[lliamander]

> In the end, the SSC guy banned more and more commenters but it wasn't sufficient to save him and he ended up deleting his blog when the world turned its eyes to the kinds of discussions he allowed.

That isn't why he deleted it. He deleted it because the NYT was threatening to publish his real name in a way that would make it untenable for him to continue to practice psychiatry.

> [1] This is from an hour ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23683033

To reduce criticism of SPLC to "racism" isn't helping the health of discourse here.

[user982]

> To reduce criticism of SPLC to "racism" isn't helping the health of discourse here.

"The SPLC is a hate group" is considered healthy, valid criticism to you, coming from an account which then said that "hate speech against white people has been normalized in our society for some time now" and linked to The Bell Curve as proof for the superiority of the white race, but referring to them as "racist-adjacent" is unacceptably reductionist?

[lliamander]

The comment "The SPLC is a hate group" is not racist. Even if the person who said it is otherwise racist, it's entirely possible for racists to say things that aren't racist.

Whatever "racist-adjacent" means, clearly it must mean "not actually racist" because if it was racist, I'm sure you would call that.

[TomSwirly]

An outspoken racist falsely attacks one of the great legal defenders of Blacks in America and your argument is, "it's entirely possible for racists to say things that aren't racist."

I'm doubtful you will convince anyone with that argument: perhaps not even yourself.

[lliamander]

My argument is that I don't think the user's other comments are relevant to the question of whether the statement is racist.

Now, if you think the statement "the SPLC is a hate group" is false that's fine. I think there is a debate that is worth having here on HN - especially when tech companies are using the SPLC's hate list to justify their deplatforming decisions. In my opinion, the SPLC's use of defamation and fear-mongering for profit make the statement perfectly justified.

Calling it "racist" or "racist-adjacent" is a rhetorical attack that does not serve the purpose of mutual enlightenment. "Racist-adjacent" strikes me as particularly insidious since implicit in that label is the admission that the thing being labeled is not actually racist.

[camelite]

You clearly aren't familiar with the actual history of the splc. Even the name is a bit of a scam, chosen for it's adjacency to Martin Luther Kings civil rights organisation, the SCLC. The founder is a direct marketing hall of famer.