When you use a phrase like "genocidal rhetoric", I assume that you consider certain comments to be wrong and bad. From that perspective your question could be generalized to "what's the best way to respond to wrong and bad comments on this site?" Keeping in mind that "bad" here doesn't just mean the comment is badly written—in internet jargon, it means the commenter is bad.
Curiosity doesn't exclude wrongness or badness—it's interested in it. How did this comment (or person) get so wrong and bad? Could that change? Is there a response that could pull them out of wrongness and badness into rightness and goodness? Why do most of my (<-- I mean any of us, of course) attempts to do this fail so badly? Is there a more effective way to respond? Might there be something interesting here beyond wrongness and badness?
That's the spirit we're trying for on this site, so that's the answer to your question.
If I ask myself what other approaches are possible, there's one obvious option, and that is to crush/destroy/defeat the wrong and bad argument (and person) utterly. This is the desire to kill the other person (if only metaphorically (and maybe not always so metaphorically)), and thus establish rightness and goodness over wrongness and badness.
So the "accepted way" here is to listen to the other and dance with them, rather than killing them (or their position). Dance rather than war, if you like.
Is there a third option? I'm not sure. When I look inside myself, I can find the listen/dance option (or one could say give-and-take), and I can find the kill option. But I'm not sure I can find a third.
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Edit: reading this the next day, I think the word 'dance' could have trivializing associations (e.g. let's just dance rather than deal with violence and tragedy). I don't mean it that way. I mean something like moving and changing in response to each other. If anyone can do that in response to the other, even just a little, then one's self becomes a place for at least a modicum of change.
As someone who abandoned rightness/wrongness 9+ years ago (except in the idea of alignment with the cosmos), I can say that "genocidal rhetoric" doesn't necessarily imply rightness or wrongness. There exist language patterns that indicate a perspective that, when culturally carried and compounded for years, has the effect of cultivating behaviors that lead to extinguishing a people, whether intentional or not. This is genocidal rhetoric.
As for options as to what to do with it, I find this useful for finding more.
> "genocidal rhetoric" doesn't necessarily imply rightness or wrongness
I believe you when you describe your perspective this way, but it's so far beyond conventional usage that it may be misleading to express it in this way. Certainly I didn't understand your GP comment as being anywhere near what you're saying here, and I doubt others would.
It's true...conventional usage is rooted in addiction to violence, which includes dualistic myths of right/wrong, life/death, like/dislike, belief/disbelief.
Perhaps a site-wide call for curiosity when encountering such myths could help spur people to pull themselves out of such ways of "killing" nondual animist views of experience.
I appreciate you dang and the culture you are trying to cultivate, but I think in a genocide civility politics are inappropriate. I'm jewish, and I am certain that "raising questions" about whether jews should live or die or are intrinsically evil terrorists would not be allowed on this site. For balance, this should be accorded equally to palestinians, who are in fact being killed mercilessly in line for food by Israeli forces and US mercenaries. pg in fact has been loudly talking about the genocide, which I appreciate.
I will try to be less flippant in my comments. Nonetheless, it is a lot of work to cut through genocidal lies that are often supported (at least in editorials if not in actual reporting) by the mainstream media. The north of Gaza has been nearly obliterated and still these guys get to cast aspersions justifying the annihilation of a people.
> "raising questions" about whether jews should live or die or are intrinsically evil terrorists would not be allowed on this site. For balance, this should be accorded equally to palestinians
What are examples of such comments not being flagged and/or moderated? I'd appreciate links. Such comments are unacceptable by any interpretation of HN's guidelines, and the only reason we wouldn't crack down on them (same as with antisemitic comments of course) is if we didn't see them.
> I think in a genocide civility politics are inappropriate
I'm not talking about civility and stopped using that word years ago. Shallow words like civility or politeness don't reflect how we think about moderation. (I listed a few past explanations about that below*, if anyone wants them.)
What are we looking for? Not sure I can answer that better than I did in the GP comment. We want people to listen to each other, because of the two available options—listening and killing—only listening is compatible with the core value of the site.
I know it's a provocation to use the word "killing" in this context, and obviously I mean it metaphorically, but I think it's accurate. When people stop listening and seek to destroy the other's argument/position/view, killing energy is the quality that shows up. I don't think it takes too much emotional self-awareness to feel this, nor too much self-honesty to admit it.
That is the dynamic behind weaponized internet comments. It's easy to deny, because the genre itself is so trivial, and so are the weapons (snark, tropes, etc.). But one need only sense into the feeling level and it's no longer so trivial—in fact, it's all there.
This explains the distinctive mix of rage and pain that flares up when one reads a comment fired against one's position, and also the distinctive mix of...let's call it righteousness and triumph that flares up when a comment is fired in favor of one's position.
Perhaps it would be less provocative to use the word "war" rather than "killing" for the non-listening option, but I'm not sure that abstraction is beneficial in describing this. It creates distance from the reality inside ourselves, and room for denial and evasion.
Regardless of what the best names are, we want the listening option, because the alternative is just more destruction.
(Needless to say, I'm not talking about you here, I'm talking about all of us.)
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* Here are a few posts touching on how we stopped thinking in terms of 'civility'...lots more can be found in HN Search if anyone cares...
When you use a phrase like "genocidal rhetoric", I assume that you consider certain comments to be wrong and bad. From that perspective your question could be generalized to "what's the best way to respond to wrong and bad comments on this site?" Keeping in mind that "bad" here doesn't just mean the comment is badly written—in internet jargon, it means the commenter is bad.
Curiosity doesn't exclude wrongness or badness—it's interested in it. How did this comment (or person) get so wrong and bad? Could that change? Is there a response that could pull them out of wrongness and badness into rightness and goodness? Why do most of my (<-- I mean any of us, of course) attempts to do this fail so badly? Is there a more effective way to respond? Might there be something interesting here beyond wrongness and badness?
That's the spirit we're trying for on this site, so that's the answer to your question.
If I ask myself what other approaches are possible, there's one obvious option, and that is to crush/destroy/defeat the wrong and bad argument (and person) utterly. This is the desire to kill the other person (if only metaphorically (and maybe not always so metaphorically)), and thus establish rightness and goodness over wrongness and badness.
So the "accepted way" here is to listen to the other and dance with them, rather than killing them (or their position). Dance rather than war, if you like.
Is there a third option? I'm not sure. When I look inside myself, I can find the listen/dance option (or one could say give-and-take), and I can find the kill option. But I'm not sure I can find a third.
---
Edit: reading this the next day, I think the word 'dance' could have trivializing associations (e.g. let's just dance rather than deal with violence and tragedy). I don't mean it that way. I mean something like moving and changing in response to each other. If anyone can do that in response to the other, even just a little, then one's self becomes a place for at least a modicum of change.