7 ms·

Ok, I can see the "fascist sympathizer" (though the fascist is Trump, not Mussolini or Hitler, so it's presumably not such a minority opinion in the US overall)

by wongarsu 11mo ago

Ok, I can see the "fascist sympathizer" (though the fascist is Trump, not Mussolini or Hitler, so it's presumably not such a minority opinion in the US overall). But "doesn't seem to think that women have any role to play in his profession" doesn't seem substantiated from those links, unless I'm missing something here? Women being less interested in programming according to him is completely orthogonal to whether he thinks they should play a role

latexr 11mo ago
> though the fascist is Trump, not Mussolini or Hitler, so it's presumably not such a minority opinion in the US overall Does that make a difference? You could levy the exact same argument about the other two in their respective countries in their respective times. Doesn’t make it OK.
- incrudible 11mo ago
  It is OK in the sense that these are not fringe opinions, they are part of the mainstream political discourse that, as a serious person, you can not effectively dismiss by throwing around certain bad words like fascist.
  - latexr 11mo ago
    > these are not fringe opinions Neither was slavery. Was that OK too? And to clarify (though it’s worrying this point needs to be made), I mean morally. > throwing around certain bad words like fascist Fascism has a very clear definition. It describes a particular set of behaviours and actions, all of which you can compare to reality and determine if it’s happening or not. It’s an objective word. If anyone is trying to “dismiss” anything, it’s the people pretending it’s subjective because they support its outcome.
    - jstimpfle 11mo ago
      The therm "fascist" is definitely being thrown around like it was nothing, for the most unnewsworthy opinions or statements. There are definitely people who call anyone fascist who would dare to claim that there might be differences between the sexes on average for example. Doing so probably has a fascist element itself (not accepting different opinions). It's also unreasonable, and let me say _ridiculous_, to even doubt that there are certain differences. To be clear, it's of course not right to make any prescriptions what any specific member of a sex should or could do -- but that's a completely different thing.
      - immibis 11mo ago
        "There are differences between men and women" isn't a fascist-coded statement because of the statement itself - it's obviously a true statement no matter what you believe. It's fascist-coded. This statement is almost exclusively said by fascists, for reasons that have not much to do with the statement itself. Why is that? IMO it's because fascist slogans always tend to drift away from their actual meaning, towards things that are socially acceptable to say. Back in Hitler's time, Hitler didn't give speeches about "Let's kill all the Jews" - he'd rather give speeches about "Let's clean up Germany" even though he clearly wanted to kill all the Jews. When Hitler says "Let's clean up Germany" and the crowd goes wild, you know they're going wild because they're wild about the idea of killing the Jews, not because they're wild about the idea of mopping the floor. At least I assume you would know that now, with the benefit of hindsight. You'd have to be living under a rock not to. And that's not a euphemism for "Let's kill all the Jews" specifically. It's a general euphemism for all the bad things he wanted to do with all the people. It's not like there's one euphemism for "Let's kill the Jews" and a different euphemism for "Let's gas the Jews" and a different euphemism for "Let's kill the gays". It's more like all the euphemisms point to all of the underlying true thoughts, all at once. One loose region of semantic space points to another loose region of semantic space. You can see how Hitler could have started out saying what he actually meant, but to avoid scrutiny he'd drift towards more innocuous words, but anyone who's been following his whole campaign would know what was meant. It's a bit like Cockney rhyming slang - the pointer drifts until it has no surface-level relation to the pointee, but just because it's not surface-level obvious, doesn't mean it's unknowable (as people who pretend not to recognize the statements often claim). And if I'm in Germany in 1932 and I'm following politics, and my friend says "I support cleaning up Germany" I'm going to do a double-take. I'm going to suspect he's not talking about mopping the floor and picking up litter. Though, if I'm in Germany in 1932 and I'm ignoring politics, I might reasonably assume that he is talking about those things and get quite confused why my other friend thinks he's a fascist. In modern fascist dialogue, "men and women have differences" is a pointer to the semantic space containing statements like "women belong in the kitchen", which itself is pointer to the semantic space containing statements like "women should do what men tell them". You can see how this came about because saying "women should do what men tell them" would be unpopular, then fascists justified it with logic like "well women are biologically submissive and men are biologically dominant" and it over time it got watered down to stuff like "men are biologically different from women"
    - incrudible 11mo ago
      > Neither was slavery. Was that OK too? And to clarify (though it’s worrying this point needs to be made), I mean morally. From the perspective of a pre-abolitionist society, it evidently was, but that's not a political issue you're gonna have to deal with in 2025. Consider yourself lucky. > Fascism has a very clear definition. First of all, that isn't true. Secondly, even if it was true, it wouldn't matter. You are using the word as a though-terminating cliché. That doesn't work in the long run, you'll just get ignored. As a result, you can pat yourself on the back for calling out fascism while all the behaviors and actions that you believe to be fascist are mainstreamed and affecting people's lives. If I was you, I'd be more worried about criticizing those behaviors and actions on their merits (or lack thereof), rather than trying to tie them to some textbook definition fascism and dismissing them wholesale.
