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Comment by jahnu | Hacker News Reader

I find these comparisons unhelpful.

What happened in China during the Cultural Revolution is on such a different level of awfulness it just isn't even the tiniest bit comparable to anything controversial or problematic happening in West right now. Even today what is happening in China, and even the freer parts like Hong Kong, is still far removed from issues in the West. Even as a "thin end of the wedge" argument it's just weak.

It hurts legitimate and necessary criticism of actual authoritarian countries and it hurts legitimate and necessary criticism of real issues (such as that raised in the article above) in free, Western countries.

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I find it somewhat amusing, in that the attacks on someone like Wilson for his minor prejudices and ill-chosen wordings looks petty and out of proportion when considering all the worse offenders in the world, just as the attacks comparing this situation to the acts of authoritarian regimes is out of proportion.

There is a nice sort of proportionality to how everything is hysterically overdone and out of proportion!

That said everything is on a sliding scale here, and the worst enforcement of orthodoxy on the mildest offenders can certainly be compared to much lesser attacks if they stem from similar impulses.

If you cannot make a comparison of this sort then the world would be a place with unconnected events and patterns, and no real way of defining or discussing how situations move from a not bad condition to a very bad one, or in the other direction.

There would never be such a thing as warning signs or worrying trends, because those things would not be relatable to absolutely awful things they might lead to.

Conversely if you were living with awful things there would be no reason to discuss how they could improve, because the improved version of life would not be comparable. How can you make legitimate and necessary criticism of actual authoritarian countries if you cannot compare bad with less bad?

I just don't see how you can make a slippery slope argument when comparing dictators with the power of massive governments to changing political youth culture. Especially when this left culture keeps losing politically and has little state power. The anti-CRT hysteria has resulted in a bunch of laws mandating changes to curriculums without input from educators, to me that's closer to the old communist dictators.

Many of the worst parts of the Cultural Revolution were driven by the Red Guards, a political youth culture group with no formal government power. I don’t think American youth are gonna start beating their teachers to death, but it’s wrong to think that only things the government does can matter.

The story of the turmoil at Evergreen college [1] a few years ago has enough similarity. Kids there cornered, berated, and essentially held hostage professors- it's pretty unbelievable.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Wny9TstEM

What I dont understand, if you have a hostage situation can the police not handle it appropriately?

Not in anarcho-tyranny world.

The last time the evergreen college protests were brought up to me, it was by a friend who had started leaning right and he mentioned something similar to what you said.

When I looked more deeply in to it, the only mentions of people being held hostage came from far right sources, such as the youtube channel you linked, with little credibility.

Watching recordings of what happened it's hard to take you seriously when you say people are being held hostage.

The president was kept in his office by students, and wasn't allowed to go pee: https://youtu.be/SS_85aSeZjI?t=45. Though he swears ignorance to this (see the clip).

The same emotions and scenes that played out under communism play out everywhere, they are depressingly human scenes. The triumph of liberalism is coming up with systems that, if followed, transcend the natural monkey-isms of humans. Things like law courts that decide based on evidence rather than common knowledge or deciding tricky questions by vote rather than by what "good people" think. And giving people freedom to do icky things and then letting the good be remembered with the bad.

It can simultaneously be true that the West is a long way from communism and that these scenes look a lot like what happened in times when communism was seriously tried. These are the same dynamics that got out of control and into the halls of power.

The comparison is very apt. My mother always says how this current climate in the US reminds her of the Cultural Revolution, and told me on many occasions about how one of her physicist friends got "struggled" against because he had the temerity to claim that the sun had black spots, and it was taken a a veiled criticism against Chairman Mao and the party. It was just a struggle session where he had to wear the dunce cap--no jail time, but I'm sure it was quite a frightful experience.

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