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 [flagged] Ask HN: Is HN Pro-Fascist?
67 points by sundaeofshock 6 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 83 comments
It sure seems like many articles that are critical of the Trump Administration or of certain people in the tech world (eg Musk) are flagged in under an hour. It does not matter if it a tech focused article or pure politics, it will just be flagged.

What do people think: is HN pro-fascist?



No, it's not pro fascist.

Re articles getting flagged, see the HN guidelines:

>Eschew flamebait.

>Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities

Also re Musk there have been ten Musk stories submitted in the last 24 hours, none actually flagged as far as I can see, though with little interaction. You can have too much of that stuff.


If we didn’t flag a bunch of them, that’s all there would be. I like my HN with a side of politics, not the other way around.


Exactly. There are thousands of other venues to share political news. Go there.


I think the OP's question is what about when the story, while involving politics, is more about technology than anything else? I can see flagging it on the principle that even mildly political tech stories bring out the political rhetoric in the comments... is that a principle among the moderation (I would strongly support that if it is)?


Funny thing is, I'm a liberal arts kinda guy, I'm mostly respond to political and special interest stories, and I find plenty of them, but I will flag like the 5th "Musk did something crazy" story I see in a week.


It's a fallacy to argue that a community can be any specific thing. No community is a monolith. There are factions here, just like everywhere else.

There are multiple factions. There's the people fearful of AI, the people who post everything anyone posts if it vaguely relates to AI, the people who love to complain about AI posts, and the people who left because they got sick of all the AI stuff.

If you want a description of the politics related factions, just apply `sed -e s/AI/politics/g`.


There is certainly a large pro-fascist contingent, though they probably don't see themselves as such. The fact that support for Musk[1] or Thiel's political ideologies is not verboten (or at least a massive faux pas) should be massively telling. The unpleasant truth: fascism is fun if you're winning and happen to lack empathy or a moral compass.

EDIT: Not sure how one can read some of the comments in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44605618 and not conclude that sizable portions of the userbase are disturbingly racist and fashy. But I suppose it's a nice opportunity to use the "Comments Owl for Hacker News" plugin to tag particularly deplorable users for easier flagging in the future.

[1]: As a reminder, this man supports far-right parties like the AfD and called people on government benefits "parasites." Plus a million other things. And his "wood chipper" megalomania has already lead to dozens of documented deaths in impoverished countries.


You think HN is pro-Trump? Quite the opposite from what I can tell! But I have also noticed that any story mentioning Trump gets flagged. I don't see this as fascist so much as it seems like there less than zero desire to see the name of Trump regardless of whether the story is positive or negative about him.

And yes, there are some things that are coming out of legislation which would usually be of big interest to HN (or at least I would think so) but I don't bother submitting stories if one or two particular people have their names prominent in the story. It is what it is.

EDIT: That said, the one I posted today didn't get flagged (yet): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44594622

EDIT 2: Something else that will get a story flagged seems to be anything about XLibre (for or against). I'm guessing that has to do with who is running that project which is kind of a shame since I'm curious why there's so much reflexive and visceral animosity for those suggesting we slow the roll on forcing all distros and desktop environments to move to Wayland.


XLibre gets voted down because all of the project lead's freedesktop PRs were reverted for being crap, and nobody has any faith in the project, especially when Wayback now exists

I mean, him being a notorious crackpot doesn't help, obviously. But it's a project with absolutely minimal promise.


Fair enough, but why snuff out X11 so aggressively when there seems to be several/many use cases where Wayland just isn't there yet? I would hope that the apparent forcing of Wayland onto distros and DEs could be addressed without reference to the person forking X11 into another project.


Is HN is the institution? As a recruitment board for YC, of course it is. Are there openly fascist posters in most relevant threads? Definitely. Would I describe the average community member as such? No.


Extremely silly to describe YC as "pro-fascist". It's like claiming State Farm is "pro-fascist".


Our proto-edger on high had a more serious one: Corporatist.

His specific usage has the center-left covered! Too bad it didn't stick

(Strictly speaking, that'd be "neo-corp", like "neo-lib", but with more of a Futurist flavor. You could even say cyberpunk :)

https://davidgraeber.org/videos/donald-trump-is-a-classic-co...

https://youtu.be/yCQDq1oG0vA


Indeed, HN seems to be pro-institution (because most livelihoods depend on them)

But when seemingly innocuous posts are flagged, that label seems too weak.

To those sympathetic to these political posts..upvoting or posting calm or mildly supportive comments like the above (BEFORE THE FLAG happens) might help to prevent flags..

