Posted by miles 6/24/2025
Why is this even on HN?
> Mathias Rongved, a spokesperson at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has warned fellow Norwegians that it is their duty to be clued up on US regulations before entering the country. "Most trips to the US go without any particular problems," he said.
> "Entry regulations can change at short notice, and it is the traveller's responsibility to have valid documents and be familiar with the current entry regulations. It is the immigration authorities upon arrival who decide whether you are rejected at the border. Norwegian authorities cannot intervene in this decision.
And as far as the original story, individual border agents should absolutely not be doing this to people because they have a meme on their phone, doubly so one where Vance shared a version of it himself. There is straight up no justification for this.
Dark days for the values the US professes to represent.
One of the underdiscussed aspects of an authoritarian regime is that it creates countless little tyrants that all feel empowered to exert whatever power they have in any way they see fit.
Some years later "Pull the guy with tattoos". Full search.
Year or two after that, New York, pulled from the queue, directed to stand in a clear box. "Do not move your feet from those markings". My young daughter had to stand and watch.
Another trip. My passport photo did not fit their criteria. "Why did you shave your head?" .. "Because it was hot" .. repeat that whole interaction several times.
I am so so happy that I never have to visit the USA again and it's solely because of the 'people' assigned as 'guards'.
Most border agents are brutal, regardless of the current administration. But things do seem to get worse when the Republicans/MAGA are in. I wouldn't even want to think about how they'll act if a big terrorist attack comes.
Drawing attention to yourself results in attention. Who knew.
People who put tattoos on their face are looking for attention. Attention is exactly what he got.
Obviously the guy has never traveled to Asia. He'd be singled out in every port and every station. Sounds like he lives a tidy life in No Europe. Where bald white guys with face tattoos and body armor are normal and only brown people are singled out in security lines...
No. Should have precisely zero baring on anything at all.
Reminder: Support of free speech requires support of the right to say things that you loathe by people you hate or you don’t support free speech.
See it?
I know you didn't mean it this way, but both sides believe this to be true depending on how you define "the right"
The thread in question is already 6 days old but you (both) broke the site rules so badly that this is not one to let pass.
We end up having to ban accounts that break the site guidelines like that, so please don't do it again.
No it doesn't. You're putting arbitrary limits to suit your views. You can support free speech for American citizens and also support using a foreigner's speech to determine whether or not we allow them into the country. That's just smart border policy. We should be vetting who we allow into our country, and using their speech is one way to vet them.
Obviously not allowing someone in over a bald JD Vance meme is stupid. But the idea that we have to allow all foreigners the same level of free speech without it affecting their chances of getting into the country is also stupid.
The bar for when speech should be criminalized/penalized by the government should be very high.
For private entities I'm far more tolerate of censorship especially since it cuts both ways. Allowing or banning speech can directly impact a company's bottom line and should be regulated by customers choosing to interact with or avoid platforms.
Who is this "we" and what rules govern these "we"? What are the consequences for this "we" just up and violating the rules or throwing those rules out altogether to grift, stay in power and persecute those they hate?
Maybe someday the civilized world will realize democracy often ends in the case of two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.
> We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words
and further that you're intending to use it as a burn on Trump and his government?
Regardless of what you think about them and Neo-Nazis/white supremacists, I think it's unfair because the policies of the current administration with regard to war, debt, environmentalism etc. evince a total disregard for the futures of children of any colour.
That is due to incompetence, not desire.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44369233
Or celebration
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44369218
The whole “political correctness is so bad that we need to elect the current regime” crew only ever really wanted to feel aligned with power and are more or less indifferent to what that power does so long as they are periodically made to feel reassured that they are on the right side of it.
The polite description of bootlicker
As someone who would be closer to that side than the opposite: this is terrible and unacceptable.
(It is not that hard to have actual principles)
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition. There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
https://plas.princeton.edu/news/2023/do-latin-america’s-top-...
I'm not a historian, but this reminds me a bit of the prelude to the French Revolution: a growing list of grievances against a ruling class by a population that feels abused, disenfranchised, and numerous.
