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Comment by energy123 | Hacker News Reader

What many in the US don't have conceptual familiarity with is pre-genocidal speech. Historically and empirically, the actual call to violence only happens at the end of a long period of collectivizing dehumanization via media, when people are already pliable for it. In my view, those causal antecedents to genocide should be illegal due to their historically proven connection to genocide. This speech is more dangerous and leads to more dead bodies than other types of speech which are already illegal, like isolated calls to individual violence or libel.

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When I read about the leak of the new Meta internal guidance for content moderation[1], my first thought was that the only things they banned were likely things that they understood to be pre-genocidal speech (eg comparisons of a group to vermin). Rules that seem kind of arbitrary to a modern western audience but which click in place if you look at propaganda that was issued during historical genocides.

[1] https://theintercept.com/2025/01/09/facebook-instagram-meta-...

You make some good points but the problem is these efforts are usually bankrolled by well connected right wingers, so the state will not enforce the law unless there has effectively been a socialist revolution that deprives the right of power and money almost completely.

… because nominally socialist movements have never committed genocide? Go read Gulag Archipelago or listen to the recent Behind the Bastards podcast on Pol Pot.

It seems to be something humans do, a kind of tribal warfare or “raiding” program deep in the brain stem that can be activated. Nobody has a monopoly on it. It seems possible to activate these behaviors with any pattern of rhetoric that dehumanizes a group of people and creates a powerful in group out group schism. That can be framed in any way — right wing, left wing, anything.

When a group is worried the ‘music is going to stop’ and is trying to make sure they have a chair reserved, is when this typically happens.

And frankly - it’s deeply embedded in human nature because in a resource constrained environment, it’s what works.

I used the term raiding because this is what it’s called in chimps, our closest genetic relatives. This is primate behavior.

The proto-genocidal rhetoric you are hearing in the US right now is probably linked to fear that in the near future nobody below, say, the top 10% of the ability curve, will have a job. So close the borders and kick out “outsiders” and go after minorities. Chimp behavior.

By that I don’t mean to say these people are uniquely dumb. My point is that this is brain stem encoded behavior that can be triggered in all humans.

Well, and encoded that way because it works by many definitions of the word.

And can you say they are for sure wrong?

You could argue it's a maladaptation in a modern setting, now that many non-zero-sum games are available, and now that existential risks are a thing. It worked by many definitions of the word in ancestral environment which was very different to the modern environment. Our brains are now trying to apply those chimp heuristics in an environment that they're not designed for.

That’s exactly what I would argue, and in addition to the X-risks (global thermonuclear war etc.) it’s also a giant source of unnecessary human misery and massive waste of resources.

In many cases the resources we spend hoarding and raiding and doing other chimp things could make us all 2X or more wealthier if we did not fight.

Right now the US is spending billions of debt financed dollars to rid itself of people who want to become tax paying citizens because they have brown skin. A beyond human intelligence would look at this the way we look at ant mills.

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

“Just quit circling.” But I’m sure circling forever feels right and proper in the belly, or whatever the ant’s equivalent of deep feelings of rightness feel like.

The issue is that once you’re fighting someone with a zero-sum mindset, it’s easy for the non-zero sum mindset to screw you.

Look over the comment you replied to and you’ll see that they didn’t say that socialist movements have never been violent. Is a socialist revolution not violent?

Of course when people are confronted with the fact that the right-wing foment violence in order to protect their interests we’re right back to quasi-psychology about original sin à la some Canadian called Bernt. “It’s all the same man”

I think socialist revolutions have killed more "out group" members than any political/religious movement in human history

Debatable. Capitalism has a kill count of 100 million and shows no signs of slowing down. Death counts linked to capitalism and neoliberalism are cumulative, indirect, and often undercounted because they manifest as "normal" outcomes of policy: poverty, malnutrition, or ecological collapse. Capitalism and neoliberalism externalize death ie: they make it appear as an individual or national failure, not a systemic one.

