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Yes, It's Fascism

theatlantic.com

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Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#181

Post by tombert »

deeg wrote: post #175
tombert wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think generally the mods like to avoid anything involving "politics" since it's likely to start a flame war. The issue, of course, is that literally anything can be "political", and moreover by trying to actively avoid political discussions you sort of tacitly endorse the status quo. It's a tough line to draw, and I'd be lying if I said where I knew where to draw it; HN is a fun forum specifically because the moder…

I've been frustrated by the flagging (because fascism is so real right now) but I've been a moderator in the past and I know it's impossible to keep a large majority happy. It's hard for me to criticize the mods much.

Yeah, I’ve been a mod on a relatively small Discord server (~60 users) and even in that scope it can be difficult to keep people happy with stuff I’ve done.

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#182

Post by gorbachev »

tombert wrote: post #17
fugalfervor wrote: post #5

I am so terribly disturbed by the ICE shootings (and killings). There is no justification for them. This is supposed to be a nation of laws and the rights of those shot (to say nothing of those abducted and harassed, beaten, or removed without due process) has been so grossly violated that it's hard to believe. My heart aches for the countless victims of this band of fascists in the executive branch.

The killings are horrifying in their own right, but the most disturbing part to me is how quickly the Trump administration will just declare these people as "terrorists" before any kind of investigation has happened. This suggests to me there is some level of systemic intent (or at least ambivalence) with this administration's use of ICE's use of lethal force. It is beyond concerning. This admin is now very literally…

There's nothing surprising about it given US history.

The US administration has always labeled any resistance against it as terrorism at least ever since 9/11. You might remember the justification of killing young Afghani males, who were posthumously labelled as terrorists. They drone strike an apartment complex and report 25 dead terrorists, conveniently omitting to report on dead children or women, because there were 25 males between the age of 15 - 25 among the dead. No evidence of terrorist activity required.

The only change is that the same justification is now being used within the US borders.

The dead are still, however, The Other, which is how it's being justified now as it was when the dead were foreigners in a war zone.

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#183

Post by midlander »

C6JEsQeQa5fCjE wrote: post #168
tombert wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The killings are horrifying in their own right, but the most disturbing part to me is how quickly the Trump administration will just declare these people as "terrorists" before any kind of investigation has happened. This suggests to me there is some level of systemic intent (or at least ambivalence) with this administration's use of ICE's use of lethal force. It is beyond concerning. This admin is now very literally…

> the most disturbing part to me is how quickly the Trump administration will just declare these people as "terrorists" before any kind of investigation has happened Imperial boomerang. After enabling Israel/IDF which routinely just shoots unarmed people and officials on all levels simply justify it with "Terrorists.", and also routinely denies ambulance access to victims shots, it was only a matter of time until suc…

Well done on finding a way to link this story to your favorite scapegoat.

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#185

Post by deeg »

quercus wrote: post #37
testing22321 wrote: post #3

The parallels it dark times in history are too strong to ignore. The only question now is will the people be able to stop the takeover before it’s too late.

“weak men create hard times” never fails

And there is no weaker, frailer man than trump.

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#186

Post by litoE »

eudamoniac wrote: post #169

I read through every comment in this thread and no one seems to be addressing that the people voted for this . They'll probably vote for it again in the midterms and/or 2028. You're despairing over a democratic outcome. What do you actually propose that would fix this? Disenfranchise half the country? Outlaw things people are voting for to happen? Any criticism needs to address how we democratically counter this regi…

If your definition of Democracy is based on how we elect our leaders, then Hitler's Germany was a Democracy because Hitler was elected Chancellor by a majority. You need to define Democracy based on how we replace our leaders. In that case, Hitler's Germany was not a democracy since it was impossible for the people to replace the Fuhrer had they wished to. In Trump's case, we may still be a Democracy but there are worrysome indications ("Trump’s recent musing that there should be no 2026 election may or may not have been jocular").

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#187

Post by slg »

mold_aid wrote: post #158
RealityVoid wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am so terribly disturbed by the ICE shootings (and killings). There is no justification for them. I think they are simply poorly trained people that are given free reign. The results are disastrous. They probably don't wake up thinking "Today I'm going to murder someone" but they just don't realize what they're doing. I'm not sure how it's at the destructiveness scale at this moment, but these organizations can a…

>They probably don't wake up thinking "Today I'm going to murder someone" but they just don't realize what they're doing They absolutely woke up thinking that. This is the happiest these monsters have been in their lives

Bovino has said the agents involved in the shooting are back at work today. Even if you believe that they were 100% justified in their actions, they killed a man, any decent organization that cared about human life would believe that has an impact on people and would put those involved on some sort of paid leave to process it. But that isn't how this organization works. This organization believes that taking a human life is just something that might happen over the course of your average workday and you'll be back at work the next day like nothing unusual happened.

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#188

Post by dang »

jLaForest wrote: post #161
smw wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I think you're a superhero for making this place such wonderful forum for deep and interesting conversation, but isn't there some point where you might consider putting your finger on the scale to help stop the slide into authoritarianism? This seems like the moment, maybe?

It's a matter of taking his finger off the scale... Stop taking down threads with productive discussion just because they conflict with your worldview (and financial interests)

What you call "taking finger off scale" would turn HN into a politics / current affairs site. I know that some of you want that, and a few even wonder how we can possibly be so evil as not to do it, but it is simply not the kind of site that HN is. That is the case regardless of what terminology you use - fingers on scales, curation, moderation, - which are different ways of describing the same thing.

I'm not sure why you need to invoke cynical motives for us running HN this way, since the reasons we give for this (which are quite real) explain things better. (for example, if we only cared about suppressing this stuff, why would HN be having frontpage threads about it at all? that doesn't make much sense.) But that's just me.

I think it would help you guys to understand that most of the HN community, even most who agree with you politically, do not want us to throw in the towel and let HN become like the rest of the internet. Only a small portion of users want this, though they do post intense (and sometimes even aggressive) comments about it. Given that HN has always stuck to its mandate and that the community wants us to keep doing so, I don't see this as a close call.

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#189

Post by [deleted] »

messe wrote: post #164
throwworhtthrow wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mods (dang and tomhow) have written probably 50,000 words on the subject. I've also emailed the mods and promptly received personal replies. Transparent as you could ever hope for: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang

So the explanation for this removal condemning the ongoing fascist revolt in the US is where? At least that's what it looks like to an outside observer from elsewhere in the world. It's been fascinating as an outsider to watch your republicans suddenly unsure about the second amendment after the last few days.

[deleted]

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#190

Post by jemmyw »

xnx wrote: post #177
eudamoniac wrote: post #169

I read through every comment in this thread and no one seems to be addressing that the people voted for this . They'll probably vote for it again in the midterms and/or 2028. You're despairing over a democratic outcome. What do you actually propose that would fix this? Disenfranchise half the country? Outlaw things people are voting for to happen? Any criticism needs to address how we democratically counter this regi…

> Disenfranchise half the country? Way more than half the country was disenfranchised in the last election. Best case scenario (and very unlikely scenario): blue sweep in the next elections and then massive electoral reform.

Electoral reform is really hard for parties just voted in by that election system. Suddenly they see the good in that which they had previously seen as bad.
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