Someone wrote something really interesting here somewhere a couple of days ago:
every time a non-racist says something not correct enough or God forbid even wrong (e.g. on twitter), they are ejected into the other camp. Eventually the other camp's grown from a fringe phenomenon to being noticeably large and everyone laments.
HN routinely votes down to the max all kinds of mainstream and legitimate viewpoints that aren't "white nationalism" but aren't supportive of globalism either. Literally any criticism of the EU will hit -4 within hours regardless of how grounded in facts it is. Given the rhetoric that often accompanies that topic, without a doubt some people consider any criticism of the EU institutions or ideologies to be some sort of racist zealotry, although it's utterly mainstream throughout Europe.
You understand that when you speak of "globalism" this way, you place yourself as a member of a tiny, if vocal, minority.
Hacker News has a lot of sophisticated, intelligent people from all over the world and that's why fringe political beliefs aren't common. I would add that the collegial atmosphere here means people are unsupportive of naked aggression and anger, which also seems to be a common component of fringe political beliefs.
If it's important for you to criticize the EU and have people listen to you, there are plenty of places to go for that.
My personal belief about the EU is that it like all political systems is flawed and could certainly do with constructive criticism, but has managed to deliver a high standard of living, personal rights, some degree of income equality and even happiness to its citizens for decades now and do it better than any other.
This is why I personally left the United States after thirty years to move to Europe.
Obviously you're entitled to your view on the EU, but your attitude is why EU supporters lost in the UK and would lose in other countries in the unlikely event their political systems would ever give them a true choice on the matter. You cannot handle genuine, well reasoned, intelligent and sophisticated criticism of the EU so simply try to suppress it.
That mistake is how the EU's supporters in the UK got their asses kicked, despite having way more resources and the full support of the entire global establishment on their side. They thought all "intelligent, sophisticated" people agreed with them ... because they'd shouted down or suppressed everyone who disagreed. They were then shocked to discover that their arguments were deemed incredibly weak by the large section of the population that hadn't already made up their minds.
That's what happens when you deplatform those you disagree with. They don't go away. They keep refining their arguments where you can't see it, and then if one day you go head to head with them - you lose.
Trump soundly lost the popular vote. Read up on the electoral college if you're curious; it's a doozy
(I used to consider myself a "cautious/mild euroskeptic" up until the referendum, at which point I've become a hard-remainer)
Suppose two people are talking. The first says, "Minority X children score below the national average on IQ tests. I bet it's because minority X children are more likely to be exposed to lead in tapwater. Our country should have an all-hands on deck effort to solve the lead-in-tapwater problem" The other responds: "I am not interested in any discussion that begins with 'minority X children score below...'. You are a racist for saying this and I don't listen to policy proposals from racists".
Which of these two is the racist? By the modern definition, it's clearly the second, because he's arguing for a status quo that disadvantages minority X. Whether his heart is in the right place or not, he's contributing to systemic oppression by refusing to act in the face of injustice and therefore a racist. By the classic definition, it's just as clearly the first because he is asserting a difference between races. Whether his heart is in the right place or not, he's deepening racial divisions by this rhetoric and therefore a racist.
Hopefully we can agree on those definitions, if not the rest of this comment is pointless. Regardless, and assuming we can, let's bring this to the topic at hand.
African-Americans are Molyneux's 'Minority X' and child corporal punishment is his 'lead-in-tapwater'. Let's see first how he fares by the modern definition of racism. The wrinkle here might be that lead in tapwater is done to a population while corporal punishment is done by a population. This might seem to make it apples and oranges, but I'd disagree. Anyone who wished could make the case that higher rates of corporal punishment are self-evidently fallout from the abuses of colonialism, and done to the African-American population no less than leaded tapwater.
What's the standard under this definition for determining whether a person is a racist? I would propose the following two tests: if their professed beliefs are sincerely held, and if their proposals would lessen inequality assuming their premise is correct, then that person is not a racist. They may be mistaken in their premises, but in that case it is up to other non-racists to educate them, and there is no use for hostility in that process. By that standard, how does Molyneux fare? I think his life provides ample evidence that his beliefs were sincerely held. He became a public intellectual and subjected himself to ongoing, harsh criticism because he believed it was important people hear his ideas. He spoke often about corporal punishment of children and not once did he vary his message. As to the second test, if his premise is correct that higher rates of corporal punishment lead to worse education outcomes for African Americans, then it's fairly obvious that his proposal of no corporal punishment anywhere would help close the gap. Having listened to him speak, I genuinely believe that if his proposal was accepted and the result was that his children faced tougher competition for jobs and scholarships, he would consider it the best possible outcome and validation of his beliefs. So by that standard, I would definitively judge him 'not racist'.
Of course, Molyneux never made any of these arguments because like most people born before 1982, he would use the classical definition of racism and probably refuse to cede the linguistic territory necessary to make any of the foregoing arguments. The way to not be racist by the classical definition is much simpler and requires no arguments about colonial fallout. One must simply start the argument by saying 'inner city children...' instead of 'minority x children...' and one's thoughts on race are one's own affair. The trouble with that approach is, people born after 1982 immediately start shouting about dog whistles and secret racism, and one finds oneself isolated with people who increasingly egg one on to just name the races in question. I believe this is what happened with Molyneux. When I first encountered him, he seemed to be making a good-faith effort to talk about specific demographics instead of the races over represented in them. By the time I lost interest in his content, I must admit, he was no longer making that effort nor did the bulk of his audience want him to.
