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Comment by annexrichmond | Hacker News Reader

I lost a lot of respect for Kenji after this incident:

López-Alt wrote that “it hasn’t happened yet, but if you come to my restaurant wearing a MAGA cap, you aren’t getting served, same as if you come in wearing a swastika, white hood, or any other symbol of intolerance and hate.” He added, “MAGA hats are like white hoods except stupider because you can see exactly who is wearing them.” Both tweets have since been deleted. [1]

[1] https://www.grubstreet.com/2019/02/j-kenji-lopez-alt-maga-ha...

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Your comment reads like what he did is in such bad taste that you have to let it be known, on a site that is pretty well established to be anti-MAGA, how you disapprove of this person's choice to also be anti-MAGA, and you're still trying to maintain your elitism and stature by saying "I lost respect" to continue to fit in on the site. You're playing edge lord on easy mode.

Why even bother posting this?

It's not about anyone's stance on "MAGA". It's about about his divisiveness, and comparing roughly 40% of a country to Nazis and the KKK

40% of the country doesn’t wear MAGA hats, and didn’t at the peak of that cult, either.

And even if they did, popularity doesn't make you different from the Nazis or the KKK, both of which had fairly high peaks of popularity in their respective geography.

The prior four years were an exercise in the extreme amplification of divisiveness by all sides. I wouldn't blame anyone—on either side—for being momentarily swept up in it.

(To be clear, I'm not claiming equivalence and don't dispute that most of the blame rests with Trump's divisiveness.)

There's an old saying, "if it walks like a duck".

Being anti-MAGA and calling the MAGA crowd genocidal racists are very different things.

While I agree it was inartful and ultimately counter-productive, it was nonetheless understandable (and quite frankly unremarkable) in the context of the broader zeitgeist. Thankfully we know not to judge people's character on the basis of two tweets.

I do tend to enjoy his content more when he doesn't mention politics.

This is true of most people regardless of their politics.

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