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Comment by wedn3sday | Hacker News Reader

On the flip side, every time I hear about some right wing nut getting deplatformed by paypal, I think to myself, "hey their service isnt as bad as I thought." Virtue signaling might bring them more business then they lose by tossing out a small number of fringe wackos.

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From your comments throughout this thread it seems as though you are either confident that your personal convictions will remain within the overton window in perpetuity or you lack the ability to imagine that one day they may not. Not to mention some of your convictions may have been outside the overton window in recent history. In a world where cash can be refused by businesses and governments can ban physical interaction, the ability to conduct digital commerce (and speech) must not be frustrated regardless of its general unsavoriness. The fact that we as a society have allowed a small cabal of payment processors to collude on who is allowed to conduct online commerce is a tragedy.

Something in those words reminds me of what some people were saying in early 1930s Nazi Germany: "Serves them right. Goddamn Jews."

"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

—Martin Niemöller

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-nie...

This is an extremely self-serving and deceptive quote from Niemöller, and its life is due to the fact that it works as poetry. The fact is that he cheered them on when they came for the socialists and the trades unionists. He only tacitly supported the rounding up of German Jews because, and I have to paraphrase here, he thought the Jews were "too smart" to "force" Hitler to kill them, and would just leave.

His mistake was his belief that the Nazis were good Lutherans rather than Jungian Hindu UFO mystics.

The words are powerful and iconic. From the linked page:

"Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Lutheran pastor in Germany. In the 1920s and early 1930s, he sympathized with many Nazi ideas and supported radically right-wing political movements. But after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Niemöller became an outspoken critic of Hitler’s interference in the Protestant Church. He spent the last eight years of Nazi rule, from 1937 to 1945, in Nazi prisons and concentration camps."

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