't want anyone to be shamed, punished, penalized or "canceled" here. That would be ridiculous. I wasn't even looking for any kind of apology. I'm just hoping that the standards of civility and respect followed by members of the HN community can incorporate an awareness of what this kind of language really means to some of us. There are some things that no civilized person will say in polite society—that idea, I think, is not controversial. Let this particular use of the word "lynching" be one of those things.
  - Dirlewanger 6y ago
    You sound like someone who'd have a problem with someone because their last name is Lynch.
  - Amezarak 6y ago
    While Black people were disproportionately victims of lynching, lynching was not in itself a racial phenomenon, even if racists frequently employed it. People of all races were commonly lynched by people of all races. It's a legacy from a time when mob justice was common, in part because of the limitations of the legal system. So his usage seems quite correct.
  - mariusor 6y ago
    With all due respect (and with apologies for going off topic) but the meaning of "lynching" is not restricted to the US. This colonialist attitude towards the English language from US speakers is quite distasteful when it's used to bludgeon the country's racial problems into any discussion. Please stop.
    - dang 6y ago
      Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic hell on top of the ideological hell we are all enduring with topics like this. If you want to make a point about international variations in language, that's fine, but turning it into a whole separate flamewar is not cool. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - mariusor 6y ago
        Apologies again. I will not be offended if the post is scraped.
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
I mean if a message goes across a distributed network and all the different nodes of the network independently decide to change their operation then there is no centralized power structure saying do this, even though it is effectively the same.
- captainredbeard 6y ago
  In the gospel of wokeness, there must be an oppressing power structure
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Number157 6y ago
The weapon is censorship. Dictatorial governments supported by control over information have killed far more people than H-bombs.
- illirik 6y ago
  What information in these children's books is undermining dictatorial governments? The government isn't censoring e.g. Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States or Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago - these are literally just picture books with racist caricatures in them. You have no right to shout "fire" in a crowded theater, and you have no right to denigrate your fellow man.
  - throwawayfrauds 6y ago
    You’re actually wrong about rights in the United States. You have every right to do all of the things you claim you don’t: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
    - illirik 6y ago
      The laws in the United States are pretty convoluted, and I don't think they align with human rights all that well, especially given the treatment of imprisoned folks or asylum seekers. However, I do think that causing mass hysteria for kicks (shouting fire...) is wrong and you should not do it. I'm curious: do you believe that there is anything that one does not have the right to say?
      - throwawayfrauds 6y ago
        Nope. And every other country in the world is available for someone to move to if they don’t like the US free speech laws.
        illirik 6y ago
inglor_cz 6y ago
Using the word "denigrate" would be a reason to cancel you for some very conscientious minds. It sounds too similar to, ya know. And you aren't even talking Chinese [1] [1] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/09/08/professor-suspended-saying-chinese-word-sounds-english-slur https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/09/08/professor-sus...
- godelski 6y ago
  This one was weird as it's saying that English has ownership over sounds. If it sounds similar to a bad English word then it's also bad, even if context is given.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    Magical thinking at its best. The Middle Ages are back. You are not allowed to pronounce anything similar to the powerful incantation, lest the demons emerge. Regardless of context. Of course, in practice, the demons are regular people with stones in their hands ...
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      So videoconference calls are modern seances ("Is anyone there?", "Can you hear me?"...), you tweet of the Devil and He doth retweets, ... ... we've managed to turn magic and superstition into reality, just not in a way we expected.
      - inglor_cz 6y ago
        This is a very funny perspective, thank you :-)
    - pineaux 6y ago
      Or, and this might be something to consider: this restructuring of of culture into groups of "good and bad culture" is something that happens each generation. Like the hippies against the old ideals, the 80 kids/punkers against the hippies, the smooth millennials against the 80-kids. Every generation did their own thing. We are getting old and do not subscribe to the new future. We are losing our childhood loves. They will disappear into the fold of history. Just like we will.
PontifexMinimus 6y ago
> there is no power structure wielding a “cancel button” here This is hardly an isolated occurrance, as you well know. So we have all of Big Tech acting in concert to ban what they deem wrongthink -- but, oh no, that's definitely not a power structure! Nothing to see here, folks!
- pm90 6y ago
  Yes, because it’s certainly plausible that the leadership of Big Tech that are always at each other’s throats to dominate their corner of the digital market would want to put aside any such differences in direction, and decide that this is the one issue that they could show a United front on because this after all is what affects their goals of market dominance. It’s this that dominates the meeting of their leadership, who are always just hanging out with each other, combing through a list of things to cancel, put together a coordinated plan to cancel the thing, and then — in secret, nobody should know! - execute on that. Because what else could they possibly be bothered with?
coldtea 6y ago
>The “weapon” here is just basic conscientiousness No, it's predominantly white-driven top-down (upper 20% income bracket) classism run amok, proping up specialist careers and pretending to be about "caring" and "wokeness". >there is no power structure wielding a “cancel button” here. Yeah, no "power structure", just the mainstream media, the corporate world, ad agencies, governments, government agencies, web-mobs, FAANG - the biggest tech companies in the world plus Clouldflare and others, payment processors, the "good society" class wise and so on, with an increasing number of BS laws on their side too...
- illirik 6y ago
  > No, it's predominantly white-driven top-down (upper 20% income bracket) classism run amok, proping up specialist careers and pretending to be about "caring" and "wokeness". I'm pretty sure most people are in agreement that racist caricatures are bad. > Yeah, no "power structure", just the mainstream media, the corporate world, ad agencies, governments, government agencies, web-mobs, FAANG - the biggest tech companies in the world plus Clouldflare and others, payment processors, the "good society" class wise and so on, with an increasing number of BS laws on their side too... My wording could have been better, but my meaning was that this "cancellation" (which is really just people acknowledging that something is bad) is not applied by some power structure, and is certainly not a weapon that can be aimed at arbitrary concepts at will. I agree that free speech is important, but hate speech is not.
