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Comment by tibbydudeza | Hacker News Reader

SOME right-wing communities are rather racist and frankly unhinged with the worst aspects of online behaviour - just look at QAnon and Proud Boys and the hatred of LGBTQ people.

It is not like the old days of conservatism - Big govt is bad - lower taxes- unions are bad - abortion is bad - work at will is the way to go.

Most left wing communities even the extreme ones in comparison get upset full of vitrol but that rarely veers into that sort of behaviour - health care for all - single payer - socialism works is hardly offensive to many.

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But the actual results of the left are much scarier than those of the right. "Socialism works" in particular was the initial seed of some of the worst suffering humanity has ever called forth.

And I haven't seen a tally of the results but the amount of political violence could be relatively balanced. Eg, attacks on congress people [0] is roughly balanced, with arguably the Republicans have suffered more (I personally call that 1-1 since 2000, although the attack on the republican baseball game was probably trying to achieve mass slaughter - it isn't obvious the attack on Rand Paul was the normal political assassination variety).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Congress...

Socialism as in Sweden or AOC or Bernie Sanders.

You are no doubt from the US watching the the wrong news channel missing out an nuance when it comes to using the word confusing it with the Cuban/Soviet communism.

It is definitely not the same.

I'm not from the US & I don't watch corporate news.

And I doubt any of the people who cause that sort of catastrophe go in to it saying "lol we're gonna starve you peasants!". They go in saying "this'll work, you just need to give us power rather than those greedy capitalists". The ideas there turned out to be worse than WWII because they weren't on-the-face scary enough to prompt the violent resistance to them that was needed. I dunno, I suppose just as a point of interest, what part of the communist ideology do you think they got wrong, which needs to be avoided? Particularly from the early days before people realised how bad the famines were going to be?

And I don't think that the US socialists are interested in copying Sweeden. They've got their own plans and they're going to claim "this is what worked in Sweden!" regardless of whether that is true or not. I don't think AOC or Sanders speaks Swedish or has any respect for Swedish legal principle.

But you are the one who said "socialism = worst suffering humanity has ever called forth" - this is the worst of the uninformed FoxNews hyperbole you find on there.

I simply don't see how asking for a social safety net, national healthcare and economic justice for the poor relates to that hence my remarks ????.

If that makes me a Socialist then so be it. Perhaps cheap easy labelling of ideas is the issue here.

What do you think was worse? USSR + China was pretty bad.

> social safety net, national healthcare and economic justice

The US already has 3/3 of those things. But where is the limit where you agree that the US has them? And why is that the limit where the power centralising stops?

And how does that compare to the early calls from the communists? They thought they were helping too. There are scary outcomes from bad policies with good intentions.

But this is a bit off topic so I'll appreciate your answers but hopefully stop getting distracted. The point I want to make and I think I've made is that by actual outcomes it needs to be demonstrated which wing of politics is likely to be more dangerous. They are both pretty scary when they go wild. The rhetoric is not the scary part of the left, their rhetoric is like honey. Everyone likes it at some level.

I meant national health care like the UK NHS or Canada - the US does not have it.

On the social safety net sure there are programs such as SSI/MedicAid/Food stamps etc but there are more efforts esp from the right to curtail than actually expanding it

It is not like the number of poor people in the US are getting less.

"scary outcomes from bad policies" - it is inherent in any govt system whatever you label it not only left - recall the junta's in South America that made people disappear or Spain/Portugal to protect the countries allegedly from the communists.

The best bet is a free press, democracy and hopefully informed voters that participate (sadly that is becoming more of a wish these days)

> The best bet is a free press, democracy and hopefully informed voters that participate (sadly that is becoming more of a wish these days)

The political news of the week is that the FBI launched a no-knock raid on the former president, we learned from the Rogan-Zuckerberg interview they were also active in suppressing news stories that would have favoured him and were probably active in the years of stupidity that was exposed as a farce in the Muller report.

If you happen to be in the US, tack FBI reform (or ideally, disbandment) to your list of wants. Because if there is a collapse of press freedom or democracy they'll be involved for the worse. Or indeed, are involved. And they're part of the spies-on-everyone conspiracy wasn't-actually-a-theory.

... you got me, despite myself I liked that answer so much I had to respond.

False comparison - you’ll find plenty of vitriol against white people, christians, traditional values and such in extreme left

But no calls to violence, despite our desires to oust politicians who make hay off of threatening violence.

Just an example from, uh, 2 days ago:

https://www.chronicle.com/article/professor-fired-for-allege...

This earlier article is far more interesting; most importantly it contains the words the professor actually said; the quote in the headline of the article you link is disputed.

(Interestingly, both articles have the same author.)

https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-disenchantment-of-a-bl...

It's a long story about an ambitious academic losing at university politics, to the point of being fired from a tenured position without, allegedly, due process.

https://www.thefire.org/fired-for-criticizing-his-administra...

to be frank I'm not here to argue the semantics of a single incident, but rather to argue against the "left can do no harm" crowd

> ... I'm not here to argue the semantics of a single incident

You cited said single incident as an example. It's validity as an example is open to impeachment.

Making fun of and mocking a belief in God/Jesus is harmless compared to some the stuff on the extreme rightwing - now who had a noose for "traitors" at their political rallies.

You don't see lefties burning crosses, displaying Nazi symbols or parading with signs i.r.o Jews now do you ???.

Nope the problem is mainly from one side.

People proudly display the hammer and sickle, because Hitler was an evil man, whereas Mao and Stalin were just extremely unlucky or something.

Antifa and BLM don't assault people or destroy property (If people deserve it, it's not assault or something like that. At any rate it just can't be domestic terrorism.)

You can't be racist against white people, because they are the only racists by definition!

I wish some people had a shred of intellectual honesty.

Two of our neighbouring countries has an AK47 on their national flag (Zimbabwe/Mozambique).

If you knew about their tortured path to emancipation for the black majority and to statehood from colonialism then it makes sense why it is so.

The same for my country - things are nuanced - hammer and sickle is hardly as offensive and can be placed in the same category as the Nazi symbol it does not represent the misguided Mao (killing of sparrows led to locusts = failed harvests) and the nutcases that was Stalin/Beira.

> things are nuanced - hammer and sickle is hardly as offensive and can be placed in the same category as the Nazi symbol

Even if you completely buy into the narrative that it was a giant mistake, what is nuanced about the fact that tens of millions of people died needlessly? That fact alone makes any display of the flag reprehensible.

If 'misguided' is how you describe Mao, then you do not know Chinese history, or you're talking about a completely different person. At the very least, Mao was directly responsible for the millions of landlords that were killed, along with academics and critics. How on earth can you justify that morally?

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