People reliably will come out to defend white nationalists in every topic it comes up here. And people denouncing white nationalists will be voted down.
Can this be because your group of "white nationalists" is getting very big and possibly includes a good number of innocent people?
Someone wrote something really interesting here somewhere a couple of days ago:
every time a non-racist says something not correct enough or God forbid even wrong (e.g. on twitter), they are ejected into the other camp. Eventually the other camp's grown from a fringe phenomenon to being noticeably large and everyone laments.
No, it's not. It's because people make point-in-time observations about HN and don't see the community working over hours, which is what you have to do, since anyone can make an account and write any comment they want here.
HN routinely votes down to the max all kinds of mainstream and legitimate viewpoints that aren't "white nationalism" but aren't supportive of globalism either. Literally any criticism of the EU will hit -4 within hours regardless of how grounded in facts it is. Given the rhetoric that often accompanies that topic, without a doubt some people consider any criticism of the EU institutions or ideologies to be some sort of racist zealotry, although it's utterly mainstream throughout Europe.
You understand that when you speak of "globalism" this way, you place yourself as a member of a tiny, if vocal, minority.
Hacker News has a lot of sophisticated, intelligent people from all over the world and that's why fringe political beliefs aren't common. I would add that the collegial atmosphere here means people are unsupportive of naked aggression and anger, which also seems to be a common component of fringe political beliefs.
If it's important for you to criticize the EU and have people listen to you, there are plenty of places to go for that.
My personal belief about the EU is that it like all political systems is flawed and could certainly do with constructive criticism, but has managed to deliver a high standard of living, personal rights, some degree of income equality and even happiness to its citizens for decades now and do it better than any other.
This is why I personally left the United States after thirty years to move to Europe.
Given I'm British, that'd make me a part of the majority actually. And in the USA that anti-globalism candidate won the last election, so, I guess I'd be in the majority there too (barely).
Obviously you're entitled to your view on the EU, but your attitude is why EU supporters lost in the UK and would lose in other countries in the unlikely event their political systems would ever give them a true choice on the matter. You cannot handle genuine, well reasoned, intelligent and sophisticated criticism of the EU so simply try to suppress it.
That mistake is how the EU's supporters in the UK got their asses kicked, despite having way more resources and the full support of the entire global establishment on their side. They thought all "intelligent, sophisticated" people agreed with them ... because they'd shouted down or suppressed everyone who disagreed. They were then shocked to discover that their arguments were deemed incredibly weak by the large section of the population that hadn't already made up their minds.
That's what happens when you deplatform those you disagree with. They don't go away. They keep refining their arguments where you can't see it, and then if one day you go head to head with them - you lose.
Fairly sure I could write a comment about how egregiously bad the handling of the financial crisis was in Greece by the EU, or the failings of the Common Agricultural Policy, without getting downvoted to -4.
(I used to consider myself a "cautious/mild euroskeptic" up until the referendum, at which point I've become a hard-remainer)
Try it. Though for some reason Greece seems to be considered legitimate criticism by some EU supporters, perhaps because this "criticism" is in reality a demand for the EU to have done more, rather than less.
This is a thread topic about white nationalists being banned from YouTube. It has 700+ comments, many of them in defense of the banned. Which of the banned people being defended are not actually white supremacists, but innocents caught in a too-broad dragnet?
I don't think I've even seen an explicitly racist post here, despite having dead comments turned on, maybe excepting obvious trolling or spam. Implicitly racist posts are usually downvoted.
I have seen downvoted replies that nonsensically infer racism in a post. I suspect that's how I would describe what you're thinking of.
Because they're not explicitly racist. It's dogwhistling, or talking points, which almost always indicates racism.
Someone saying that black communities should be more policed by dogwhistling that disproportionate crime warrants "assertion of police presence and predictive policing" by willfully misinterpreting statistics is racist, even if it doesn't explicitly say that black people should be harassed by police.
Does it bother you that some of the people most in favor of increased police presence in crime ridden communities are themselves black. Is it more likely that they are racist too, or that their material concerns for their safety are more legitimate than your racism dog whistle detector?
> I don't think I've even seen an explicitly racist post here, despite having dead comments turned on, maybe excepting obvious trolling or spam.
This is self-contradictory. You state that you have never seen explicitly racists posts here, but then you state the exceptions of "obvious trolling or spam". How does a racist post being "obvious trolling" make it not-racist? How does a racist post being spam make it not-racist? Racism abounds in trolling and spam. Spam and trolling are similarly havens for racism.
The spam and trolling is racist, but it's flagged and downvoted to hell immediately. I was responding to someone saying the opposite voting trends exist for racist content.
>People reliably will come out to defend white nationalists in every topic it comes up here.
...and they will be voted down quickly.
> And people denouncing white nationalists will be voted down.
Examples please :-)
The closest thing I can come up with is when I kind of reliably get downvoted every time I say I'd support a ban on nazis but that seems to be die hard free speech people, not nazis.
I'm sorry but this very discussion contains the reverse of what you're saying. In a post suggesting that SM isn't racist, he's only concerned for the welfare of black children, I posted a link clearly highlighting the many instances of SM's racism. My post got downvoted, the parent didn't.
The post you replied to was downvoted and flagkilled until I vouched for it. Every post from me in this thread is or has been graytext. Too many other examples just in this thread to enumerate or counteract.