  - crististm 6y ago
    I find your comment offensive
  - krona 6y ago
    The discussion is not about whether racism occured, but how did it manifest. Unless something is specifically anti-racist, it is bad. Therefore all culture is bad. QED.
    - illirik 6y ago
      We're having difficulties getting consensus around the idea that racism is bad, which is a prerequisite for discussion
imgabe 6y ago
Hey, can I come look through your house to make sure there are no books there that offend me? It would be incredibly rude of you to consume any content that random strangers might object to. I'll be over in an hour. This has nothing to do with conscientiousness. Buying a book to read at home by yourself is not the business of anyone else and neither eBay nor anyone else should be dictating what you're allowed to read.
- spamizbad 6y ago
  Actually you have the property rights angle all wrong: People who control the publishing rights and the intellectual property behind an ecommerce platform to distribute things have both decided they don't want to sell certain works for whatever reason. A stupid one IMO. But it's within their rights as we currently understand corporate power. Perhaps we shouldn't be so willing to indulge liberal market freedoms as they can be a double-edged sword - property owners can "censor" cultural touchstones thanks to powerful intellectual property laws. To fix your analogy: Someone comes to YOUR house and demands you release a "problematic" work of fiction to the public from your private collection because people are censoring it and people need to see its no big deal. You refuse, because it's yours and you don't feel like it... maybe you agree with the rabble? Either way... you know your rights. If you want to defeat cancel culture you should advocate for LESS property rights, less market "freedom", and strong labor protections. This whole idea that you can somehow defeat a moral panic with some sort of counter moral panic (or backlash) has been tried for over 40 years - it's not working.
  - imgabe 6y ago
    > Someone comes to YOUR house and demands you release a "problematic" work of fiction to the public from your private collection because people are censoring it and people need to see its no big deal. You refuse, because it's yours and you don't feel like it... maybe you agree with the rabble? Either way... you know your rights. Not really. It's more like Person A wants to sell a book. Person B wants to buy a book. Persons C through Z, who are not involved, haven't read the book, have no intention of ever having anything to do with the book, but saw a tweet that said it was bad, interject themselves and decide that persons A and B are not allowed to conduct their transaction.
Veen 6y ago
And yet, eBay does sell a crap load of Mein Kampf editions and gollywogs. The motivation seems to be corporate virtue signalling rather than any commitment to a principle.
- pm90 6y ago
  This argument seems really silly to me, have you thought this through? It appears to be a “talking point” as a few other right wing sites seem to be making the exact same argument. The flaw in the argument is that Mein Kampf is not a children’s book. If hitler wrote a popular racist book series for kids, eBay would likely delist that too.
- tibbydudeza 6y ago
  Yep no doubt due to recent CPAC conference and too early for a "War on Xmas " so they needed to focus on the nemesis of "cancel" culture rather than the disaster of Covid-19 deaths.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    Don't worry, they'll focus on that disaster soon enough. They'll want to blame Biden for the 650k who will die of covid this year, just like they didn't want to blame Trump for the 350k who died of covid last year.
bawolff 6y ago
Ah yes, mein kampf is ok [1], but dr suess is a bridge too far. [Before anyone makes assumptions about my political views, i'm fine with publishers no longer publishing if tastes change, but i can't abide banning the sale of books in general. I don't really care what the content is] [1] https://www.ebay.ca/itm/MEIN-KAMPF-1939-Complete-Unabridged-Annotated-Reynal-Hitchcock/373479460581?hash=item56f51c4ee5:g:NMUAAOSwrAFgPBn3 https://www.ebay.ca/itm/MEIN-KAMPF-1939-Complete-Unabridged-...
- pineaux 6y ago
  Nobody banned the sale of these books. The only argument any of the people who are crying their eyes out could make here is: we need open source decentralized bookselling to ensure that people who don't care about the bad feelings people have about these books can still buy these books. Every other argument is just weak and quite frankly, herdmentality of the right wing political sphere.
  - morlockabove 6y ago
    When there's one company (due to network effects) that does something, that company's a de facto arm of government for that thing. So yes, we do need distributed everything.
    - pineaux 6y ago
      So. You think all the companies in the world are defacto arms of the government? I don't get what you are saying
      - morlockabove 6y ago
        Monopolies are de-facto government bodies. It isn't that Ebay is administered by USG (although I'm sure Ebay has an NSA/DHS detachment); it's that it makes no difference to the user whether a government bans the sale of books on online flea markets or the only practical online flea market does. If the only store within a 2-hour drive is walmart, walmart is your equivalent of the soviet centrally-planned economy.
erhk 6y ago
>eBay decided that they did not want to be facilitating the sale of books that denigrate people Objectively false. eBay responded to a headline and will continue to permit the sale of many works of similar nature because it is ultimately apathetic
bzbarsky 6y ago
eBay has no problem facilitating the sale of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", or "Mein Kampf", or "laddie magazines", or cartoons of Muhammad, or any of a variety of other things that "denigrate people". So let's not pretend like this is a principled stand of some sort by eBay. Leaving aside the question of whether the books in question actually denigrate people, what makes this case so special that eBay takes action? eBay is losing money by not allowing sales of the books; presumably they either feel like they would lose even more money if they did allow it or feel that the books are morally repugnant enough to be worth the loss. Any other options? The second option does not seem to hold water given all the other things eBay allows. The first option leaves the question of why they would lose money. Digging into that is where you find the power structure you are refusing to see.

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