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Ten Signs of Fascism. America has all of them

rutgerbregman.substack.com

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Re: Ten Signs of Fascism. America has all of them

#81
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America does have basically every characteristic of fascism on every important list of fascism characteristics ever made. That's actually kind of important to the tech community, considering we are wildly complicit in this . So, maybe consider that more than "politics junkies" might be interested in this, and that the tech billionaires might have a vested interest in making sure stories like this get flagged (very ea…

> the tech billionaires might have a vested interest in making sure stories like this get flagged Interestingly, this "anyone with an opinion different from mine must be a paid shill" argument doesn't pop quite as often in the discussions about Clovis Culture tools, Roman Empire letters, or pre-Linotype typesetting -- the fact that makes me think that maybe keeping politics out of HN is actually a good thing.

> "anyone with an opinion different from mine must be a paid shill"

Not remotely what I said. One of the better HN guidelines here is to try and interpret comments you read in the best possible light. I recommend it.

What I actually said is simply correct - there are tech billionaires who do have strong reasons to flag certain topics on HN.

And there's no way to stop them from doing so. We rely solely on 100% opaque moderation to unflag stories.

There's no shortage of people who have complained about how often threads concerning Musk, DOGE, the Lawnmower guy, Thiel, certain genocidal countries etc get wiped from here...

Do you see those threads? Unless you have [showdead] on, and browse /active, almost certainly not... Because they get flagged, and they're not put back. Discussion of how HN's flagging system works - or doesn't - is explicitly banned at the post level. You can only talk about it in comments.

So, no, that isn't just my opinion, or paranoia. And the fact that you don't know how often those stories are unfairly flagged and never put back is actually evidence of the tightness of the blinkers here. It's been crazy this past year - just try looking at my favorites.

Re: Ten Signs of Fascism. America has all of them

#82
post #35
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Otherwise it quickly becomes politics all day everyday. No, it doesn't. This is one of Hacker News' weird phobias but it doesn't reflect reality. I know the mods believe it too so there's no point in debating it but even Reddit isn't politics all day every day. The nature of the community here is a self-correcting mechanism. This thread is not a flamewar, the posted article isn't low quality (certainly not on a foru…

> The nature of the community here is a self-correcting mechanism. It looks like the community has deployed its self-correcting mechanism in this case.

The flagging mechanism, as it exists, feels a little… cowardly (?) to me.

What if, instead of the existing mechanism, we posted in the comments, "Please Flag", and follow that with our rationale.

Mods could "read the room" (so to speak) and flag the article. You might still argue as to whether an article should have been flagged but at least the receipts exist to show why the mods acted.

Re: Ten Signs of Fascism. America has all of them

#83
post #36

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, ACTUAL facists (as in no serious discussion possible, nobody needing to be convinced) were in power from 2023 to 2025. The country of the author has had a fascist prime minister for 2 years ... And the main reason that stopped is that a bunch of his party members ran off and started a new party. As a reaction voters became more extreme. The FvD (forum for democracy) is making big stride…

While some* of that is true, does that matter to the argument being made by the author? And yes, that author also opposed fascist forces in the Netherlands. : Former prime minister Schoof was was not* a fascist, but basically just an independent bureaucrat hired to attempt to hold a very brittle coalition together. He failed at that miserably. Also, the 'main reason that stopped' was that the PVV party went from 23%…

Last week I was at Amsterdam station and I became 100% sure of one thing: this will happen again. Hopefully not with FvD on top this time. But it's going to happen again, for sure.

Re: Ten Signs of Fascism. America has all of them

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not possible to vouch for articles that are not dead

what a lovely loophole

Comments, when they say "flagged", are also dead. But articles say "flagged" for some number of flags, but they aren't dead yet. It takes more flags to kill them. "Flagged" is just a notification that an article has received some flags, but it doesn't actually change anything yet.

Re: Ten Signs of Fascism. America has all of them

#85
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While some* of that is true, does that matter to the argument being made by the author? And yes, that author also opposed fascist forces in the Netherlands. : Former prime minister Schoof was was not* a fascist, but basically just an independent bureaucrat hired to attempt to hold a very brittle coalition together. He failed at that miserably. Also, the 'main reason that stopped' was that the PVV party went from 23%…

Last week I was at Amsterdam station and I became 100% sure of one thing: this will happen again. Hopefully not with FvD on top this time. But it's going to happen again, for sure.

Mind telling us what happened at Amsterdam station that made you sure of that?

Re: Ten Signs of Fascism. America has all of them

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what a lovely loophole

Comments, when they say "flagged", are also dead. But articles say "flagged" for some number of flags, but they aren't dead yet. It takes more flags to kill them. "Flagged" is just a notification that an article has received some flags, but it doesn't actually change anything yet.

wrong, [flagged] removes it from the front page

Re: Ten Signs of Fascism. America has all of them

#89
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Trump is not authoritarian The better discussion is: 1. Does he aspire to be authoritarian or does he prefer to do work with congress, scotus, and independent agencies? 2. Has he expanded presidential power, formally or informally?

It is not a better discussion in context, because the topic says "America has signs of fascism", not "Trump wants more power". The later topic is not very intellectually engaging.

Re: Ten Signs of Fascism. America has all of them

#90

Donald Trump strikes me as a low-level antichrist who's more honest and upfront about everything, whereas other politicians are more cute and polite about their agendas, or are just stupid in their policy making. But then again, most of politics is corrupt. You really are voting for the lesser of two evils, in that, the choices you're given are all actually evil, no matter what party, platform, or side of the aisle y…

[flagged]
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