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Comment by rwcarlsen | Hacker News Reader

This is a great quote and I think is very relevant to what's been happening over the last few weeks. I'm no Trump fan - nor a fan of the actions of people at the capitol. But trump never asked for anyone to be violent or occupy the capitol. But he and related organizations (i.e. parler) are being treated as such. Seems a bit disturbing to me. The arguments used to try to shut up MLK Jr. in the 60s are the same arguments being used to shut up Trump. Heaven knows we don't need to hear more of what he has to say. But I'll defend his right to say it. And nobody needs to rehash "but these are private companies" crap. Their doing this to appease the full-stack blue fed gov't coming in. So, in a way, it kind of is government motivated censorship.

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you misunderstood me.

Parler’s defenders kvetching about their failure to maintain business contracts with their partners is disingenuous, and can and should be recognized for the bad faith slime that it is.

In the context of “letter from a birmingham jail”, trump and co. are more robber than robbed.

I see your point now, but your comment above (MLK's quote) comes across as saying the opposite.

It sounds like it's saying that Trump et al are okay, they're just exercising their right to speak, and if people are violent in return then we should punish those violent offenders.

But I suppose in reality you're saying the tech companies are okay, they're just exercising their right to police their own platforms, and if people are violent in return then we should punish those violent offenders.

Specifically, I think that appeasement is a real stupid justification for decisions made one way or the other, and I'm not persuaded by that argument in general. (https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/dane_geld.htm..., for another fine literary reference)

In this case, justifying continuation of parler's services because "if not, the people that just shit in the rotunda are going to do something worse" is in fact a strong argument for doing the opposite and posting the national guard outside the capitol building for a week, which is what's actually happened.

In the long run, is it going to stop them? No. In the short term, is it going to really hamstring the potential for a reprise of this insanity on the 20th? Yep!

No - I recognized what you were saying by your last non-quote bit at the bottom. I was just pointing out that this quote really supports (IMO) the "trump-side" of this whole issue.

in context, it doesn’t.

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