YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Read the letter the FBI sent MLK to try to convince him to kill himself (2014)

259 points surprisetalk 1 hour ago 151 comments

andrewla 1 hour ago | parent

Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_letter

mentalgear 1 hour ago | parent

Interesting, true citizen action only revealed the FBI was the author of the blackmailing of MLK.

> On March 8, 1971, an activist group called the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI burglarized a local office of the FBI in Media, Pennsylvania, and stole classified documents. Parts of them exposed a secret FBI operation called COINTELPRO. Those documents were later sent to newspapers and members of the United States Congress.

embedding-shape 1 hour ago | parent

Some might call this lawlessness, but in a society where the government is keeping secrets from its own constituents, this sort of actions are the only ones a citizen can realistically do to return from a lawless and corrupt government, sadly.

Shame some societies digress into this state in the first place, even bigger shame when they keep sliding deeper and deeper into it.

MomsAVoxell 1 hour ago | parent

The corruption of government begins with its secrets. A truly free people keep no secrets.

hypfer 1 hour ago | parent

That letter reads almost identical to internet hate comments. Wild. I guess the tactics have always been the same then.

At least now we have LLMs that can produce this kind of stuff at human-overwhelming rates, so that is progress.

williamdclt 1 hour ago | parent

> That letter reads almost identical to internet hate comments

the corners of the internet that you frequent have much more eloquent haters than the ones I'm used to

hypfer 1 hour ago | parent

HN is one of those places, actually.

There are quite a few covert psychopaths on here that happily twist knives and hurt people.

It's just hidden under layers and layers of indirection, jargon and plausible deniability. Not unlike your standard boardroom I guess.

my-next-account 1 hour ago | parent

I think it's typically quite obvious, or maybe I haven't seen the psycopaths. However, SWEs can be real dick heads. Just made me think of this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_5uVdy5YmA

Uploaded 16 years ago... I can't believe that a video I thought was so hilarious back then is dating me so hard.

kirth_gersen 57 minutes ago | parent

came expecting a rick roll, got an unexpected banger. thanks!

hsuduebc2 1 hour ago | parent

Can you be more specific? This is heavy moderated environment and I would say it's one of the most pleasurable places on public internet to be.

hypfer 1 hour ago | parent

Not really, because a generic observation cannot be expressed specifically. So that's a weird question to begin with.

It is true that this is heavily moderated and that this is one of the more pleasant spaces, but it is also precisely the moderation style that is being weaponized.

As I said, the toxicity gets hidden in layers and layers of jargon, misdirection and plausible deniability. It gets a veneer of civilty applied, which, somewhat surprisingly, makes it hit even harder, because fighting back is a lot harder, as there is nothing immediately visible to fight back against. It just stings.

It's not just attacking but simultaneously gaslighting. Which has been what the whole internet has been doing since everything became twitter fwiw.

What I said is also not to be understood as "HN bad", because if I would feel that way, I would not be commenting here.

brookst 1 hour ago | parent

If you’re having to look through layers and layers of jargon, misdirection, and plausible deniability to find the toxicity, is it possible there’s a roarscach element to it?

hypfer 1 hour ago | parent

> If you’re having to look through layers and layers of jargon, misdirection, and plausible deniability to find the toxicity, is it possible there’s a roarscach element to it?

Are we going to play "prove me right" here? :D

Come on, this is just a direct personal attack. Go play better. Hide it with a more elaborate construct.

Arnt 1 hour ago | parent

Sometimes it can be difficult to tell whether someone is a troll "just asking questions" or actually just asking that question. More so on HN than in most of the world, I mean.

retromagik 1 hour ago | parent

Yep that's why the trolls lick that strategy

hypfer 1 hour ago | parent

An interesting realisation there which I believe will shape the upcoming years of discussion spaces is that one can shift the burden of proof there.

Instead of leaving it with the moderation to prove without a doubt that someone is trolling, one can default to assume trolling and demand prove that it is not the case.

As it is impossible to bring up proof for either of those things, the house wins and people make damn sure to quintuple-check if their messaging is decent.

I don't think that that is a good solution, but the status quo was horrible, so maybe the pendulum swinging in another direction for a while might help us discover saner solutions.

cowlevel 15 minutes ago | parent

It works until trolls figure out how to prove they are not trolls, even though they are trolls, while non-trolls have difficulty proving it.

cowlevel 53 minutes ago | parent

And that ambiguity is precisely something that trolls hide behind.

tacitusarc 1 hour ago | parent

It seems likely this comment is a waste but… no, that clearly was not a personal attack, and going through life treating comments like those as personal attacks seems like a good way to be miserable.

hypfer 1 hour ago | parent

> It seems likely this comment is a waste but… no, that clearly was not a personal attack, and going through life treating comments like those as personal attacks seems like a good way to be miserable.

I'm not sure if can truly let this pass as a more sophisticated construct, but I do appreciate the opener that already invalidates dismissal.

