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Comment by xenophonB | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, weirdly this ludicrous standard is never applied to leftist politics, for example suggesting that any criticism of inequality could "escalate" into the Holodomor or the Killing Fields of Cambodia, so therefore its important not to "normalize" such behaviour.

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That's because there is a strategic difference between talking about inequality and making fun of someone for having a name that's different than yours. One has an upside, the other doesn't.

How is that even a valid comparison? It is logical that making fun of people for characteristics related to race could be escalated to more serious racist behavior, and therefore should be discouraged. But where is the logical connection between criticizing inequality and committing genocide?

In the case of Cambodia, I think the connection being suggested is that the genocide targeted "professionals and intellectuals"[0], essentially the bourgeoisie, or the wealthy (it was a communist revolution). So criticizing inequality is being framed as a slippery slope to killing rich people.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Fields

Well, I'd argue that the gap between making racist remarks and committing greater acts of racism is a bit smaller than the one between criticizing inequality and emulating the mass genocide of a communist regime. Although the other OP did bring up the Nazis, so I see where he was coming from.

I think they might be alluding to things like "kill all landlords" which are I suppose jokes for some and simply calls to action for others.

I'd love to see an example of a landlord being killed as a result of such a "call to action" from a political movement.

I can point to numerous people being killed by calls to action around abortion.

A few hundred-thousand dead Kulaks is a good example. Killed because they were just above the peasantry.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization

And how many were killed because they were on a funny name list?

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