      - magicalist 11mo ago
        > From the perspective of a pre-abolitionist society, it evidently was, but that's not a political issue you're gonna have to deal with in 2025. Consider yourself lucky. ...do you not also consider yourself lucky about this? Weird phrasing.
      - latexr 11mo ago
        > From the perspective of a pre-abolitionist society, it evidently was I sincerely doubt the slaves would agree with you. Just because one group was economically and societally OK with it, doesn’t make it morally OK. > but that's not a political issue you're gonna have to deal with in 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century Again, I doubt the slaves would agree with you. > Consider yourself lucky. That’s a really strange comment. What does that mean? > First of all, that isn't true. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism Seems pretty clear to me. > You are using the word as a though-terminating cliché. Of course I’m not, I barely use the word. Pay attention to the person you’re replying to. What you’re doing is putting me in a box of other people you’ve seen online and making a bunch of wrong assumptions. You’re not engaging with the arguments, you’re fighting against a straw man in your imagination.
    - grog454 11mo ago
      > Neither was slavery. Was that OK too? And to clarify (though it’s worrying this point needs to be made), I mean morally. It may well have been morally OK to most people (see: moral relativism), and since you're implying it wouldn't have been OK to you, it's worth pointing out that you probably wouldn't have done anything about it in the relevant time periods. If you're an American you don't even need to try that hard to make moral relativism visceral: was the displacement (and far worse) of Native American tribes "OK"? I'd say no, but it isn't morally urgent enough to me or the 99%+ of Americans who are unwilling to pack their bags and return the entirety of two continents to the native descendants.
- CraftingLinks 11mo ago
  Yes it does. When you live in Europe and listened to your late grand parents talk about the war. In Europe, "fascist" actually has still some weight to it and it doesnt get thrown around so casually as the US, yet. Same strory with the word "communist"...
  - latexr 11mo ago
    I do live in Europe, and I’m old enough to have close friends and family who were alive during fascist dictatorships.
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
enqk 11mo ago
He also had a 88 for a long time in his twitch channel name
- jstimpfle 11mo ago
  I would be very surprised if this connotation was intentional of him. His name was "Naysayer88" for a long time, and I had wondered as well where that 88 came from -- maybe it was a rhyme on "Naysayer", which (ignoring the number) is an apt description of his ways and approaches. At some point he changed the name. I assumed the reason was he had gotten aware of the connotation.
  - meheleventyone 11mo ago
    I agree that the number choice was probably unintentional but you'd have to really strain to make 'naysayer' and '88' rhyme so thats probably not it.
    - wahnfrieden 11mo ago
      Why give him the benefit of the doubt? He also fervently defends giving sieg heils in public
      - meheleventyone 11mo ago
        Blow is an odd duck and clearly following a political descent into fascism after his SV tech bro heroes. Just that his political descent occurred after he started Twitch streaming and as much as he boot licks Musk so I can see him defending that (if that’s what you’re referring to) I don’t think it’s credible that he would support Hitler.
  - bena 11mo ago
    I'm thinking he changed the name when too many people had gotten aware of the connotation. You have to twist logic pretty fucking hard to find a reason for him to put 88 in his username. He's a guy who thinks he's way more clever than he is and gets upset when it gets pointed out to him.
__alexs 11mo ago
Old tweet screenshots are the best I can do: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRT4vNEUIAEJgP3.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRT4vNEUIAEJgP3.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRT4vNAVAAAT8JP.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRT4vNAVAAAT8JP.jpg
- mariusor 11mo ago
  Can you share why these statements are controversial? They might be misguided or misinformed, but the underlying fact is that women are not as well represented in stem. Just because the reason it's more likely to be misogyny rather than any biological inclination, doesn't make it an outrageous statement in my opinion.
  - _aavaa_ 11mo ago
    Because as a statement is functions to excuse the representation in the field. It completely neglects the actual history of the field of computing, even just the 20th century, where the field was filled with women. It’s only once it became a prestigious field that women suddenly developed a “biological” inclination against it.
    - phantasmish 11mo ago
      I… super hesitate to wade into this, but: 1) It was way before it became prestigious. And 2) An explanation of this needs to account for a great and rapid shift in favor of women, as far as proportion-of-practitioners, that was happening at exactly the same time as the opposite shift in programming, in both law and medicine. I don’t know what the actual reason is but “it got prestigious so women got pushed out” makes no sense to me, based on the timeline of events in full context. It was very much not prestigious in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, certainly far less so than law and medicine at that time (still isn’t as prestigious as those, outside tech circles—you can see it in people’s faces. It’s high-paid but lower-“class” than those, to this day)
      - femiagbabiaka 11mo ago
wahnfrieden 11mo ago
What's the point comparing the sympathy to that of Mussolini or Hitler but qualifying it as not a minority position? Those two had even greater domestic support.

