This is a headline and an article about "alternative facts", relating them to a book about comprehensive "alternative fact" propaganda. Not about any of things that you listed.
You didn't add any meaningful information to the discussion, but have added divisive and heavily argued opinions, in a way that only furthers their divisiveness.
This is not a comment on your opinions. This is a comment about whether expressing those specific opinions on this specific news item and in that specific manner was constructive or destructive to this community; I'm saying it's destructive.
There is exactly one non-Orwell link in the article, and it's to an article with this headline: "Sales of George Orwell's 1984 surge after Kellyanne Conway's 'alternative facts'"
The first explicitly political thing in the OP is "alternative facts"; so that's where I grabbed that from.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/
Meanwhile, those of us who have read it will remember that 1984 dwells on hard-left totalitarianism and its habit of doing things like censorship, the desire for unitary thinking, interfering with disagreement by controlling the language and so on.
Your comment doesn't actually rebut anything about what the OP said, but does try to lower the visibility of his views (suppressing speech) and does attack an entire class of speech on the grounds of "divisiveness" and "destructiveness" (unitary thinking).
Trump is many things but hard-left is not one of them. Stupid phrasing today by his press guy aside, Trump's path to victory was built on a repudiation of 1984 style tactics:
• Language control: political correctness, where words and phrases are redefined or suppressed through taboo
• The 5-minutes hate: the establishment against Russia
• Loyalty to the party: in our world the closest equivalent to a vast unaccountable power structure would be called "Washington" or "the elite".
The parallels aren't perfect by any means; Trump loves surveillance just like Democrats do.
What do you think I saw in the OP's comment?
> doesn't actually rebut anything about what the OP said
I mean, I wasn't trying to. I said that explicitly.
> but does try to lower the visibility of his views > does attack an entire class of speech on the grounds of "divisiveness" and "destructiveness" (unitary thinking).
I mean, yes? But it sounds like you're confusing divisiveness with disagreement. I wouldn't quite say that Mikeb85's comment is trolling, but it's getting close enough, and yeah, I'll attack that category of speech on those grounds.
Your entire post is an excellent example of disagreement without divisiveness, and is constructive to the HN community.
Context is a thing, and you even make use of it in your comment. You have set up a false scenario where (according to you) we are only allowed discuss what is explicit in headline, yet "alternative facts" isn't even in the headline.
If you seriously believe that comment sections should not discuss the context around its subject, you are wasting your time here because there is an entire internet you there for you to police.
First - I'm straight up not talking about only the headline.
Strawman'ing is a real thing, and Mikeb85's comment is doing it. The article has six sentences, and then a bunch of Orwell links.
Only one of those sentences is about anything other than Orwell, and that sentence is a link to an article about Orwell, and how "alternative facts" sounds a lot like Newspeak.
At no point is either the original article, or its sole political link, making any kind of comment of argument on any of the things in Mikeb85's comment.
Context is great! Establish some, and then present your points, arguments, and comments.
Maybe we can blame echo chambers for this...
There were also: Stalin, Mao Zedong, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Francisco Franco, Pinochet, Ceausescu...
Just in the 20th century there were hundreds of what we call 'dictators'. So it's a relatively common phenomenon.
Some of the common traits that they shared: they got shit done, they were egomaniacs, extravagant, sometimes talked crazy and were obsessed with lies, deception and then spies and enemies.
Killing (or creating the conditions for the death of) lots of people wasn't necessarily in their plans, it was just a necessary means to a glorious end.
I've seen him compared to Kim Jong-Un, Mussolini, Putin, the Roman Emporer Caligula, King Louis XVI of France, Emporer Maximilian I of Mexico, and to the leadership of the Communist Party of China generally, as well, among others. Your post seems to be premised on the idea that Trump has been compare exclusively to Hitler, and not or other authoritarians, which is not the case.
And how did that thetoric worked for right if Obama won?
Obama antichrist - 445 thousand results
Obama anti-christ - 2 million
Trump Hitler - 32 million
Trump antichrist - 447k
Trump anti-christ - 1.7mil
Obama Hitler - 27mil
I think the takeaway is that stringing a couple terms together in google gives us little in the way of political insight.
I think the takeaway may be that both sides of the political spectrum are equally inclined to name calling.
(One tiny piece of evidence these results are not mere coincidence: there are 4x as many such results for Trump/Obama Hitler than for "Jesus Hitler" - 9.5 million)
Also, I should add - for Democrats out there who keep trying to compare Trump to Hitler, say he's fascist, etc... That weak rhetoric is what gave you guys your worst election result in what, 80 years? The more you cry foul over nothing, the less people will actually believe it. Just an outsider's opinion after an entertaining and somewhat perplexing election.