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Comment by rbecker | Hacker News Reader

Just in case someone finds the examples in the article all acceptable censorship, here's a few more off the top of my head:

Evergreen professor forced to resign for opposing day of white absence: https://blog.usejournal.com/the-controversy-of-bret-weinstei...

UCLA professor placed under investigation for reading MLK's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail": https://freebeacon.com/issues/university-to-investigate-lect...

Data scientist fired for retweeting study showing non-violent protests are more effective: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/case-for-liberalism-...

View on HN

The last one about the data scientist tweet got even crazier:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/white-fragility-raci...

Wow. That was an eye-opening read.

That link was posted here on HN and then got flagged. You can find it if you paste the URL into HN's search.

O_o

In mainstream news (ap, CBC, bbc, others), increasingly people and groups are being labelled as racist without any discretion. Eg, people out protecting Churchill statues in the UK are labelled as racists in several stories[1]. Surely, there is at least one racist in the group, but increasingly every single person who doesn’t tow the line is being called out - entire police departments, mayors, city councils, schools, news organizations - everyone is either supporting the cause or else is a racist, with no evidence or scrutiny being applied. How can entire police departments be racist? Entire companies?

[1] to be fair, Churchill was a racist and a colonialist. He opposed Ghandi. He also helped defeat fascism and naziism and is an important historical figure. Defending a Churchill statue does not automatically make everybody in the vicinity a nazi.

At some point a word becomes so overused it loses all meaning.

The guy who created the word genocide also created the word vandalism. He intended for both actions these words described to be looked at with abject horror and thus applied as infrequently as possible so that they would retain their meaning.

When everyone is racist, effectively no one is.

> Eg, people out protecting Churchill statues in the UK are labelled as racists in several stories

You missed out the bit where some of them were doing Nazi salutes or carrying EDL / Britain First etc flags.

If you’re in a group with people you don’t know very well and some of them say or do something utterly stupid, you are not automatically one of them. Eg, some people were looting during the protests but it would be ridiculous to say the entire protest is just a bunch of thugs

If you're in a large group, and many members of that group are by any definition racist, you're going to be called part of a racist group.

Then the early black lives matter protests were nothing but a bunch of anarchistic rioters and looters. And every cop in those police departments is racist. And all those city councillors too. It isn’t true though and the point is you can’t just go around labelling people like that willy nilly. You can’t just group everyone together based on what the worst of them do.

Imagine a world where every honest cop quit in order to avoid being associated with the bad ones

I don't agree with the point you're making at all here. OPs point is that if you attend a gathering with people you don't know, and that gathering turns out to be heavily represented by white supremacist groups, you are going to be labelled with it.

You're furiously defending an argument that you've made, which is exactly the point that is being made repeatedly in this thread, that's it's very difficult to have a discussion on many of these topics because the debate turns to this very quickly.

In the same spirit, gentleman11's point is that if you attend a gathering with people you don't know, and that gathering turns out to be heavily represented by looters and rioters, you are going to be labelled with it.

> You're furiously defending an argument that you've made

More like trying to show to DanBC that their line of thinking is illogical. Regardless, I do not see anything furious about it.

There's nothing illogical about describing as racist a group of people who make Nazi salutes, who attack black people, who spray racist graffiti.

I'm pointing out that this is a simplistic, dishonest, framing:

> Eg, people out protecting Churchill statues in the UK are labelled as racists in several stories[1].

A more honest framing would be "people out protecting Churchill statutes, many of them making Nazi salutes and chanting racist slogans, are labelled as racists in several stories".

This isn't just the extreme left calling everything racist. Here's the Telegraph[1] quoting Boris Johnson[2] who condemns "racist thuggery". https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/13/black-lives-matt...

[1] A right wing newspaper.

[2] A right wing PM.

> There's nothing illogical about describing as racist a group of people who make Nazi salutes, who attack black people, who spray racist graffiti.

However that's not what you were doing; you were stating the point that being with a group doing x means you will labelled as x.

> If you're in a large group, and many members of that group are by any definition racist, you're going to be called part of a racist group.

Now whether you meant that that is a case of will be vs should was not covered but that was what the original point was.

