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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

There a lot of people who rail against fascism in a hateful way and if you replaced the word fascism with something else other people would say “that person talks like a fascist”. Like they are jealous or something.

I see DHH as being stuck in one of those finger traps, he’s engaged with a bunch of people who have to have the last word and as such they’ve taken over his life and he is going to go from forced errors to unforced errors. Not least concepts such as ‘free speech’, debate and such are problematic in the age of disinformation, polarization, spam, industrial-scale scams, Russian trolls, etc.

His best bet is to pretend those people aren’t there and focus on positivity and what will happen is his opponents won’t know what to do and surrogates will turn up to give those people the smack down. The harder he fights personally though the deeper hole he digs for himself and he doesn’t get it.

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If I want to say fascism I say fascism, and I didn't. Pretending bullies don't exist os not only hypocritical, but it doesn't work. He will dig his hole but he is bringing so many people in because "oh, he is a winner". Instead, showing people that his discourse makes no sense, that works in showing people who care that they are not alone.

There is plenty of pernicious discourse to go around. I think some people take on marginalized identities (there are some you aren’t born into but can self-attest) for the sense of purpose, meaning and community it gives. Someone who is neurodivergent, weird and awkward has certain problems but by adding a fashionable identity to the mix they can find meaning attacking people like DHH gives their life meaning and then get attacked by clinically crazy marginal people who like Trump at the community center and feel vindicated in their world view.

This is a “meme” which ultimately spreads or doesn’t spread and I’d argue that’s the right frame to discuss it as opposed to frames that attribute some meaning to the words or try to situate them in one cause or another, especially any sort of unicause of the left or the right. It is not violent but it causes harm to the host the same way a DNA or RNA virus does. DHH is caught up in it because he doean’t understand that it is pointless to treat this as a ‘discussion’ or a ‘debate’ or communication in the conventional sense.

The people who are fighting with him are not doing anything to make workplaces better, that kind of slacktivism tends to create an equal and opposite backlash and creates a set of people who will oppose what they are doing and precludes any kind of activism, discussion or debate that would make things better. But it’s self-reinforcing the same way a dog will keep barking because it feels good to bark.

I don't know who you are talking to. Certainly not to me. I don't know why you have any advantage in victimising poor millionaire DHH.

> There a lot of people who rail against fascism in a hateful way and if you replaced the word fascism with something else other people would say “that person talks like a fascist”.

If you change the words in someone's sentence, the sentence changes it's meaning. Nothing is new there. Regardless, to your point I would like to bring up the paradox of tolerance[1]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

In European countries that criminalize hate speech, changing the targeted group doesn't make it less illegal. Left-wing extremists attacking right-wing extremists are most definitely prosecuted. Turns out that not tolerating the intolerant doesn't mean you have to get violent.

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