Regrettably, that is what's lost in all of this. Protesters against other opinions and belief systems strongly defend free speech so long as you are saying what they approve of.
There were Communists in the government in the McCarthy era. There were quite a few Communists, much as there is still racism at large in the USA today. And yet you will note that successfully rooting out spies is not why McCarthy is remembered, but rather, for his self-aggrandizing campaign of paranoid repression.
As mentioned, there were Communist spies in the US government, far more than was generally understood at the time; we know that now thanks to the Venona files. That doesn't change the fact that Joe McCarthy was almost always correct only by accident. (You shoot in a random direction often enough, you'll hit someone eventually.) Worse, his excessive rhetoric likely for years discouraged legitimate rooting out of said spies.
Maybe ask the West-Berliners that the SU tried to starve to make them surrender and become part of the SU.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with being a communist. You don’t have to agree with it as a political philosophy (I don’t), but it’s no worse than being a capitalist.
He was offended, and thought it indecent, that this young man, a nobody and a nonentity, should have his name paraded front of the entire nation, accused of betrayal, his reputation jeopardized not by any proceeding undertaken for the sake of justice, but rather, in the mainfestly unfair court of public opinion, for the sake of his outrage machine.
Eighteen months ago this nation witnessed Nicholas Sandmann, a random eleventh grader from Covington, Kentucky, excoriated on national television. There are those who still believe it was justice, that the boy had it coming, and declare that he has a "punchable" face. If someone has stood up and called this indecent, it was little noted. CNN settled a lawsuit over the matter, but has not issued an apology; our outrage machine has rolled on to other matters, and will continue to do so with little heed to justice.
No, the argument was that "the threat" was "mostly made up". I assure you, it was not.
There is a difference between communism and nazism.
Communism is simply the belief that the workers should own the means of production. It's like being a "witch". You might think it's complete nonsense and doesn't work in the real world (I'd agree with you), but if people want to be witches (or wiccans or whatever), they should be allowed to be.
Nazism, on the other hand, is an inherently evil ideology. Hopefully, I don't have to explain why.
And once again, you've mistakenly conflated communism with totalitarianism (which is what 1984 is actually about).
The situation I was referring to has nothing to do with the Nazis: it was after WW2 when the East/West conflict ramped up and Berlin was divided in two sectors (Soviet/Western controlled), but surrounded by the Soviet controlled sector of Germany. The Soviet Union then decided to enact a blockade to stop transports to West Berlin and starve the population to force the Western Allies to give up Berlin. It's what lead to the massive air transport operation dubbed "Raisin Bombers" that sustained the West Berlin population.
> And once again, you've mistakenly conflated communism with totalitarianism (which is what 1984 is actually about).
Yeah, yeah, "this time, it will all be different, we won't have concentration camps, we won't have purges, we won't have mock trials". At some point you can accept that some mechanism in your system leads to the undesired outcome, and that, even if you have not yet discovered it, there is most likely a causal relationship.
First, it's not "my system". I'm not a Soviet apologist, I'm not a communist, and frankly I don't even think communism is a workable system of government.
But I would the same exact things about libertarianism.
Just because I don't agree with something doesn't mean I think people should be prosecuted for it.
I get that you're trying to say that there's something inherent in communism that causes totalitarian states, but you are confusing correlation with causation.
Whatever terrible things have been done in the name of communism (and absolutely, some of the worst attrocities in history have taken place under communist rule), the same or worse things (slavery, genocide, oppression, colonialism) have been done under capitalist rule.
People aren't open to hearing reasoned arguments either. A reasoned argument doesn't deliver the dopamine hit of a rant or a catchy meme.
In that environment the only thing possible is to deplatform. I mean what else is there to do? Nothing is being accomplished anyway.
Maybe we should just turn off social media. Deplatform it all.
[1] https://nypost.com/2020/06/17/mit-chaplain-resigns-over-emai...
No it doesn't. This is wild hyperbole. No one deserves to be shot in the back.
However, people are painting him out to be an angel - quite literally there are multiple artworks of George Floyd with a halo and wings [1]. The reality is he was human, and one with a complicated criminal past who was jailed 8 times [2] including for drug offenses. Is saying that someone with a criminal record like that "didn't live a virtuous life" really a fireable offense?
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=george+floyd+angel&client=fi...
[2] https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/06/12/george-floyd-criminal...
Talk about wild hyperboles!
“In the wake of George Floyd’s death, most people in the country have framed this as an act of racism,” Moloney’s email continued. “I don’t think we know that. Many people have claimed that racism is a major problem in police forces. I don’t think we know that.”
The Chaplain has said enough things that association with him became a liability for an institution like MIT, that is all.
But it really isn't. In fact, it continues to be an opinion of a large section of the society. He is only saying that the police are not totally racist, maybe only a bit! Disagree as much as you want, this is an opinion beyond the pale now?