The new point about framing would be in relation to the original point made where all in the protest centred around protection of the statues were labelled racist for doing so by major news organisations. At a guess there's at least two frustrations made in that that I can immediately think of

1) the lack of nuance from the papers (probably a hopeless ask given the way media operates in general for any story they handle but something worth discussing)

And 2) the hypocrisy displayed. We've seen the recent riots described as "mostly peaceful protests" time after time when a simple look at the stories and videos coming out show anything but yet the difference in the media descriptions of the two is pretty glaring would you agree?

> However that's not what you were doing; you were stating the point that being with a group doing x means you will labelled as x.

I still say that. If you attend a demonstration organised by a far right group (FLA), heavily promoted by other far right groups (Britain First, EDL), and prominent members of the far right (Stephen Yaxley Lennon, Paul Golding) then you're going to be called racist.

You're desperately trying to say these crowds were people interested in statues and merely peacefully protesting to protect statues. That shows a complete lack of understanding of i) who organised the demonstration ii) the language used to organise the demonstration iii) the behaviours displayed during the demonstration and iv) the commentary across the political spectrum condemning this demonstration as racist thuggery.

> yet the difference in the media descriptions of the two is pretty glaring would you agree?

At some point you're going to have to come to terms with the fact that in the UK the far right pose a far greater risk of harm than the left.

The people you're desperately trying to defend were drunk, coked-up, racist, football hooligans on a rampage. That has been fairly and accurately described by UK news media, including those on the right.

Daily fucking Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8404751/Police-fear...

I haven't said anything about defending these crowds at all, you're welcome to point out where I defended them; I've pointed out the likely frustrations of op about two facedness and lack of nuance in the press.

I can perfectly see there are people in the protests making the nazi salutes just fine and I follow the logic behind getting the label if you hang with them, and as you'll surely agree in just the same way that those involved with the recent floyyd protests will be labelled as opportunistic thugs looking to destroy property and assault people.

> At some point you're going to have to come to terms with the fact that in the UK the far right pose a far greater risk of harm than the left.

No, no I don't; both sides seem significantly detrimental in different ways and I don't have to permit free reign to one group of sociopathic bullies just because they are the enemies of a different one.

> the same way that those involved with the recent floyyd protests will be labelled as opportunistic thugs looking to destroy property and assault people

This is so disengenuous as to veer into the realm of absurdity. You seem to be completely ignoring the actual intent of the two groups in attempt to conflate them to defend your argument. Not to mention both side-ing them is an absolute joke.

The intent of the floyd protests wasn't to loot and destroy property. It was to protest his death. The fact that some took this opportunity to do so does not affect the actual intent which was upheld in many other places and protests.

The intent of the other group was explicitly racist. Organized by far-right groups and quite literal Nazis.

No the intent as described many times in the comment chain was protection of the statues; that was what spurred the counter protest. Both sides began under good intent; both sides had bad actors who caused trouble; both sides get labelled.

And as DanBC said multiple times, that was not the real reason why they were out there. You seem to be ignoring all context for why they were out there and who organized it in attempt to equate the two in a disingenuous manner. At this point it's obvious you're not here to argue in good faith.

Unfortunate as it is but neither you nor DanBC are the global authority on other peoples "real reason" for doing things no matter how you feel on the subject. Context is also a poorly thought out point to bring up considering plenty was provided; numerous examples of destruction of statues given before, no sign of slowing and future targetting given often and loudly.

Why are you repeating the same thing over and over while ignoring the argument given?

Oh well, here, let's repeat it. "There's nothing illogical about describing as looters and rioters a group of people who break windows, steal from shops, set buildings and cars on fire."

You can extend the same argument to have racist undertones by including all black people for example because there are some criminals among them. Racism is bad not because it is racism but rather because it is yet another instance of prejudice and generalization.

If the protest which gets the media coverage for fighting police is an organised group of football hooligans run by prominent far-right activists, and there are widespread Nazi salutes, it's probably not incumbent on the media to 'some of them were good people' away the nature of the group you've joined up with.

Even the also in-attendance group of veterans which was very angry at media coverage for suggesting there might be racists descending on London acknowledged in their rush to disassociate themselves that the larger and longer lasting football hooligan protest which got into the actual fights was explicitly racist.

With all the talk of people doing Nazi salutes it seemed like you could open any news story about the counter-protests and you'd see clear evidence of Neo-Nazis but it was anything but, even when people point to videos [0] that are supposed to demonstrate the Nazi salute it's a struggle to even figure out who is supposed to be doing it. Another video [1] of that same scene is even less supportive of the claim of Nazi salutes. The discussion on such videos at the time always devolved into bickering about how strict the salute had to be before it counts on videos that were overwhelmingly of people with one or both arms in the air, closed fist salutes, people literally pointing, stills out of context, etc, on videos that were always accompanied by football chanting. I don't think I saw a single example of a strict or even semi-strict Nazi salute from a couple of days of casually looking up the news on the counter-protests despite every thread having a dozen people that were quick to point out that the protestors were racists doing the Nazi salute.

