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Some might be offended by holocaust comparisons here, but if we are to really take the ideal of "never again" seriously, then it's absolutely crucial that we be

Some might be offended by holocaust comparisons here, but if we are to really take the ideal of "never again" seriously, then it's absolutely crucial that we be free to openly discuss in good faith how situations gradually snowballed from one thing to another and ended up at a certain point in history without needing to censor ourselves so much to avoid offending someone. And thankfully we've had nothing close to approaching the horrendous events of the holocaust during our present pandemic difficulties, but opposing discussion on the grounds of it being potentially offensive isn't doing any service to the survivors (and victims) of those past atrocities, and it risks us following some of those dark paths of the past into the future if we cannot apply what we learned to our own times. The various lessons of history must be applied as much as possible in order to better understand our present time and to avoid repeating those mistakes of history.

rgrieselhuber 4y ago
[flagged]
- tomhoward 4y ago
  As an Australian who lived here throughout the pandemic, it's massively hyperbolic and bad-faith argumentation to relate Australia's pandemic response to Nazi Germany, or even to what is going on in China now. Yes we had lockdowns - as did many other countries/states/provinces/cities, including in the U.S. And yes we've had vaccine mandates in order to work in many roles - as has been the case in the U.S. and many other places around the world that have always been regarded as highly liberal and democratic. And yes we had quarantine for people entering the country - which has been utilised widely throughout history. It sucked to experience, and yes, sometimes there was cause for concern as to how far it was going and how permanent the restrictions would be. But we can now see the outcome; the country is almost completely back to normal, and ended up with one of the lowest per-capita fatality rates in the world, hospitals were only briefly strained when omicron surged this past January but quickly returned to normal, and the country has fared well economically compared to most other countries. And even if the outcome wasn't so positive, this distinction is crucial: Nazi Germany was defined by persecuting, imprisoning and murdering huge numbers of people; Australia's pandemic response was intended to prevent the premature deaths of huge numbers of people, and it succeeded at doing that whilst impinging on people's freedoms for only a limited period of time and to only a limited extent. Screeching ideologues on Twitter and cable TV who were not here and know nothing about our societal values are not the people to be informed by on this topic.
  - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
    I am far from the only person who expressed concern about what happened in Australia. I also saw huge numbers of Australians protesting in the streets, unless you are claiming that the lockdown protests are somehow hyperbolic and not real. Human Rights Watch [1] documented a variety of arbitrary abuses and disturbing authoritarian trends. I watched videos of police choke-slamming an innocent woman for not wearing a mask [2], people being forcefully kidnapped from their homes and taken to camps (!) [3], and many other abuses. The comparison with the National Socialist regime in WWII is not a comparison of specific ideologies, as I already made very clear, but of a societal-level adoption of coercive actions and narratives in the name of serving the greater good. There is a desensitization that occurs and, IMO, any honest student of history would see the exact same forces at play. 1: https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/24/australia-harsh-police-response-during-covid-19 https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/24/australia-harsh-police-r... 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Svogj_qPL_I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Svogj_qPL_I 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGFdWcJU7-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGFdWcJU7-0
    - tomhoward 4y ago
      I’ll preface my response by saying I’ve leaned libertarian/Laissez-faire for much of my (now lengthy) adult life, and I’ve liked plenty of what I’ve seen you write on HN before (I recognize your handle as we met personally at YC many years ago). I say that to point out that I don’t think we’re coming at this with strongly opposing ideological priors. To your response: - I myself was concerned by some of the measures and the risk of overreach and permanence of the measures - I said so in my original comment. - Yes people protested, which was understandable and healthy, and allowed by governments/police. - Yes sometimes police were heavy handed in enforcing the laws - where it went too far it was widely shared on social and mainstream media and condemned by pretty much everyone. But these cases were isolated. - The measures taken in the NT to quarantine cases were done because that territory is home to some of the most vulnerable people on earth in terms of pre-existing health conditions, education/language and access to medical care and information; in short, it was done to protect the most vulnerable members of the indigenous population from severe illness and premature death. You couldn’t possibly think of anything more opposite to Nazism if you tried. The thing about being an adult is that you learn that government policies/measures shouldn’t be measured against some idealistic, imagined alternate reality, but against the realistic next-worst scenario. That’s the whole reason I outgrew my belief in simplistic socialist policies in my late 20s, which most people do, of course. To me one of the greatest revelations of the pandemic is that libertarians are just as liable to succumb to idealistic fantasies as socialists have historically been. The standard refrain has been that governments should “protect the vulnerable” while letting everyone else live totally freely - but without suggesting a workable plan for how this actually could be achieved, particularly when it’s not obvious in advance, who is/isn’t vulnerable. Let’s be clear: your phrase “societal-level adoption of coercive actions and narratives in the name of serving the greater good” is a high-minded way of saying that the virus should have just been allowed to spread, regardless of the cost in human lives, and that to do otherwise is essentially the same as Nazism. If I’ve misrepresented you, please explain how. If not, please be less euphemistic in how you’re conveying the kind of outcome you’d prefer to see of the pandemic in Australia, given that the ultimate actual outcome has been a remarkably low fatality rate by world standards (1/7 per-capita even of the much vaunted Sweden), and a social/political order now largely back to what it was beforehand.

