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Comment by naringas | Hacker News Reader

>one professor asked for evidence of “violent practices.” Another professor responded that “to ask for evidence of violent practices is itself a violent practice.”

so: to question something is an act of violence towards that something?

oops, I just questioned something ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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They see your free speech as violence and their own violence as free speech.

Nice summary.

Works both ways, too, e.g. whenever religious groups rename any kind of disagreement with them as "Hate speech".

That's one of the most frighteningly accurate descriptions of modern US politics that I've seen, especially since it works regardless of who "they" are.

Sounds context dependent. Asking for evidence can certainly be an aggressive act—asking for evidence of the holocaust in certain situations would be interpreted as holocaust denial. This sounds like traditional media context erasure to create a story out of nothing.

That’s why more information on the questioning is so helpful. The quote said it was a professor trying to learn what the grievances were.

The difference with holocaust deniers (really quite an uncomfortable comparison of millions murdered to the demands of a few dozen rich, spoiled young adults that perceive violence) is that there is an existing evidence base documenting the holocaust. You can’t skip this step and there’s a lot of soul searching for the harm is caused to the collectors of that evidence.

Skipping the evidence base and going directly to no questions is a stupid approach in that it will not help people understand and avoid future harm.

It was the journalist who picked the context of the quote to carefully frame the narrative. Blame them.

Well, there’s already a lot of evidence about that, so there’s no need. Asking for evidence is absolutely essential to the progress of knowledge and truth.

I agree, it depends on the context.

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