I saw their comment and frankly I think it's a perfectly reasonable sentiment. That objecting to incarceration practices in America is viewed as contributing to a "political flamewar" by the mods here is surprising to me.

"[F]acists" and "concentration camps" are intentionally incendiary and do not promote a constructive discussion. There is nothing reasonable about that wording at all.

It's not intentionally incendiary when it's largely true.

These are descriptive terms for what currently exist in the US (and have existed before in the US). If hearing them causes you to feel emotions that don’t allow you to engage in civil discussion I think it’s worth investigating why that is —- not insisting we find less precise terminology.

If I'm allowed to ask "What should we do about the Jewish Question" in a manner that appears civil, it's still not a civil discussion, regardless of the tone. If someone responds "don't you dare ask the Jewish Question," they aren't at fault for the lack of civility; the premise of the question was deeply uncivil.

Contextually, if someone on HN is asking "what should we do about the prisoners?" about people detained by ICE, the premise of the comment is uncivil. They are not prisoners, they have committed no crime (even by the standards of US law), and they are being held in deeply inhumane conditions. By any reasonable moral standard, the question is not "what should we do about the prisoners", but "how should we free people who are inhumanely detained." Allowing such an uncivil premise while banning emotional responses only reinforces the view that these people have committed some crime, and that they somehow 'deserve' the abhorrent treatment.

Furthermore, "concentration camp" has never meant "death camp", as many people seem to assume. I don't understand how it is incendiary to state they are concentration camps, when they largely meet the standards of a concentration camp.

I don't expect my posts to help these people, but I also refuse to remain silent about their inhumane treatment. If you still think this is inappropriate, I accept my ban, but I ask that you consider banning posts with such uncivil premises as well, even if they are written in an inoffensive tone.

Denunciatory rhetoric breaks the site guidelines regardless of what you're denouncing. If you hurl the buzzword weapons of the moment, it will take the thread further into political flamewar regardless of whether your position is right or wrong. Yelling a right position doesn't help; it will only trigger others into yelling a wrong position, or their idea of the right position, back. We know from long experience what sort of comments take internet forums further into flamewar. What good does it do if this place burns down?

We took the word "civil" out of the HN guidelines because people kept lecturing us about it, as if we were ignorant of the objections against that word or somehow on the wrong side of them, when the truth is we know as much about it as the people doing the lecturing, couldn't care less about that word, and aren't motivated by the concept.

If you're bringing up "the Jewish Question" as a way of insinuating something about HN moderation, that's pretty offensive.