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Comment by common_crow | Hacker News Reader

Promoting universal healthcare and proportional taxes isn't dangerous at all. Neither is promoting freedom of speech and healthy laws for small businesses.

It get dangerous when either side decides that anything standing in the way (in their opinion) of these ideals are "other", and that the "others" are so evil they are simply inhuman, and must be quashed by all means necessary.

This pattern repeats in history many, many times. And lots of people are nervous that the beginning of that pattern is starting to play out in the modern West.

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> It get dangerous

True. Remember all the lynchings of white people in the South by the BBB, for offenses sometimes as minor as drinking from the wrong water fountain?

Or when BLM marched, with torches in hand, chanting "Blood and soil" and "You will not replace us"? There was even a Neonazi woman who was ran over by a BLM activist driving a car.

And what about the day when BLM terrorists invaded the Capitol threatening to kill everyone who wouldn't break the law and vote Obama back into the presidency? That day was wild.

Both far left and far right regimes have resulted in chaos, murder, and repression.

If you're skeptical that leftism can cause violence, the wikipedia list of recent far-left terrorism groups may convince you otherwise: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_terrorism

And of course, there's the more classical examples: Maoist struggle sessions, the Red Terror, the Cambodian Killing Fields.

Extremism is dangerous. And it's concerning to me that this has become a debatable point.

It's noteworthy that these groups were mostly active in the 20th century as opposition to governments while right-wing extremists have been the government of many countries, including the US until recently.

Yes, I agree that it's very noteworthy. These groups generally appear in response to right governments. Which means I suspect we'll see more of them in coming years.

I am all for fighting far-right extremists. I am very against innocent civilians being killed, oppressed, or censored in the process.

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