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by enraged_camel 3210 days ago
The thing is, many people conflate Freedom of Speech with free speech.

The former is the constitutionally protected freedom from government persecution (e.g. imprisonment) based on what you say.

The latter is the misguided belief that you should be allowed to say whatever you want in public without consequence.

I strongly believe it is morally wrong to side with people who support genocide, and whose predecessors have committed genocide. It is morally wrong to suggest they should be allowed (by other members of the public) to continue touting and spreading their hateful, vile ideologies. Siding with such people doesn't make you a Nazi, but it's still pretty bad.

They do have the right, i.e. Freedom of Speech, to demonstrate without government interference. They absolutely do not have the right, morally or otherwise, to demonstrate without interference from public groups.

America fought and defeated the Nazis in World War 2. Can you imagine this "both sides are wrong" argument being pushed forth back then?

Well, actually you don't have to imagine it. In the late 1920s and early 1930s when Nazis were still a relatively fringe extremist group, Antifa was violently opposing them and beating them up in the streets. And many members of the German public, mainly the German middle class, denounced such violence, which only served to empower the Nazis, who could in turn say "See? Violence is wrong! Everyone says so!"

We all know how it all ended up.

1 comments

Yet no Nazi symbolism or chants were present in the Alt-Right's ranks before Antifa started to organize Black Blocks and turned protests violent.

Remember this whole cycle started by grown adults wanting special treatment, such as safe spaces and forced usage special pronouns, and people who were against such non-sense.

This is the worst comment I've read in a long while. Political discussions on HN are the worst.
Only when people show up to defend Nazis.
> Yet no Nazi symbolism or chants were present in the Alt-Right's ranks

You think the identification of someone as a Nazi requires them to be wearing symbolism or chanting? No. The alt-right has been espousing Nazi ideals and philosophy for a long time - well before Spencer coined the cute term for them.

> Remember this whole cycle started by grown adults wanting special treatment

Yes, I remember the GamerGate idiots too.

>Yes, I remember the GamerGate idiots too.

I hardly followed the topic. Refresh my memory, it was about some developer who had slept with some journalist at some point and the journalist gave the game a good review and people thought the game was bad?

All I remember from it was that everyone who played video games was again labeled as misogynist and there were demands from SJW changes bunch of games to have female characters with less revealing clothing.

Short version:

A ex to a female developer of a game wrote a long blog post, where in part he accused her new romantic partner who worked at Kotaku for writing a favorable review of the game. The New York Times then wrote a article about the blog post, causing a lot of attention both sides of the political spectrum where one side accused the other of sexism and the other side for a lack of journalistic ethics.

The best summery was said by totalbuscuit, which if I recall right concluded that the biggest issue with game journalism ethics is not romantic entanglements between devs and journalist, but rather the standard practice of quid pro quo for exclusive early access to review copies. Romantic entanglements is simply not worth talking about in this context.

In the end no one really cared. All people wanted was to continuing fighting a gender war, ignited for both sides by the New York Times. The romantic drama, ethics, or games for that matters was just the excuse.

> In the end no one really cared.

I think a lot of people who were - and still are - harassed by GamerGate cared about it.

> Romantic entanglements is simply not worth talking about in this context.

Not least because it was bullshit.

> The best summery was said by totalbuscuit

I'm not sure bringing him up in the context of GamerGate is ever going to come under "best" unless it also involves "apologising for being a dick about it".

To care more about the practice of quid pro quo for exclusive early access to review is being a dick about it...

Keep fighting the gender war. I am sure your side will win by burning the heretics and eradicate the unbelievers.

> Refresh my memory, it was [incorrect account of how GamerGate started]?

No.

> everyone

No.

> there were demands from SJW changes bunch of games to have female characters with less revealing clothing

No.

It is almost as if I asked what it was about...
>>Yet no Nazi symbolism or chants were present in the Alt-Right's ranks before Antifa started to organize Black Blocks and turned protests violent.

I don't know where you get your news.

This is from July 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijRE9eR6tX0

An Republican National Convention speaker openly doing the Nazi salute at the end of her speech. No one batted an eye.

This is from November 21st, 2016: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/richard...

Members of the audience perform the Nazi salute at the end of white supremacist Richard Spencer's speech.

I can go on. The fact is that Nazis have always been a part of the alt-right for as long as the alt-right has existed, because their ideology strongly aligns with, and is the logical end result of, alt-rightism. They show up at alt-right rallies because they know they can recruit young, impressionable people to their ranks there by whipping them up into a frenzy.

If you think they started showing up only after Antifa broke a few store windows, you haven't been paying attention.

Question: are neoreactionaries Nazis?
your whataboutism is nonsense. please take it somewhere else.