Hacker News Reader

Comment by shultays | Hacker News Reader

Interestingly hammer and sickle is not in the list

The list specifically says "including but not limited to". If you are implying that there is a leftist slant to their rules, I would point to the examples of banned offensive phrases that includes the anti-police "FTP" and "ACAB".

I think mainstream historians would argue that Soviet Communism was terrible - but it wasn't an ideology based on hate or subjugation. Displaying the Hammer and Sickle likely means you stand for unity with the working-class and seek an egalitarian society - or you have grievances with the current system of capitalism - and not that you hate on any particular group of people, and especially not for any of their immutable characteristics.

I know Tankies and Holomdor apologists exist - and their calls for guillotining billionaires are concerning - but I compare that to a person proudly displaying a (non-Hindu) swastika: it means that person is either a fascist who actively supports genocide - or is being an edgy teenager. Similarly proudly flying the Confederate battle-flag means they either actively support white-supremacy and subjugation of black people - or they're very ignorant of history and bought into the post-reconstruction propagandizing by Confederate apologists.

That's the difference between what I feel those symbols mean.

A distinction without a difference if in both cases the conclusion is democide.

It's still entirely subjective.

> "but it wasn't an ideology based on hate or subjugation"

This is really stretching. I doubt may people who supported the Nazis early on would have thought their party was going to commit genocide. You don't see cognitive dissonance while you're in it.

The Confederate Flag does represent Treason and many declarations of independence mention defense of slavery explicit in the first two paragraphs. However, if the Confederates has succeeded, there's a good chance they would have ended slavery anyway. There were a lot of moral concerns around slavery at that time. The Constitution and Declaration of Independence, at that time, did not directly mention the word "Slave," not to mention it started to fade internationally not long after.

In that case, slavery could have been seen as just an artifact of a previous, ignorant group of their population, that also founded the country. And no mistake, between Iraq, the Iranian-Contras, the School of the Americas, MKUltra .. the Union/US has done terrible terrible things around the world to extract resources in the name of democracy.

You can't say something is going to turn out while you're in the center. Looking at the current anarco-anti-cap left groups right out, some of their action are fascistic.

Inhibiting the freedom of people to speak their minds and express their unpopular or controversial opinions is a dangerous path to go down, and many on the progressive-left are already showing contempt for the freedom of speech.

> However, if the Confederates has succeeded, there’s a good chance they would have ended slavery

[citation needed] do you have some sort of source to back this claim up?

Why would a region willingly give up it’s main source of economic power a la slaves? The south was notorious for avoiding investment into public infrastructure like roads, rail, foundries, etc. Why would they enter into a civil war over slavery if they were “about to give it up” anyways? This take flies counter to everything I’ve read about the confederate south

Why would it be? I don't recall it ever being used as a symbol of discrimination against one specific group... unless you mean landlords?

That's right, it's just a symbol that has been used historically to kill tens of millions of people, enslave many more millions, and violently steal other people property. No hate here at all, nothing to see.

No hate against a specific group. The cross has been used as a symbol in the slaughter millions over the centuries. But it is not generally used as a symbol to threaten any one specific group.

Landlords?

You should really meet someone from the former Communist block, it would probably change your mind. The father of a good friend of mine still remembers the time when the military police used to stop by his village and get the new prisoners they needed to fulfill the gulag quota.

The list of "bad" ideas blows this way and that with the wind. It's not about what it was used for in the past or how much bad was done. It's about whatever mobs with pitchforks demand. They can always come up some reason like "used for hate" or "causes offense" or "safe environment" but they don't really mean it. Those are just rationalizations for organizations making decisions out of fear.

On a similar note, why raised fist is not on the list? It's been used throughout the 20th century to commit atrocities on a grand scale and force tens of millions of people into labor camps. It was used to incite violence that killed many millions of people in Russia and across the world. It still used nowadays by people promoting violence and class warfare.

It seems very disingenuous for MS to ban one specific symbol of hate, but not other, much more prominent ones.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com