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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

Gallows are a time-honoured protest prop (eg, [0]), one being present isn't really the manifestation of gross negligence that this post wants to make it out to be [1].

This is not a very interesting post. Yeah you could predict that there was going to be a protest from Parler. There would have been people saying "hey, there is a rally on the 6th, lets go there and show our support".

[0] https://www.victoriabuzz.com/2019/11/climate-activists-plan-...

[1] Refering to "Parler allowed the idea of attacking and hanging politicians ... through gross negligence or willing ignorance. This idea manifested itself in the gallows erected outside the US Capitol on January 6th.

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It's a disgusting practice. I don't care how time-honoured it is. Real people are involved here. Real violence. Real death.

Showing someone a guillotine or a gallows or making threats to use deadly violence as part of a political protest is just plain wrong.

I don't disagree that it's a threat. But that threat is always there anyway. We prefer the democratic process because it's less destructive than regular, bloody power transitions. A guillotine can be seen as a reminder for why we have democracy. So in a way it's a pro-democratic symbol as the threat is there to enforce democratic norms.

The threat only becomes misguided if you're wrongly under the impression that democratic norms have been violated and thus you're threatening legitimately elected officials.

Think of it as a prisoner's dilemma. Perfectly rational or virtuous prisoners might cooperate out of their own volition. But even very selfish prisoners might be convinced to cooperate if they repeatedly get reminded of the grisly outcomes that happen to defectors. We might prefer the former (virtuous actors) but if we can't rely on everyone being like that then encouraging good behavior through threats is the next best option which is still far more preferable than the worst possible equilibrium.

This is the same kind of thinking that leads to western states that support black propaganda.

No. We do not need this. The grisly outcome that they who would defect should not be death. Economic hardship after months long protests which shut down the economy are a much better tool. Or even mass emigration to a safer or more just state.

Gandhi was plenty effective enough. We do not need spirals of threats and violence and arms races.

Back in the summer protestors stood outside Jeff Bezos's house with a guillotine: https://twitter.com/dcexaminer/status/1299022885231538176

That is also disgusting. Bezos is still a human. I know I'm replying to each of these replies to me, but it's because I'm so concerned about the divisiveness of the politics we find ourselves in. It doesn't matter if it's on the left or the right. In a democracy or republic with free movement and free speech the tools are there to enact the change the public desires without weapons or slaughter or threats or violent symbolism.

These are real people with real lives and living children and parents and friends.

I think we need to be careful with overreactionn on both the left and the right. For example simply looking at someones actions overreacting to it and calling it disgusting and then saying that whatever they did is absolutely irredeemable promotes a toxic political culture. This kind of intolerance of other viewpoints is part of the reason we are in todays mess.

I agree with your general thrust, but I disagree with your conclusion.

We need to say when things are wrong. It's vital. And right now what the right in America is doing is wrong. I'm not some absolutist left-winger. I once had a firearms license here in Canada. Though I'm a happy Liberal Party of Canada member, I've voted for Conservatives in the past and I'm open to doing so in the future.

I do not have intolerance of other viewpoints. I actively seek out a broad range of views. What I have intolerance for is violence and calls to violence and lies. If that's the charge against me I happily accept whatever verdict you or anyone else will levy against me. The truth matters. Peace matters. I am unwilling to let these half truths go by without comment or rebuke.

Threat of deadly violence is the weight that the political system throws around. To consider using them same to keep it in check to be disgusting is to ask to be used as a doormat.

I don't care if deadly violence or the threat of deadly violence "throws the political system around" it is completely counterproductive in the long run so long as the people in the system are free to communicate and assemble. Blowback is real and lasting. If enough people want change, organize a three month long protest where people actually leave their jobs and fields. There are plenty of legal and safe ways to change the course of a democracy or republic.

We do not need men in viking hats storming the capital or symbols of mob-rule-sanctioned execution to fix things.

im super annoyed by people who are outraged about this then turn around and repost memes about eating the rich or guillotining/GULaging Jeff Bezos

I'm highly critical of certain billionaires, Bezos included, but I do not endorse or even tolerate language like "eat the rich" because I still value the humanity of people that I think are presently exploiting a broken political / economic system.

