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Comment by inferniac | Hacker News Reader

>voting for policy positions that obviously work against those voters' own interests

Delusions of grandeur / superiority complex much? Have you considered a posibility, that these voters just dont agree with your idea of what their best interests are?

>fictional terrorist organization called "antifa."

An organization so fictional, that just a few months back multiple members were convicted in a terrorist attack

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyedgnyn4mo

Antifa defenders just hide behind the fact that the movement is decentralized and leaderless by design, but that doesn't make it fictional.

They are obviously a terrorist organization and it is good to go after their financing and communication channels.

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> ” They are obviously a terrorist organization”

“Organization” is a stretch. Criminals? Sure. Violent thugs? Maybe.

The “terrorist” word, however, has been stretched and distorted for political ends. It seems like any crime motivated by political or religious ideology is now “terrorism”, and thus subject to much harsher punishment than those same crimes would normally receive.

By this definition, the Jan 6 rioters were terrorists - yet they received pardons.

The UK's position on Palestine Action is the poster child for this. Completely harmless old people holding placards have been prosecuted under terrorism legislation passed after 9/11. "Terrorist" has become a label applied to anyone opposing any government policy.

We need to roll back all those counter-terrorist laws in every Anglosphere country.

It's astoundingly trivial to abuse.

If people could imagine it being used against them, maybe they might understand. Like labeling the Republican party a terrorist organization because they sponsored Jan 6 insurrectionists.

"Terrorist" is just this century's n-word. Racists in Congress couldn't use the n-word so openly any more, so they invented a new word - same effect.

> Antifa defenders just hide behind the fact that the movement is decentralized and leaderless by design

Calling a movement an organization is a fiction, unless you live in an alternate reality. Should i consider you part of an organization because you tweeted a certain hashtag once? Are you the member of a band because you whistled a song on the subway? Are you in the military because you watched a Rambo movie when you were a teen?

Any was there any proof of them being members of anything beyond that group of about ten people? That article sure doesn't claim it.

If a movement has no leaders at all then it's not an organization.

For a group who's so bloody-minded about "words have meanings" about certain things, this whole "movement and affiliation and organization are all obviously exactly the same thing" claim is blatantly ridiculous.

When Republicans in the US communicate and sometimes coordinate with totalitarian international leaders, does it mean we get to label the whole thing as a single "international totalitarian organization"?

> Have you considered a posibility, that these voters just dont agree with your idea of what their best interests are?

I mean, there's not really room for debate on it. Voting to take your money away from you and give it to people who already have more money than they could spend in a lifetime is obviously against your interests. But that's what Republican policy does. That's why they have to make increasingly outlandish fictions and fund whole media empires to sell those fictions: to convince people to keep voting against themselves. Between either a billionaire, or the guy down the street making burritos for $8 an hour, it's obvious which one took all of your money. It's the guy with the money. The increasingly elaborate alternate reality exists to hide this from their voters, so they can keep raiding us.

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