Comment by simonebrunozzi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonebrunozzi | Hacker News Reader

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What worries me most is that this guy is supposed to be the inspirational leader of many startup founders and technologists, in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.

Reading this made me really sad.

It's actually hard for me to conjure the strength to write and share an appropriate response, and explain why.

Let me just mention one of many thoughts. Mark Andreessen cites a number of Patron Saints of Techno-Optimism, "In lieu of detailed endnotes and citations, read the work of these people, and you too will become a Techno-Optimist."

One of them is Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.

This is what FTM writes in his Manifesto of Futurism [0]. (original Italian first, then English translation).

""Noi vogliamo glorificare la guerra - sola igiene del mondo - il militarismo, il patriottismo, il gesto distruttore dei liberatori, le belle idee per cui si muore e il disprezzo della donna."

"We will glorify war - the only true hygiene of the world - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of anarchist, the beautiful ideas which kill, and the scorn of woman"

In 2023, reading about the "glory of war", and the "scorn of woman", should be enough to know what's needed to judge this guy.

Mark, you are really smart and successful and most people would envy your fame and wealth and intelligence, but you need to grow up for once and realize how sick some of your ideas are.

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

The idea of someone unironicly promoting Marinetti (a co-author of the Fascist Manifesto) in 2023 is mind-blowing. I get the idea of wanting to be optimistic about technology, but Marinetti is a cautionary tale of how optimism about technology can morph into disdain for humanity. He’s an anti-role model, the thing we need to be careful not to become.

This is where the Overton window is shifting.

See the deafening silence of the media on Nazis in Ukraine, and the recent mind-blowing case of the heads of state of Canada, Ukraine, and the entire Canadian parliament giving a standing ovation to a literal SS officer, which has triggered discussions (even here on HN) in the vein of “actually some Nazis were good guys”, which would also be unthinkable just a few years ago.

I think the Canada thing was an honest oversight. The party in power isn’t even a right wing party. Pretty centrist. They don’t have any motivation to shift the overton window in the “maybe we’re okay with Nazis now?” direction.

I know what you mean but I think there is more context that enables such an oversight to happen.

It feels like a product of the "we have always been at war with Russia" political fluidity when the applause was triggered by claims of fighting Russia in 1940. Today we funnel guns to units wearing SS unit patches with no scandal. There is no international effort for peace. There is no widely held principle that we must turn enemies into allies. Instead there is glee at every Russian death and disinterest, unless useful, in every Ukrainian death. To be anti-war gets you treated as a crank. It makes me feel sick.

One can hope that every single one of the 200+ highly educated members of the elite ruling class of Canada made this “honest oversight”. At least they can claim it after some kind of apologies were made. Not so much for Zelensky who didn’t mention this incident at all, since honoring Nazis is business-as-usual in Ukraine.

Still, I can see how it can benefit the Canadian party too, because the original electorate would either not notice this or accept the apology and forget about it, thus not impacting the status quo, but now they also get the neo-Nazi vote after this wink and nod.

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