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Comment by zaksoup | Hacker News Reader

I want to say: I don't talk as casually as this in a work channel, though I do sometimes discuss politics and current events. That's not because I don't think it's professional, but rather because I'm jewish and what happened to this employee feels like a very present threat.

It is a well-documented fact that neo-nazi hate groups were a significant presence in the riot and preceding "protest" at the capital. Stating that fact ultimately lead to a nazi-apologist coworker denying it, and then the jewish employee being fired.

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> Stating that fact ultimately lead to a nazi-apologist coworker denying it

Where?

From the article:

>The current conflict began the day of the riots in Washington, DC when a Jewish employee told co-workers: “stay safe homies, nazis are about.” Some colleagues took offense to the language, although neo-Nazi organizations were, in fact, present at the riots. One engineer responded: “This is untasteful conduct for workplace [in my opinion], people have the right to protest period.”

Ctrl-F for that to see the screenshot with the full context.

How is that denying there are Nazis?

If you read the full sentence in the article, you will note that it continues by saying that the label is "slandering." Something has to be untrue for it to be slander. Therefore, by saying that labeling people in the crowd as Nazis is slander, it denies that there were Nazis in the crowd.

That employee is taking the position that "there are" is equal to "all those people are", the same flawed logic is being used as a premise by a lot of commenters here.

It's so blatently wrong that it's hard to assume good faith.

Now that you pointed it out I see what you mean, but I wouldn’t call it blatantly wrong. To me the statement honestly read like it’s lumping all protesters together, or at least it’s certainly not making an obvious attempt to differentiate.

> ... or at least it’s certainly not making an obvious attempt to differentiate.

It does not need to.

Yelling "Fire!" in a cinema hall does not need to be accompanied by precise instructions as to where said fire is burning. It's a warning, not a debate.

Something has to be defamatory and expressed orally for it to be slander. Apparently, all the labeling should have been around libel.

I am having trouble adjusting to a reality in which I am the first to express this quibble.

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/libel-vs-slander-dif...

That's really an irrelevant piece of nitpicking, especially given the context being that someone was fired for calling neo-Nazis, Nazis.

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