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Comment by nardi | Hacker News Reader

Gender, race, age, sexual orientation, etc. are “protected classes” that you can’t discriminate on. Being a Nazi is not a protected class. If you have a business, you can feel free to discriminate against Nazis. And you probably should.

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If you operate on public infrastructure, like being granted public right of ways to lay fiber, I think you lose the right to discriminate. This feels good because Nazis are assholes but it sets a very dangerous precedent. This is why the ACLU has a long history of defending Nazis and their ilk. Because one day it will be you on the other side. We should all discriminate against Nazis by denouncing them, ignoring them, etc. Public infrastructure should not.

What happened last time the Nazis were ignored?

You mean when the redshirts rioted and killed 24 people which pushed the public towards the brownshirts and ultra-nationalism? Was that when we're imagining the Nazis were ignored?

There's this event called the second world war.

He's referring to the fact that a major catalyst for the Nazis gaining power was German communists engaging in what was practically open warfare with them.

They sold themselves as law and order - in contrast to the civil war there militant wing fought with the communists in the street.

Thats the real danger here. A hysteric left and some right outliers creating the basis for continuously improving anti-terror laws. Oh.. too late.

The last 70 years.

Look on the bright side. The last time they were banned - 1939.

By this argument Gmail shouldn’t be allowed to run spam filters.

Apples and oranges.

I actually used to work on Gmail anti-spam and wrote this reply to the same argument yesterday:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15011913

You can talk about how things "should" be, about "precedents", etc, but the true guideline to measure these things is what the vast majority agrees to, because that's what public approval is all about. So all you can really do is try to convince the majority about what is 'right' and what is 'wrong'.

> So all you can really do is try to convince the majority about what is 'right' and what is 'wrong'.

Unless the people who own all the infrastructure disagree with you, and refuse to accept your money.

Protected classes in California include "political activities or affiliations".

Also, did the website actually self-identify as Nazi, or were they just called that by other people?

Well, they seem to have been named by reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_St%C3%BCrmer...

Your link is broken. It works if I remove trailing dots..

Ah, whoops! Those were intended to just be punctuation, not part of the link.

Making things marginally easier for people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_St%C3%BCrmer

    https://www.dailystormer.com/why-free-speech-and-free-internet-advocates-must-become-nazis/

The site is offline, but if you search for it on Google, you can still find it in the cache

Yes, it's pretty clear.

This isn't so clear cut though. Religion is usually included in that list, even though That is pertly ideological. Recently, gender and/or sexual orientation/identity has become arguably ideological too. Racial identity has some problematic examples (are jews white? what about light-skinned hispanics?)

Can of worms doesn't even begin to describe these half-baked, feel-good, shortsighted, "shore up a few voting blocks" measures. Parents who petition the city council for soft playground surfaces have done humanity a great disservice. Just be grateful there is a playground and work to make sure others get playgrounds before you turn your child into someone who can't produce something of value without first making sure everyone else is following "the rules".

It may be helpful for people to understand some of the underlying legislation that lays out protected classes. Of course, there is state and local legislation that can further refine the protections at a state/local level in addition to the national legislation.

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

Hmm... Nazis are typically white & male. Do I need to ask all my white male patrons if they're Nazis before I serve them?? /s

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