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Comment by slouch | Hacker News Reader

He retweeted a video wherein a man yelled white power.

I watched the video and it seemed pretty obvious that the old man responded mockingly to the other person accusing him of white power.

I don’t think the driver was actually chanting white power as a claim that white power was his desire.

Now, there’s certainly an argument for not making such a response and to channel anger better and not joke about such things. But I don’t think retweeting that video is a show of support for white power. Poor taste is much more likely.

Poor taste is much more likely.

Was that not the very point of some people’s frustration? Why does the intentions of the person on the video need justification, rationalization or explanation?

I agree but brought it up as OP stated that POTUS endorses racism and white power through the tweet. I think I may be automatically biased against his tweets. But if a regular person posted that video I wouldn’t consider it endorsement of white power.

Perhaps if there’s more context on the person in the video that would help. It seems like a frustrated response pointing out absurdity. But if the person flies a nazi flag then that would change my mind.

I don't care what the motivations of the person in the video are, they're irrelevant and I'm not interested in trying to unpack them; it was incredibly poor taste for POTUS to retweet it for any reason. That's the point.

My comment wasn’t whether it was poor taste or not.

I think saying the president is clearly supporting white power because he tweeted this video is incorrect. This video does not support white power. I don’t think it’s intent is to further white power. I think representing its purpose as promoting white power is incorrect, or misleading, or confusing, or anything other than accurate and truthful.

But I agree about the poor taste comment. But I think there’s a big distinction between a rude person and a white supremacist.

This falls under the Rule of Goats

https://twitter.com/popehat/status/858722120620265473

I don’t think the old guy ironically fucked a goat here. I think he claimed that he was a goat fucker to demonstrate the absurdity of the accusation.

You can add levels of meta to disarm any analogy and excuse any statement but that's silly. Yelling 'white power' is goatfucking and that guy is a goatfucker.

Is Ed Norton a goatfucker for American History X? Are we both goatfuckers for having “white power” in our comments?

I think the context and intent of a statement is really necessary for answering the question.

I don’t think the guy in the video was yelling white power to mean he supports white power. But perhaps you think differently.

Yes but you're trying to make the trivial context and intent complicated and it isn't. Ed Norton plays a goatfucker. We are talking about goatfuckery. Dude yelling 'white power' in public? Actual goatfucking. But no, you say, he was commenting on the absurdity of the goatfucker accusation by fucking some goats. This is precisely the sort of thing the Rule of Goats is about.

I don’t think that’s what the rule of goats is about, but I appreciate your continued commenting.

If your interpretation of the rule of goats is right, then it’s not very useful as it turns lots of people into goatfuckers. And when everyone is a goatfucker, fucking goats isn’t that bad any more.

The point of the 'rule' is that some things are so repugnant, there's no doing them 'ironically' or 'as commentary'. Hence the goats. If, when accused of goatfucking, you produce a goat and start fucking it, you are a goatfucker not a wry commentator on the baselessness of the accusation. If someone at a rally accuses you of racism (by, you know, association since you are rallying in support of someone with a long track record of racism) and you start shouting a virulently racist slogan, you're a racist. It's super-duper simple. Your interpretation is that yelling 'white power' is not actually racist because... some weird meta-thing. The entire purpose of the rule is to act as a terminating condition in otherwise unbounded meta-recursion.

Perhaps the chanter was being ironically racist, but I think its pretty hard to see Trump's retweeting of it as ironic.

I don’t think he was being ironically racist.

Here’s how I interpreted it...

Someone says “I bet you beat your spouse and children? It’s such an insane statement I say “Oh yeah, I’m definite a spouse beater. Beating spouses is a great thing. We all should beat our spouses and children!”

I don’t think that’s ironically condoning domestic violence. It’s an as absurdism response. If I was captured on video with such a response and you retweeted it, I don’t think it’s likely that the retweeter was condoning domestic violence.

Thus saying “prepend condones domestic violence.”

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