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Comment by komali2 | Hacker News Reader

Thug is historically a racist dog whistle. Ignorance of this, pretended or otherwise, isn't a valid defense.

I saw a couple videos of burning buildings, sure. I had trouble caring though, because the only places that happened in are the ones where soldier cops got insanely abusive with peaceful protesters. The onus is on the state to back down, not the people.

Did you see video of out of state proud boys driving in armed caravans to protest areas, paintballing and pepper spraying indiscriminately?

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>Thug is historically a racist dog whistle

Really? I'm a native English speaker, albeit not American, and I've never heard thug implied to have racist connotations. The original word comes from a Hindi word for criminal, which was also used for a violent cult: "Devotees of the goddess Kali, the Thugs waylaid and strangled their victims, usually travellers, in a ritually prescribed manner. They were suppressed by the British in the 1830s."

>I had trouble caring though, because the only places that happened in are the ones where soldier cops got insanely abusive with peaceful protesters.

How does the police being abusive make it okay for the rioters to burn down random buildings?

> How does the police being abusive make it okay for the rioters to burn down random buildings?

It doesn't absolve any responsibility, but if you take a step back - the police behavior was the indirect and sometimes direct cause of the other symptom.

Dog whistle is a useful term, because it gives someone the power to redefine what has been said to mean anything that you would like.

E.g. on NPR you hear talking heads speak about “staunch conservatives” like Bill Barr. This term is now a dog whistle on the left that means ‘white nationalist’

> because it gives someone the power to redefine what has been said to mean anything that you would like.

Like you did in this comment, to the word "dog whistle?" Let me guess, SJWs are the enemy of the people?

What shall we call it when a white supremacist waggles his eyebrows and says "those people" then? Willful ignorance is painful to witness.

Maybe if staunch conservatives stop being white nationalists, or stopped catering to white nationalists so overtly, or actually spoke out against their white nationalist base (instead of "both sides"ing them), people wouldn't associate staunch conservatism with white nationalism? Just a thought.

It was tongue in cheek to the fact that words change meaning.

The non-GTP-3 agent above was surprised to learn that the word ‘Thug’ now means something else. It’s like the rug was pulled out from under them.

Well said.

Hard to care about cops being aggressive when "protesters" burn down buildings. If US cops actually got proper riot training like French police then citizens wouldn't need to take self-defense into their own hands(e.g. Kyle Rittenhouse).

You believe that arming yourself, driving across state lines, and then putting yourself into the middle of a protest, is "self-defense?"

Great! Then, the protesters are acting in self defense as well, as the bar is apparently quite low for self defense.

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