Prisoners Strike in Georgia (2010)

mobile.nytimes.com

28 points·mempko··3 comments

This is a totally off-topic post, from 2010, submitted from an account with an ideological agenda (a comment history dominated for months with anti-capitalist comments) in response to a top-of-the-front-page story about Soviet slave labor on which they also added a derailing comment comparing Polish slave labor to modern US prisons.

Being anti-capitalist is of course totally fine and this person is a bona fide contributor in lots of other ways, but throwing off-topic ideological grenades onto the HN front page is not totally fine. Flagged.

I submitted this as a response to a comment and certainly didn't expect it to go into the front page. Glad it got the up-votes it did though.

In response to ideology. Are you implying HN is supposed to be ideology free? Hacker News is a place created by a VC firm. This is already a place with deep ideology of pro-capitalism. As an anti-capitalist I can't help but have my own opinions and interests be colored by my beliefs. Just as you can't help to have yours colored too.

For example, what does capitalism have to do with the US prison system, and why would I as an anti-capitalist be against prison systems?

I am not at all implying that commenters on HN must avoid having ideologies. There is nothing at all wrong with being opposed to capitalism; many productive HN commenters are.

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