latexr 11mo ago

> though the fascist is Trump, not Mussolini or Hitler, so it's presumably not such a minority opinion in the US overall Does that make a difference? You could levy the exact same argument about the other two in their respective countries in their respective times. Doesn’t make it OK.

incrudible 11mo ago
It is OK in the sense that these are not fringe opinions, they are part of the mainstream political discourse that, as a serious person, you can not effectively dismiss by throwing around certain bad words like fascist.
- latexr 11mo ago
  > these are not fringe opinions Neither was slavery. Was that OK too? And to clarify (though it’s worrying this point needs to be made), I mean morally. > throwing around certain bad words like fascist Fascism has a very clear definition. It describes a particular set of behaviours and actions, all of which you can compare to reality and determine if it’s happening or not. It’s an objective word. If anyone is trying to “dismiss” anything, it’s the people pretending it’s subjective because they support its outcome.
  - jstimpfle 11mo ago
    The therm "fascist" is definitely being thrown around like it was nothing, for the most unnewsworthy opinions or statements. There are definitely people who call anyone fascist who would dare to claim that there might be differences between the sexes on average for example. Doing so probably has a fascist element itself (not accepting different opinions). It's also unreasonable, and let me say _ridiculous_, to even doubt that there are certain differences. To be clear, it's of course not right to make any prescriptions what any specific member of a sex should or could do -- but that's a completely different thing.
    - immibis 11mo ago
      "There are differences between men and women" isn't a fascist-coded statement because of the statement itself - it's obviously a true statement no matter what you believe. It's fascist-coded. This statement is almost exclusively said by fascists, for reasons that have not much to do with the statement itself. Why is that? IMO it's because fascist slogans always tend to drift away from their actual meaning, towards things that are socially acceptable to say. Back in Hitler's time, Hitler didn't give speeches about "Let's kill all the Jews" - he'd rather give speeches about "Let's clean up Germany" even though he clearly wanted to kill all the Jews. When Hitler says "Let's clean up Germany" and the crowd goes wild, you know they're going wild because they're wild about the idea of killing the Jews, not because they're wild about the idea of mopping the floor. At least I assume you would know that now, with the benefit of hindsight. You'd have to be living under a rock not to. And that's not a euphemism for "Let's kill all the Jews" specifically. It's a general euphemism for all the bad things he wanted to do with all the people. It's not like there's one euphemism for "Let's kill the Jews" and a different euphemism for "Let's gas the Jews" and a different euphemism for "Let's kill the gays". It's more like all the euphemisms point to all of the underlying true thoughts, all at once. One loose region of semantic space points to another loose region of semantic space. You can see how Hitler could have started out saying what he actually meant, but to avoid scrutiny he'd drift towards more innocuous words, but anyone who's been following his whole campaign would know what was meant. It's a bit like Cockney rhyming slang - the pointer drifts until it has no surface-level relation to the pointee, but just because it's not surface-level obvious, doesn't mean it's unknowable (as people who pretend not to recognize the statements often claim). And if I'm in Germany in 1932 and I'm following politics, and my friend says "I support cleaning up Germany" I'm going to do a double-take. I'm going to suspect he's not talking about mopping the floor and picking up litter. Though, if I'm in Germany in 1932 and I'm ignoring politics, I might reasonably assume that he is talking about those things and get quite confused why my other friend thinks he's a fascist. In modern fascist dialogue, "men and women have differences" is a pointer to the semantic space containing statements like "women belong in the kitchen", which itself is pointer to the semantic space containing statements like "women should do what men tell them". You can see how this came about because saying "women should do what men tell them" would be unpopular, then fascists justified it with logic like "well women are biologically submissive and men are biologically dominant" and it over time it got watered down to stuff like "men are biologically different from women"
  - incrudible 11mo ago
    > Neither was slavery. Was that OK too? And to clarify (though it’s worrying this point needs to be made), I mean morally. From the perspective of a pre-abolitionist society, it evidently was, but that's not a political issue you're gonna have to deal with in 2025. Consider yourself lucky. > Fascism has a very clear definition. First of all, that isn't true. Secondly, even if it was true, it wouldn't matter. You are using the word as a though-terminating cliché. That doesn't work in the long run, you'll just get ignored. As a result, you can pat yourself on the back for calling out fascism while all the behaviors and actions that you believe to be fascist are mainstreamed and affecting people's lives. If I was you, I'd be more worried about criticizing those behaviors and actions on their merits (or lack thereof), rather than trying to tie them to some textbook definition fascism and dismissing them wholesale.
    - magicalist 11mo ago
      > From the perspective of a pre-abolitionist society, it evidently was, but that's not a political issue you're gonna have to deal with in 2025. Consider yourself lucky. ...do you not also consider yourself lucky about this? Weird phrasing.
    - latexr 11mo ago
      > From the perspective of a pre-abolitionist society, it evidently was I sincerely doubt the slaves would agree with you. Just because one group was economically and societally OK with it, doesn’t make it morally OK. > but that's not a political issue you're gonna have to deal with in 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century Again, I doubt the slaves would agree with you. > Consider yourself lucky. That’s a really strange comment. What does that mean? > First of all, that isn't true. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism Seems pretty clear to me. > You are using the word as a though-terminating cliché. Of course I’m not, I barely use the word. Pay attention to the person you’re replying to. What you’re doing is putting me in a box of other people you’ve seen online and making a bunch of wrong assumptions. You’re not engaging with the arguments, you’re fighting against a straw man in your imagination.
  - grog454 11mo ago
    > Neither was slavery. Was that OK too? And to clarify (though it’s worrying this point needs to be made), I mean morally. It may well have been morally OK to most people (see: moral relativism), and since you're implying it wouldn't have been OK to you, it's worth pointing out that you probably wouldn't have done anything about it in the relevant time periods. If you're an American you don't even need to try that hard to make moral relativism visceral: was the displacement (and far worse) of Native American tribes "OK"? I'd say no, but it isn't morally urgent enough to me or the 99%+ of Americans who are unwilling to pack their bags and return the entirety of two continents to the native descendants.
CraftingLinks 11mo ago
Yes it does. When you live in Europe and listened to your late grand parents talk about the war. In Europe, "fascist" actually has still some weight to it and it doesnt get thrown around so casually as the US, yet. Same strory with the word "communist"...
- latexr 11mo ago
  I do live in Europe, and I’m old enough to have close friends and family who were alive during fascist dictatorships.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]

