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Comment by 1000units | Hacker News Reader

I too am alarmed by these spooky disinformation campaigns.

I just googled "what party was abraham lincoln in" and a big box popped up at the top saying "National Union Party". I've never even heard of this party. I assume its a euphemism sinister people use like "Democratic People's Republic".

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Wikipedia: Abraham Lincoln started out as a Whig Party leader in 1834. He left politics in 1849, and reentered it in 1854 as leader for the newly rename republican party created the same year.

In 1864 during the civil war both republicans and democrats had internal conflicts about leadership and the war. In order to create a majority, those republicans loyal to Lincoln decided to create a new party name in order to form a collation with pro-war democrats. The new party name got called the National Union Party.

Lincoln died the next tear in 1865. The next year after, in 1866, the new National Union Party leader failed to maintain the coalition and Republican members left, with the remaining democrats leaving short after.

"what party was abraham lincoln in" is thus a question about time. He was party leader under three different party names, president under two, and leader of one coalition that spanned between two parties. He spent 15 years as a Whig, 10 years under the republican name and 1 year under the coalition which is the point of his death.

He spent only 2 years as a Whig before exiting politics. He returned as a Republican until his assassination over a decade later. (Granted, by sleight of hand he did change the name of his Republican party for a year. Perhaps the trickery of his contemporary enemies here is payback for these tactics.)

Upon expanding the answer, this is the explanation I saw.

"The National Union Party was the temporary name used by the Republican Party for the national ticket in the 1864 presidential election that was held during the Civil War."

Since Lincoln's final election victory as President was under their ticket, it's not a crazy answer to give. It's not the answer one expects (I had never heard of it until now) but it seems to be technically correct.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Union_Party_(United_S...

Is this sarcasm? Lincoln was in the National Union Party during the civil war since he wanted to keep the Union together. It was a temporary 'rebranding' of the Republican party for the Presidential Election to attract members who wouldn't take the Republican name but were sympathetic to the Union.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Union_Party_(United_S...

He was elected initially as a republican and was a republican for much longer than he was in the "National Union Party" - I think the result from google is clearly deceptive.

Are people honestly insinuating that Google's algorithm is hiding the party of Abe Lincoln as some sort of slight against modern Republicans? What in the world... how could anyone believe that?

Is that bizarre conspiracy theory more likely or that their search results scrape Wikipedia and return the most recent party a politician belonged to?

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

Lo and behold, it reports that Strom Thurmond was a Republican (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strom_Thurmond) and Jeff Van Drew is too (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Van_Drew), even though both were Democrats for substantial periods in the past.

Is it a persecution complex when many of these kinds of "technical errors" seem to so often befall people from one political persuasion? Some of them clearly weren't errors and that has happened enough that people stop believing that it's just an error, because these companies have demonstrated in the past that they don't mind doing moves such as that.

Yes. The fact that the OP had never heard of the National Union Party and jumped immediately to the conclusion that is was a 'euphemism sinister people use' rather than spend 30 seconds confirming that this was in fact the name of the party he represented as President at the time of his death is ample evidence of a persecution complex. Propensity to assume one's own ignorance of facts is evidence of malfeasance on the part of one's opponents is pretty much the definition of persecution complex.

I was being facetious; it appears it is your theory of mind which is lacking. Of course, this is no grave fault of yours. Noticing these subtle tricks takes special acuity. After a few dozen more Google queries and even examination of several different platforms entirely, the picture becomes much clearer.

> search results scrape Wikipedia and return the most recent party a politician belonged to?

Google for: "what party was Andrew Jackson in"

For me this shows "Democratic-Republican Party" - this was the first party he was part of - he was elected president while a member of the Democratic party and remained such until his death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Jackson

So your theory does not hold.

Here we have someone who was a Republican being portrayed as something else and someone who was a Democrat being portrayed as something else - and in both cases there is political benefit to Democratic party in the US.

Yes, I found it very deceptive as well. I have no idea why you're being downvoted.

Its now Republican Party

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