That's a good tactic. Thank you for playing.

I feel great btw :) Thank you for your concern.

kmijyiyxfbklao 22 minutes ago | parent

This is completely crazy. How could someone point out that assuming evil intentions is not a good way to interact with people without being accused of doing the same thing as the FBI telling MLK to kill himself?

regretsresin 1 hour ago | parent

Unlikely. Plenty of anti LGBTQ rhetoric is permissible here by mods, for example.

However, it often uses queer lingo - words that folks might think aren't notable, but queer folks will instantly recognize as an attack.

Refusing to call a gay man's husband a husband, but subsisting in friend or partner. Calling someone biologically male. Etc.

These get deployed quite subtly here, and because none of the words are slurs, they don't get moderated. (Though HN also permits overt slur usage -- search for the r-slur and you'll find plenty of cases.)

cosmic_cheese 36 minutes ago | parent

FWIW, it may just be a colossal misconception of my own, but I’d been of the mind that “partner” was in some cases more polite to use because it doesn’t make assumptions about the individuals in question or about the dynamics of the relationship between them. I am not part of the LGBTQ world, however, and am happy to be corrected.

amanaplanacanal 6 minutes ago | parent

It can be used both ways, I suppose. I use it for my partner because legal marital status isn't important to me, but for those that had to fight to obtain the basic right to get married I can see why it would be hurtful.

I wonder how much of it is generational? I see something similar in the way second wave feminists rightly hated being called girls, whereas it's not as much of an issue for the younger generations because they didn't have those experiences.

semireg 1 hour ago | parent

There must be some logical fallacy here where, reduced down to human existence, all toxicity is hidden under layers. This is both an ultimately true statement of any suspiciously viewed human interaction and it kind of makes the argument moot.

Reminds me of the recent thread about LLMs controversial take on humanity: we are all terribly cynical, hallucinate importance, and we are all bad/good deep down inside.

mjburgess 1 hour ago | parent

I guess they are saying people argue/comment in bad faith. That they don't really mean what they say, and at least, they say it not to discuss it but for some hidden agenda.

The problem is that outside of "where's my keys? what are we having for lunch?", most language is a symptom of people's agendas. Its a rarefied elite environment that takes things literally, and acts in good faith.

I don't think this is psychopathic, as much as we're apes -- and speaking literally and in good faith about relatively abstract topics takes a considerable amount of training and is, in general, psychologically fragile (ie., its easy to be tilted).

MomsAVoxell 1 hour ago | parent

Try to criticize the US' war machine as it relates to the US' tech industry, for example. You will incur the wrath of a thousand HN fascists.

Compare the actual human rights records of the Western sphere (war crimes, crimes against humanity, violations of human rights at massive scale) with those of the nations we are being taught are inferior: same effect.

Or for any of us who were around for the Snowden/Assange chapter of HN, who supported the effort to expose the US' heinous crimes - there are still massive sections of western culture who are fundamentalist in their superiority. You can find them in the downvoted and dead-flagged comments section.

pixelready 5 minutes ago | parent

This works the same way irl too. The US is one of the most heavily propagandized populations in history. You have to be talking to a very progressive, very politically savvy group to not constantly run into the usual knee jerk canned responses the second you bring up any criticism of military spending, foreign policy, or the panopticon. Probing of those responses in family or social settings for actual justification shows there’s no first principle reasoning behind them, just a vague unease about discussing the topics, like they’re sacrilege.

MomsAVoxell 2 minutes ago | parent

Yes, the frothy-mouthed ideation of the US cultural identity is just as frustrating to have to contend with as any other ideology. I've met great Iranian folks and great American folks, and great Russians too - and what they all have in common is the ability to reflect on the limits of their own cultures.

ballmerpoint 50 minutes ago | parent

It’s not heavily moderated. This is the usual link dang/tomhow give when they explain why their moderation is necessarily inconsistent:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

This is not a criticism of their moderation style, this is simply reporting how they describe it.

sejje 17 minutes ago | parent

It's largely self-moderating

MomsAVoxell 1 hour ago | parent

Techno-feudalism is an Ayn-Rand objectivists wet dream, after all. There's profit in oppression.

ranger_danger 1 hour ago | parent

Ironically this is quite common on 4chan, although so are many other much more childish things, but there is an occasional flash of someone with real knowledge using it to be a clever asshole.

I'm convinced the only reason crimeflare continues to platform them is that it must be some kind of three letter honeypot.

cowlevel 52 minutes ago | parent

They've gotten some strict rules. It's not the lawless wasteland it's portrayed as any more.

ranger_danger 37 minutes ago | parent

The only strictness I have noticed is that captchas are way more annoying now, and they blanket ban entire residential IP networks (in addition to every possible datacenter/VPS/VPN/tor IP block on Earth). But somehow tons of people (not me) keep getting through.