As far as the EDL / Britain First goes, this is literally the first time I'm hearing that the leader of Britain First showed up, it seems like it was drowned out of the news completely. Are there any pictures of said flags or the scale of their involvement? I don't recall seeing any at the time and I can't find any pics at all. Edit: Found one [2], it's of the leader.

[0] https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1271763042745925632

[1] https://twitter.com/BBCDomC/status/1271761377317851136

[2] https://twitter.com/hopenothate/status/1271772683013931008

> this is literally the first time I'm hearing that the leader of Britain First showed up

It's somewhat frustrating that people who do not know who attended the demonstration are telling me that I'm wrong when I say it was mostly comprised of recognised far right groups.

The protests were organised by far right groups such as FLA / DLFA, with calls from people like Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and Paul Golding for people to attend.

Here's a photo of a Britain First flag: https://twitter.com/harshmallow01/status/1272099528175386625... (This is the un-modified version).

Here's Stephen Yaxley Lennon calling on the Football Lads Alliance (a recognised far right leader talking to a recognised far right group) https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/2020/06/08/football-hooligans...

Here's a right-wing source, describing a right wing PM who calls the protest "racist thuggery". https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/13/black-lives-matt...

It was extremely well publicised at the time too: Golding even gave the PA a quote in advance about why he was going, every mainstream media outlet mentioned him in their reports and Twitter throbbed with speculation about whether he was breaching his bail conditions.

Maybe in some circles it was well publicised but in many articles around the time it's nothing more than a single sentence mention, e.g., [0] which is near the bottom, [1] or [2] which are closer to the top but still not really the point of the articles. The Telegraph link from DanBC's post mentions them a few more times for comparison.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53033550

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53031072

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/14/met-police-con...

>telling me that I'm wrong when I say it was mostly comprised of recognised far right groups

I'm not trying to tell you that you're wrong or that far right groups didn't attend and I'm sorry if it came across that way, I was hesitant to even make a reply for fear it would come across as a defence of groups I'm ideologically opposed to over protests I don't agree with. The only point I wanted to discuss really was the Nazi salutes since 'protestors defending Churchill statue perform Nazi salute' seems to be the sticking point of social commentary on the counter protests, but the supposed video where it happens is questionable. But I'm happy to be proven wrong on that, just like I was the involvement from Britain First which is why I edited the post, so again sorry if it seems like I'm trying to downplay their involvement.

So if there is a peaceful protest and some looters pop up, what does it make of the protestors?

Cause the statue was defended by far-right group. It is not act of defending statue that makes him Paul Golding racist, but the fact that far-right groups are defending the statue while left leaning are against it is definitely notable.

They were also labelled as racist by right wing newspapers that venerate Churchill and defend the historical value of statues of slave traders, on account of the groups organizing it and how the crowd behaved.

You've not linked any of the stories. Do they actually use the term 'racist'?

People loathe being called racist, to the point that if you point out someone is accidentally doing something unhelpful or discriminatory - not calling them racist - then you have to worry about them becoming emotional about it.

Your first example isn't about speech. The school had a policy of a white absence day (which is batshit, but whatever) and he expressly violated that as an act of protest and got fired for breaking the rules. He'd been clearly opposed to it from the start and not censored.

Be very careful with that second link, that story was spun like crazy in conservative circles, and even weeks later it's impossible to find an account of what happened from anything other than the lecturer's perspective. I mean, that Free Beacon story is one of the worst examples: find me anywhere in that story that quotes a student or explains what they were upset about. The go to Google News and search for the guy's name, and you find a giant list of stories from conservative outlets (and none from mainstream sources) all with the same odd skew to the reporting. I think the jury is still out about what exactly was offensive, I'm guessing it wasn't just because he read an MLK speech. UCLA has not said anything yet.

The David Shor one is a good example though. Something crazy happened there and no one understands why he was fired.

The first example says the school didn't make it mandatory for white people to stay home, it was just highly recommended. It doesn't look like he broke any rules, the school had just hoped everyone would fall in line and he was fired for not agreeing with them.