The title of this one is too inflammatory imho

EDIT: The comments to this one seemed alright but still got flagged https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44601096


I've noticed this too, not only on HN but the media in general.


https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41851458

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44403947


YES. Practically all posts to articles that -- legitimately expose the fascism AND gain sufficient attention -- are quickly flagged and deleted.


No, people just don't want to talk about Trump in general. I mean, what's the point of criticizing him, it would just be like "running up the score". Kind of pointless and resulting in no real glory or anything.


There is a lot of fascist or fascist-adjacent behavior/opinions in the Trump/Musk crowd. Despite this, flagging Trump/Musk-critical articles doesn't make you fascist, and implying it does is an unnecessary provocation that only makes things worse and more bitter. A vicious cycle.


There are two robots in a room, one is pro-fascist and the other is anti-fascist.

You ask one of the robots "are you pro-fascist?"

What answer do you expect?


Opinion answer - no, judging by the votes and contents of the majority of the comments about politically charged topics, I'm pretty sure that most of the people here are approximately center-left leaning, and more libertarian than authoritarian leaning. Some examples, without judging them - HN on average seems to support European worker protections than USA free for all stance, at the same time EU bureaucracy and red tape is mostly universally frowned upon as a factor slowing down economical innovation. Ukraine and Taiwan are supported more than Russia and China. Palestine/Israel opinion seems to be a split, but subjectively it seems majority leans pro-Palestine. Trump is universally reviled, I haven't seen any pro-Trump comments here (at least above 0 votes). Musk is a split opinion, but also majority seems to be against him this year. Megacorps are widely disliked, with a new anti-Google topic popping up very regularly, same with Facebook and Amazon, unless they are strictly about new good IT stuff. Creepto is mocked by majority, anarcho-capitalism too. Aaron Swarz is universally liked as are others with the same leaning.

All in all these are definitely not right wing opinions.


What's funny is that OP thinks anti-Trump posts being flagged suggests HN is pro-Trump, while not noticing that pro-Trump posts don't exist here at all. Unless they're deleted immediately (seems unlikely), people with that opinion have just learned to keep it to themselves (or go away) because it'll only destroy their karma here.

That suggests that HN leans heavily anti-Trump, but also doesn't want to talk about him all the time, so flags posts that drag the forum in that direction. Ditto Musk and "fascism," whatever that's supposed to mean nowadays when everyone to the right of Mao gets called a fascist sooner or later.


The issue is that they're often purely political in a way that doesn't relate to what some of us that use HN believe political posts should be.

I.e., Trump & deportations. Very political and would flag immediately. Trump & NASA, perhaps not flagged at all. Trump and his cankles? Flagged immediately. Trump & science grants? Perhaps not flagged at all.

This isn't reddit. Or at least, I'd hope it shouldn't be.


The VC and other capital allocator class stands to gain a LOT from the current administration.

I think after like 100M+ levels of wealth, "morals" and "ethics" go out the window.


Historically the economy has largely done worse under Republican administrations; while individual VCs may gain something/a lot, overall they lose.


This just means this with lots of capital can buy things for cheap. This is not a downside. Overall, they win.


I'd argue it's the opposite. Look at contemporary Russia.

You can be on the margins and yell all you like and still be on the margins, they know it doesn't matter what you do. [1]

If you're an oligarch and get in the way you fall out of a window.

Jeff Bezos was no ally of Trump I, had he not been sitting behind Trump II at the inauguration he could have kissed all his rocket plans goodbye because all his permits and contracts could be canceled just like that.

[1] Being "marginal" is probably more blessing than curse in a lot of cases and a status you might want to retain.


I noticed that too, so I used this as a test case:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44588392

it hours to get it flagged where a Trump/Musk criticism gets flagged in a few minutes.

But it was flagged. I really really doubt HN is "pro-fascist", but I think it leans to the right because it is the rich that funds their projects.


It's a misconception that most HN users are startup founders taking investor funds.

Most HN users are tech employees or freelancers on salaries or contractor fees, so whatever political slant HN has aligns with that.

Posts about the U.S. administration and tech celebrities get flagged because people try and submit them every day and they lead to repetitive flamewar discussions, which is everything that HN is trying to avoid.


It depends on the time of day. I have noticed that certain posts of mine are getting downvotes earlier in the day (when there are more Europeans) and upvotes later (when the Americans are in the majority). Other posts are getting upvotes early and downvotes later.

And it's the main reason why I rarely write comments on HN. Everything is so political. If people don't agree with you, they downvote you. Your karma only reflects the popularity of your views. If you're writing something that is controversial, it's likely to lower your karma, if one side can downvote it before the other side sees it.