I did some very small experiments on such a thing a while ago. One was an example of someone being unjustly detained in violation of their rights [1] and another was an actual example of government censorship [2]. The first one was flagged and killed immediately, the second received zero response.
On HN, all of the 'free speech' stories I see always pertain to the far-right and/or incredibly vitriolic individuals getting removed from platforms. They receive massive amounts of votes and spur on large flamewars. HackerNews unfortunately is just as prone to falling into certain narrative traps as other websites and one of them that seems to come up more and more frequently is free speech and individual rights but only as it pertains to the far-right.
The discrepancy could be because Hacker News cares more about technology platforms than Alabama public TV. For an example of HN getting upset about government censorship on a technology platform, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219
I'm not sure that's the case. Some examples looking back on some of the most popular HN stories tend to align well with either tech platforms or issues dealing with personal rights. Such as [1] or the Snowden and Julian Assange situations [2] [3]. Or for the sake of not cherry-picking, when the Supreme Corut legalized same-sex marriage [4]. Although perhaps somewhat morbidly, the top comment seems to demonstrate one of the problems I find with HN.
With my first story I figured it would fit well with the people that tend to advocate for personal rights because it was an example of an American citizen being wrongfully detained for three weeks, but it ended up flagged because I think people tend to circle the wagon around anything tangentially related to immigration.
The second example was about a direct example of government censorship and the inconsistency of free speech advocates. Google's actions and bending to China for the sake of maintaining profitable behavior is bad, yes, but they also are not the government. The government should be held to even higher standards and yet it seems people are not willing to do so for this administration. An example of that is that people here were praising the administration's threats against Twitter as some sort of pro-freedom move.
all of the 'free speech' stories I see always pertain to the far-right and/or incredibly vitriolic individuals getting removed from platforms
That's because getting people shut down, cancelled, censored, is a left wing tactic, so of course it always seems to be the right getting censored. Free speech is a value the right hold and the left do not, systematically so throughout history.
That is incorrect. Censorship is on the orthogonal spectrum to to the right-left one. It is in liberal-authoritarian spectrum, where authoritarian end usually has state censorship and liberal end usually has freedom to individuals/corps to their own selective "censorship" (by definition censorship is only by state entities, so the term should be different).
Both left and right can be liberal and authoritarian. And in the middle are centrists.
Given the amount of state violence used against left wing protestors over the last month and the number of active political leaders championing that violence... I really don't agree. Leftist speech is silenced with guns. And the free speech supporters sit silent.
Many of the people who raise objections based on “free speech” every time a private entity declines to actively participate in amplifying right wing speech have been actively cheering the events you describe, and arguing they need to be intensified, not sitting silent.
Somehow we have the opposite experience. One day, I'll see people claim HN is a safespace for socialists/communist lefties and another day it's a white nationalist haven.
dang has commented on this a lot lately and he says it is because we see the other side much easier than our own side.
I agree with him to a large degree:
I personally see mostly problematic content from the left[0] but I guess that is partly my bias.
[0]: for example this comment earlier today that I thought[1] was absolutely crazy "I don't want to participate in spaces where religious white nationalists feel safe" - just try to turn that phrase around to "I don't want to participate in spaces where atheistic colored globalists feel safe" and see if it wouldn't be flagged to death immediately by everyone including me.)
[1]: someone had to tell me that this is basically an euphemism for nazi, to which I had to reply that I would prefer if we just said nazi then because then I could join in despising it.
> "I don't want to participate in spaces where religious white nationalists feel safe"
VS
> "I don't want to participate in spaces where atheistic colored globalists feel safe"
The weight there is different though, in the groups you analyse the violence has historically flown in one direction more than in the other.
I am inclined to think that there have been historically much less concerns of safety for "religious white nationalists" than for "theistic colored globalists"
> The weight there is different though, in the groups you analyse the violence has historically flown in one direction more than in the other.
I think you are wildly underestimating the violence of a number of non-religious groups: recommended reading includes the reign of terror, Stalin and Khmer Rouge.
While it's a euphemism for nazi, I hope you don't just assume that it's appropriate to use "white nationalist" to mean "nazi". Just because other people are being stupid doesn't mean we have to. A white nationalist could be from any political faction and could have different ideas for economic policy. A National Socialist is a very specific kind of person.
Religious white nationalists want me deported or killed. Of course I don't want to be in a space where they are safe.
People say white nationalist instead of Nazi because white nationalists will always deny being Nazis. Someone being nationalist for a race should immediately bring up red flags. There are also small differences. For example some white nationalists are not necessarily antisemitic, which is a characteristic of Nazis, or might even support Israel (though you can be pro-Israel and antisemitic of course), instead focusing their hate on black people, Muslims, etc...
> Religious white nationalists want me deported or killed.
Where do you get that religious thing from? Because for all their faults all major variants of the mainstream religion in US and Europe is pretty clear about not supporting that -to the point that a number of clergy got in real trouble with nazi Germany.
Also yes, while a lot of religious people are very good, the religious people that also happen to be white nationalists tend to be even worse than the garden variety white nationalist.
Someone wrote something really interesting here somewhere a couple of days ago:
every time a non-racist says something not correct enough or God forbid even wrong (e.g. on twitter), they are ejected into the other camp. Eventually the other camp's grown from a fringe phenomenon to being noticeably large and everyone laments.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23664418