But, they now allow NSFW content in regular boards like technology, and for the first time in 20 years I actually saw someone post cheese pizza... plus I regularly see more and more leaked data posted there first, so I wouldn't call it less lawless at all.

sejje 18 minutes ago | parent

> for the first time in 20 years I actually saw someone post cheese pizza

Don't know what this means, gonna keep it that way.

cowlevel 15 minutes ago | parent

"cheese pizza" is internet slang for "child pornography"

thinkingemote 3 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

deadbabe 38 minutes ago | parent

What do you mean? you’re on HN.

antonvs 1 hour ago | parent

One commonality is the lack of restraint that anonymity can produce.

ranger_danger 1 hour ago | parent

I'm sure it helps, but there's definitely still way too many people [on social media] that have zero problems with publicly telling people to jump off a bridge while signing their full name with the message. Which is technically illegal in California now.

gadders 1 hour ago | parent

EG Chrissy Teigen: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-57478066

timmmmmmay 1 hour ago | parent

the modern internet has given everyone a higher level of immunity to this kind of thing now that it's in the background everywhere at all times; the FBI would need to step up their game today

cowlevel 13 minutes ago | parent

Or different tactics entirely. I've been getting ads recently saying "it's Qatar's fault". I don't understand at all what is supposed to be Qatar's fault, and I'm sure they can't say it in the ads because then it would be a lie and they could get sued, but I'm sure their target audience knows exactly what Qatar supposedly did.

somenameforme 1 hour ago | parent

I think it's more that social standards of acceptability tend to continually degrade. There was a time when calling someone a scoundrel or a rascal was one of the most vile insults imaginable, potentially worth fighting to the death over, and I mean that completely literally.

I used the word 'degrade' earlier and I'm not sure fighting to the death over rascal is a higher state of enlightenment, but I do think words should have meaning, and now they mostly no longer do because everything is always hyperbolized to the most ridiculous degree.

So if the FBI was doing something akin in modern times they'd probably weaponize their knowledge by framing him as a viable rapist or other sort of sexual predator as opposed to a simple womanizer.

jacquesm 37 minutes ago | parent

In modern times that would qualify you for high office...

antonvs 1 hour ago | parent

Almost every adjective in that letter is a projection by the author. He/they must have been a real piece of work.

gadders 1 hour ago | parent

Well, there was that rape incident that MLK allegedly encouraged: https://www.standpointmag.co.uk/the-troubling-legacy-of-mart...

Apparently the audio tapes get released in 2027 so we may find out for sure then.

iAMkenough 1 hour ago | parent

With 20 seconds of audio, I can make MLK Jr. say whatever you want.

chasd00 1 hour ago | parent

The very funny “presidents discuss anime” video opened my eyes and that was like 3 years ago. Audio is going to have to require some kind of proof of authenticity going forward.

andruby 43 minutes ago | parent

not just audio unfortunately.

gadders 25 minutes ago | parent

They're tapes from the time. I think the check is to see if the 40-50 year old tapes match the 40-50 year old transcripts.

protonbob 1 hour ago | parent

No he really did all that stuff.

mentalgear 1 hour ago | parent

Back then the establishment used the CIA/FBI to prevent a multi-coalition, working class movement across ethnicity, unions, and religions that would have made the US a better democracy.

The battle of the present (ICE abuse, Social media speech suppression, ..) to win the government back by the people and for the people can still be won - but it hinges all on this November.

VulgarExigency 1 hour ago | parent

> Back then the establishment used the CIA/FBI to prevent a multi-coalition, working class movement across ethnicity, unions, and religions that would have made the US a better democracy.

What makes you think they've stopped?

mentalgear 1 hour ago | parent

Never said they stopped: industry 'leaders', authoritarians, will always try to keep and expand their abusive grip over others and claw as much power from the common people as possible. The methods are always the same: distraction, disinformation, abuse. The common people's only defense is transparent institutions and limiting power/wealth in general.

See also how the robber barons of the 1930s (Rockefeller, JP Morgan, etc) already tried to overthrow the government to establish a fascist military dictatorship.

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

regretsresin 1 hour ago | parent

The democrats participate in this export strongly too. Biden shut down a really important union strike. They are less overt about it, but go watch Malcolm X talk about foxes and wolves.

ToucanLoucan 46 minutes ago | parent

Really all the comments about "white moderates/liberals." The exact sort of people who forgot the Civil Rights movement, Labor Rights movement, and Women's Suffrage, and really every movement by a marginalized group to gain power from the mainstream were packed full of organized political violence.

Non-violent protests have a place. On occasion though, you need to hit the system where it hurts in order for it to take you seriously.

mentalgear 42 minutes ago | parent

The Democratic Party too had problematic 'wealthy supporters' that influenced them away from a people's real needs. However, Biden's initiatives were probably the most 'socialistic' since FDR. And if the DSA and Bernie Sanders' aligned forces are finally able to force the Democratic Party back to their roots of FDR, then there is good chance we might still make it.

gadders 1 hour ago | parent

Well, "they" did their best to stop Bernie running.

cowlevel 58 minutes ago | parent

They succeeded.

