GitHub reportedly fired a Jewish employee who called Capitol rioters “Nazis”

https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/12/22227487/github-microsoft-fired-jewish-employee-warned-nazis-us-capitol-breach

by wfleming • 6 years ago

36 16 6 years ago

We really need to stop using the term Nazi so flippantly. Nazism represented a systematic process of genocide. Literally treating the death of an entire ethnic group as something you use CI techniques to improve efficiency.

The US saw some cosplay that went way too far. Is it dangerous? Yes. Is it toxic? Yes. Could it lead to something akin to Nazism? Yes. Is it Nazism? No.

Don't minimize what happened under Nazism by using it as an idle insult

Finnucane4• 6 years ago

Yes, when you're Jewish and there's an armed mob of white supremacists on the street, the last thing we want to do is insult them by improper classification.

forgotmypw172• 6 years ago

two wrongs don,t make a right.

eyelidlessness• 6 years ago

It’s not being used flippantly. There’s literal nazis running amok. With literal swastikas, SS symbols, derivative names. For years. Deeply embedded and actively organizing the mobs like we saw last week. Ran around chanting “Jews will not replace us” and murdered a woman with a Dodge Charger. Where have you been?

srockets• 6 years ago

Don't minimize the current threat by thinking it isn't as dangerous.

jjk166• 6 years ago

Nazis committed genocide, but that's not what Nazism was. The Nazis existed and were active for years before they had the opportunity to carry out genocide, and even then many details were kept secret from the vast majority of Nazis because the leaders recognized they would lose popular support. To say the civilians rioting in the street, ransacking and assaulting as the authorities did nothing, during Kristallnacht weren't Nazis just because there were no death camps at that time is beyond absurd.

Nazism is a political ideology which combines the ultranationalism and authoritarianism of fascism with fervent antisemitism, anti-communism, and racism. To the extent that any ideology can be summed up in three words, race-based fascism is a pretty good definition. If you see someone espousing both fascism and racism, labelling them a Nazi or neo-nazi is generally appropriate. To act like nazism is some impossible level of evil that no living person could ever reach is to deny both the reality that millions of people did in fact adhere to these views in the past, and that even today a small but vocal minority see this ideology as legitimate.

fulafel• 6 years ago

Re the comparison - Yes it seems far different if you look 30's nazism as a historical artifact, in retrospect. But the genocidey things only happened pretty late in the game and was even then kept in secret for long. A better point of comparison is what happened earier, there's plenty of differences and similarities to be found there worth arguing.

joshuahaglund• 6 years ago

To the people saying stop using the term Nazi there were people in "camp auschwitz" shirts and "6 million wasn't enough" tattoos (referring to the number of Jewish people killed). There absolutely were Nazis in the streets.

I'm disappointed in github for their actions and in the HN community that I see people defending Nazis.

Also, FWIW, this is what 20,000 American Nazis in Madison Square Garden in 1939 looks like. Nazi, white supremacist, neo-confederate, all the same thing, all in America. Complacency and nit-picking verbiage will only make them stronger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC1MNGFHR58

FrozenVoid• 6 years ago

What is Github's side of the story?

GitHub reportedly fired a Jewish employee who called Capitol rioters “Nazis”

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