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Comment by freeli | Hacker News Reader

Here's a great example (and I don't mean to pick on you personally, jmyeet).

You wrote "Elon "Sieg Heil"ed twice on national TV." as if it were undisputed fact. This "fact" been repeated here to the extent that "only Nazis could have interpreted it differently" is the default.

Well, I interpreted it differently. It was an (admittedly inartful) attempt to extend his "heart" to the crowd. This is further supported by his spoken words at the time of the supposed salute: "My heart goes out to you."

Perhaps I just like to assume innocence as opposed to malevolence, but this explanation makes sense to me. Elon isn't the most effective public speaker, so it's entirely reasonable to me that he was just trying to mime what he was saying.

You're welcome to disagree, but the fact that folks here just uncritically repeat "Elon is a Nazi; he even saluted" without any pushback is another example of the symptoms I describe in my earlier comment.

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Everyone can have many explanations that make sense in their perspective. That doesn't make those explanations right per se.

Crediting someone's gesture of being only an inappropriate, forgivable mistake, or misinterpreted gesture is skipping conveniently his discourse (and actions) towards far-right groups, and the impact his discourse has on these groups (if only in Europe, where I can witness it). It didn't happen in a vacuum.

Someone with such wealth, power and extent cannot have the excuse of the doubt: they are waaaay over-equipped to know better.

I don't know Elon well enough to comment on his political views. My point was simply this: "Elon sieg-heiled showing that he's a Nazi" has become dogma around here, because nobody is engaging in constructive debate about it, because the opposing viewpoints are either not making it to the screens, or not being offered in the first place.

I don't care about Elon. I don't own or use any of his products, and I don't idolize men. I don't wish to engage in a discussion about whether Elon is a (literal or figurative) Nazi.

I care that Drew DeVault's assessment that HN has been taken over by right-wing posters does not match what I've seen here, and therefore maybe we as a community should re-evaluate the benefit of engaging in political discussion on this (technical) forum.

> My point was simply this: "Elon sieg-heiled showing that he's a Nazi" has become dogma around here, because nobody is engaging in constructive debate about it, because the opposing viewpoints are either not making it to the screens, or not being offered in the first place.

I think the subject is debated again and again each time it appears. There were tons of newspaper article debating the subject.

You say you don't know Musk and the context around him. Well, how can you know if there was constructive debate then? You basically say "I did not care to read any article discussing of Musk's ideology, but I conclude that if someone link Musk to one ideology, it's surely a superficial reaction".

(as for the need of having some political discussion when talking about technology, the fact that you admit not understanding the context around Musk shows that maybe in fact it is more needed that you think it is)

I think I understand what you're saying, but I have to disagree with parts of it.

Again, I do not wish to debate whether Musk is a nazi (literal or figurative). I don't own or use any of his products, and he is free to espouse whatever views he wants, as we all are. You are absolutely entitled to develop and hold your own opinions regarding Musk and I don't want to attempt to convince you to change them.

Where I both disagree and agree with you is your statement that "the subject is debated again and again each time it appears". This may be true in general, but my point is that here on HN, it has become a truism that Elon performed a nazi salute. My point is that you're right that other outlets present the alternative view that I mentioned above, but I'm not sure ANY substantive debate regarding this specific action ever happened here, and even if it did once, the fact that it has now been stated as fact that "Elon gave a nazi salute" at least twice so far in this thread without anyone bringing attention to the fact that others might disagree with that interpretation does not lend credence to Drew's assessment that HN has been overrun with right-wing bias.

> but my point is that here on HN, it has become a truism that Elon performed a nazi salute.

I don't think it's a correct formulation. The idea that this gesture was not a mistake is just the consensus. Here or everywhere else. Of course, "official" entities (like companies or official instance) will not openly take a position because it can hurt them. But it is just "politically correct" to avoid being clear on the subject, while the large majority, unofficially, know what happened.

Strangely, you seems to both saying that "political discussions should not happen here" and saying "people have political discussions and build their opinion also outside of HN, so if they present their opinion without redoing here the whole discussion, it is not valid". If people had discussions elsewhere and reached a conclusion, the fact that they share a consensus here does not mean that this consensus is a dogma.

In Elon's case who he funds is very revealing. The main anti-immigration party in the UK turned down his money because it came with the condition that they allow extremists to join. He now funds and supports those outright racists.

Ask Brittons, and Germans, about Elon interference

Supporting far right parties, stone cold racists and bigots. Spreading lies frankly and openly, doing his best to undermine the democracies

He does not live there, has no right to be involved in their politics. Interfering for sadistic fun, it seems

The damage he did (in a ketamine haze it seems) to federal programmes with such astounding carelessness...

It is no wonder that he has such a negative following. He is a genuinely bad person, and being so rich, powerful and hungtry for more he is news worthy

Observe the force and facial expression. This was not a pleasant "my heart goes out to you", this was clearly a very agressive salute, even more agressive than how most real nazi's would do it.

