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Comment by smcl | Hacker News Reader

FWIW he's fairly anonymous outside the USA. It was in Mike Duncan's "Revolutions" podcast that I first encountered him properly (not counting a reference I didn't understand in "Scrubs" a decade or so earlier). When it comes down to it, he was a bit more of a complex Bad Guy than your Adolfs Hitler or your Judases Iscariot.

What is odd is the suggestion that "Benedict" is ill favoured due to the memory of Benedict Arnold, while more universally and unambiguously bad guys (from the perspective of the US state) like Robert E. Lee and David Duke don't have this

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There's bad and then there is traitorous - completely untrustworthy.

Robert E. Lee might be seen as a traitor, but only if everyone citizen of the CSA is.

I'm not aware of David Duke being a traitor.

If being a traitor was such a big thing I would have imagined the attempt to overthrow the election on 6th January 2020 would have been more broadly opposed. What is more traitorous than attempting a coup?

My point is not to relitigate old battles though - people like and dislike stuff based on their gut, which is fairly arbitrary and sometimes contradictory and I am not immune to that myself. My point was that it's interesting one person gets a pass for being universally awful and another has their role in a revolutionary war completely boiled down to "Benedict Arnold bad!" when the story is "Benedict Arnold bad ... but also at one point good, and interesting and worth reading about"

There are (so far) 862 criminal charges filed regarding that incident, with more on the way. How broad would you like your opposition?

I expect that GP meant broadly opposed [amongst the population]. You could argue that even with this assumption, it would qualify, as 7 in 10 Americans do think the insurrection was wrong. But I can see the merit in arguing that 3 in 10 supporting it is uncomfortably high.

Well a pretty sizeable chunk of the population believe it was a good thing and don't appear to be discouraged in any way by those charges

Mostly misdemeanors. Very few got as many as four years, probably most will be out in much less than their sentence.

Not like the patriots who exposed war crimes.

I read the parent to mean that -- apparently in some cases -- actions alone are insufficient to indicate treason: the actor has to be seen as a traitor. Hence the apparent disjunction between the general regard of Americans for Benedict Arnold and Trump.

There a lot of other famous Roberts and Davids, to dilute any negative connotation associated with Robert E. Lee and David Duke. Benedict has a lot less dilution powers. Furthermore, most people don't care or know about David Duke and Robert E. Lee is seen by many as a noble and sympathetic character.

Benedict Arnold is the only one of those three who will be consistently seen as a big and important villain by the general american public.

Robert E. Lee was indicted for treason, but the nation favored reconciliation over retribution, and the treason of the South was ignored by the country as a whole. Lee's prosecution was later dropped. If Johnson had gotten his way and prosecuted the leaders of the South, the US' feelings towards Lee today might be different.

More complicated in some ways but also surprisingly similar in that he would rather see his country burn than see someone else get credit for it's success.

Many people here will remember what they learned or heard, and instinctively downvote because they believe Arnold was a traitor through and through, and that it's not worth considering anything otherwise.

But as I recall he was a relatively successful officer in the US army in the war of independence. But he'd been overlooked within the US military (and incurred financial losses to boot) which make his decision to work with the British a bit more understandable. Looking back in hindsight with the USA as a distinct and separate nation, it looks like he's betrayed the nation of his birth ... but in the context of a civil war where there are two factions broadly of the same "nationality" fighting for independence it's a little more complex than that

I am both aware of those circumstances, and considered them. At the end of the day, Saratoga was won by hoards of soldiers largely anonymous to history, and yet they didn't betray their country for lack of credit. On the balance, Arnold's motives appear self-serving, and his willingness to betray his allegiance for a seemingly better deal made him a traitor.

If I read this correctly, Arnold was responsible for the victory of Saratoga, but public accolades were given to Horatio Gates, who would later prove completely incompetent (and something of a coward at Camden).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Gates

It does appear that Benedict Arnold did greater service to the United States than the harm of his betrayal.

He tried to do a lot more harm than he succeeded at. Had it worked, it is not clear the colonies would have won in the end.

Eh, he tried to sell a military fort (West Point) to the British for what would be about $5M today. I don't care how butthurt he was over a lack of recognition (he was a Major General, FFS), he earned the "traitor" moniker 100%.

If the Colonies had lost the Revolutionary War, the signers of the Declaration of Independence knew they'd all hang for treason.

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