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Comment by justinzollars | Hacker News Reader

The United States is done. The tools that this community is building to enable political censorship will surely come back to you.

You can call this Democracy. But this feels like Authoritarianism.

I'm so disappointed in Silicon Valley and those in the Hacker News Community that are stamping out free expression. Shame on you.

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The United States will be done in by... stamping out the free expression of openly organizing to commit sedition against the United States.

Spare us.

sedition.

Big loaded words. This was a peasant revolt of gas station employees - that did a lot less damage than the riots in San Francisco last summer.

> loaded words

The literal definition of sedition [1] is:

  If two or more persons [...] conspire [...] to prevent, hinder, or delay the
  execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or
  possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof

1. Do you deny that the Capitol building was breached by force?

2. Do you deny that Congress was in session at this time?

3. Do you deny that the breach of the Capitol hindered the Congress's ability to certify vote totals for the presidential election?

If the answer to all three of those is "no", then we are literally talking about sedition.

[1]: https://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-18-crimes-and-criminal-pr...

Does seem to apply. Also appears that this sedition law applies to the perpetrators every statue owned by the government that was torn down as well. So we can officially call them seditionists now.

On Parler they are bragging they have kill lists of people who they don’t like and warn that they are coming.

What do you say to someone on those lists? The FBI doesn’t think these are LARPers.

I am really afraid of the ex armed forces types that think this is the funnest thing to do with their short time on Earth. But it’s real.

What will happen when they gain control of nuclear weapons or other mass weapons? Are they more angry at foreign foes, or purging liberals? Who is an easier fight?

"All of these authoritarian powers will, ironically, be invoked and justified in the name of stopping authoritarianism — not from those who wield power but from the movement that was just removed from power. Those who spent four years shrieking to great profit about the dangers of lurking “fascism” will — without realizing the irony — now use this merger of state and corporate power to consolidate their own authority, control the contours of permissible debate, and silence those who challenge them even further"

[1] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-threat-of-authoritarian...

Oh boo hoo a company is being thrown in the trash because they encourage terrorism against elected officials.

My family fought in the American Revolution and I was an elected DNC delegate. This is cowardly and unamerican.

If you think being able to trace your ancestry back to certain well connected families makes your opinions more valid and important than other people’s then you believe in aristocracies, and maybe you’re the un-American one. If you think that companies should have their first amendment freedom of association rights violated by forcing them to do business with people they don’t want to do business with them maybe you’re the un-American one who doesn’t understand what the first amendment entails.

You have my vote, sir.

This is what feel like Authoritarianism? Not the attempted theft of a legitimate democratic election?

Hmmm...name me one country where it’s less restrictive than the US. People really take the freedom afforded in the US for granted.

You are right. There is no where to go. Its sad to see this disappear.

In an actual authoritarian country Jack Dorsey would have been thrown into a gulag or re-education camp for banning Trump. The fact that private citizens can openly defy their leaders is the exact opposite of authoritarianism.

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