I remember reading the online news about those primaries as they happened. Bernie wins this state in a landslide. Bernie wins that state in a landslide. Suddenly he's not on the ballot in most of the remaining states. At the end he doesn't have enough votes, oh dear too bad so sad. Some sort of investigation happened, but concluded the DNC has the absolute right to run primaries any way it chooses to.

mentalgear 35 minutes ago | parent

Yes, that was the Clinton-controlled ('wealthy donors') DNC that excluded Bernie from a fair competition to become the Democrat's Candidate - which by all metrics and polling from the party's base and non-party members he would have won.

So, the Clinton-controlled DNC from 2016 put Trump in the White House.

The positive message is that since then the Democrats have been infused by Sanders-like independent Democrats that want to do the right thing, but we must keep on pushing to rid and guard the DNC and party administration off the corrupt billionaire influences.

buellerbueller 32 minutes ago | parent

HRC was also given the power to effectively run the DNC (while a candidate in the primaries!) in exchange for some funraising. There were bunches of other shenanigans.

To me, it all seems to boil down to the notion that Bernie would credibly have "drained the swamp," which would have effectively tanked the careers of a lot of long-serving Democratic folks who were not aligned with his populist/progressive agenda. Simply by hiring people that would have aligned with his vision, this was such a threat to existing power, it had to be stopped. Yes, the Rs are worse (in my opinion), but this gives me plenty of distrust for the Ds. Institutions eventually become more about institutional survival than about their "core mission."

amenhotep 6 minutes ago | parent

> Suddenly he's not on the ballot in most of the remaining states

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2016_Democratic...

Why are you just completely making things up?

swed420 58 minutes ago | parent

So did Dems

gadders 51 minutes ago | parent

I don't think the Dems are still the party of the working class.

amanaplanacanal 17 minutes ago | parent

There is no party of the working class. Hasn't been since Clinton in the 90s moved to the right.

superdisk 1 hour ago | parent

It's the most important election of our lifetime... For the fourth time in a row!

Micrococonut 1 hour ago | parent

As long as people keep electing fascist billionaires to loot the country, the fight continues

chasd00 1 hour ago | parent

The very foundation of Democracy is at stake!! …again for like 30 years straight now.

My step dad use to quote bible verses to me trying to prove Obama was the literal antichrist. Before that it was the evil Bush and his oil cronies. Now it’s Trump, in two years it will be someone else. Same as it ever was.

cowlevel 56 minutes ago | parent

It is though? Like, every single election, someone runs on the platform of abolishing democracy. Every single election, it's important that person doesn't win, or there won't be a democracy any more.

By all rights there shouldn't be one already, but we're lucky the democracy abolitionists are fairly incompetent.

sejje 22 minutes ago | parent

So last election, Kamala Harris was the platform of abolishing democracy?

Or, alternatively, did we cease to have a democracy?

jeremyjh 12 minutes ago | parent

We are very substantially less democratic than we were in 2024. The admin has broken laws regarding impoundment and war powers, just to name two. The executive has no legal power to determine funding allocations, or to commit to wars long-term. Yet both have happened and are still happening.

Using the DOJ to interfere in state elections they have no jurisdiction in, and having masked men abduct people and ignore court orders regarding their disposition is just about as authoritarian as it gets.

Those are all new things that have substantially eroded - or removed all together the idea of democracy in less than two years.

cowlevel 6 minutes ago | parent

On the other hand, it's possible to argue that America is still democratic, since it voted for all the stuff that's now happening. It would become irreversibly undemocratic if a president stayed in office after losing an election.

jackb4040 22 minutes ago | parent

Well it's important to you. It's evidently not important to the people you vote for, the people who fundraise off of this hostage situation, the people who have had trifectas multiple times during this era and have not even used them to permanently secure the "democracy", let alone the overwhelmingly popular policies with their base that would guarantee they win ever election but piss off their donors.

Arodex 50 minutes ago | parent

Oh, yeah, Bush wasn't that bad, right? Just hundreds of thousands of deaths and crippled veterans, and the complete destruction of global order that opened the door to Russia invading Ukraine. "Just worth a shrug", you say while you pass by a crack addicted veteran while on you way to pay 30% more for gas and food. "It wasn't worth getting worried about."

What a level-headed, reasonable know-nothing you are, sitting above all this unreasonable jockeying.

I am not surprised though, you live in a culture where people can lecture others that the Bible told them Obama was Satan. You don't know what actual politics is anymore.

saila 31 minutes ago | parent

I’d add the so-called “Patriot Act” to the list of damages from the GW Bush era. Massive consequences that can’t be shrugged off with some both-sides nonsense.

basilikum 47 minutes ago | parent

How many of them openly attacked and rejected to democratic process itself? How many of them did not accept the result of an election?

10111001 46 minutes ago | parent

> The very foundation of Democracy is at stake!! …again for like 30 years straight now.

