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Comment by whymauri | Hacker News Reader

Bannon suggested that the White House should behead Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Chris Wray. He then suggested their severed heads be displayed on spikes, at the White House.

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And I, a hapless plebe, am clearly unqualified to judge whether calling for beheading someone is reasonable. Only Facebook should be able to determine what is reasonable for the hoi polloi to hear. The general public, as we all know, are helpless infants who need Facebook and other tech companies to censor their media for them.

You are missing the point. It is not about the content.

Go look at Parlor if you want see people inciting the death of all democrats, gays, and non-christians.

And here you touch on the real problem. By banning extreme people from the commons you send them all to cluster together somewhere else, where their views are met with support instead of derision, thus amplifying and intensifying the extremity of their views.

Steve Bannon on Facebook gets called out and shouted down. Steve Bannon on Parlor gets praised and encouraged. People on Parlor get positive feedback and begin to think their views are mainstream and reasonable. People on Facebook get negative feedback and at least have a chance to think "Hmm, maybe if everyone says I'm wrong about this, I should rethink it".

Yes, I know many people won't rethink it, but facing some opposition at least provides the possibility of that happening. Forcing everyone into a filter bubble of only their own views provides no possibility of that happening.

Facebook is already a filter bubble though. It is Facebook itself that can impose opposition.

There are plenty of officials on Twitter openly wished that Trump died when he got coronavirus. Both situations are disgusting but neither are real threats.

Passive versus active would make a huge difference here, right? Even if it’s amoral to wish someone does not recover from an ailment, there’s no act involved or even promulgated in such a statement.

No, there is a huge difference because Trump's death would be from the same disease he criminally downplayed.

We've banned this account for using HN primarily for political battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of what you're battling for or against, because it destroys the intended use of the site.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Disgusting or not, there would have been delicious irony in Trump dying from a Democratic hoax.

Uncool, but also political exaggeration. Burning an effigy of Donald Trump is an analogue. Nobody expects someone to catch Donald Trump on fire, and no one expects anyone to behead Anthony Fauci.

Then why did Steve Bannon's verified Facebook Page reiterate that he called for their execution without any of those caveats or counterfactuals or even the defense that it was hyperbole or parody?

I am beyond tired of people making excuses for public threats of violence from authoritarian right-wing actors. It isn't helpful to any discourse to pretend words don't mean what they mean anymore.

Facebook post here: https://www.facebook.com/SteveKBannon/posts/376710023761776

archive.org snapshot here: https://web.archive.org/web/20201106185230/https://www.faceb...

Here's the text of that post in case it is removed:

    [BREAKING] On www [dot] PopulistPress [dot] com -
    *Steve Bannon Under Massive Attack*
    - Steve Bannon Under Attack
    - Steve Bannon’s Twitter Account Suspended After Calling for Execution of Dr Fauci and FBI Director Wray
    Get your news NOW - Bookmark www [dot] PopulistPress [dot] com

I am also beyond tired about the nebulous interplay between word and deed when it comes to right-wing violence.

Bannon is "just joking" about beheading his opponents, Pompeo is "just joking" about Trump not stepping down, constant talk about jailing political opponents -- sorry, constant jokes -- and constant talk about lynching journalists (e.g. "rope, tree, journalist" t-shirts that you see at MAGA rallies, not at any others).

And the FBI eventually breaks up a ring of people who are planning to kidnap and ??? the sitting governor of Michigan, but all of the violent-yet-it's-a-joke speech continues unabated. Was the kidnapping plot a joke, too? Where does all this end?

Serious question, what's the end-game for increasingly violent, increasingly authoritarian jokes?

You keep posting this like it's a smoking gun but clearly whoever runs his Facebook page just copy posted some blurb from another website.

I think populist dot press might be Bannon's own site. It heavily promotes his content, his weekly live stream, and it ties in to his social media on other platforms.

Even if it's not his own, this is his official Facebook page from which Bannon hosts his weekly live stream.

Here, you can see his "War Room" video series in its entirety: https://populist.press/americas-voice-war-room/

A guillotine was set up outside of Bezos abode, in the spirit of actions speaking louder than words?

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/08/jeff-bezos-guilloti...

Ban them from facebook then.

And I am not capable of judging for myself whether or not that is a bad idea, so I am grateful for the Facebook moderators and their superior judgment in making sure I don't see this!

hy·per·bo·le - noun - exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.

But, to tone down my own snarkiness-- in just a few months we have seen a dramatic increase in moderation in what people are allowed and not allowed to say. This is not going to end well, imo. We are just going to end up with the liberal equivalent of the oppressive religious right from the 80's.

Yeah germany is doing fine I don't think American exceptionalism extends to death threats. Hiding behind hyperbole doesn't make you snarky just idiotic.

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