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Comment by dandare | Hacker News Reader

What really angers me about this - and the radical left in general - is not that it is dangerous per se. It dangerous because it gives free munition to the populists and alt-right cranks, who are dangerous per se.

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What is dangerous is if a country has radical groups in both directions , which demand allegiance from moderates. It is also interesting how class (laborer, burocrat,farmer,...) has been replaced by race or “privilege” (basically inconsequential for changes in wealth distribution) in radical-left circles. Which is why it is easy for big companies to be “woke” because it doesn’t threaten the established order, but caters to special interests. This navel gazing and self-absorption by a large fraction of young people that otherwise could protest economic inequality like the occupy-wallstreet movement did is pretty intentional I think.

I like this distinction of class and privilege you've made, I think it's interesting how they differ and how they're similar. What do you think about the argument that in a knowledge economy, a person's "privilege" which involves their education, but also a stable life and lack of stuff that distracts them from thinking clearly is more or less what gives a person their middle class status, and their "privilege" which involves connections to people with capital and ability to impress them, is crucial to making it rich?

I don't see how people think that it isn't dangerous. Ezra Klein wrote the following on Vox.

> A few years ago, it became popular on feminist Twitter to tweet about the awful effects of patriarchal culture and attach the line #KillAllMen. This became popular enough that a bunch of people I know and hang out with and even love began using it in casual conversation.

> And you know what? I didn’t like it. It made me feel defensive. It still makes me feel defensive. I’m a man, and I recoil hearing people I care about say all men should be killed.

> But I also knew that wasn’t what they were saying. They didn’t want me put to death. They didn’t want any men put to death. They didn’t hate me, and they didn’t hate men. “#KillAllMen”

Ezra admits that viscerally it didn't sit right and it took some understanding to come to the conclusion that what was being said wasn't what was actually meant.

This is the exact same argument people like Peter Thiel make, "take Trump seriously not literally".

The idea that people have to read through the lines of hyperbolic and aggressive speech and understand the intentions and history is absurd. It just seems obvious that incendiary and zero sum language is going to push people into more extreme (and authoritarian) politics.

> The idea that people have to read through the lines of hyperbolic and aggressive speech and understand the intentions and history is absurd.

The idea that they should is absurd; the idea that they will (or that they all will) is simply false. If you say "kill all men", some people (both men and women) will take you at face value. Even worse: A small minority of those why say it will genuinely mean it.

Good. Then the same applies to someone saying #KillAllWomen. We either judge everybody by the same standard, or not at all. Everything else is sexist (or racist, in the case of race, and so on).

By the way, personally I don't care about somebody saying "KillAllX" regardless of who that X is, when it's used in hyperbole. The problem is that, with some people, context gets disregarded. "KillAllMen" doesn't really mean actually killing them, but if someone said "KillAllWomen" all of twitter would be arguing that they totally definitely absolutely one hundred percent meant it literally and should be imprisoned.

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