There's a very easy method to tell if someone making that claim is a liar: ask "what major ideological compromise are they making to save democracy?" if the answer is "none" or close to it, they're full of shit.

'Cause if fascism is really our doorstep, you'd think they'd be gunning for the broadest, most indefatigable anti-fascist coalition possible; instead of the narrowest, most pure one they think they can get away with.

samrus 1 hour ago | parent

Thats what happens when you live in increasingly interesting times

swed420 56 minutes ago | parent

Anything to prop up the illusion of democracy.

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

timacles 39 minutes ago | parent

Yep, Dems are just the good cop to the bad cop. And their only purpose is to placate the country into thinking we’re not 100% owned by billionaires and corporate interests.

kspacewalk2 1 hour ago | parent

>Back then the establishment used the CIA/FBI to prevent a multi-coalition, working class movement across ethnicity, unions, and religions that would have made the US a better democracy.

It's communism. Cold War. All there is to it. As with much other evil, this was done because the FBI feared that Big Bad Uncle Ivan will somehow gain influence over this leader and use it for leverage in the Cold War.

The same multitudes of extramarital affairs and other racy and embarrassing stuff that Dr King took part in, as a reverend, could be used by communists to blackmail him into working for them or making decisions that favour the Soviet Union. Is it far-fetched? Sure. Is it, in hindsight, paranoid and stupid? Yep. But can we say with certainty, without hindsight, that it was impossible, when you have an entire organization dedicated to rooting out hidden influence of the enemy in an existential covert global struggle?

And it wasn't all paranoia. The Soviet Union under Stalin was extremely good at infiltrating American academia, civil society and government. The Rosenbergs, Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, etc. The US government went from ignoring the problem and dealing with it so incompetently actual Soviet spies were in almost cabinet-level positions, to hysterically over-reacting and ruining the lives of people like Dr King "just in case".

cowlevel 55 minutes ago | parent

There's another country that has infiltrated the whole American government, and a third country that is often said to have infiltrated American academia and civil society, but we don't seem to worry about them. Why the distinction?

kspacewalk2 46 minutes ago | parent

I'm not sure what your question is. Did someone draw a distinction? If you transplanted the 1960s FBI to modern times and told them to look for influence in favour of Russia or Israel or whoever you mean but for some reason don't name, and told them to use the same tactics, they probably would try.

jackb4040 18 minutes ago | parent

The USS Liberty happened in the 1960s. It's downright silly to pretend the American state would ever have had a similar orientation towards a rival superpower vs its own unsinkable aircraft carrier.

DFHippie 53 minutes ago | parent

It's pretty good under Putin, too. Better, actually. They don't use the same narrative template, but they're picking tools with more power. It turns out it's really easy to manipulate narcissists and authoritarian followers.

(well, the Russian Federation, not the USSR)

regretsresin 1 hour ago | parent

It doesn't all hinge on this November. It hinges on all the moments where people do work to avoid fascism. Some of that happens at the polls. Some of that happens at home. Some of that happens online.

Feed people. Engage in mutual aid. Build communities. Prepare candidates. Grow networks. Then vote. Voting is the last and easiest part.

accountrequired 49 minutes ago | parent

>multi-coalition, working class movement

That is how Communists get their cultural revolution, you know.

cowlevel 19 minutes ago | parent

It's the excuse Communists used. It's also the same excuse Fascists used. Need I remind you: national socialist German worker's party.

There seems to be great demand for a party that actually makes life better for people, so great that you can just name your party that, win an election and do anything you want to. For some reason there's very little supply of parties that actually make life better and don't just pretend they want to.

pessimizer 13 minutes ago | parent

> Back then the establishment used the CIA/FBI to prevent a multi-coalition, working class movement across ethnicity, unions, and religions that would have made the US a better democracy.

Back then the establishment used the CIA/FBI to attack black civil rights movements. They also used it to attack things that were associated with the Soviet Union, including associating black civil rights with communism and socialism, like you're doing here.

Maybe this was not about everybody and not about you?

fransje26 1 hour ago | parent

> I repeat - no person can argue successfully against facts.

In some aspects, times have changed..

ajs1998 59 minutes ago | parent

I think they mean it will tarnish your legacy. Obviously lying works short term.

WillAdams 1 hour ago | parent

One of the things I have of my father is an envelope which has some brass bits in it (I believe for a scale) which was mailed to my great uncle, addressed by hand, with only the county and state for an address in 1957 from Washington, D.C. with a postmark "Pray for peace" and in a box on the left of the envelope is written:

-------------------------------------------

House of Representatives, U.S.

Part of Congressional Record --- Free

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND NAACP IN COLLUSION TO FORCE SCHOOL INTEGRATION IN VIRGINIA

Address by Honorable Harry Flood Byrd before the Richmond Kiwanis Club, Richmond, Va

Extension of remarks of HON. WATKINS M. ABBITT of Virginia IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Wednesday, April 3, 1957

-------------------------------------------

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

Folks forget or underestimate how bitter the opposition to the Civil Rights Movement was.

