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Comment by MustardTiger | Hacker News Reader

It is interesting the extent to which leftists seem to believe they can control people's thinking by controlling their expression. As though I will cease to be racist if you don't let me post racist comments on your website. Doesn't it actually work the other way around? Changing people's thinking changes their behavior.

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Interesting that you used "leftist" as an implicitly derogatory term here. Think about it.

I was under the impression that 'leftist' (like SJW) is a derogatory term used for people who would likely call themselves 'liberals' or 'progressives'. Just like I've never seen someone unironically call themselves a 'fundamentalist'.

The intent of the OP was derogatory. Doesn't matter what the recipient thinks.

I think leftist and SJW are not necessarily considered derogatory by those who identify as those things.

It doesn't detract from your point, but.. I've been around hundreds of people who use the term fundamentalist proudly as sort of an advertisement for their brand of christianity. They looked askance at other flavours of christianity, believing those to have drifted from the fundamentals of the religion.

"Leftist" is just bad grammar, really.

What is interesting about it? The poster clearly doesn't care for leftists, much in the same way you likely don't care for conservatives.

Before you respond "But that's a false equivalency because leftists are good and conservatives are bad" I beg you to search yourself for a speck of self awareness.

It is a derogatory term. Just like I use the term "racist" as an implicitly derogatory term. Because it is.

Actually, a lot of research shows that our actions influence our thoughts. If you smile more, you'll be happier. If you are paid to recite a statement, you are more likely to believe it. Similarly, it is plausible that if you post less racist comments, you'll probably over time become less racist.

No it doesn't. A small amount of very flawed research did. If you smile more you may become happier. But this is because other people's reactions to you change if you smile or not. People being nice to you makes you happy, not your own smiling. Either way, how does that apply to racism? We've clearly seen that silencing racism does not make people less racist, it just makes them form little racist clubs to be racist in.

For one, I honestly don't care if you cease to be racist or not. I don't want that crap around my site. Go be racist somewhere else if you really feel the need to, but don't drive away my users with your poorly thought out crap.

Personally I think language plays a huge role in the dynamics of how people think and reason about the world. Why would any group want to ignore something so powerful? Because the "opposition" are not going to stop injecting their own ideas out of some sense of moral purity.

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