Incidentally, some of the users flagging the story are people who, I know from their usernames, are sympathetic to the cause of the protestors. The flagging is therefore not exclusively ideologically driven. Seasoned Hacker News users often flag threads that they feel are bad for the site (e.g. because the thread is a flamewar), separately from their own views on the topic. That's community stewardship, not ideological suppression.
Edit: also, is it really a mystery what's happening here? The article linked at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23867746 seems to explain it pretty well: the feds have sent police to Portland and there's a strong disagreement between the federal government and the state and local governments about whether they should be doing that. If those are the facts, it's not surprising that the threads are flamewars, because there's really not much for commenters to comment on other than to repeat the political commitment they already have.
HN has never been a site to shy away from political flamewars. You can look back through the various posts we have on China here where people rightfully claim the government in China has been responsible for various atrocities. Those threads fall along similar political lines and there's no real debate to be had, yet they still survive [1]. Hell, we can even talk about the recent threads on Trump [2] to see similar threads explode in popularity and make it through unflagged.
But we have a very obvious instance of something that all sides should be able to agree on, which is the feds picking up people off the streets without identification or recourse. This shouldn't even have political contention because both the left and the right should be able to agree it's a Bad Thing. Especially here on HN where there's a running trend of anything that involves censorship or rights being taken away [3] [4] [5] [6] gets massive amounts of traction but a story of very obvious government overreach ends up getting flagged.
This isn't to say that I think all topics are driven like this. As you've linked before, there are various discussions on police brutality made here on HN. But I've noticed those threads also go through significant periods of being flagged or pushed off the page until there's enough users to vouch for it or vote it up to bypass those flags. Which is to say I firmly believe stories nowadays are being flagged not on the basis of discussion but because of ideological reasons even if there are a few users using flags as it is intended. Otherwise why do those other stories explode in popularity considering they have the same levels of political flamebaiting?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23739567
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347155
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23758547
People make generalizations about HN based on what they see, but they see what they notice and are far more likely to notice what they dislike and weight it more heavily (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). Basically that means your image of HN is likely to fill out as an inverse image of your own views. In other words, HN will seem to be full of your enemies. That explains why the other side sees the forum as being made up of their enemies.
Everyone here needs to accept—because it's reality—that the forum is simply divided on divisive topics. It's divided roughly the way that society at large is divided in the many countries whose citizens participate here. No doubt there is some skew (because of factors like education and class), but with the exception of a small number of issues like, say, software patents, it's likely not a major skew. Perceptions of major skew on HN are overwhelmingly rooted in cognitive bias, which explains why they're so contradictory and all over the place.
One reason this is so important is that when someone perceives HN as being dominated by enemies, they are much more likely to go into battle mode. If instead you perceive it as being a more-or-less representative sample of the world, that's still rough—the world is not as we would like it to be—but there's at least a greater possibility of openness. I wrote more about this here, if anyone's interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.
They have also been allowed to throw bricks, molotovs, bats etc on law enforcement and people. They are destroying the peaceful protests to turn them into violence. Local law enforcement hasn't been doing anything to stop it because the mayors have been useless. That's where the feds intervene - especially because most of these people who are getting arrested are crossing state lines and therefore federal.
If you're one of the pro-freedom people here on HN, how could you ever rationalize this sort of thing? In what world is it ever OK for the feds to do this sort of thing? This is something both the left and the right should be able to fully agree on!
I'm incredibly disappointed this got flagged, but not surprised. It is somewhat ironic though, since on HN any threads about perceived censorship gets massive amounts of votes such as when Twitter added the disclaimer to Trump's tweets. But then you have someone quite literally being abducted without cause and here come the flags and the 'it's too political' signs coming out.
The border patrol, DHS, and Portland Police Bureau are purposely terrorizing the citizens of Portland for political motives every single night. Portland is a lightning rod for right-wing animosity.
A lot of previously passive citizens are becoming radicalized by these events (similar to wartorn countries) and it kind of feels like a foreign occupation at this point.