Source? Liberalization since the 1970s (so called "neoliberalism") has lifted more people out of poverty than any economic system in human history. ~60% of all humans lived in extreme poverty in 1970, and less than 10% do today. This period coincided with the expansion of free trade, deregulation of markets, modernization of monetary policy, and, perhaps most notably, the downfall of communism. I'd say capitalism is a net positive compared to what we had before, and especially compared to the alternative

Most of the recent improvements have come from china

You're shifting the frame. The original question was about cumulative deaths, direct or indirect, linked to systems like socialism or capitalism, not about which one produced more GDP growth. Pointing to poverty reduction doesn't erase the structural harms capitalism has caused or the millions who've died from preventable conditions under regimes that prioritized market logic over human need.

You can't ethically "net out" human deaths with economic gains. That treats lives as statistical noise in a profit-loss spreadsheet. It’s not just bad morality, it’s bad history too.

Economic gains represent people being lifted out of dangerous situations and increasing access to thing like health care and stable/clean housing. Economic gains in the moral opposite of preventable deaths. You cannot indict capitalism for the people that die under it while simultaneously ignoring the lives it has saved through poverty reduction

We could talk about direct, actual murder. I think that capitalist interference, coups, counter-revolutionaries, and death squads have managed to murder more people than socialists have.

“Source?” Eh, I’m just telling you my perspective in the same vigorous way that you opened this thread.

> I think socialist revolutions have killed more "out group" members than any political/religious movement in human history

This time period coincided with China and it’s large population “lifting people out of poverty”, a not-neoliberal economy.

If you look at the income graph for this period you’ll see that the bottom part of the world did get more money. Meanwhile the working class and middle class (what’s the difference?) in the West got more money. And finally the wealthiest got a stupendous amount of more money. Now look at the US for example. GDP has grown at the same rate since the post-war period. The distribution is just more lopsided (neoliberalism). Thus it seems that the worldwide economic system could have “lifted people out of poverty” at a higher rate/given the former poor more money. But instead the vast amount of money went to the very rich.

The wealth/income/money distribution since the neoliberal period began demonstrates that it is really designed to lift millionaires into billionaires.

Finally one would have to look at what “extreme poverty” means in order to judge these percentages. I can easily define that term with the global living standards of the 1970’s in mind, put it slightly above that, then declare victory when the global population gets a slight improvement. I don’t recall any such discussions off the top of my head but apparently you can easily spend at least twenty minutes going through all the details. Meanwhile while the fact-checker puts on his shoes, claims about increasing or decreasing poverty are already half-way across the world.

China is not a liberal country, but it's economy was relatively liberalization from the 80s onward.

I agree that liberalism has lifted many billions of people out of poverty, and that we could be doing more than we already have. I believe that turning around backwards toward socialism and centralized economic planning would be a grave mistake that would undo the gains made by liberalism since the 1970s

> China is not a liberal country, but it's economy was relatively liberalization from the 80s onward.

You’re the one who said “neoliberalism”. You weaken your claim now? Why am I asking.

> I agree that liberalism has lifted many billions of people out of poverty, and that we could be doing more than we already have.

Key word “I believe”. China has made their own progress and a look at worldwide poverty reduction would have to take that into account.

And thanks for collapsing my whole discussion of the poverty rate down to “I agree”. We could do the same for you by bringing up the fact that the Soviet Union economy grew a lot compared to Tsarist Russia—I guess you will have to concede to being a planned economy supporter as well.

> I believe that turning around backwards toward socialism and centralized economic planning would be a grave mistake that would undo the gains made by liberalism since the 1970s

Meaning lifting millionaires into billionaires.

The like-for-like comparison would be other political movements.

Historically, socialist governments such as the Soviet union or peoples Republic of China have behaved more similarly to religious movements than political movements. The cultural revolution has more in common with the Spanish inquisition than it does with the US labor movement.

This is a good example of hate speech. You are dehumanizing people of the US saying they don't conceptual understand morality and can't decide for themselves what is morally wrong or right.

Oh my, do explain further!

They can understand morality but have chosen not to. They can decide what is morally wrong and right and then have chosen wrong and have decided not to care about it.

I was being ironic, because their is an actual honest disagreement about morality but not being able to talk about it because it's considered by a some to be hate speech doesn't make it go away.

If flat earthers can't talk about a flat earth then no one will dissuade them of the notion.

good thing the good old belgians know how to spot a genocide in africa

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