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Comment by Mickelby | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

Go read the complaint[0]. The total nexus is (1) he spoke to a jailed suspect on the phone and (2) moved a box of zines from his parent's house to an apartment.

[0]: https://www.nlg.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Fed-Complaint...

"Terrorist-related crime"? I mean, wouldn't the entire US air force be guilty of "terrorist-related crimes" for recently bombing a school full of children in Iran? Yet you don't see them being charged. Courts and the term "terrorist" are tools applied by the powerful to those without power in society.

I understand your frustration, you're trying to redefine the word "terrorist" on a website that deals with fact-based tech news.

I'm not trying to redefine the word for everyone, I'm speaking to you, I'm trying to get you to be more critical of your own personal usage of the word. When you adopt/parrot someone's claim about terrorism, that is not a neutral territory, and certainly isn't "fact-based". Especially if your other claims/deductions are downstream of the word "terrorism". It is almost always used as a propaganda term, commonly to justify horrific things, clearly it's been effective on you as well. There's a good book that spends a huge amount of time dissecting the use of the word terrorism you should check out: "Manufacturing Consent".

Besides I don't think you can neatly cleave the world, or this website, or the news, into "facts" and "emotions" as you seem to think.

First, there's no "terrorist organization". Antifa doesn't exist as an organization.

Second, the zines cannot be evidence of the crimes committed, i.e. setting off fireworks, and injuring an officer.

These are your emotional-based feelings. The facts are that the DOJ has a different terrorist definition, and that the legal concept of "conspiracy" exists. On Reddit/4chan-type websites, emotional opinions get the most upvotes. On fact-based websites they don't.

It's kind of fact-based that "antifa" is not an organization in the real world.

It's as real as claiming that "pro-gun" is an organization, or "anti-pollution" is an organization.

The zines are only evidence of Rueda's political opinions, not of intent to carry out a crime.

Question: Do you take everything Trump declares as the absolute truth?

If Trump designates Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to be a terrorist organization tomorrow, do you believe their church members to be terrorists?

This is a fundamental question, because at the very core of the case, these protesters have been labeled terrorists belonging to a "Antifa cell", aka. terrorist cell.

Do you believe that a anti-ICE protester transporting scream rockets is equivalent to a ISIS member transporting pipe bombs?

It is very much possible to have opinions, without basing your opinions on feelings. If Trump tomorrow declares that the sky is golden metallic, and that all humans can fly, disagreeing isn't opposing facts just because Trump has declared those as the new facts.

Why would you think I was a Trumper just because I'm complaining about the clownish framing of the "jailed for moving zines" story? I'm European so you can guess my opinion of Trump. It's possible to be against both far-left (Reddit-brained) and far-right (MAGA) populism.

> tampering with evidence in a terrorist-related crime that involved an officer shooting.

Talk about an "emotional-based framing" meant to "radicalize the less-literate" ! For starters, terrorists attack civilians rather than de facto militaries. These are like the opposite of terrorists, however misguided we might think they are.

Regardless of framing, the core argument here is that the contents of political publications (ie protected speech) are not appropriately evidence in a criminal proceeding, therefore attempting to hide them is not tampering with evidence. Anybody who believes in the first amendment to the US Constitution should be receptive to this argument.

Shooting a policeman is the "opposite of terrorists"? Nobody is going to agree with you on that, except Reddit-type people.

Shooting a policeman in defence of innocent others said policeman was about to shoot.

I thought the second amendment was all about stopping the bad guy with the gun?

Again, I don't understand who you guys are trying to convince here? You're justifying the shooting of a policeman by a group being charged as a terrorist organization. Who on Hacker News is going to agree with you, except those on the extreme-left fring of politics?

Hacker News is a rational fact-based website. There are lots of other populist websites where people react more emotionally to things. Surely you'd have more success posting this on Reddit or TikTok?

>being charged as a terrorist oganization

Such charges are outright nonsense, for one thing. And I think that's relevant since it's the only possible jutification for the utter forfeiture of rights.

That's a valid complaint, and I'd understand if that was the thrust of the conversation. But the story is that someone was jailed for "moving zines", which is obvious nonsense. You can argue your other points while still being honest about the facts of the case. Otherwise you look like a populist trying to appeal to emotionally-vulnerable people.

You started off bemoaning "emotional-based framing" and "populism", but now you don't want to accept that a word has a specific meaning beyond its popular emotional usage? Perhaps try being consistent.

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