Comment by dang
5 months ago
Past experience with this kind of thing by you-know-who does not lend itself to the idea of a substantive discussion.
HN isn't "about the tech industry" per se - its mandate is to discuss topics of intellectual curiosity. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Celebrity troll moves (or whatever this is) don't fit that bill, so in this case I'm inclined to agree with the users who flagged the story.
How does a discussion about ethics and symbolism not fall under intellectual curiosity?
There must have been a breakdown somewhere in our objective view of reality when doing fascist salutes at the inauguration of the largest tech-business bearing country in the world, by the wealthiest tech CEO in the world, are whittled down to "Celebrity troll moves". I don't know if HN is beyond saving, but it does feel like it tows the line when it comes to techno-fascism.
A discussion worth having, if we could.
I wonder if there were any concerned engineers at IBM who tried to raise their voices over the tabulating machines being sold to Nazi Germany? If there were, I bet they heard similar things as today when they were brushed off.
Yes. This is beyond surreal. Is this normalized now? Since when? I don't understand.
I would like to see a discussions on about ethics and symbolism. The hand on heart, and then a gesture of throwing it outwards towards the public while saying "My heart goes out to you" is a very different symbolic gesture compared to a salute were a person execute it by extending the right arm stiff to an upward 45° angle and then straightening the hand so that it is parallel to the arm. In term of symbolism, what create the difference in interpretation? How much does the context of the speech and speaker influence how the symbolic gesture get interpreted?
In terms of ethics, if the intention is to generate outrage in order to generate views and media coverage, does media coverage help or harm? Research on violence has has reached a fairly strong consensus that symbolism and displaying of cultural values is a major contributor for continued violence and conflicts. What should be the most effective (and ethical) strategy in reducing such display?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qDRYi1IYI2o&t=35s&pp=2AEjkAIB
Watch this at 00:35. Debunks your entire point about "the look" with Hitler doing the salute exactly as Musk did it.
I'm from Switzerland / Swiss German and maybe we just watched way more WW2 docs in high school and had more exposure to the various ways a Nazi salute can be done, but across the German speaking sphere we all saw this as a Nazi salute. In this variation it was often done with hand on breast during "Sieg!" and then the extension with "Heil!".
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The end result of that is that Musk will be lionized by Hacker News but never criticized.
Your policy settings are wrong.
> lionized by Hacker News but never criticized.
You need only look at any thread involving His Muskness from the past several years to satisfy yourself that is not the case.
A story about Musk being unable to explain X/Twitter's stack and immediatly attacking the person asking him about it has been not only flagged but completely removed.
Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42775528
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There are plenty of authors and writers who could discuss political controversies as intellectually profound learning examples, etc. That is a norm in academia, for example. It reflects more on online forums and basic limitations of forum structure and demographics, rather than anything intrinsic about a given topic.
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Thank you for keeping this inflammatory garbage to a minimum. If photographers followed anyone around for a day, they could catch you do any number of silly poses.
Especially when you're speaking at a political rally and you perform two fascist salutes.
Nono, you don't understand. He is autistic so he didn't know what he was doing, in fact he is giving money to far right/nazi parties throughout the whole europe because he loves free speech and democracy