I was taught to gut a squirrel by the son of a freed slave who lived behind the home in Virginia where my family retired to, he had worked alongside my grandfather as a sharecropper on my paternal grandmother's father's farm.

and it's worth noting that that county was one of the last to integrate in Virginia, facilitated by student teachers from a college in a nearby town whose post office is named for Watkins M. Abbitt.

MomsAVoxell 1 hour ago | parent

>Folks forget or underestimate how bitter the opposition to the Civil Rights Movement was.

It's especially jarring to understand this in the context of the utterly racist "war on terror", which is just racism under cover. Racists can't use the n-word any more, so they invented "terrorist" to continue their bigotry and hatred of cultures they've deemed inferior.

Its one thing to consider the West to be morally and technologically superior with regards to civil rights - its another thing to remember that our governments were the principle violators of civil rights, just a few short decades ago. What the hate-leaders tell us to think about the mullahs and Iran, we could easily have thought about our own nations just a half a lifetime ago...

chuckadams 54 minutes ago | parent

> What the hate-leaders tell us to think about the mullahs and Iran, we could easily have thought about our own nations just a half a lifetime ago...

Or where they'd still like to take us. The only problem they have with Ayatollahs is that they call God by the wrong name.

zulux 51 minutes ago | parent

Well, that, and the rapeing and the murdering. And sticking their women in sacks isn't a good look for the theocracy.

jacquesm 47 minutes ago | parent

The fundamentalist 'christian' groups are not much better from my vantage point.

sejje 28 minutes ago | parent

It's hard to discern detail with your eyes closed.

MomsAVoxell 46 minutes ago | parent

See, there you go, doing it.

Do you think that subsistence-working at Only Fans, or the local strip club is a better alternative?

For every 'women in sacks' argument that can be made, there is a street downtown where women put themselves in immense danger just to be able to feed their kids, pay their medical bill debts, get themselves some kind of safety net...

Same shit, different social flavor.

Arodex 35 minutes ago | parent

In America women can go to jail for their husbands' crimes, men are allowed to marry ten-year-olds, and abortions in some states are illegal, even in cases of rape.

https://letterboxd.com/film/americas-war-against-women/watch...

GolfPopper 42 minutes ago | parent

Are you talking about American religious conservatives in power, or Iranian ones?

MomsAVoxell 49 minutes ago | parent

I think the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a pretty good framework by which to assess the longterm viability of a nation/state/group. States which violate the principles of the UDHR tend to be dreadful places to live in many ways - and this is as true of Western states as it is the non-Western ones.

I couldn't live in a state which allows its police forces to murder with impunity, for example.

The point is that the moral authority we claim over other states is a fallacy. Until we are actually protecting civil rights to the extent we expect of other nations, we are hypocritically justifying our own states heinous track record.

Alas, this seems to be understood pretty well by the ruling classes, who have subjugated human rights to mean "this gives us a right to justify the destruction of sovereign states and their peoples' we have deemed inferior".

dragonwriter 41 minutes ago | parent

> It's especially jarring to understand this in the context of the utterly racist "war on terror", which is just racism under cover.

Not under that much cover, just the more overt part of it directed at a different demographic than the primary foci of earlier rounds of US racism (though it provided a lot of excuse for actions directed more in line with classic US racism, and set the stage for the renaissance of more classicly directed, out-and-proud racism that has characterized the Trump era.)

MomsAVoxell 24 minutes ago | parent

See, I happen to think that racists get some kind of perverse self-actualization from manifesting degradation of cultures they consider inferior - that there is a real 'buzz' to be had from such fallacious elevation as required to justify bombing another culture into oblivion. The murder is its own reward in such circles.

The "terrorism" tranche of this hate culture is particularly jarring, since the ones claiming moral altitude over 'terrorists' are delivering far, far more terrorism than their supposed enemies. It's just been homogenized.

fsckboy 3 minutes ago | parent

>remember that our governments were the principle violators of civil rights, just a few short decades ago.

Booker T Washington, a notable and well-known African American scholar and public intellectual who worked tirelessly to improve the lives of Black Americans and is considered an authority on these topics, said in an 1895 speech in Alanta that despite the civil rights challenges faced by African Americans, that America was the best place in the world for Africans to live and prosper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Exposition_Speech It is silly to present yourself as more knowledgeable or morally pure about civil rights than Booker T Washington.

so, no, you are wrong, without defending any of the injustices that occurred, America has literally not been the principle violator of civil rights at any point in its history. (The wars against Native Americans were wars just like the wars that the Native Americans inflicted on each other, no other word to use than barbaric and indefensible. Yet, worst in the world? worst in that period? No.)