Fascism implies (paraphrasing Wikipedia):

* a dictatorial leader

* an authoritarian government

* nationalism and/or racism

* militarism

* promotion of a "natural order"

I don't think any of those accurately characterize a dominant ideology on HN. If anything, in my observation, HN is somewhat libertarian-leaning, rather than fascist.


Even that is an incredibly vague and ahistorical definition. It’s strange how much ink is spilled over redefining ‘fascism’ in as vague a way as possible (thinking of Eco here, who remains perennially popular among those who tilt at hooked windmills).

Mussolini did a great job as delineating exactly what fascism was, and the NSDAP fit it, but in general it really doesn’t fit states outside of that particular time and place, including most regimes described as ‘fascist’ today.

The arguments for why Trump is somehow a fascist are among the most facile I’ve ever heard, and I say that having never voted for nor supported Trump, and having even more negative an opinion of him now than I did previously.

Political discourse will never be anything beyond laughable until we can get past screeching at each other over which side is the secret fascist.


No, that's approximately the definition you'd find in Payne's text. It's just missing modernism and state religion.


I think that accepting the definition given by fascists to fascism, instead of evaluating their actions - as did Eco - might be the wrong way to go about this.


Well, people who actually study this shit widely disagree with you, random HN commenter.


Trump won't even do H1B reform which is something plenty of non-nationalist moderates want.


Outrage and anger are part of the problem not part of the solution.

Anti-fascists are jealous somebody has better footwear than them. Woke right NPCs who blog endlessly about "cancel culture" wish Karl Marx was banned 150 years ago.

If you read The Wall Street Journal or The Washington Post you'd think Zohran Mamdani has the opposite policies of Trump but he's twice as angry. He's dangerous to system not because he's angry but because he listens to people, something you'll see him do on YouTube or TikTok but that mainstream TV channels won't show you.


When I first moved to the Bay Area, San Francisco was described by one person to me as "quite conservative actually." At the time, that seemed unlikely. However after a while, I can now see why this is the case.


Rich people tend toward whatever helps them get richer. Whether they agree with the ideology or not.

See also: Why US presidents present as happily married and religious, no matter what the reality is.


If you had much empathy for the downtrodden you couldn't stand to live at the epicenter of the homelessness crisis.


I am not 100% sure that your implication really tracks with conservative behaviors. I would say it would be more likely that non-empathetic conservatives would work pretty relentlessly to relocate homeless out of their communities rather than just ignore and co-exist with it.

I am not saying they would solve it, but they would make it some other community's problem.


I think it selects for people who don't care. Or maybe it is a warning that it could happen to you if you don't suck up to your brat boss.


> I think it selects for people who don't care

Ok, but that is a different thing than a specific political lean. I know quite a few folks who claim to care about the homeless, but those claims don’t ever translate to action. That leads me to suspect that what they actually care about is people believing they care about the homeless.


What do you expect those individuals to do about a nationwide systemic failure? Genuinely. Like what would they have to do to convince you they care?


They could just do something. One small thing…even locally. I don’t buy into this “the problem is too big” so all I am going to do is point it out.


Are you sure they're doing nothing? My political allies in Chicago are doing their best, and have made a lot of positive change. Maybe you're not paying attention


Good. Obviously my comment is not referring to them. You have my attention…so What are you doing about it?


I have trouble taking people seriously when they use “fascist” as a blanket term to discredit people they don’t like.


Maybe we should define our terms then? I favour this definition of "ur-fascism" by Umberto Eco: https://archive.is/VamLM

To steal a few examples from a convenient summary list someone[1] made:

1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”

2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”

3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”

4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”

...

10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”

Open to other definitions. But I look at that list, written in 1995, and it feels like you can check off a lot of these items in things that are rapidly being normalised.

1. https://www.openculture.com/2024/11/umberto-ecos-list-of-the...


Do you feel the same about use of terms like "socialist" or "radical left"?


I have trouble taking people seriously when they refuse to call things what they are because they don’t want to admit it.


"Anti-fascists" were saying things like "Keir Starmer is a Fascist" (sci-fi writer Charlie Stross) or that "My local police department is Fascist" or "White people are Fascist"

If you know your 'Pataphysics or Chaos Magick you know that's a magic spell to put fascists in charge.


So you can't call fascism fascism because some idiot called not-fascism fascism?


You can but people won’t listen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf


The problem is that fascism historically encompassed a number of political and power qualities and what is being described as “fascist” today might have some of those qualities, but not necessarily all of them. Ironically the side yelling “fascist” today also has some of those qualities, but doesn’t want to admit either.

Probably just best to focus on those qualities you don’t like on the other side and leave the labeling to the future historians.


We need words people understand now to describe what's happening now.

Curious what you consider fascist about people who hold zero corporate or political power


> We need words people understand now to describe what's happening now.