Even if one expects to enjoy a sense of Schadenfreude were such a revolution/slaughter to occur, our staples of daily life (food, medicine, electricity, fuel) are distributed over such a geographically large network, that almost everyone on the country would suffer greatly.
I imagine.
The other thing to remember about the French Revolution was that nearly all the revolutionaries who came to power during it were dead by the end of it. The folks who are crying "We're in power now, suckas!" are being extremely stupid. Power doesn't last long at times like this.
The other thing that scares me is that the best place to be in all those historical times of crisis was an ocean away from the place where the crisis starts. But that doesn't work today; we have weapons with global reach that can level whole cities in 30 minutes. If the U.S. disintegrates nowhere on earth is safe.
This is a very Hollywood action film way of seeing the world. In the case of an American civil war, it's unlikely that it will be fought using nuclear weapons, and in that case, it's unlikely that they would use any on say, Chile, or Australia.
Europeans are screwed though.
If you live in Chile, the main danger is not that the U.S. drops a nuke on you. It's that Pakistan (freed from fear of international condemnation) drops a nuke in India, which then can no longer export rice to Saudi Arabia, where revolt breaks out, which cuts off the flow of oil, which makes Chile's economy grind to a halt.
So it’s not the Hollywood action movie view of the world. It’s just the standard 2005 version of Pax Americana make-believe.
Meanwhile Israel has attacked Iran and its US ally said “we want to do that too”.
India is also a nuclear state, so this is pretty unlikely unless the wheels really come off the deterrence strategy. North Korea attacking South Korea perhaps, but even that seems unlikely as it would greatly anger NK's closest ally of China.
Anyway, even I, with my paltry education in history, can see the historical parallels. And here I am, versus an oligarchic class that had the opportunity for a world-class education, and surely knows at least as much history as I do. I wonder if they really believe that they've found the way to prevent the inevitable consequences this time, or if they just think that they'll have found some way out, possibly just having passed the buck to the next generation, before the consequences for them come to pass.
History rhymes.
Just because who he voted for got the power, does not mean Yarvin got the power.
"Me Yarvin, Me powerful now". Is not true. What power does he think he has.???
The real question is, what has to happen before these people 'learn', or 'understand' that they were duped. What would it take for them to really grasp how they were played? Like all those Germans that shrug, 'I didn't know'.
Democrats lost their conscience with Clinton.
The last republican president with a clear conscience was probably Bush Sr. He was also crucified for it (hence the single term). He foolishly let reason about running a government get in the way of party bluster and that ended his career.
Carter was the last democrat president with a conscience and he also was lambasted for it.
Unfortunately in the US, principles and conscience haven't resulted in party success in the last 50 years.
And the difference is really striking.
Once Republicans got power, they immediately forgot basically ALL their ideals: small government, States rights, adherence to law, budget discipline, etc.
A better summary might be:
Yarvin tells Scott that today’s populist right is too weak to fear, while the real authoritarian danger comes from the prestige-driven institutions that already steer American life. His shift since 2008 isn’t a sell-out but a recognition that the fuel of mass democracy has run low and that the managerial regime’s ongoing failures are the greater evil.
This is a perfect example of Bourdieu's idea of symbolic violence and the violence of the arbitrary.
The uncomfortable truth is, for many the thrill isn't in enforcing fair rules, or even unfair ones. The thrill is in the power to enforce arbitrary rules. The point isn't who gets punished, it's that someone can be, at a moment's notice, for no coherent reason. And the joy is in unpredictability, in knowing they can shift the rules under your feet and there's no one appeal to.
This is the logic sitting beneath every hand-wringing editorial and rage-bait thread about "cancel culture run amok." The goal is sovereignty, not consistency. It's about who gets to draw the lines and when they can redraw them. Arbitrary enforcement isn't a bug. It’s the feature.
The clever "gotcha" crowd falls flat when they imagine that, by exposing contradictions, they'll force a confession, a moment of logic, an admission, and surrender. But that moment never comes. When the point is arbitrariness, contradiction isn't a failure. It's the currency of power. Pointing it out only proves you're not the one with power.
