Hacker News Reader

Comment by orthecreedence | Hacker News Reader

Whether the symbol is used by Antifa or not doesn't really matter. What matters is if people in general associate the symbol with antifa. I almost always think of two flags (a red and black flag) when I think of Antifa, or just the regular anarchist flag.

Look here: https://www.google.com/search?q=antifa+logo&tbm=isch&ved=2ah...

The google image search for "Antifa logo" does not show the inverted triangle, except in a post explaining the ad we're all talking about.

Nobody thinks of an inverted triangle when thinking about Antifa. Some people in the antifa movement may have used the symbol, but it's not associated with them enough for an ad calling them out to use it.

Why run an anti-antifa ad and use a symbol that people don't associate with antifa?

View on HN

> Why run an anti-antifa ad and use a symbol that people don't associate with antifa?

Because we are in the post-truth era, where the White House claiming this to be an antifa symbol is enough to convince the base that their president isn't literally putting Nazi imagery on his campaign ads.

Edit: Observe how there's no shortage of either true believers, or devil's advocates in this thread, that are ready to argue this point.

This is the clearest explanation as to why the lengthy argument in this thread is pointless. Common sense makes it obvious that this symbol was not chosen purely to represent antifa.

I agree. ...at the same time, an upside-down red triangle doesn't mean anything to anybody either.

...so really the logical conclusion here is that the intern that posted it is an idiot.

The notion that there is a secret KKK/Nazi message here is conspiracy theory territory.

Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

Nobody thinks of a nazi concentration camp symbol to label liberals, social democrats, and any party dissenter (this was not the one used to mark jews) either.

Which is why it was chosen. It's not obvious. It's just a red triangle.

It's not just "not obvious" - it's not used at all. ...and hasn't been since 1945. ...and even then it wasn't known except to the people in a few camps.

...so what's your hypothesis here? That he told them to use a near-nonexistent symbol as a secret message to the, maybe 5 people in the world that remembered that symbol?

Does that sound like a credible theory to you?

...or isn't it more likely that some stupid intern just fucked up?

This. I can't wait until we are rid of Trump, but this honestly just seems like somebody was ignorantly copying and pasting symbols.

Why would a campaign intentionally risk the political fallout of using Nazi imagery when that candidate is already the established favorite for white supremacists? There's enough factual shit to be disgusted about regarding Trump, we don't need to be fabricating conspiracies out of geometric primitives.

I have no opinion about what is the most likely scenario, but:

Using really far-fetched nazi symbols in campaigns seems like a smart move if you want maximum attention and for your opponents to call it out, and then most people going: "?? whats nazi about a triange??".

I learned about the Nazi triangles after seeing a pink triangle on a girl's jacket when I was in middle school decades ago. You've seriously never heard about these Nazi triangles before?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com