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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

#121

Post by dx87 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #105
koheripbal wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have you ever been in the military? From my time in the USMC, it was a meritocratic institution where your race was irrelevant, and overt racists wouldn't last long. Do you have any sources to back up the "strong ties to white nationalism" and plenty of likeminded KKK type racists?

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

#123

Post by rvp-x »

koheripbal wrote: post #91
eropple wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But Patton does not mention that, by his own testimony, he continued to socialize with white supremacists while in the Navy. Patton told prosecutors that he gathered with skinheads while stationed in Virginia for training. “I had known some of the Skinheads there from prior rallies in Tennessee and because of not knowing anybody there, I ended up meeting with them and hung out with them for some time,” he said.

He joined the navy at 18, in 1991 - immediately after getting off the street and out of the gang. Did you expect his transformation to be instantaneous?

A bigger question is how is one allowed to join the navy after taking part in a racially motivated drive-by shooting?

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

#125

Post by e5india »

It's so interesting how these surveillance/data-gathering companies (Palantir, Banjo, Anduril) are founded by right-wing types. Professed small government libertarians building that very same government's intelligence apparatus for profit. It's exactly this double-speak on government and individual liberty that makes minorities distrustful of conservatives.

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

#126

Post by Pils »

forgot_user1234 wrote: post #24

When reached for comment, Patton wrote: "32 years ago I was a lost, scared, and vulnerable child. I won’t go into detail, but the reasons I left home at such a young age are unfortunately not unique; I suffered abuse in every form. I did terrible things and said despicable and hateful things, including to my own Jewish mother, that today I find indefensibly wrong, and feel extreme remorse for. I have spent most of my…

or, more simply, "I'm sorry I got caught"

Look, the man participated in a drive-by shooting on a synagogue when he was a legal adult. It's disgusting that people on this site are defending a literal terrorist because "he's one of our own."

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

#127

Post by dang »

sweden wrote: post #109

Thank goodness the title mentions it is Softbank backed, otherwise I would have missed some good Softbank bashing.

It's really hard to come up with neutral titles for a story this inflammatory. I changed it from the article's main title in the hope that it would have less of a less extreme effect on the thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23011234). But I missed the fact that the subtitle also included a different sort of flamebait.

One consistent lesson of moderating an internet forum is that titles dominate discussion virtually completely.

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

#128

Post by Razengan »

bravoetch wrote: post #76
sasasassy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you accept that? People change and people can still be afraid that if everyone knew what they did as a teenager they'd be attacked relentlessly. Lying is exactly the correct thing to do when living in an unreasonable world.

Lying because you're afraid of an unreasonable world... That's your argument? Lying because of fear doesn't make it right. I think we fundamentally disagree on values and maturity levels that adults should aspire to.

What if telling the truth could bring harm to your family, who had nothing to do with it, but omitting the truth would harm no one?

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

#129

Post by bravoetch »

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…

He's been lying. He practically wrote a book about it and lied about that part. You invented the part about forced apologies - I didn't say that.

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

#130

Post by illumin8 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #105
koheripbal wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From the article:

> On the evening of June 9, 1990 — a month before Patton turned 18 — Patton and a Klan leader took a semi-automatic TEC-9 pistol and drove to a synagogue in a Nashville suburb. With Patton at the wheel, the Ku Klux Klan member fired onto the synagogue, destroying a street-facing window and spraying bullets and shattered glass near the building’s administrative offices, which were next to that of the congregation’s rabbi. No one was struck or killed in the shooting. Afterward, Patton hid on the grounds of a white supremacist paramilitary training camp under construction before fleeing the state with the help of a second Klan member.

Now, imagine that this same story had happened, but the young man 1 month from his 18th birthday was black. He would have been tried as an adult and put in jail for a long time. The justice system has a long and storied history of going easy on white supremacist hate crimes.

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