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Comment by christoph | Hacker News Reader

This really will be political and I’m sure get me downvoted to hell & back.

It’s amazing that the old political guard still haven’t got this. Look at Spain today. What do you think would work better - hitting them with rubber bullets and batons or something more loving like sending people down to make it “Hug a Spaniard” day and making the Catalan people feel closer to their fellow countrymen?

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This method, it was called the "love-in" [1], was used by the Canadian government in 1995. It was illegal as hell as it was a blatant violation of election spending laws.

Some people say it was counterproductive but the proof is in the pudding I guess.

[1] https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-r...

Directionally accurate, but in the example you've chosen it's more about economics than demographics, so they'd hug and then vote to separate anyway.

Yeah, but that’s still an improvement over the current situation (at least as I understand it).

I'm not on their side, but they should have announced it was invalid and that the results don't matter, promoted unity and then secretly committed fraud they could expose. They could have posed as pro independence units preventing no voters from voting (recorded "secretly" on a smartphone). Then they could spin the separatists as dirty playing and corrupt.

What're they going to do when Catalan goes underground and high tech with their voting?

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