It's especially jarring to understand this in the context of the utterly racist "war on terror"...which is just racism under cover. Racists can't use the n-word any more, so they invented "terrorist" to continue their bigotry and hatred of cultures they've deemed inferior.

you put "war on terror" in quotes, rightfully, because you recognize that it's just a catchphrase like the wars "on cancer", "on smoking", "on diabetes", etc. And you are using the term "racist" the same way. Most terrorism in the last 60ish years is associated with some Arabs and also some Islamists, and with or in cooperation with, anarcho-Marxists like Bader-Meinhof, Brigate Rosse/Red Brigades, antifa, etc. These people do not form a race or inasmuch as they do it's within the white "races", i.e. not much African and not much Asian. But like the "war on terror", you want to invest your misguided view of this struggle as beyond reproach so you say people who engage in it are Racists™. The PLO was not Islamic, the PLO was nationalistic. Islam isn't a race. Capitalism is not Christianity. Humans get into conflict about ideas more than anything else. Debate the ideas and don't contribute to strife by lashing out emotionally.

>"It's one thing to consider the West to be morally and technologically superior with regards to civil rights"

yes, go on...

As your profile page says, "listen here, person, respect is mutual": none of us is perfect, but those are words to at least try to live by.

barake 44 minutes ago | parent

My local school system was forcibly desegrated _less than 10 years before I was born_ [1]. You can still plainly see the impact of redlining on my city [2]. I think it goes without saying that this wasn't covered in our schools, public or private, and was something I only really understood the scope of as an adult.

1: https://www.wlky.com/article/forced-busing-anniversary-50-lo...

2: https://www.louisville.com/redlining-louisville-dividing-lin...

amanaplanacanal 24 minutes ago | parent

I was born and raised in liberal west coast Oregon. We sure weren't taught about the racial implications of our state's history either. When Oregon was admitted to the union the state constitution prohibited blacks from living in the state. 100 years ago the Klan was big here, and even now African Americans are less than 2% of the population.

igleria 41 minutes ago | parent

I mean... operation paperclip already tells you A LOT of what you need to understand about the USA for most of the 20th century. And I'm being kind because it would otherwise be unfair to most of the users of this site who were not even born then.

tsunamifury 23 minutes ago | parent

I don’t think you need to be so gentle with us.

We, as Americans have had our “mask off” moment now and are openly declaring ourselves the preeminent empire on the planet. It’s simply that we are withdrawing from our globalist support structures due to a wide variety of forecast reasons along side that, which is confusing to many.

It was our liberal values and performance internally by the Democrats that gave our people as sort of comforting story before. We do it for the good of others we give we topple dictators etc.

I am a deeply “real politik” person and I don’t think you average right leaning American ever thought otherwise. It was somewhat ironically the hope yet no-change left Americans (who i have counted myself among) who tried to give it the thinnest veneer of responsibility.

The greatest thing we provided the world was order, for a time. That seems true of almost any mature empire.

tehjoker 16 minutes ago | parent

Order for the West, chaos and death for south america and southeast asia and the middle east and parts of africa.

jfengel 40 minutes ago | parent

Folks forget or underestimate how bitter the opposition to the Civil Rights Movement is.

White folks, that is. Black Americans are acutely aware of it.

Civil Rights legislation is being rolled back, to enthusiastic cheers. A lot of people never got over the Civil War, and are still trying to prove that somehow they were right all along.

WillAdams 38 minutes ago | parent

In my experience, the only group more racist than rural black males are the Japanese --- hard to claim that they are aware of the Civil Rights Movement when they pour vile racist epithets on anyone who is different from them.

caranlharris 29 minutes ago | parent

Black people cant be racist. Racism is a systemically created way of thinking about a people to oppress them. Who created the system here in America, not the black and how do you call people black who are brown. Why were the blacks oppressed and written into the systems as not fully human so most systems see black folk less than human. It still happens today. Black people have reacted to a system built against themselves in fear and noone says that is fair but they aren't the majority or the people with the power to change it.

sscaryterry 27 minutes ago | parent

> Black people cant be racist

You are clearly misinformed.

r14c 22 minutes ago | parent

Colloquially racist? Sure. Anyone can be, but racism is also a political structure which black people don't have access to in the US. Which is what OP is trying to get at.

sscaryterry 20 minutes ago | parent

Agreed, but let’s not make such wild statements. Racism and xenophobia does not look at the colour of the perpetrator’s skin.

crostlybostly 23 minutes ago | parent

Ranting about “Black people cant be racist” is a great way to get most people to ignore everything you say after.

Everyone can be racist. No one wants to debate pedantic redefined terms that liberal arts professors came up with so they could sell books.

bennettnate5 9 minutes ago | parent

The whole "X can't be racist" claim is part of the broader class of intellectual ragebait--subverting the original meaning of a term to elicit reaction and thereby garner views (or in the academic realm, citations), but with more refined language and logic than the usual memes ragebait is found in. I find it frustrating and detracting from actual meaningful social/scientific efforts.

robtherobber 9 minutes ago | parent

Should you've stopped at "everyone can be racist", the comment would've been an excellent, if oversimplified, synthesis of the issue.

