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Comment by guerrilla | Hacker News Reader

The thing is, that's not the problem. The problem is that people don't know these basic facts about the periods under consideration. Words change their meanings and 'vikings' is now just a vague term for all of it and that's not something to waste your time fighting. The real problem is people thinking they know something about vikings when they don't even know this basic introductory material. They don't even know there's anything to know. A big part of the creation of that situation is movies and TV which pretty much only focus on pirates but the whole thing from the migration period to Christianized Scandinavia is pretty interesting. It seems like something schools could glaze over, so that people at least get an idea that there's something more going on than what's in popular media.

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Are either of these things actually a problem? Regular people have probably always been misinformed about everything, does it matter at all?

He mentioned one of the practical problems in the article, that the current mode of romanticism has been used as a justificatory foundation for fascists.

> This is insidious; by linking military prowess and savagery to an entire ethnic group, it encourages its appropriation by racial supremacists.

I think in general though that any amount propagating misinformation is bad and can have all kinds of minor unforeseen consequences that can add up.

On the idea that 'wild men' are superior fighters, and that hard times breed strong men, strong men make good times, good times breed weak men, and weak men make hard times. There is a nice (but long) series of blogposts: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...

It brings up how many times this idea was brought forth by people frustrated by the limitations of civilization, who wished to convince their peers they would be better off as a wilder people.

People are being morons is a fully general justification for censorship because people are always either deeply misinformed about something, hence moronic, or doing something someone thinks is stupid, hence moronic.

> I think in general though that any amount propagating misinformation is bad and can have all kinds of minor unforeseen consequences that can add up.

Yes, other people agree with you that there are bad people out there with bad opinions who should be stopped. They just disagree on who the bad people are, and what the bad opinions are.

Some people think Drag Queen Story Hour is great. Others think that all guns should be banned. Some think that teaching first graders about gender identities is wonderful, others that denigrating religion is wrong.

Misinformation is an excuse for censorship and people aren’t dumb enough to fall for it for long.

You seem very lost. I said nothing about censorship.

> the current mode of romanticism has been used as a justificatory foundation for fascists.

Any examples? Sounds to me like a lot of hand waving and rhetoric.

Sorry, I thought it was common knowledge since the 90's [1] and kind of obvious being that they often use the valknut, Thor's hammer and Tyr's rune for their logos. There's nothing hand-wavy about it though. It's huge in current fascist movements, you won't have to look too hard.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathenry_(new_religious_movem...

> Regular people have probably always been misinformed about everything ...

So others are responsible for what you know? Surely it's the individual's responsibility not to be ignorant?

Yes, liars are responsible for lying. And this is why we have school as well.

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