So no, the gesture was pretty clear.

You know what people do when they make a comment or gesture that is widely seen as something horrible, even if it’s a misinterpretation?

They apologize.

And you know when someone deserves the benefit of charitable interpretation?

When they don’t spend their vast influence and wealth to very publicly and globally promote the abhorrent ideology symbolized by that “misinterpreted” gesture.

HN is nothing if not contrarian, which can lead to interesting discussions, but ehhh… this is not the thing to be contrarian about, especially given all the overwhelming evidence out there.

If it was the only thing Elon did, maybe. But there are plenty of examples of nazi and white supremacist dog whistles from his twitter posts.

> Well, I interpreted it differently.

Congratulations, you have political opinions. Despite your claims elsewhere, you’re not “politically neutral.” Nor do you believe, in practice, that political opinions do not belong on HN.

> Congratulations, you have political opinions. Despite your claims elsewhere,

Your underlying point is correct of course, but can you please make your substantive points without snark, and avoid the flamewar style? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

@dang - "Your underlying point is correct, of course". Could you please explain which statement of sheafification's, specifically, is correct (besides the fact that I have political opinions, which I do not believe is mutually exclusive with being politically neutral)?

Yes, happy to - but I'll be offline for most of the next hour, so it might have to be later.

I should mention though that I wasn't making a point about your comment (which I haven't really read) and certainly not about you personally. Rather, it's a general observation that has come up many times over the years.

With respect (especially for the work you do here), this isn't ok.

sheafification's reply was specifically to me and specifically personal. (Every sentence was directed at me - not something that I wrote.) There was no "general observation" that I can see in his reply. For the record, here is his reply in its entirety:

> Congratulations, you have political opinions. Despite your claims elsewhere, you’re not “politically neutral.” Nor do you believe, in practice, that political opinions do not belong on HN.

Where is the "general observation that has come up many times over the years"? What part of this response read as "correct" to you, and why?

From my reading, it was an ad hominem generalization based on a flawed understanding of my previous post designed to dismiss my opinions based on some perceived contradiction. What about this is "correct"?

I agree that that language was too personal. That's one reason why I asked the commenter not to post like that in the future.

The underlying point, as I understand it, is that it's not possible to be "politically neutral" or "apolitical" because what counts as "political" is itself politically contested. This is an argument that people often make in discussions like this—it has come up countless times over the years—so I was pattern-matching in interpreting the GP comment that way.

FWIW, although I happen to agree with that claim in general, I disagree with the consequences people usually try to derive from it (for example, that it is necessary to choose a single political position from which to moderate a site like this one).

None of that is pertinent to the moderation issue, though, which is that if people are going to make points like this in HN threads, they need to do it without snark, personal attack, or other flamewar devices. My moderation reply was about that, not "is it possible to be politically neutral or not"—it would be the same regardless of topic. I just prefaced it in this case with "your underlying point is correct of course" because (1) I like to say something to connect with the person I'm replying to, if I can*; and (2) it makes the "you're only moderating this because you disagree with my opinion" objection a tad less likely.

(* which equally includes you, of course!)

@dang - thank you for the explanation. I can see how you might read this into the post, but I think it's a real stretch to derive that conclusion from three sentences that ascribe motivation and belief to me personally. You have more experience with this than I do, so I'll respect your conclusion.

Thanks for flagging the personal attack.

An interesting aspect is that not only the far-left is thinking it was a nazi salute, the far-right too, welcoming it and seeing it as Musk supporting them.

For me, the gesture is already quite suspicious (People have tried to cherry-pick similar gestures from other people, but they don't come close. The way the hand is flat at the end does not seem something that come "naturally" or "by accident", as it does not occur in others). But the reaction to the controversy is even more suspicious.

As I've said, far-right people were saying it was a nazi salute, and Musk never deny that to them. He criticized "far-left", or even instrumentalized it to attack people he does not like (for example, he attacked Wikipedia for just saying "some people compared the gesture to a nazi salute", which, according to him, is the proof that Wikipedia is part of the far-left conspiracy). He may have publicly said it was not a nazi salute, but it is clear that it is not enough to convince his far-right supporters it was not one.

So, yes, I think that "he has made a nazi salute" should be the default hypothesis. The data fits wayyyy better with this hypothesis than the one where it was an accident. No need to pretend that this hypothesis is favorised because of a conspiracy of biased people against Musk.

(Personally, I think that Musk did this gesture on purpose, in order to troll, trying to "trigger the woke". Does it make of him a Nazi? Well, some people supported the Nazi party because they were intrinsically "nazi" inside (whatever that means, probably something different for every single nazi). Some people supported the Nazi party just to troll their neighbour. They all ended up guilty of nazism all the same. So, while it can be an interesting nuance, it does not matter: if you are happy to play with the nazis, you are as toxic for humanity as them.)

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