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Comment by newacct583 | Hacker News Reader

How do we square that, then. You want it to be OK to call for a public servant to be beheaded? (The Bannon case). You want it to be OK to just print lies (c.f. most of Newsmax and a lot of Breitbart)?

You need to understand that to anyone left of center, your demand seems to be a conspiracy to be wrong at will. Isn't that likewise a "bad look"?

What's your solution?

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> You want it to be OK

What the fuck does this mean? I want people to be free to express themselves, and yes, that includes being free to earn money. I do not want a few corporations deciding what people are allowed to say on the internet, or even who is able to earn a living on the internet.

Just to be clear here: You're saying you don't personally have a problem with people making money from publishing specific and credible threats of violence (which is the case discussed in the original post), or from publishing intentional misinformation with real-world partisan political goals.

It also sounds like you don't support the ability of people who purchase ads to have any control over whether their money funds publishers of the type described above.

Do I have that right?

If a threat of violence really is specific and credible, clearly the FBI should get involved, and the person responsible should get arrested. If anyone really thought of a threat of violence as specific and credible, that's what they would call for, not for advertisers to demonetize the person making the threat.

It was not specific, not credible, and not a threat. The United Sates has never once beheaded anyone.

Bannon was talking of "heads on pikes", which is obviously metaphorical.

So, yes, that's OK. Even if he's completely wrong in his claims of fact, we shouldn't be expelling people from society over their choice of historical allusion.

The quote itself was literally not a metaphor: “Now I actually want to go a step farther, but I realize the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man. I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England, I’d put the heads on pikes, right, I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you’re gone – time to stop playing games.”

Now, you can argue that this was irony, sure. In the real world, if Bannon isn't delusional, we don't do that and it won't happen. But it's not a metaphor. The word "actually" tells you that right at the start. He is saying, literally, what he would like to do.

And that's awful, and shameful, and if anyone who wasn't on your team said it you'd be screaming (c.f. Kathy Griffin and the severed head -- which was a metaphor!).

No one is being expelled from society.

So elimination of free speech?

Russia used to have a joke department to ensure all jokes were politically correct.

Worked with some Russians who kept going on about how serious a matter it was.

Meanwhile there is literal beheading going on in France - but mainstream media is completely silent on topics like immigration. The general dissatisfaction with mass immigration in the USA and Europe, and the failure of the mainstream media to acknowledge this, is what is fueling the rise of Breitbarts.

Bannon didn't call for Fauci to be beheaded becuase of immigration... Fauci does disease response for the NIH.

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