enqk 11mo ago

He also had a 88 for a long time in his twitch channel name

jstimpfle 11mo ago
I would be very surprised if this connotation was intentional of him. His name was "Naysayer88" for a long time, and I had wondered as well where that 88 came from -- maybe it was a rhyme on "Naysayer", which (ignoring the number) is an apt description of his ways and approaches. At some point he changed the name. I assumed the reason was he had gotten aware of the connotation.
- meheleventyone 11mo ago
  I agree that the number choice was probably unintentional but you'd have to really strain to make 'naysayer' and '88' rhyme so thats probably not it.
  - wahnfrieden 11mo ago
    Why give him the benefit of the doubt? He also fervently defends giving sieg heils in public
    - meheleventyone 11mo ago
      Blow is an odd duck and clearly following a political descent into fascism after his SV tech bro heroes. Just that his political descent occurred after he started Twitch streaming and as much as he boot licks Musk so I can see him defending that (if that’s what you’re referring to) I don’t think it’s credible that he would support Hitler.
- bena 11mo ago
  I'm thinking he changed the name when too many people had gotten aware of the connotation. You have to twist logic pretty fucking hard to find a reason for him to put 88 in his username. He's a guy who thinks he's way more clever than he is and gets upset when it gets pointed out to him.

__alexs 11mo ago

Old tweet screenshots are the best I can do: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRT4vNEUIAEJgP3.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRT4vNEUIAEJgP3.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRT4vNAVAAAT8JP.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRT4vNAVAAAT8JP.jpg

mariusor 11mo ago
Can you share why these statements are controversial? They might be misguided or misinformed, but the underlying fact is that women are not as well represented in stem. Just because the reason it's more likely to be misogyny rather than any biological inclination, doesn't make it an outrageous statement in my opinion.
- _aavaa_ 11mo ago
  Because as a statement is functions to excuse the representation in the field. It completely neglects the actual history of the field of computing, even just the 20th century, where the field was filled with women. It’s only once it became a prestigious field that women suddenly developed a “biological” inclination against it.
  - phantasmish 11mo ago
    I… super hesitate to wade into this, but: 1) It was way before it became prestigious. And 2) An explanation of this needs to account for a great and rapid shift in favor of women, as far as proportion-of-practitioners, that was happening at exactly the same time as the opposite shift in programming, in both law and medicine. I don’t know what the actual reason is but “it got prestigious so women got pushed out” makes no sense to me, based on the timeline of events in full context. It was very much not prestigious in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, certainly far less so than law and medicine at that time (still isn’t as prestigious as those, outside tech circles—you can see it in people’s faces. It’s high-paid but lower-“class” than those, to this day)
    - femiagbabiaka 11mo ago

wahnfrieden 11mo ago

What's the point comparing the sympathy to that of Mussolini or Hitler but qualifying it as not a minority position? Those two had even greater domestic support.