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Kind of amazed this was let on the front page of HN. I've seen so many political posts sunk to the abyss the past few weeks.
by bearjaws 2y ago
Kind of amazed this was let on the front page of HN. I've seen so many political posts sunk to the abyss the past few weeks.
- bloomingkales 2y agoLong as you censor it appropriately then it won't get flagged. It's 2025 y'all.
- thegrim33 2y ago[flagged]
- JKCalhoun 2y agoThere are 29 other posts on the front page that are not political.
- tomrod 2y agoDang has been a remarkable example of what free speech moderation looks like.
- intended 2y agoI was a mod, and by the definition used to pillory content moderation, there is no free speech compatible moderation anywhere. This is the same thing done by everyone from radio jockeys dealing with callers, to TV shows. The fundamental tool is the ban, because the only real power for site owners is silence. Any principled stand will be riddled with exceptions in under a few days of operation. I’ve seen this repeated in multiple free speech communities, like clockwork. Id very much like to see a principled stand which isn’t reducible to “free speech = speech exceptions I can tolerate.” Most people can’t and don’t want to live in 4chan (8chan ?)
- steele 2y agopg might be busy on the hub; when he finds this he will make sure to suppress opinions that aren't double plus good
- NathanKP 2y agoHN has always had a certain respect for people and articles that seem particularly prescient. I suspect that the 2017 in the title does a lot to boost the upvotes and reduce the flags.
- tbrownaw 2y agoIt's from eight years ago almost exactly (a couple months off). Saying it references today's current events isn't prescient, it's "second verse, same as the first".
- southernplaces7 2y agoAmusingly, the post is now flagged. So much for hacker spirit here.
- krapp 2y agoAlways remember the "Hacker" in "Hacker News" refers to Silicon Valley startups "hacking" capitalism and regulations, rather the anti-establishment hacker culture of the pre-web era. The resistance isn't here, and it's never going to be here.
- dang 2y agoThat's quite wrong—pg, rtm, and tlb came out of the MIT/Cambridge hacker scene and used the word the same way everybody else there did. (which is the original sense of the word and which, as everyone here hopefully knows, predates computers, and btw didn't originally have to do with breaking into closed systems)
- visekr 2y agoi was gonna say the same - as my post got sunk into oblivion after hitting second page
- idiotsecant 2y agoIt's telling that the Overton window has shifted far enough that the very idea of resisting authoritarianism is 'political'...
- Panoramix 2y agoIt's the implication that the current government is authoritarian which is political
- DavidPiper 2y ago"Left" and "Right" are luxuries of democratic societies. Pro-democracy and anti-democracy is another axis entirely. Both are political comparisons, but they are not the same thing. The implication of the article is that we will only discover whether the current government is authoritarian based on how it handles social resistance.
- intended 2y agoEverything is political once everyone is a broadcaster.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoNote the (2017) in the title.
- idiotsecant 2y agoOh? Did someone say that somewhere? Should I start assuming that my feelings about things are what makes them political?
- SpicyLemonZest 2y agoHow could resisting a political system ever have not been political? I'm endlessly confused by how people use the term "political" these days. Is there some new definition I'm not familiar with?
- heavensteeth 2y agoWhat is authoritarianism but politics?
- jayd16 2y agoThe article is about Nazis. It says a lot about the state of things that this would be considered political and not historical.
- tbrownaw 2y agoThat's a hazard of apocalyptic rhetoric. If you're constantly comparing people to some group, you can't talk about that group without being suspected of dogwhistles. Which forecloses discussions that otherwise could have been interesting.
- intended 2y agoSometimes the other group is neo nazis and are the dominant power. Sometimes they are close enough but different that the similarities strike normal people. Except when they bring it up, the defense is “no actually the Nazis we’re specifically doing XYZ. This isn’t the same. Which shuts down conversation about both - the actions being similar or identical. But this is the value of rhetoric.
- jayd16 2y agoOk I'll bite. What's another example? I don't think a post about Soviet Russia or really any other similar thing would get the same treatment. I think you could invoke Godwin's law but it was seen as childish, not political.
- ModernMech 2y agoIt's also the insidiousness of Nazis. People always look at the holocaust and wonder how it could ever happen, and the answer as far as I can tell is Nazis weaponize the benefit of the doubt. When you look back at how the world received Hitler before he became the Hitler we know, you see publications like the NYT musing that Hitler really doesn't mean anything he's saying about the Jews, and when he comes to power he will temper himself [1]: So violent are Hitler’s fulminations against the Jews that a number of prominent Jewish citizens are reported to have sought safe asylums in the Bavarian highlands, easily reached by fast motor cars, whence they could hurry their women and children when forewarned of an anti-Semitic St. Bartholomew’s night. But several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes. Same thing is happening today. Trump is telling us he is going to genocide Gaza, he's going to create a concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, annex Canada, invade Greenland, invade Mexico, cut out Congress, defy the Judiciary, serve past his constitutional term limit, and be dictator "for a day"... maybe let's just take him at his word instead of giving him the benefit of the doubt? [1] https://www.vox.com/2015/2/11/8016017/ny-times-hitler https://www.vox.com/2015/2/11/8016017/ny-times-hitler
- insane_dreamer 2y agoWell, that didn't last long. Now flagged and nowhere near the front page.