I noticed a similar view appearing more than once in the UK: "if you voted for Brexit you're probably a racist".

I think people like this were ironically and unwittingly recruiting people to the other side. Which is unfortunate.

Had a friend who mused (not sure if serious, but tone somewhat suggested it) that'd he'd travel in such a way to "avoid the racist counties" (i.e. majority brexit)...

>I think people like this were ironically and unwittingly recruiting people to the other side. Which is unfortunate.

If you're dumb enough to switch how you vote on something that is unquestionably going to change your personal economic, social, and political future because someone went a little overboard in calling people racists, then you deserve to have your country decline.

Thanks for the anecdote. Was a reminder of "let's be respectful, now!" good enough to solve the problem?

It took many more words, several days and a lot of listening from both sides for a more reasonable position to emerge.

nice, pointing out that he used an anecdote to respond to a person also basing their opinion on anecdotes

Oh, I'm fine with anecdotes responding to anecdotes. I was just wondering what happened next.

Lmao at people acting like people are insane for feeling right wing people are alienated and there being not one but two comments in this thread saying being a republican makes you a racist.

You really "LMAO"?

Because you should be "fearing your ass off" when people are afraid to express their legitimate political views. This has all happened before and it wasn't pretty.

update: come on downvoters. At least give me a clue.

It's funny in the fact that it's so obviously absurd but the people doing it don't see it. It's both funny and scary depending on how much I think about it.

Please keep standard political talking points off HN. If you repeat something stock, it will get stock responses. That makes it off-topic on a site dedicated to curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

how is the entire topic of this discussion not a standard political talking point?

For one thing, many people are talking about their personal experiences, from many angles.

Comments like "blood on the hands of $movement", by contrast, are battle fodder. Irrespective of your politics, that's the sort of thing that provokes worse from others and leads to all-out war, which we're trying to avoid on this site. So if you'd please not post like that here, we'd appreciate it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ok, I'll try again. how is this notion that conservatives are not free to express their opinions not a standard political talking point? there's an entire genre of such articles in the mainstream media. it's a popular argument with white supremacists who are attempting to normalize fascism.

you're permitting a standard political talking point to be an entire topic of discussion, and then screening out some individual replies because they invoke additional standard political talking points.

you're allowing some standard political talking points and disallowing others. if you're doing that, it would be convenient for your users if you were to specify which standard political talking points are valid topics of discussion, and which other standard political talking points will get your comments banned.

I hear you, but it's more complicated than that. To judge by the reaction of HN users, not everyone expressing this point of view is doing so just as a political weapon. Some are struggling to articulate their experience with the intention of connecting with others. So it's both. From a moderation point of view, the goal is to encourage the one kind of discussion—sincerely articulating experience with the intention of connecting with others—while discouraging the other, i.e. repetition of weaponized rhetoric with the intention of defeating enemies.

You don't have to be racist to support the modern Republicans, but you do have to decide that racism really isn't a deal-breaker for you.

If racism isn't a deal-breaker for you...

In a multi-party system, I would agree with your implication. But when you have a system with only two realistic choices, it is possible to vote for a candidate because you think the other one is even worse, without endorsing the candidate you voted for.

"undeniably racist"? I'm curious. Do tell more.

And you sound like a populist. How one can have a meaningful debate when nothing you say is strictly true?