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Comment by akarma | Hacker News Reader

Prefacing this by saying I disagree with the protest:

> "I did not know that, as a Jew, it would be so polarizing to say this word,"

Saying this word when referring to a large protest of Americans for a cause you disagree with in your work Slack channel? Statistically, it's likely that several people in the channel either agreed with the protest, or at the least, have relatives who did. You essentially just called coworkers and their families Nazis.

> In his final Slack message to coworkers, the employee said that his experience shows that the tech industry, and GitHub in particular, needs to be held more accountable for improving diversity and inclusion at the leadership level.

I'm fairly sure that GitHub's own CEO is Jewish, and would see this employee's perspective perfectly well. I don't think this is an accountability issue so much as a social-cues-in-the-workplace issue.

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I am honestly so tired of this hand wringing over calling things what they are.

It's going to be uncomfortable but this isn't as simple as pro-life and pro-choice. This is about the very nature of our country and a party wanting to throw it all out.

If you are uncomfortable with an employee saying the truth (Many seditionists wore Nazi / white supremacist apparel and were carrying Confederate flags!), you should examine your own beliefs and whether you are either a white supremacist or a sympathizer.

This isn't about being "alarmist" or a "snowflake liberal", this about saying what we _literally_ see. That's a Nazi flag, that's a Nazi; "those are Nazis". Pretending like we all need to hold hands and coddle _literal Nazis' feelings_ is absurdist and socially + morally wrong.

If you are uncomfortable with, again, LITERAL Neo-Nazis and white supremacists being called what they are, you should be the one getting fired.

> This about the very nature of our country and a party wanting to throw it all out.

I agree, and I'm firmly in the camp that the election must be respected, and that it would be the death of America as we know it to overturn an election like this.

> If you are uncomfortable with an employee saying the truth

Did you read the article and the phrasing of his comment? This appeared to be during the initial peaceful protest; they were not all Nazis, and I doubt that even 0.1% of them were. Read the room, it's a workplace!

I would have no problem with seeing his take on Twitter, but the workplace? I equally don't expect someone to be able to go around my work's Slack saying "watch out for the Black nationalists" and "watch out for the violent Bolshevik Commies" because they saw a raised fist and a hammer-and-sickle in the crowd at a Black Lives Matter protest.

>This appeared to be during the initial peaceful protest; they were not all Nazis, and I doubt that even 0.1% of them were. Read the room.

If I show up at a protest and someone is carrying a Confederate flag, I am leaving. Full stop. No more excuses, no more "but some are good people!".

If you are hanging with Neo-Confederates in political spaces, you are at best a sympathizer and at worst a silent Neo-Confederate.

If I see a neo-Confederate at a political rally toting a Confederate flag and I am in that group, I am going straight home and evaluating my opinions.

If you march alongside a nazi, you are one. If you support a nazi, you are one. If you support a president who separates children from their parents and puts them in prison camps you are one. If, for all that, you are willing to steal an election and terrorize your elected officials, build gallows outside the building and enter if with plastic handcuffs, you most definitely are one.

I won't go through all the effort of sourcing as this is easily searchable, but:

> If you support a president who separates children from their parents

Obama's Homeland Security secretary, Johnson, confirmed with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly that this predates the Trump administration.

> terrorize your elected officials

AOC has said that the whole point of protesting is to "make people uncomfortable." A professor at Wellesley wrote an article in Slate that "Violence can be an important tool in protests." The destruction of government buildings has certainly occurred in recent protests, there are dozens of instances of this.

> build gallows outside the building

Even the irony in this! Black Lives Matter protestors built a guillotine in front of Jeff Bezos' DC home.

I support Black Lives Matter to be clear, but obviously this whole "Nazi by association" schtick leads to the conclusion that we would all, in fact, be Nazis.

> Obama's Homeland Security secretary, Johnson, confirmed with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly that this predates the Trump administration.

Do you have numbers on how many children were separated from their parents? How many parents were repatriated without their children? How many kids died in custody and of how many they lost track of?

> Black Lives Matter protestors built a guillotine in front of Jeff Bezos' DC home.

Did they also invade Bezos' home with the intention to drag him out?

> obviously this whole "Nazi by association" schtick leads to the conclusion that we would all, in fact, be Nazis.

When you think about that, do you feel comfortable at endorsing the policies that caused kids to be permanently separated from their parents? Kids that died without the comfort of being with their families?

HRW did a report on that https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/02/28/freezer/abusive-condit...

You seem to be implying almost all Americans are Nazis. Most Americans supported Obama or Trump. Both separated children from their parents and out then in prison camps.

It's troubling, but if someone supports a person like him, with all we know now, with parents that were deported without their kids (after doing everything according to international treaties and norms - first enter, then ask for asylum), kids they lost track of and can no longer reconnect with parents, people who died in their custody, the callous inaction in front of a pandemic... With all that, if someone still supports the president, I'll question their character, fiscal policies and tax breaks be damned.

I face a similar issue in my own home country of origin: 58 million people voted for a corrupt ex-military drop out, racist, homophobic, and incompetent beyond belief who's trying to bypass all democratic processes and take over local police forces which overwhelmingly support him. I can't have those 58 million fellow Brazilians in high regard. Even if you say the previous government was corrupt, corruption is much less serious than letting 200 thousand people die while sabotaging emergency healthcare measures so that your possible political opponents in the next presidential election don't get credit.

The best guess on Wikipedia for attendance at the protest seems to be around 30,000. An upper bound of 0.1% is 30 people.

In addition to the literal neo-Nazis in attendance, there were also plenty of groups — such as Proud Boys — that may not be technically neo-Nazis themselves, but are definitely Nazi adjacent; I don't think it's a particular stretch to put them under the Nazi umbrella.

Given all that, 30 seems like a real lowball.

So, I absolutely do not believe we should go making a "Nazi umbrella" and throwing every anti-socialist, western chauvinist, Republican, etc. into it.

With that said, I agree 30 may seem like a lowball and it possibly is, but I've seen so many cases of people who went to the initial protest being doxed, and it's been some random kind woman from the Bay Area, some random woman who works at a hospital in Massachusetts, and so on. They very much just appear to be regular people brainwashed by Trump and his cronies.

Yes, the word is overused, and I wouldn't apply it to every Republican, anti-socialist, etc. But on the other hand — if Proud Boys say they’re not Nazis, but keep showing up alongside Atomwaffen and Identity Evropa, and some of their members wear 6MWE shirts [1]… at some point, we just have to be like "okay, these people are Nazis."

Because it's a sliding scale, right? And just because there's no single objective line doesn't mean that we have to give up drawing a line entirely.

I'm not giving an opinion on doxxing random people at the protest who weren't involved in the terrorist attack. I'm just saying that it's fair to see the crowd that showed up and say "stay safe homies, Nazis are about." It turned out to be prescient.

[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/proud-boy-6mwe/

I work at GitHub: the comment was made after the Capitol had been breached.

> Did you read the article and the phrasing of his comment? This appeared to be during the initial peaceful protest;

Article:

> he sent the original message because he wanted to warn people to be careful: *The mob rampaging* through the US Capitol

I mean, there were literal Nazis there. Several people were wearing "6 million was not enough" and "Camp Auschwitz Staff" shirts.

At a certain point, you have to be utterly delusional to not admit that there are at least some Nazis out and about.

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