So on deeper reflection, I think it was a bit disingenuous of me to judge Molyneux only by one set of standards. By what is probably his own definition of racism - and though I'm conversant in both linguistic systems, the definition I use in private thought - he did commit racism. My only excuse is that I cede linguistic territory as instinctively as Molyneux would defend it, and it didn't occur to me much harm could be done thereby. I'll walk my statement back and say that Molyneux weaponized racism for an agenda that, had it succeeded, would have reduced racial inequality.
I have seen downvoted replies that nonsensically infer racism in a post. I suspect that's how I would describe what you're thinking of.
Someone saying that black communities should be more policed by dogwhistling that disproportionate crime warrants "assertion of police presence and predictive policing" by willfully misinterpreting statistics is racist, even if it doesn't explicitly say that black people should be harassed by police.
This is self-contradictory. You state that you have never seen explicitly racists posts here, but then you state the exceptions of "obvious trolling or spam". How does a racist post being "obvious trolling" make it not-racist? How does a racist post being spam make it not-racist? Racism abounds in trolling and spam. Spam and trolling are similarly havens for racism.
> Implicitly racist posts are usually downvoted.
That's not my experience.
...and they will be voted down quickly.
> And people denouncing white nationalists will be voted down.
Examples please :-)
The closest thing I can come up with is when I kind of reliably get downvoted every time I say I'd support a ban on nazis but that seems to be die hard free speech people, not nazis.
The post you replied to was downvoted and flagkilled until I vouched for it. Every post from me in this thread is or has been graytext. Too many other examples just in this thread to enumerate or counteract.
On HN, all of the 'free speech' stories I see always pertain to the far-right and/or incredibly vitriolic individuals getting removed from platforms. They receive massive amounts of votes and spur on large flamewars. HackerNews unfortunately is just as prone to falling into certain narrative traps as other websites and one of them that seems to come up more and more frequently is free speech and individual rights but only as it pertains to the far-right.
With my first story I figured it would fit well with the people that tend to advocate for personal rights because it was an example of an American citizen being wrongfully detained for three weeks, but it ended up flagged because I think people tend to circle the wagon around anything tangentially related to immigration.
The second example was about a direct example of government censorship and the inconsistency of free speech advocates. Google's actions and bending to China for the sake of maintaining profitable behavior is bad, yes, but they also are not the government. The government should be held to even higher standards and yet it seems people are not willing to do so for this administration. An example of that is that people here were praising the administration's threats against Twitter as some sort of pro-freedom move.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21517722
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12494998
That's because getting people shut down, cancelled, censored, is a left wing tactic, so of course it always seems to be the right getting censored. Free speech is a value the right hold and the left do not, systematically so throughout history.
I come here to get away from the shouty people. You seem upset people here won't let you get shouty. I disagree.
Many of the people who raise objections based on “free speech” every time a private entity declines to actively participate in amplifying right wing speech have been actively cheering the events you describe, and arguing they need to be intensified, not sitting silent.
Which is it? :P
I agree with him to a large degree:
I personally see mostly problematic content from the left[0] but I guess that is partly my bias.
[0]: for example this comment earlier today that I thought[1] was absolutely crazy "I don't want to participate in spaces where religious white nationalists feel safe" - just try to turn that phrase around to "I don't want to participate in spaces where atheistic colored globalists feel safe" and see if it wouldn't be flagged to death immediately by everyone including me.)
[1]: someone had to tell me that this is basically an euphemism for nazi, to which I had to reply that I would prefer if we just said nazi then because then I could join in despising it.
VS
> "I don't want to participate in spaces where atheistic colored globalists feel safe"
The weight there is different though, in the groups you analyse the violence has historically flown in one direction more than in the other. I am inclined to think that there have been historically much less concerns of safety for "religious white nationalists" than for "theistic colored globalists"
I think you are wildly underestimating the violence of a number of non-religious groups: recommended reading includes the reign of terror, Stalin and Khmer Rouge.
... and also non-whites by the way.
I prefer to call nazis "nazis". It is short and simple and we can all agree that we don't like them.
Actual Nazis are rare. They were rare during WW2 and they're really rare now.
People say white nationalist instead of Nazi because white nationalists will always deny being Nazis. Someone being nationalist for a race should immediately bring up red flags. There are also small differences. For example some white nationalists are not necessarily antisemitic, which is a characteristic of Nazis, or might even support Israel (though you can be pro-Israel and antisemitic of course), instead focusing their hate on black people, Muslims, etc...
Where do you get that religious thing from? Because for all their faults all major variants of the mainstream religion in US and Europe is pretty clear about not supporting that -to the point that a number of clergy got in real trouble with nazi Germany.
Also yes, while a lot of religious people are very good, the religious people that also happen to be white nationalists tend to be even worse than the garden variety white nationalist.
This makes literally no sense.