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Comment by nl | Hacker News Reader

How can resigning in response to failure to condemn the KKK and Nazis be considered an extreme position?

It seems to me that "I condemn Nazis and the KKK" is pretty much a "motherhood"[1] statement and you'd have to be pretty extreme not to make it. Even Jeff Sessions condemned it, and many of those on the left consider him a complete bogeyman.

So while increased polarization might be a problem in US politics, I'm not at all sure we can see that here.

Edit: And who on earth downvotes a comment like this? I don't need to complain about downvotes, but what on earth are people thinking here? Is it people who support Nazis who downvote this, or is there some subtle point here I'm missing?

[1] Motherhood statements are those statements that politicians make that "everyone" agrees with; eg "I think motherhood is great"

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> Is it people who support Nazis who downvote this

There are certainly a lot of people on here who are very keen to point out that the Nazis aren't that bad because [bullshit reasons], yes.

Are there? I mean, I see lots of false equivalence arguments and (possibly fair, possibly not) criticisms of political violence from left-leaning groups.

But surely no one is arguing "Nazis aren't bad" on HN?

>I see lots of false equivalence arguments and (possibly fair, possibly not)

If they are fair then it's just equivalence, not false equivalence. I feel like this has become the new vogue term thrown around since Charlottesville happened, and it's seeing a lot of misuse. Most people don't even bother to explain why the equivalence is false, thus attempting to shut down the conversation in the manner of the fallacy fallacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

>> I see lots of false equivalence arguments and (possibly fair, possibly not) criticisms of political violence from left-leaning groups

> If they are fair then it's just equivalence, not false equivalence.

I think you are misparsing my statement. The "and" separates two sub-statements:

1) I see lots of false equivalence arguments,

and, additionally

2) I see lots of (possibly fair, possibly not) criticisms of political violence from left-leaning groups

What is true and fair is that Obama failed to condemn numerous left-wing violent acts and so far Trump has condemned all of the ones that the media attributes to the right, and the left for that matter but that's probably a negative to many posters here.

> But surely no one is arguing "Nazis aren't bad" on HN?

Not so openly. Plenty of dog whistles, though.

> But surely no one is arguing "Nazis aren't bad" on HN?

If your first instinct is to minimise the Nazis (historical or new) by way of comparison to [anything else], then yeah, I would say they're arguing exactly that.

They’re not saying “Nazis aren’t bad”, they’re saying “these guys with swastikas and Nazi symbols holding guns and shouting Nazi slogans are actually political moderates and true Americans”.

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