I had to go look that up again. It wasn't about this one incident. He wasn't even fired, he resigned after becoming the center of a huge protest movement on campus directed specifically at him (a self-described member of the conservative "Intellectual Dark Web"), then after suing the college for failing to protect him, and the resignation was part of the resulting settlement. Then he did the FOX tour and wrote an op-ed for the Journal and settled into his life as a conservative martyr.

Yeah, he wasn't fired to keep him from complaining about white absence day.

He, and most of the rest of the IDW would not consider themselves conservative at all. In fact, only JPeterson considers himself conservative out of the commonly touted members. Dont misrepresent people because they dont fit your narrative

This one[0] gets the noggin' joggin'. Cambridge defends one of their profs saying "White Lives Don't Matter" yet were quick to rescind their invitation for Jordan Peterson for "controversial" comments [1].

[0]: https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/19539 [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/mar/20/cambridge-...

And on the other hand, saying "White Lives Matter" got not only the man saying it fired. His girlfriend was found to be guilty by association and also fired.

https://tribuna.com/en/chelsea/news/2020-06-25-burnley-fan-b...

That's not true. His girlfriend was fired previously for posting racist messages on Facebook and then refusing to go on a sensitivity training course offered by her employer.

That article is a summary of a daily mail article, so it's bad journalism squared.

Ah, that's new information to me. Still she was fired immediately after this statement of her boyfriend, so there is obviously a connection to that, in addition to what she said herself in the past.

> Data scientist fired for retweeting study showing non-violent protests are more effective

This is a blatant misrepresentation. The tweet talked about "race riots" and Democrat election results. Many people would argue that the point of direct action is not to sway electoral votes toward the Democratic party.

And particularly, that election was in the middle of the southern strategy switch, and the Democratic party didn't define itself as the left wing of acceptable politics in the nation as it does today. Particularly the Southern Democrats hadn't overwhelmingly converted over to Republicans yet. It was only after the Civil Rights Act was passed (which was six days into the race riots mentioned, so real actionable change that came from them) that the Dixiecrats really started switching, and that took time (a few elections worth).

> It was only after the Civil Rights Act was passed (which was six days into the race riots mentioned, so real actionable change that came from them)

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed into law on the second of July 1964, had been in the works since before Mr. Kennedy's (unrelated) assassination in 1963; it passed the House 290–130 and the Senate 73–27: I really doubt that six days' rioting can be credited with passing it.

A lot of bills of all had been in the works for years and were only passed after some swell of public opinion.

For instance the Patriot act didn't come out of nowhere, but it's provisions had been shopped around for years prior. With 9/11, they had the votes necessary to move forward with it.

There was no switch. Go look up members of congress who switched political party during that era. Wikipedia has a list. You'll find two, one in the house and one in the senate.

Had there been an actual switch, you'd expect to see numerous members of congress switching sides.

The "party switch" narrative is a lie. It's to cover for the fact that the republicans kept voting for civil rights until they were finally able to pass it. Today, being the party in opposition to civil rights wouldn't be seen as OK, so a false version of history is pushed to cover up the truth.

A better explanation for the change in voting is that party preferences changed once the issue of civil rights was no longer under consideration. With that gone, other political goals were able to determine party preference.

It wasn't a switch as in politicians jumping ship from party to party in most cases, but instead a high level policy switch of voters, purging politicians from one party, and gaining new ones on the other as Dixiecrat voters felt betrayed and were welcomed into the Republican party as a new policy shift of that party.

Framing this as the civil rights act being solved and now voters focusing on other issues is ahistorical, and essentially just propaganda.

That's what the mean by a party switch.

The "party switch" is ahistorical, and essentially just propaganda.

Republicans, who for years had been fighting to pass civil rights laws, didn't one day suddenly decide to become the party of Jim Crow, KKK, and slavery. That's democrats, who even today (now that the old stuff is unacceptable in public) have low expectations for some races.

Purging politicians from one party would be great. We can start with the Virginia governor who went to a party in blackface, with his fiance in classic KKK garb. We have pictures, matching pictures of him in the same plaid pants, an awkward admission of guilt, and still he remains in office. This is 2020. He is in office.

Next up would be Biden. There is plenty of video of him saying... that word... to rudely refer to black people. Oh wait, he's the party's presumed 2020 candidate for president!

Nothing deep has changed. It's just being smarter about public relations.

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