Flagged on HN means that some users thought your comment broke the site guidelines and shouldn't have been posted here. (See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.) After that, your comment got enough upvotes to override the flags, which is why the [flagged] marker disappeared.

I think your comment was fine, but I had to read it pretty closely to be sure. Most likely it was worded in a way that it made it seem more provocative than it actually is. Unfortunately, seeming provocative and being provocative are pretty much the same thing on the internet. The word "Nazi" itself contains a provocative charge for many readers, so in a way your comment was affected by the phenomenon it describes.

Interesting. Dang, you should write a book -- or at least a blog post -- on the psychological dynamics of internet communities!

> The word "Nazi" itself contains a provocative charge

I find this a bit confusing. Provocative to whom? There are 1) people calling other people Nazis and there are 2) people being called Nazis.

1) Can't claim they're being provoked because they're the ones using the word in the first place. I don't think 2) would be offended by the word itself. They don't like being called Nazis, which is different.

When someone says "Nazi" I'm thinking "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question" and the "superiority of the Aryan master race". These are very bad things and practically everyone agrees!

Side note: perhaps when people say Nazis they mean ethno-nationalists?

Nazis killed millions of people in Europe and took my country apart. What was left behind is a deeply damaged society. I don't know how many generations it will take to fix it. So it annoys me when the word is thrown so casually at any random person on the internet. A dude going to a Mall with a swastika flag is probably just an ass that wants to "trigger lefties". And they take the bait. And media takes the bait too.

> "Why are Americans so obsessed with Nazis?"

Terms like "Nazi" and "alt-right" are powerful memes. They have dictionary definitions of course, but people aren't dictionaries. Outside of special practices (engineering, math, etc), people think in terms of relatively vague concepts - in memes. Language can be used to shape people's perception of reality. This very article is an example of that, look at how many characters in this simple story had their beliefs shaped by memes of various kinds: the girl who had detailed beliefs of what the boy did despite having next to no information; the school administrators who were absolutely sure he had done something terrible despite working from a child's opinion, the parents who had trouble seriously addressing their son's new obsession despite being highly knowledgeable on "the facts of the matter". Another example is forum discussions on topics similar to this one.

Human beings hold an incredibly detailed model of reality in their mind, they have extremely high confidence in their model (after all, if it was incorrect, they'd change it of course), yet every single person's model is largely based on memes. Ideas and "facts" about the reality they live in, picked up from here and there, all added to the ultra high resolution model of reality they hold in their heads. The vast, vast majority of that model is based on vague, often incorrect data. But to the observer, it looks perfectly correct.

As for why Americans are so obsessed with Nazis? Because it is a powerfully persuasive meme. Attaching a label ("Nazi", "alt-right", "socialist", "crooked Hillary", "Lyin' Ted", etc) to someone alters the mental model of reality held by other human beings. Sometimes it is used for good, sometimes it is used for evil. Language has always been used to shape people's perceptions of reality, the internet has just increased the speed of propagation. We often hear how we should base our opinions on facts, yet those in power who tell us this seem rather reluctant to give up their reliance on memes.

Here's a fun experiment: next time you encounter someone online asserting a "fact" that you sense is actually a meme, ask them how they know that their fact is actually true. In my experience, you will collect several downvotes, and zero answers to a perfectly obvious and reasonable question.

It’s impossible to have a balanced discussion in which all sides on a controversial topic are viewed at face value when the format of the forum promotes and hides content based on popularity. /pol/ could never have existed if it had upvotes and downvotes, for instance.

It's probably put in a way that can cause flame wars.

Unmoderated quickly devolve into toxic pool of "I don't actually care about what you're saying, I'm just going to downvote/report you". And it works! No discussion can take place just self-reinforcing feedback loop (ironically that's what the author describes in the article!).

Moderated platforms are no better because then one is at the mercy of the moderator.

What are we to do?

I like to discuss anything and everything because I can't turn off my brain and I just think about all kinds of random stuff, a lot. There's no "idle" mode.

There just doesn't seem to be any sane place left on the internet.

The spirit you're describing is pretty much the intellectual curiosity that is most welcome here. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

But even when motivated by curiosity, it's easy for comments on divisive topics to get caught in, and even feed, the flames. Therefore one needs to learn how to include a bit of flame retardant each time one does so. Unfortunate, maybe, but it's a reasonable price for not having the forum burn to a crisp.

Downvotes aren't "I don't like you / your idea". Obviously some people use them that way, but ultimately they're about public moderation.

I downvoted your comment. I can explain why if you like. It's not because "I don't really care about what you're saying", and it's not right to be so dismissive. There are substantive reasons.

First, you set up a strawman: Why are Americans so obsessed with Nazis?

There are two implications here:

* The first is that there is an obsession, an irrational amount of attention. Obsession has strong negative associations. It's a highly loaded word. This is a common rhetorical pattern: choose such a loaded word and present it as the antecedent of whatever argument you're putting forth. It lays the groundwork of the ensuing discussion that, indeed, Americans are obsessed, why would anyone not agree with that? It's often used as part of a Gish Gallop, where highly editorialized statements are peppered throughout an argument, making a thorough response become far too long-winded, meandering, and rhetorically weak. It's a strong signal that someone is posting in bad faith; there are many ways to ask this question in a neutral way, but that wasn't done.

* The second is that Nazis are the issue, rather than fascism or the right-wing in general. It's definitely worth noting that this article specifically used the term "Alt-right", and only referred to Nazis when referring to actual neo-Nazis, Nazi symbolism/flags, etc. Generally, discussion of Nazis is common because it's an entirely apt and powerful example of right-wing ideology and political power.

Beyond the rhetorical flair, the rise of right-wing ideology in America has been so sudden and pervasive that it strains credulity that anyone would be surprised that the issue gets lots of attention. The rhetoric of foreign threats, heterodoxy and distrust of academics/authorities/elites, national/racial pride, traditional values, etc. are all shared between the contemporary alt-right and the Nazis, so these comparisons are bound to happen, and are often apt. Certainly it's not always used appropriately, but nothing can change the fact that these are, overall, similar right-wing movements.

Your comment went out of the way to bring up "obsession" with "Nazi hysteria" despite having nothing to do with this particular article, so it's hard to believe it's made in good faith. Perhaps it is, but the cost of false-positives in this sort of moderation strategy are very low; you can easily get around it by taking on a somewhat more neutral tone.

What do you mean by right-wing? Does right-wing automatically mean something negative? It seems to me that to you right-wing means something bad. I don't have that kind of association.

To address your first point, I disagree it's a strawman. My personal opinion and what I'm arguing here is that yes, it is indeed an (unhealthy) obsession. I'm an expat. I lived outside my home country longer than I lived there. I bounced around Europe, Asia and US. I've never heard much Nazis except the constant coverage from US media that emerged in last few years.

I agree that comment was only tangential to the article. But every time someone says Nazis I raise my eyebrows and think "who are those Nazis they speak of"? I've only been to New York, DC, Bay Area and few other places in US and I've never seen a Nazi.

I'm happy to concede that what I've said was somewhat off-topic though.

To address your second point, while the bulk of the article talks about alt-right, Nazis and American History X are mentioned, and I think that makes discussing them fair game. Because this article does not exist in vacuum.

Thank you for taking the time to explain your downvote though.

I think I could substitute "obsessed" for "preoccupied" in the future :)