[newsbinator]

> I've said this before. There's a strong libertarian bent to HN and I'm not surprised if there's a large contingent of this site that actively supports the convoy. There's people here that are strong supports of Peter Thiel, if that's any indication of where their sympathies lie.

To me the political bent of HN isn't relevant when reading a comment. I'd rather take each comment on its own merits, without guessing or assuming what the ideology of the commenter would have to be.

I recently lived in a country in which wearing the wrong color socks is grounds for instant prison, so I prefer when my government's monopoly on violence errs on the side of restraint, as in the case of these protestors.

Should individual protestors get shut down when they harass mask-wearing doctors or honk horns in the middle of the night? Obviously.

But there is some fuzzy line in which we let protestors do otherwise illegal or fineable things that we don't let individuals do.

I could be convinced that skin color is a factor as you mentioned, but at the moment I have no idea.

[SauciestGNU]

I don't know what the answer is with these protests, but criminalizing them isn't the answer. I'm an active leftist and do a lot of mutual aid and protesting. I've been beaten by cops and had them deploy munitions against me. Giving cops more latitude to deal with this protest movement will mean that they deploy even more force against me the next time I'm politely asking that they stop murdering people.

[purephase]

The original comment was mentioning the downvotes, not comments. I agree on engaging comments (hence this conversation) but there's definitely brigading happening with votes if you post anything that the libertarians disagree with.