And the fact that the culture causes MIT to believe this to be a liability is exactly the point.
Let's not be facetious here, shall we?
He said that we don't know that racism is a major problem in police forces. In fact, we do know that; the structural racism is what many people are protesting against.
Structural racism manifests itself in the rules and protocols, in traditions and patterns in actions. To say that it is a major problem does not imply that the majority of individual policemen are racists. What it means is that the black people are disproportionately affected by the negative effects of policing, including brutality.
To say that "we don't know that" is unacceptable ignorance for a public figurehead of a reputable institution.
Because we do know that.
Let me reiterate.
He said that we don't know that racism is a major problem in police forces. In fact, we do know that; the structural racism is what many people are protesting against.
Structural racism manifests itself in the rules and protocols, in traditions and patterns in actions. To say that it is a major problem does not imply that the majority of individual policemen are racists. What it means is that the black people are disproportionately affected by the negative effects of policing, including brutality.
To say that "we don't know that" is unacceptable ignorance for a public figurehead of a reputable institution, because it implies that MIT doesn't know that.
But MIT does. We do. You, perhaps, don't, and it does not look good, but this is a chance for you to learn.
It might even imply, and I reckon it probably does, that there are some sociopaths in the police form that are wholy unfit to be police officers. These people need rooted out and fired. I would probably put the officer that killed George Floyd in this category.
I'm also sure there are racists in the police force who treat black people unfairly, these people also need rooted out and fired. I'm sure there is a LOT of these types.
But from the video, it doesn't imply that the police officer was racist or that his death is the result of racism. We simply don't know if the outcome would be different had George Floyd been white.
We can't even really tell from teh video if he was intentionally trying to kill George Floyd, I suspect he wasn't. I suspect that his death was a gross mistake, a result of insufficient training and a sociopath police officer. I very much doubt it was racist cop intentionally killing a black man because he was black, on camera, in front of witnesses recording it all on their phones.
The officer that killed Floyd made a gross mistake.
Each of the three officers that were on the scene and watched Chauvin kill Floyd also made a gross mistake by not intervening in an active murder that lasted over 8 minutes.
After the murder, all the policemen involved made a gross mistake by lying on the police report about Floyd resisting arrest, and describing his death as a "medical distress".
Then the people in the justice system made a gross mistake by not opening a murder investigation and not charging anyone.
And the entire police department made a gross mistake by not making any arrests in regards to the murder they knew happened.
All these gross mistakes were happening as the video was widely circulated, and people were out there demanding justice.
And after many violent protests, there are still good chances that the justice system will make another gross mistake and acquit the people involved due to the concept of "qualified immunity", which is, of course, also a gross mistake.
Along with these gross mistakes happening on a regular basis across the country, the repeated pattern of gross mistakes makes me wonder if our police and justice systems are... a gross mistake.
Does it make you wonder? I hope it does.
Let's be clear: no one, regardless of how much they've fucked up in their lives, deserves to be murdered in cold blood by the police while they pose no threat to anyone.
To restate: a non-violent suspect's past offenses are not germane when the discussion is about the police summarily executing that non-violent suspect in the street.
Any attempt to confuse this point with ideas about how the victim wasn't perfect, about how they could have done better in the confrontation or not committed a crime in the first place, is an attempt to deflect blame onto the victim.
These kinds of arguments are prima facie disgusting and deserve no quarter in civilized discourse.
Declaring "no quarter" in actual war is saying that if the enemy decides to surrender to you, and lays down his arms, and hoists the white flag, sticks his hands in the air, then you will shoot and kill him.
Declaring "no quarter" in actual war is therefore a violation of the Hague convention. It is "especially forbidden," in the same paragraph as poisoned weapons.
You are defending your actions with a metaphor that celebrates war crimes.
Hands up don't shoot, sir.
If pushback against the intolerant aspects of progressivism is occurring even on HN (of all places!), they may need that mercy sooner than they think.
Even assuming agreement with his religion, he's not even a good chaplain. His own religious texts say he shouldn't judge, and here he is judging a dead man he never met.
"George Floyd was killed by a police officer, and shouldn’t have been. He had not lived a virtuous life. He was convicted of several crimes, including armed robbery, which he seems to have committed to feed his drug habit. And he was high on drugs at the time of his arrest. But we do not kill such people. He committed sins, but we root for sinners to change their lives and convert to the Gospel."
-- link at https://newbostonpost.com/2020/06/17/m-i-t-catholic-chaplain...
But most media outlets just quote "didn't live a virtuous life" in their own paraphrasing, as well as "I don't think we know that" - that strengthen those implications by removing any context that would otherwise soften them. It's very easy to assume was justifying the killing, given that no contrary quotes are given.
That's not to say that what he did say is ok/wise/sensitive, but much of the press are clearly sensationalising this.
You mean like how underrepresented groups regularly experience the workplace already?