rgrieselhuber 4y ago

[flagged]

tomhoward 4y ago
As an Australian who lived here throughout the pandemic, it's massively hyperbolic and bad-faith argumentation to relate Australia's pandemic response to Nazi Germany, or even to what is going on in China now. Yes we had lockdowns - as did many other countries/states/provinces/cities, including in the U.S. And yes we've had vaccine mandates in order to work in many roles - as has been the case in the U.S. and many other places around the world that have always been regarded as highly liberal and democratic. And yes we had quarantine for people entering the country - which has been utilised widely throughout history. It sucked to experience, and yes, sometimes there was cause for concern as to how far it was going and how permanent the restrictions would be. But we can now see the outcome; the country is almost completely back to normal, and ended up with one of the lowest per-capita fatality rates in the world, hospitals were only briefly strained when omicron surged this past January but quickly returned to normal, and the country has fared well economically compared to most other countries. And even if the outcome wasn't so positive, this distinction is crucial: Nazi Germany was defined by persecuting, imprisoning and murdering huge numbers of people; Australia's pandemic response was intended to prevent the premature deaths of huge numbers of people, and it succeeded at doing that whilst impinging on people's freedoms for only a limited period of time and to only a limited extent. Screeching ideologues on Twitter and cable TV who were not here and know nothing about our societal values are not the people to be informed by on this topic.
- rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  I am far from the only person who expressed concern about what happened in Australia. I also saw huge numbers of Australians protesting in the streets, unless you are claiming that the lockdown protests are somehow hyperbolic and not real. Human Rights Watch [1] documented a variety of arbitrary abuses and disturbing authoritarian trends. I watched videos of police choke-slamming an innocent woman for not wearing a mask [2], people being forcefully kidnapped from their homes and taken to camps (!) [3], and many other abuses. The comparison with the National Socialist regime in WWII is not a comparison of specific ideologies, as I already made very clear, but of a societal-level adoption of coercive actions and narratives in the name of serving the greater good. There is a desensitization that occurs and, IMO, any honest student of history would see the exact same forces at play. 1: https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/24/australia-harsh-police-response-during-covid-19 https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/24/australia-harsh-police-r... 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Svogj_qPL_I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Svogj_qPL_I 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGFdWcJU7-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGFdWcJU7-0
  - tomhoward 4y ago
    I’ll preface my response by saying I’ve leaned libertarian/Laissez-faire for much of my (now lengthy) adult life, and I’ve liked plenty of what I’ve seen you write on HN before (I recognize your handle as we met personally at YC many years ago). I say that to point out that I don’t think we’re coming at this with strongly opposing ideological priors. To your response: - I myself was concerned by some of the measures and the risk of overreach and permanence of the measures - I said so in my original comment. - Yes people protested, which was understandable and healthy, and allowed by governments/police. - Yes sometimes police were heavy handed in enforcing the laws - where it went too far it was widely shared on social and mainstream media and condemned by pretty much everyone. But these cases were isolated. - The measures taken in the NT to quarantine cases were done because that territory is home to some of the most vulnerable people on earth in terms of pre-existing health conditions, education/language and access to medical care and information; in short, it was done to protect the most vulnerable members of the indigenous population from severe illness and premature death. You couldn’t possibly think of anything more opposite to Nazism if you tried. The thing about being an adult is that you learn that government policies/measures shouldn’t be measured against some idealistic, imagined alternate reality, but against the realistic next-worst scenario. That’s the whole reason I outgrew my belief in simplistic socialist policies in my late 20s, which most people do, of course. To me one of the greatest revelations of the pandemic is that libertarians are just as liable to succumb to idealistic fantasies as socialists have historically been. The standard refrain has been that governments should “protect the vulnerable” while letting everyone else live totally freely - but without suggesting a workable plan for how this actually could be achieved, particularly when it’s not obvious in advance, who is/isn’t vulnerable. Let’s be clear: your phrase “societal-level adoption of coercive actions and narratives in the name of serving the greater good” is a high-minded way of saying that the virus should have just been allowed to spread, regardless of the cost in human lives, and that to do otherwise is essentially the same as Nazism. If I’ve misrepresented you, please explain how. If not, please be less euphemistic in how you’re conveying the kind of outcome you’d prefer to see of the pandemic in Australia, given that the ultimate actual outcome has been a remarkably low fatality rate by world standards (1/7 per-capita even of the much vaunted Sweden), and a social/political order now largely back to what it was beforehand.