DaSHacka 20 minutes ago | parent

>racist [noun]

>A person who believes a particular race is superior to others. A person with a prejudiced belief that one race is superior to others.

No where does it mention this new-age "prejudice + power" redefinition.

The word is race + -ism, IE literally "doctrine/practice based on race". The word has nothing to do with power. A black dude in America who chooses to beat up a white dude for his race is racist, even under the assumption he is a systematically oppressed minority.

throwitaway222 9 minutes ago | parent

Just stop seeing skin color - We've lost so much progress since Fresh Prince and Family Matters. Race baiters are ruining this country.

runtime_terror 5 minutes ago | parent

I believe you're conflating systematic racism with racism more broadly. Anyone can be racist.

badpun 2 minutes ago | parent

Racism is believing that people can be divided into races (spoiler alert: races don't exist) and, not only that, but also than some of those races are better than others.

IAmBroom 12 minutes ago | parent

Your experience is sadly very parochial, and simply anecdata.

Meaningful systemic racism is far more problematic than your experience with a few rural black males.

theoreticalmal 37 minutes ago | parent

Are you talking about Title VII in Universities?

tetromino_ 17 minutes ago | parent

My first guess would be this year's Supreme Court decision about the Voting Rights Act.

dcss_gardener 17 minutes ago | parent

Gotta also remember that all these devoted segregationists didn't get removed from positions of power or influence, nor did they change their minds about the value of segregation.

You had a generation of people making legal, hiring, sentencing, admission, loan decisions that smoothly transitioned from enforcing the law to being very concerned about standards or however they personally decided was the best way to publicly approach it within their little political sphere.

Then they selected and trained the next generation of administrators, bureaucrats, and enforcers about the "right" way to do this work. A lot of things have changed but at no point did this process end in any meaningful way.

forinti 38 minutes ago | parent

> Folks forget or underestimate how bitter the opposition to the Civil Rights Movement was.

When you are used to privilege, equality looks like oppression.

redanddead 33 minutes ago | parent

> I was taught to gut a squirrel by the son of a freed slave

Why gut squirrels

cowlevel 25 minutes ago | parent

That isn't what was written on the letter, that was the commenter's own writing.

lifestyleguru 1 hour ago | parent

Sometime around 2010-2020 there were tons of spam messages arriving to gmail of type "I know and have recordings of what you were doing there you immoral filthy pervert!". Nowadays they only want to give away million dollars.

cowlevel 50 minutes ago | parent

Apparently most of these huge spam waves originate from just one or two people which is why they're so similar. If a certain type of spam stops arriving it means that specific person got bored.

nunez 49 minutes ago | parent

lol I actually got a spam email the other day saying more or less exactly this!

so weird that it somehow got through the spam filter

bjacobel 24 minutes ago | parent

Gmail's spam filter has gotten noticeably worse in the last two months. I'm half-convinced they threw away whatever they used to be doing and just put Gemini in the loop.

wildzzz 20 minutes ago | parent

It's incredible how effective those messages are for some people. Some victims emptied their bank accounts because they were so ashamed of whatever porn they were watching and possibly afraid of legal consequences too. The amount of accounts on X that purportedly sell CSAM though telegram channels seems like an incredible opportunity for scammers beyond just normal fraud. Steal the money from the buyer first and then turn around and blackmail them for more.

crab2 1 hour ago | parent

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=fedpost

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49131162

jacquesm 35 minutes ago | parent

What is your goal with posting these links?

whycome 1 hour ago | parent

Vox is paywalled too?

freediver 30 minutes ago | parent

Being paywalled is not an issue, but not being able to have micro transaction in a browser with one click still is mind boggling. As a creator of a browser, taking some blame for that.

cowlevel 11 minutes ago | parent

I can do that. I can click on my credit card autofill and then "pay", so two clicks.

But sites won't let me do that, they want me to make an account first and they want to verify my email address and phone number which means leaving my browser and restarting the process each time I do because the browser got unloaded and the website doesn't save state. Almost all of the friction here is the fault of the website, not the payment process.

Usually I just can't make an account on a mobile device because of the browser unloading, so if it's important I do it later with my PC and if it's not important I give up entirely.

krunck 1 hour ago | parent

And failing that the government assassinated him.

mcv 54 minutes ago | parent

I am astonished how someone could write something so despicable. Well, not entirely astonished; I've seen the works of many internet trolls and usenet flamewars, and this fits right in. But for an official organisation like the FBI to stoop to this, well, J Edgar Hoover, I guess.

Magicrafter13 6 minutes ago | parent

What's crazy is that most of the accusations against his moral character are true. He caused a great change to take place in the nation, but he was not an upstanding individual outside of that.

Good thing the FBI doesn't do this anymore hahaha yes we are certainly safe and they are definitely not infiltrating groups and people's minds in order to discredit and trick them into failure.....

avazhi 4 minutes ago | parent

So were the accusations true or not?