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Comment by grapehut | Hacker News Reader

I think the far more worrying trend is trying to silence anyone with different political ideologies.

Like their handpicked example of a user discussing "'destroý' Islam". Note, they added the quotes around destroy. But the actual content is reasonably thoughtful discussion of appointed supreme court judges and only claims "to end radical islam".

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It’s interesting because “destroy whiteness” was and is a popular talking point in certain circles or the left. Obviously they don’t literally mean destroy white people but as always the benefit of the doubt is extended to them but “destroy Islam” immediately is interpreted as inherently violent or evil.

Take that, and apply it to "destroy jewishness"

Let's see where you end up.

IIUC, anti religion (ex Christianity) is pretty equally distributed on the left and right... Right?

The main consistent principle on the social-justice-left is rooting for the underdog. By that logic, a Hindu minority in Pakistan saying "destroy Islam" is good, but a Hindu majority in India saying the same thing is bad.

Of course the side effect of that belief is that people spend a lot of time trying to prove they're underdogs, e.g. look at kids on Tumblr listing all the ways they're oppressed because they have self diagnosed ADHD/aspergers, or trying really hard to claim ancestry of an oppressed group.

Well, more like "halfway-consistent" principle. When it's them who are holding power over some underdog group, they'll happily call that group a "basket of deplorables".

Social media usage in India nowadays includes calls for mass killings of Muslims[1] and there is widespread political momentum towards essentially establishing a Hindu nationalist society.

Over the last few decades India has seen significant violence against Muslims[2] so to label this sort of agitation as a "different political ideology" is, to put it mildly, bizarre.

Given the rifts that social media has managed to cause in multi-racial/ethnic/religious societies with any form of harmony going out of the window as extremism spreads uncontrolled through networks this kind of lack of response is a disaster. If you want a functioning multiracial society you should look towards Singapore rather than transplanting the typical Western discourse about 'silencing' on foreign countries.

And as to the example, if I were to suggest we "destroy Christianity" in the US by means of using the supreme court you would be unconcerned as long as I qualify that we're only going to eradicate "radical Christianity"?

[1]https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/24/india-hindu-event-...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_Muslims_in_In...

When I was a mod, my policy was to let the idiots speak and the downvotes answer. People should understand that the community is showing them the door, not the mods.

I drew the line at bad behaviour, which usually came in response to unpopular opinions. In other words, I left conservative comments and deleted angry personal attacks in response to them.

Some people did not get it. We had a biweekly "where are the mods" rant. They accused mods of siding with "the Nazis". By that they meant anyone who said anything a conservative person might agree with. Guilt by association.

This is how I learned the term concern trolling, which I understand as someone listening to your arguments in order to debate them. In other words, a debate. Some people were not having it.

We get hiveminds because that's what people ask for.

That might create the Nazi bar problem

https://nitter.net/IamRageSparkle/status/1280892535024619522

https://teddit.net/r/TalesFromYourServer/comments/hsiisw/kic...

The thing is those people weren't even close to Nazis. They just politely disagreed with the hivemind on finer points. All you had to do to fight them was to disagree and explain your position. You already had the crowd cheering for your side, so why should the mods give you even more of an advantage?

The risk of creating a hive mind seemed greater than the risk of being overrun by Nazis, since they got downvoted to oblivion anyway.

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