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Yes, It's Fascism

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Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#201

Post by scarecrowbob »

gorbachev wrote: post #182
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…

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 we…

Since before then, as well.

think of ELF/Earth First in the 90s with "ecoterrorism"... plenty of stops between that and, say, the Haymarket affair. Or hell, much of the anti-indigenous genocide could probably be described using the term "counter-insurgency", which is closely related to how the US gov. thinks of terrorism.

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#202

Post by scarecrowbob »

midlander wrote: post #183
C6JEsQeQa5fCjE wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yeh, the poster should have also at least name checked the administrative detention system of CIA's Phoenix program in Vietnam, which seems like a reasonable test-bed for many of the recent and horrific systems and a kind of common ancestor to both of the US ICE agency and its cousins in the Levant.

Leaving that bit of history out certain seems like a missed point of history, and absent that your parent post's point might indeed seem a little reach-y.

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#203

Post by tombert »

fugalfervor wrote: post #32
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 are also instructed illegally. They are told they don't need warrants signed by a judge in order to arrest someone. The Stanford Prison Experiment is a good analogue to what we are seeing with ICE. People empowered to be cruel. And they are given the message (from the president!) they have absolute immunity, and instructed to regard the law as a set of nonbinding guidelines. The Supreme Court played a role in th…

I think the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment have been pretty heavily disputed, and it cannot be re-tested due to ethical concerns.

I personally don't think it's making the agents worse, but rather that it's very heavily selecting for very bad people. If you have a job where people can be violent and abusive with little-to-no oversight, you are going to select for people who want to do violent and abusive things. Keep in mind, these people aren't being "drafted" into ICE, they're voluntarily joining, meaning that they had to demonstrate some interest in it.

This doesn't imply that every ICE agent is a terrible person, just like how not every Catholic priest abuses children, but if you create a selection pressure then it isn't surprising when you get what you selected for.

Sample size of one but bear with me; I am an asshole but I am a decidedly non-violent person. I genuinely do not want to commit any form of violence on people. Law enforcement doesn't seem appealing to me because it pays worse than software and I wouldn't view physically attacking people with impunity as a benefit.

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#204

Post by tombert »

slg wrote: post #187
mold_aid wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Yeah, I have felt guilt for not doing enough to prevent an acquaintance's suicide for more than four years now [1], and literally every day it bothers me a little bit. If I directly killed someone, even if it were 100% justified, I am quite confident that it would really fuck me up for years.

Granted, I've been accused of feeling too much empathy by people, but I don't think that that's an atypical reaction. The fact that this officer was able to brush it off without blinking is extremely concerning.

[1] If you want you can read about it: https://blog.tombert.com/Posts/Personal/July-2023/Guilt-and-.... That said, please do not feel compelled to tell me stuff isn't my fault. I know you mean well when you say that but my emotions are complicated and I am seeing a therapist about this stuff.

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#205

Post by tombert »

dang wrote: post #197
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…

> the mods like to avoid anything involving "politics" since it's likely to start a flame war. You're correct that we like to avoid flamewars, but not correct to say "anything involving politics". We don't try to (or want to) avoid politics altogether—a certain number of threads with political overlap have always been part of the mix here*. For (reams of) past explanations see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&pa…

Let me just preempt this by saying that I think you and tomhow do a very good job at moderating, and I'm just some goober on the internet sitting on a high-horse, so take what I say with as much respect as possible.

Hacker News is my favorite forum in no small part because this forum's users are, on average, a lot more educated than the average internet user. If not formally, a lot of the people here still do value learning and education as a whole. Those environments aren't organic on the internet, and it is largely due to efforts from folks like you to cultivate this audience and I do not want to dismiss that.

The concern, then, is that when the educated people can't discuss (and let's be honest, argue about) politics, then the only people who will be discussing politics will be the uneducated people. Politics is inherently contentious and we can't make progress (however you want to define it) without occasionally hurting feelings.

Now, a perfectly valid counter to this is "we're not stopping you from discussing contentious political issues, you're welcome to discuss it on one of the many other forums on the internet, just not here". That's fair enough, but it can come off as a little arbitrary, because virtually anything can be deemed "political"; I could argue that disagreements with type systems or the ISO standard of C or complaining about SQLite could be construed as "politically motivated".

I do realize that a line has to be drawn, though. The last thing I want is for the forum to devolve into 8chan or The Drudge Report or something, so while I don't completely agree at where you draw the line, I do understand why it is drawn.

