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CEO of Banjo admitted to being a Neo-Nazi skinhead in his youth

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Re: CEO of Banjo admitted to being a Neo-Nazi skinhead in his youth

#101

Post by koheripbal »

stephenhuey wrote: post #67
throwaway2048 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Questionable evidence that his grandmother might have had an illegitimate child with a Jewish man is a long way from "Hitler was jewish" Not to mention this is standard ahistorical conspiracy theory fare.

It’s fine to point out it’s questionable. Both of you were just throwing at one-liners with no substance like you’re fighting on a playground. I rarely downvote and thought about downvoting him but I decided to search to see what he might be talking about. You didn’t even look at my links, otherwise you would’ve known the first one was talking about a DNA study. Yes, as far as I can see it was very much up in the air…

> Both of you were just throwing at one-liners with no substance

Welcome to HN - the new Reddit.

Re: CEO of Banjo admitted to being a Neo-Nazi skinhead in his youth

#102

Post by save_ferris »

koheripbal wrote: post #94
save_ferris wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgiveness falls upon members of the public who read the story, not the press. I have no problem with this past being reported, especially given that he now runs what sounds like a large surveillance company. Being a successful CEO carries extra scrutiny that he might not have to deal with if he took a path with a lower profile.

I don't think random people in the public deserve an apology. The people he hurt do. Since when does the general social media community deserve to be apologized to. People are getting an emotional power rush by forcing apologies from people who never transgressed against them. This is poisonous behavior.

I think you misunderstand me, I’m not suggesting that the general social media community deserves to be apologized to.

The comment I replied to questioned whether publishing stories like this ruining people is right given the subject’s success and the public’s propensity to judge, which I didn’t agree with. It’s not the responsibility of the press to filter stories on compassionate or moral grounds, and there was nothing wrong IMO around its release.

I don’t believe that the public deserves an apology here, just as I don’t believe that journalists should refrain from publishing legitimate accounts of this kind of behavior, no matter how old.

Re: CEO of Banjo admitted to being a Neo-Nazi skinhead in his youth

#103

Post by save_ferris »

koheripbal wrote: post #93
bravoetch wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do change between being 17 and being adults. If you write about your life, knowing you are now a public figure, and leave this huge racist detail out, then the change is not enough. We can't accept both that people change, and it's ok to lie about it to everyone.

Wait... so you expect people to walk around with a giant billboard on their chest reading "I used to be in the KKK"? It's one thing for a person to atone for their mistakes. ...it's another more sinister thing to demand that they apologize to everyone perpetually . I find these demands for public apologies disgusting in their own right. All these social media types demanding that they deserve an apology for someone e…

> It's one thing for a person to atone for their mistakes.

It sounds more like he tried covering up his mistakes once he became a public figure, which was his decision. He could’ve acknowledged it during any of his media appearances, which would’ve allowed him to discuss the issue on his own terms instead of letting a devastating article dictate the tone of his past. He chose to hide it instead.

There’s nothing wrong with publishing this kind of information, it’s absolutely in the public interest when a CEO of a successful company was involved in white nationalism. Nobody is explicitly demanding an apology, the public just demands to know these things.

Re: CEO of Banjo admitted to being a Neo-Nazi skinhead in his youth

#104

Post by bryanrasmussen »

paulie_a wrote: post #48
throwaway2048 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he wasn't

Yes he was. He had an entire city destroyed to attempt to hide that historical fact.

Indeed, 'twas the city of Gralås, oft have I ambled it's cobbled streets in days gone by, smelling the sweet scent of the herb the soothsayers smoke thereon and listened to the ramblings of their visions.

Once I loved a woman there, her skin was red as the fires of the volcano of Taris.

Once I dueled with a man in the foggy morn at the royal park, I killed him, it was a fight over honor and I barely remember the particulars now.

But all that is gone, destroyed years past, you sir, are a scholar of deep erudition to remember the name of Gralås in this degraded age.

Re: CEO of Banjo admitted to being a Neo-Nazi skinhead in his youth

#105

Post by boomboomsubban »

koheripbal wrote: post #92
boomboomsubban wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Eventually, I was able to get myself away from this world while serving in the United States Navy. This turned my life around. While serving my country, I worked with law enforcement agencies in hate group prosecutions and left this world behind "The US Navy and law enforcement freed me from my racist past" is a bit difficult to believe.

It's easy to make that assumption if you haven't lived in those worlds yourself and only consume social media to give you an impression of what those communities are like. You might be surprised, but the vast majority of law enforcement officers and soldiers are not, at all, racist.

>You might be surprised, but the vast majority of law enforcement officers and soldiers are not, at all, racist.

Both have substantial ties to white nationalism, and neither have a reputation for helping people move past such racist views. Everyone involved doesn't need to be racist, somebody that already has connections to the KKK would find plenty of like minds.

Re: CEO of Banjo admitted to being a Neo-Nazi skinhead in his youth

#106

Post by dang »

paulie_a wrote: post #15
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #3

Interesting story that the ethnically Jewish CEO was a neo-Nazi.

[flagged]

If you post flamebait to HN like this again we will ban you. This thread was wretched enough without heading into this circle of hell.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: CEO of Banjo admitted to being a Neo-Nazi skinhead in his youth

#107

Post by dang »

fortran77 wrote: post #50
paulie_a wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Sadly, I'd expect this from hacker news commenters.

HN gets millions of comments a year. You should expect to find all kinds of junk in any set of that size.

The problem is that people (all of us) are more likely to notice and remember the things they dislike. That basically causes everyone's image of the community to turn into a reflection of their own dislikes—and the more strongly you dislike something, the more vivid the image will be. It's a serious problem and I don't know what to do about it.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

But it's definitely not the case that the HN readership generally supports a comment like the GP. Note that the comment was maximally downvoted.

Re: CEO of Banjo admitted to being a Neo-Nazi skinhead in his youth

#108

Post by dang »

ciabattabread wrote: post #81

Why the hell was this post flagged?

Users flagged it. We can only guess why users flag things, but I suppose the sensationalism of the material, the high charge in the title, and the poor quality of the thread were factors. The thread also set off the HN flamewar detector.

I've turned off the flags for now and replaced the title with a less sensational subheading in the hope that that might support more substantive discussion, though it probably won't. (Edit: well maybe it is.)

Re: CEO of Banjo admitted to being a Neo-Nazi skinhead in his youth

#110

Post by dang »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #84
ciabattabread wrote: post #81

Why the hell was this post flagged?

Because the mods at HN believe that shaming people for past actions doesn't promote "intellectual curiosity" or some equally inane non-reason. Considering it was on the front page, now doesn't appear 4 pages deep just minutes later, a mod clearly nuked this.

"Clearly" is an interesting word to use for something that you've imagined.

The submission was "nuked" by user flags and the software known as the flamewar detector or overheated discussion detector.

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