Bezos has done some good. Especially on climate change. Just because we disagree on the distributive effects of capitalism doesn't mean we're not both part of the same human race and world.

bezos ,almost single handedly, drove the whole concept of consumer accessible computing

having been in the IT field throughout this period,i remember the awful pains you had to go thru to get any reasonable amount of computing power ,including purchasing hardware with months-long leads and having to deal with import/export documents and shipment ,not to mention things that are completely irrelevant like power requirements and rack weight per sqm of datacenter space

this has changed completely and now anybody with a bright idea can spin up a cluster of tremendous capacity for literally a few dollars that would deliver enterprise grade software (like RDS , EMR or ML engines) that you as a startup wouldnt have been able to license at all

this has been an immense boon to humanity for which Bezos deserves every single penny of his fortune

I was also in the IT field before the dot com bubble burst. You're right that he's done a lot to enable startups, but there were other options before AWS came around. Rackspace, Linode, etc.

But I will say this: AWS really has done a lot of good to improve security in software. Their cloud is massive and the security options they provide are great. They also simplify many otherwise complex things for many people, but I disagree that Bezos deserves every single penny of his fortune.

He doesn't pay enough in tax. The loophole of never paying tax if you don't sell your shares is stupid. He gets to do all the cool billionaire things like building space rockets, etc. And meanwhile people with conditions where going to the loo take longer (PTSD, IBS, ETC) are in pain holding their bladders all day because they can't afford to lose their job because they have desperate families to feed and clothe.

while i do agree there ought to be a better way of sharing profits from the productivity rise that he and his company enabled, that is far and removed from calls to guillotine him that one often comes across on the not-so-far-left

I explicitly am against the calls to guillotine him. So here, we are in perfect agreement. He's a human being and should be treated with dignity, and he's far from being the very worst out there.

I personally spent many hours on Parler reading the discourse. The Turner Diaries were openly discussed and gave rise to various gallow-related hashtags which proliferated on it.

I don't presume to predict anything as was correctly pointed out. I could not and did not imagine the events that transpired.

> The Turner Diaries were openly discussed and gave rise to various gallow-related hashtags which proliferated on it.

This looks to me like a classic correlation-causation mistake.

* Discussion a book with mass hangings can lead people to talk about gallows.

* Going to a political protest can traditionally involve bringing a gallows.

They are not linked, even though both things involve a gallows. Political protest commonly involves nooses (here is a really good one [0]). That is totally normal symbolism after a US president is voted in.

[0] https://www.cbs17.com/news/kentucky-man-hangs-effigy-of-dona...

Hello, after further research and contacting an academic source about this, I believe I made a mistake in making a definitive statement about the gallows- it was pointed out to me that gallows as a protest symbol are not tied to any specific group, and I was given enough examples of their use in other protests that it cannot be definitely stated as the original commenter mentioned.

I've updated my writing to clarify it as an opinion, and I'm taking a step back to improve my research and tone of writing. The truth is I have never written anything for the Internet before and the constructive criticism of HN users has helped me tremendously. I want to make neutral statements/analysis of facts and rarely if ever provide my personal opinion.

Thank you both for taking the time to provide your feedback.

[1] Absolutely. The insinuation is the "wrong people" are not supposed to use it.

Exactly. It's nothing. Just as this is nothing:

‘OFF WITH HIS HEAD’ Black Lives Matter protesters put Trump effigy in a GUILLOTINE outside White House

https://www.the-sun.com/news/1384275/protesters-trump-effigy...

Both sides do it. Both sides fein outrage and disgust at the other side doing it.

Tabloids are not credible.

https://twitter.com/ShelbyTalcott/status/1299168966255017984 Here, from someone on the ground that night, you can clearly see St. John's Episcopal Church in the videos. The tabloid was reporting correctly.

The fact these sorts of things, including all the other violence and destruction going on at the time, were either ignored wholesale or played down by mainstream news sources, while also being actively encouraged in the next breath ought to be a source of shame for them. The country spent the last year being gas-lit.

Its no surprise at all why many people on the right distrust them.

Wow, there really was a fake Trump model under a guillotine. I agree that major news outlets have become very polarized and lack critical reflection of their own reporting / party they support.

Still, Trump supporters have become quite removed from reality, and "liberal" outlets at least recognized Trump's insane hubris.

The article is factually correct. The reason it's in a tabloid is because reporting it is sensationalistic.

It's sensationalistic because how one person, or several people, or even dozens or hundreds express themselves in a large crowd doesn't say anything about the other people "standing with them", or politics, or political leaders. This applies to the right and left.

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