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Comment by ajuc | Hacker News Reader

While I don't like what Russia is doing regarding civil rights and Ukraine - accusing the people you debate of being paid to tell lies is poor form and hurts the point you're trying to make.

Especially because most people that support Putin do so not for money, but because they are Russian nationalists and consider Putin foreign policy a good idea. That's sad, and explains nicely why Russia couldn't transform into democratic country, but whatever, it doesn't mean everybody who thinks differently is paid.

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I'd hate to think anyone misread me as speaking in support of Putin for any reason. To conclude, from my explanation of why people in Russia support Putin, that I must support Putin as well, strikes me as bearing the same relationship to the more ordinary jump to a desired conclusion, as an Olympic-class pole vault does to a bunny hop; further, if it's no longer possible for the average interlocutor to recognize the difference between explaining a position and supporting one, then I can only weep for the lost art of intellectual debate.

HN is a social echo chamber [http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/28232.html]. Given it's libertarian leaning, it would be a big surprise, if it would try to objectively assess a topic that is under heavy propaganda from all sides.

Actually the HN community is politically deeply divided. Complaints about its ideological bias thus tend to contradict one another. For example, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7626420 says much the opposite.

You're right on the important thing, though. It's too much to expect HN to "objectively assess a topic that is under heavy propaganda from all sides". Objective assessment requires time, calm, reconsideration, and a high ratio of information per conclusion—plus a discourse in which people respond first to what is true in others' comments rather than to what is false in them. That bar is too high for an internet forum, or at least this one.

Whether he is paid for his propaganda work or not, or just brainwashed and honestly believing in Putin I don't know; these are equally probable options, but they have the same cause: Putin's propaganda.

Anyway, it is well known, that Russia is spamming online forums with propaganda: http://stratrisks.com/geostrat/7796 Honestly, I've seen many, many comments like that under any article criticising Putin and Kremlin, and I feel like I can recognise common traits of these comments - apart from the message there is also the weird, even though often very sophisticated language... Many people do not know what's going on, though, that's why I decided to say something, and I don't care about down-votes.

So much for intellectual debate [1], then, I suppose. Congratulations, if you like, on having genuinely astounded me; perhaps it's merely foolish naïveté on my part, but I'd never have expected anyone to conclude that I am a traitor to my country, based merely on the facts that I know a little bit about modern history and that my English is better than yours.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7630065

Welcum 2 'merika.

It's easy to assume that the problem lies with the assorted hicks, rednecks, and crackers who make up so much of this country's population.

As a Mississippi son, though, I have the good fortune to know better. After all, I doubt there are all that many hicks, rednecks, and/or crackers who participate on HN, my own humble self aside.

Have you really never previously encountered suspicions aimed at those with book larnin' and fancy talk?

Sure I have, even on HN. But, here at least, they're much more the exception than the rule, and I've never before encountered such an egregious example of the type. Even growing up in rural Mississippi, no one ever accused me of betraying my country because I talked fancy.

Yeah. Here on HN, what you see is mostly just valid skepticism of credentialism that sometimes bleeds into a backlash against all those with credentials.

True, though I don't fall foul of that myself, because I don't have any credentials for anyone to be skeptical about. I do have a tendency to indulge in rhetoric, though, and I've been pleasantly surprised on many occasions by how willing my fellow HN commenters seem to be to tolerate that deviation.

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