I don't think I can ever go back to trusting police or the federal government the same way.
Start at 9:30 timestamp:
https://youtu.be/3ptD6koTknw?t=570
People sharing videos of this share either selectively edited videos without context OR they only share the ending part where they are arrested and not the part where they were instigating violence in the peaceful protests.
Also they are not unidentified. They have Police on their chest.
There's also a theory (can't confirm this) that these are undercover operatives being extracted as they have been infiltrated Antifa.
I'm not sure the video that you've linked is any better. It's basically someone dismissing it saying they were bad people who deserved it. It adds zero information.
https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618
This is a literally subversive movement. I'm not exaggerating or choosing a side. Watch the livestreams yourself - these people explicitly seek to subvert, dismantle, and replace modern "power structures" (intentionally left vague).
Whether you agree with what these people think they're fighting for, the system has safeguards against such insurrection.
It doesn't matter who they're arresting and for what reason. They should announce who they are, using marked vehicles and properly arrest them if they have actually committed a crime.
Because otherwise, what's stopping someone from dressing up in military garb and straight up abducting someone? How do you know they're even part of the federal law enforcement and not actually someone taking advantage of the situation to commit crimes as well?
Demonstrators like O’Shea and Pettibone said they think they were targeted by federal officers for simply wearing black clothing in the area of the demonstration.“
That's misleading. They are being recorded while they are being violent within the peaceful protests. They are being arrested when they leave because Feds don't want to disrupt the peaceful protests - so they arrest them when they leave the area. I have watched a few videos of this happening and all of them have the person in not just all black but also with a helmet, tools to break windows and baseball bats.
Here's one example where the dude who got arrested has a helmet on. Why's that needed in peaceful protests? Also note the thing he has on his left side. That's an attachment to break car windows:
https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618
But I’d like a sincere response: What difference does it make what they did if they were apprehended by unidentifiable officers? That’s the topic at hand - the fact that police are apprehending people in ways that are not identifiably different from kidnappings.
That's not what I meant when I said:
rioters (not the protestors)
I meant to say that a few violent people are sneaking into the protestors. By "not the protestors", I meant "I am not referring to the protestors".
By local government, I meant the mayor, the governor and the DA. Portland, Chicago has been this way for a long time.
What rights do you have resisting being grabbed from the street by somebody who isn't identifying themselves as law enforcement? They just have a "police" patch, they could be cosplayers.
[1] https://twitter.com/matcha_chai/status/1283328232033411072
[2] https://mobile.twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/128345258594...
And the general theory that America is some sort of police state. Undercover operators during a protest (of any sort) is an entirely logical supposition. No, it is not a blatant one; I am not being dramatic. However, the current social turmoil is revealing the oft-ignored dark side of the police to "white America" and I think that is a good thing.
I live in the UK now and the atmosphere in general here is different, I've interacted with police a few times, and no issues - but I am white. If you're in London and black... it is different. Yes, there have been stories of undercover police doing all sorts of shite with respect to environmental protesters aka "terrorists"... and lists of undesirables aka leftists...
But even then, it is still nothing like America. This is just my experience and gut feeling - the Robert Peel theory of policing still lives on here - in the States, the theory of policing is more like police are the occupying force. Cutting the budgets of police departments will help go a long way towards controlling the problem - here, the police have a limited budget (and manpower) and so have to be smart in not wasting money and dealing with avoidable hassles.
Though I was aware of the general concept of policing by consent.
Here’s the Wikipedia entry on Peelian principales of policing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles
The Peelian principles summarise the ideas that Sir Robert Peel developed to define an ethical police force. The approach expressed in these principles is commonly known as policing by consent in the United Kingdom and other countries such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
In this model of policing, police officers are regarded as citizens in uniform. They exercise their powers to police their fellow citizens with the implicit consent of those fellow citizens. "Policing by consent" indicates that the legitimacy of policing in the eyes of the public is based upon a general consensus of support that follows from transparency about their powers, their integrity in exercising those powers and their accountability for doing so.
