Comment by dcow | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dcow | Hacker News Reader

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You are right. My apologies if I implied this only happens on "the left". There's a lot of context in this thread so I didn't feel the need to caveat.

However, "social lynching" is not an absurd term. While everyone has a right to express their opinion and face the consequences thereof, social lynching occurs when people mob together and demand, pressure, or otherwise effectively execute physical consequences for a utterance of speech that is otherwise entirely legal and often totally unrelated to the consequences. Losing your job because a group of people found out you donated to a conservative social/political group is an example of social lynching (in this context). No, they didn't kill the person, but there is a real impact on that person's lively hood and it can often mean the death of a career. I agree that speech is not consequence free, let the assholes be shamed, but when we start to cross realms and impact people's jobs, families, lively hoods, for simply holding other opinions, something else is happening. We're beyond the realm of speech and have entered the wold of actions.

I still think this term is ridiculous.

You still haven't given any indication that you underand the weight of the term "lynching". If you'd like to, maybe start with this slim book, which I found sobering: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0933121180

The only example I can think of where someone lost their job due to a donation was Brendan Eich, whose political cause was changing the constitution to strip a civil right from LGBT people. You are worried about the effect on his family, but he was literally trying to harm hundreds of thousands of LGBT families, and the LGBT families at Mozilla were very reasonably afraid of more direct harm.) Why are you concerned about only one kind of family?

(And I'll note that if his career has been harmed, it's hard to measure. He's the CEO of a company with $42m in funding, which doesn't sound like death to me.)

Your taxonomy is also suspicious. The problem is not people having opinions; it's them acting upon them. And make no mistake, political speech is action. The whole point of it is to change society. That's why we protect it so fiercely under law: its enormous power to shape democracy for the better.

More than that, your dudgeon here is anti-freedom. If people don't want to work with Eich, who are you to tell them that they have to? He gets his freedom of speech; they get their freedom of association. If you don't like that, you get to exercise your rights to speech and association.

Of course, if you really wanted to pursue that, you'd have to end at-will employment. It would be an interesting world where nobody would be fired for a political opinion. But it would require absolutely massive government intervention in employment, so I doubt you'd find many conservative backers.

> I still think this term is ridiculous

I'm trying to think of a better term. The point is the concept. And in my defense the Wikipedia definition aligns with my usage of the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching.

> The only example I can think of where someone lost their job due to a donation was Brendan Eich

Yeah that was just an example. Another similar scenario I can think of off the top of my head: the president of the University of Missouri was coerced into resigning because he said something that equated to, "I don't believe in institutional racism".

I'm not trying to paint doom and gloom or anything I was responding with the counter argument to, "intolerance wants a voice", which is (naturally by now), "only an intolerant person would condone silencing in the first place".

The Wikipedia bit is uncited and does not agree with any of the first 5 dictionaries I looked at. And it's definitely now how it's used in the US. E.g., the book I pointed you to is not about extrajudicial parking tickets or something. It's about violent racist murder.

Your telling of the Missouri thing is highly suspect. He openly admits he made a series of mistakes in handling racism on campus and related student and faculty protests. His bosses wanted him out.

I can't find him saying anything equivalent to what you said; indeed, he clearly said the opposite. But if he did say and believe that, that's clearly grounds for dismissal, just the same as if he said he didn't believe in evolution or global warming. Institutional racism is a a well-established, well-documented phenomenon. A person denying basic facts about institutions in America can reasonably be seen as not qualified to lead an institution in America. Especially one in a state with huge racism-related problems.

Words mean exactly what they're intended to mean. Nothing more. I clearly don't mean violent extrajudicial murder so telling me that's a bad term because it has been used in the US to describe incidents of violent extrajudicial racist murder is exactly the type of thought policing that makes zero logical sense especially in a global forum. There's an argument for avoiding such a term out of respect/sensitivity for people personally affected by some piece of language in order to prevent triggering emotional responses, but that's not the argument you're making. And I'm sorry if that is how the term affected you.

> “Wolfe verbally acknowledged that he cared for Black students at the University of Missouri, however he also reported he was ‘not completely’ aware of systemic racism, sexism, and patriarchy on campus,” a statement from the group read.

After which Wolfe appologized but people wouldn't have it. It's the mob mentality that I don't like. Once he said that there was nothing he could do to save his job even though he met most all of the demands laid before him. At that point it became about making a statement not about humans learning to tolerate each other. It's intolerance at its finest. All the politicians asking for his removal were just being political..

CEO of Papa John's is another example. And this all started with chick-fil-a's COO.

I would suggest trying to use a different term than "social lynching". It is a hyperbolic word that describes actions that are quite out of proportion with what might be called "actual lynching". Loss of a specific, typically rarified, job is far less consequential than death.

Using that term is going ensure that a large portion of the population disregards your argument out of disgust (at the co-opting of a historically powerful word for political points). Use it if you like, but you should expect that it will lose you debates if you do. There is probably a different term you could come up with that would be better received.

I hear you. What would you suggest instead?

That's a fair question. After a bit of thought the best I could come up with are, depending on situation:

driven to professional exile

ridden out on a [digital] rail

digital skimmington

pilloried

[digitally/professionally] tarred and feathered

How about simply "fired" or maybe for cases that go beyond being excluded from a single job "blacklisted". Those examples are all very hyperbolic, albeit less so than "lynched".

Yeah, I think direct description of the actual events is the way to go. Especially when so often the actual event is something like, "felt uncomfortable after receiving public criticism".

Enough with the snark. I am actually trying to listen to recommendations for better terms and you're deliberately not helping which is really making it hard for me to extend empathy here. (HN is generally a place for constructive intellectual commentary not petty frustrated juvenile crap.) I am not talking about people simply feeling uncomfortable. That should be abundantly clear by now.

Or, we can chalk this one up to you misinterpreting the scope of events to which my initial comment refers...

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