Ok, so use words appropriate to what is happening. When you work to redefine “scary” words in an attempt to try and piggyback on their negative history you minimize that history.

> Curious what you consider fascist about people who hold zero corporate or political power

The point was that I don’t consider what we see today as fascist and you shouldn’t either…because it’s not.


At what point will you consider it fascist, if anonymous masked police kidnapping people off the streets doesn’t, and building concentration camps doesn’t, and silencing of critical media doesn’t? Are you waiting for a specific number of mass casualties, or is this just sparkling despotism?


Those are “tactics”. You are confusing relatively common control and power tactics that are used by some governments with an ideology that encompasses many different characteristics. The Soviet Union used many of the same tactics, but you wouldn’t call them fascist. Many of the important (political and economic) fascist ideologies don’t apply to the current administration…in fact politically and economically the current US administration is directly opposite of what was found in historic fascism.

I get that you want to redefine what “fascism” is, because historically it’s associated with some really evil things, but I am not willing to dilute that definition.


Well then, keep on fighting the good fight, and hopefully you won’t end up in the gulag.


I’ll just continue to “not break any laws” since that has kept me out of the gulag so far.


Breanna Taylor tried that, too.


Not sure what that has to do with me, gulags, fascism, or the current administration.


Trump has given power back to the states for various things and seems to be consistently anti-war. Musk has been pushing the idea of starting a new political party to better represent the people and is for less regulation and smaller government.

This doesn’t sound like a couple of fascists.


> seems to be consistently anti-war

…this is the guy who bombed Iran?

> to better represent the people

Do you just believe everything that people with power tell you?


>Musk has been pushing the idea of starting a new political party to better represent the people and is for less regulation and smaller government.

This is self-contradictory gibberish. Deregulation and small government for him means further weakening labour laws to the point where the interests of the majority of Americans, ie, wage workers, have no ability to advocate for their needs and no recourse when he encroaches on them.

>Trump [...] seems to be consistently anti-war.

This was already a surreal claim to make when he was sending troops and PMCs into Iraq and Syria, deploying SEALs on abortive raids in Yemen, where Saudi troops were using arms his administration provided them, oh and, I dunno, ordering the assassination of the highest military official of a sovereign nation. It becomes solipsistic in the month after he oversaw the US' direct intervention in Israel's war with Iran.


It's only war when the guy i don't like does it. Otherwise it's "intervention" or "police action" or "limited engagement" or the term du jour


The US special operation in middle east.


Yes it does


It's fascist in the anti-communist sense sure, but most Americans would be fascist then.


Most Americans are fascist, the same way most Germans were in the 1930s.


No, it's fascist in the sense of nativism and public-private collaboration that was normative in fascist states. Most Americans are ambivalent to communism.


You can't not be nativist to some degree. Otherwise all you have is an economic zone, not a country.

That's a completely ridiculous definition of fascism and again, if you pick that most Americans would be fascist and consider it a good thing.


Most Americans, who are working class, want the state to collaborate with their employers against their interests? Quite a bold assertion.


That's very much a rules for thee not for me scenario. Watch Trump regarding California and try to claim he's all about state's rights.


Is HN, the entity? Yes. Is the community? Enough of it to matter.

But like, you wanna see the most unhinged antisocial takes? Well, go to Twitter, then when you're bored, come here.

It's not really HN in particular though. It's a silicon valley thing.


You have no idea what fascism is. If you ever encountered a real fascist, you'd shit your pants.


As a whole? No. But only because Hacker News is not a monolith, and there are many groups with various viewpoints here.

Are there pro-fascist posters here? Absolutely. I've seen full throated advocacy for some vile things here. The worst of it usually gets flagged.

Is there a strong correlation between flagging political posts and support for fascism? Not necessarily. Although some of that is definitely the HN Trumpist/right-wing contingent, this forum harbors a particular distate for anything not explicitly tech related (often beyond what the actual site guidelines state to be on topic) which includes politics of any kind.

And HN is designed so that flagging and downvoting has a much greater weight than upvoting, so it really doesn't even take much to tank a thread.


[flagged]


Might not be the intention but I can see merit in flagging stories with a strong political overtone simply to make the point that this isn't /r/politics -- that that stuff over there.

In fact, if that's the rationale I support it... though it would be good to know what the current rule of thumb is in order to play along.


You need to decide for yourself what crosses the unacceptable content line and what does not. HN only provides the following guideline:

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


[flagged]


Here's George Orwell saying that in 1944:

https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/e...


Noticing fascism and flatus are often associated with the source thereof.

When making an accusation, failure to include substantive facts is counter-productive.


...really?? He who smelt it dealt it level of discourse?




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