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#206

Post by tptacek »

tombert wrote: post #205
dang wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the mods like to avoid anything involving "politics" since it's likely to start a flame war. You're correct that we like to avoid flamewars, but not correct to say "anything involving politics". We don't try to (or want to) avoid politics altogether—a certain number of threads with political overlap have always been part of the mix here*. For (reams of) past explanations see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&pa…

Let me just preempt this by saying that I think you and tomhow do a very good job at moderating, and I'm just some goober on the internet sitting on a high-horse, so take what I say with as much respect as possible. Hacker News is my favorite forum in no small part because this forum's users are, on average, a lot more educated than the average internet user. If not formally, a lot of the people here still do value l…

I think a useful litmus test for these kinds of stories is: do the people who most actively participate on them believe there's a conversation to be had, with multiple perspectives, not all of which agree with theirs? That's what this site is for.

If not, they're wrong for this site; more than wrong, corrosive. The stories themselves aren't bad (I have a lot of strong political beliefs too), but they're incompatible with the mode of discussion we have here: an unsiloed single front page and a large common pool of commenters.

(For the record: I don't believe there's a productive conversation to be had about ICE in Minnesota and wouldn't care to argue with anyone defending their actions. All the more reason not to nurture threads about it here.)

PS: I'm a longstanding "too-much-politics-on-HN" person, and even I'm a little annoyed that Jonathan Rauch's piece won't work here, if only so I can annoyingly noodle on the varying definitions of fascism. But flags are the right call here.

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#207

Post by JKCalhoun »

palata wrote: post #89
burky wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more than just poorly trained agents. Also framing it as "a gun goes off" doesn't track with the video footage I saw.

I am totally against ICE, but I came here to say that I agree with the parent. In situations of stress like this, you never know how one may react. It takes a great deal of training to be able to stay calm and rational in such situations. Obviously, the ICE agents have to rationalise what they do. "We are the good guy, we work against the bad guys". But I don't think that they wake up in the morning hoping that they…

"In situations of stress like this, you never know how one may react."

Yes, please don't give those people guns.

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#208

Post by _DeadFred_ »

tombert wrote: post #203
fugalfervor wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also instructed illegally. They are told they don't need warrants signed by a judge in order to arrest someone. The Stanford Prison Experiment is a good analogue to what we are seeing with ICE. People empowered to be cruel. And they are given the message (from the president!) they have absolute immunity, and instructed to regard the law as a set of nonbinding guidelines. The Supreme Court played a role in th…

I think the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment have been pretty heavily disputed, and it cannot be re-tested due to ethical concerns. I personally don't think it's making the agents worse, but rather that it's very heavily selecting for very bad people. If you have a job where people can be violent and abusive with little-to-no oversight, you are going to select for people who want to do violent and abusive th…

Lots of ICE were recruited from the BOP (Federal Prison). It's going to be interesting when they go back to that job with the current ICE culture ingrained. I foresee a lot of Bivens lawsuit payouts.

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#209

Post by doom2 »

csense wrote: post #30

Everyone's paying a lot of attention to how bad Trump is, or the midterms. My question is, what happens in 2028? How much of current policy is something the majority of Republican voters (let alone the American people) or the political class actually want and would do without Trump to lead them? How much is only being implemented due to Trump's choices, political style and cult of personality? (Assuming Constitutiona…

> now that he's gone we need more checks and balances

I'm sure if a Democrat is elected in 2028, all of a sudden a lot of people are going to remember that they don't want a unitary executive. A lot of people who are currently cheering on the administration.

Re: Yes, It's Fascism

#210

Post by dang »

mickle00 wrote: post #129
messe wrote: post #112

This should not have been flagged off the front page. I really worry for the people in the US, but I'm hopeful it's hegemony is ending.

I really wish there was more transparency around mod actions

Let me see if I can outline how we approach this in a way that might make sense to you...

People use the word "transparency" to mean different things. Here are the ways in which I think it's fair to say we're transparent about mod actions: (1) we explain the principles that we apply, frequently and at length; and (2) we're happy to answer questions, including about specific cases.

What we don't do is publish a complete moderation log. To understand why, it's probably easiest to look through my past answers about this at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... Here's one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39234189.

In our experience, the current approach is a reasonable balance between the tradeoffs. It's true that we don't see all the comments like the ones you posted here, and we can't address what we don't see. It's also true that, as volume has grown, we've found it harder to reply to absolutely every question. But it's still eminently possible to get an answer if you want one—especially if you're asking in a way that signals good faith*.

(*I add the latter bit because some people use the format of "asking a question" as way of being aggressive and in such cases we may respond otherwise than by taking the question literally. That's pretty rare though.)

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