What will the "PC culture" critics say? Probably what they’ve always said. Remember, it's not about the arguments. It's about who gets to arbitrate, who gets to punish, and who gets to laugh last.
It always has been.
This really is just what we have been hearing from the cultural right for a long time, masked as a kind both-sides/human-nature take. It sounds good, in that it gives something like general principle to subsume all the instances. But it just doesn't really make sense in the actually existing world. How could any given side even know they are the new hegemon, the new line-drawers, at any given moment. At what point are they rewarded with regard to the influence they wield? What does it even look like? Do you have examples? Sovereignty implies a concentration of something like power, but your very point here seems to decentralize sovereignty to the point of it being unrecognizable as such. Its like taking something very individual and trying to stretch it across everything in awkward way.
Just simply: how does this actually work? When does whatever side thats on top actually get to feel good, actually get to be the sovereign?
In my experience, the scope is the establishment of a status hierarchy.
We love to put ourselves in a privileged position. In most internet discussion, the status hierarchy extends throughout the duration of the encounter. In most Thanksgivings, the crazy uncle goes away at the end of the night, in marriages, it extends for the duration of the relationship. It's fundamentally tied to the social engagement.
Does it not feel at least a little juvenile to think like this, if you look at it critically, maybe from a little more the outside than you seem to be? These kind of pat armchair psychologies that answer in one breath the phenomena of culture, of human interaction feel just extremely schoolyard to me... but I guess ymmv.
At the very least: its unfalsifiable; one could easily go the other way and say "people love to belong to a group, and being able to police another group's language/jokes/etc is the best mechanism for reinforcing their belonging".
To picture you and your smug interlocutor as ever placed in some asymmetric structure where they are the king and you are the pauper belies the staying power of these controversies, the clear struggle they manifest. You make it sound so much like there never even is a battle, just spontaneous winners and losers.
I don't want to come off as harsh, but what you are arguing for is the logic of a loser, in the technical sense. Its asserting a projection you/others have of perceived intellectual enemies as a kind social theory for everything. It dooms you to fatalism you just dont need to have! Humans, for better or worse have a capacity for much more complicated motives. You do not need to "Mean Girls" the entire world!
I'm curious though, you seem to have not experienced this sort of internet domineering?
Yes and: Free speech maximalists seek freedom from consequences.
Reading your missive, I now have to consider how impunity is related to sovereignty.
Him and the people that backed him are the machine behind of all of this.
In this case, we have a report that someone was denied entry over an image of JD Vance.
From the same report, we have the facts that JD Vance approved of the meme the image was taken from, using it himself; and that the image provoked border control agents into interrogating the person about his ties to "right-wing extremism". Not usually something you'd expect from someone about whom the only thing you know is that he appears to be criticizing right-wing politicians.
It seems safe to conclude that politics weren't a concern. If you wanted to diagnose what happened, this looks more like the agents were looking to turn people away and seized on whatever they thought they could make work.
I have a sibling that's deep into this, he would say "haha owned"
Also remember that JD Vance himself has plenty of air time laughing at these memes, and they aren't considered threatening like calling out Biden's cognitive decline with memes making fun of it.
The overall response to memes of this nature are very different on either side. One side wants to censor the entire internet and penalize people for daring to share something politically incorrect, while the other caught an outsider who may harbor threatening sentiments about our nation, with the intent to harm - although I sincerely don't think that's the case here.
Part of the irony here is that you'll more likely find a right-winger with more JD Vance memes on their phone than this guy.
The mass-censorship has a much deeper weight to it than inconveniencing 1 tourist, and I think it's a little surprising this needs to be explained.
https://usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2025/06/25/tourist-de...
Whoever you believe, it turns out that knee jerk reactions are rarely useful in stories like these.
I condemn cancel-culture full stop whether its the right-wing mcarthyism of the fifties or the leftist bullies of the last decade.
Do you?