"Hacker News" is not made up of a single homogenous group of people who all think the same things. That should be obvious by the commentary in this post. There is much debate and discussion. But even if the majority of posters find Swartz to be a martyr and Nieto to be "basically [at] fault", it does not necessarily mean the same groups of individuals feel both these ways, much less that racism is the reason, as you imply.
You've boiled two cases down to a single factor: race. You've ignored the fact that Swartz was charged with non-violent crimes and that some of the charges were disputed and seen as prosecutorial overreach. Even the B&E charges may have been nonsense, because they were linked to an attempted felony. And you ignore the fact that Swartz was doing what he thought was right.
You've also heavily mischaracterized the Nieto case. 911 was called because a man was seen pointing a taser at people and a dog. Whether the actual caller saw the weapon is irrelevant. The fact of it is not in dispute. The only disputed fact is whether Nieto pointed the taser at police. Given his previous behavior, and the fact that his weapon was found on the ground (i.e., not holstered), it seems at least plausible that he pointed at the police, or at the least, that he was drawing it or had drawn it. So it seems like, yes, it was largely in his control whether police would show up and how they would respond to him.
The point that the hacker news community is not homogenous is too obvious to be worth making. It doesn't imply that it's not possible to make generalizations about how it reacts to certain events.
Your second paragraph illustrates my point. In the case of Nieto, you're coming up with excuses for the police; in the case of Swartz, you're coming up with excuses for Swartz. There is no objective reason for excusing the authorities in the one case and the victim in the other. We know for sure that Swartz did a bunch of stupid things which had the entirely predictable consequence that he got in trouble with the law. Nieto may also have acted stupidly in this instance -- we don't know for sure whether he did or to what extent. But in the case of Swartz, we make excuses, whereas in the case of Nieto, we say "conceivably there's something he might have done differently to avoid being shot, therefore it's his fault he was shot". Apply the same logic to the Swartz case and you'd have to say that he also deserved what he got.
Your assumptions about both cases and your preconceived notions of racism have lead to you faulty conclusions. The Swartz case was about the response fitting the crime. The Nieto case is about police officers ostensibly fearing for their own safety and the safety of other.
Had Nieto's weapon been holstered and had he been arrested, I might have been just as critical about the prosecutorial response as I am in the Swartz case. And had Swartz come out guns blazing rather than taking his own life, I would not have faulted police for responding with deadly force.
Your generalization is faulty because you've trivialized the relevant details away.
>The Swartz case was about the response fitting the crime. The Nieto case is about police officers ostensibly fearing for their own safety and the safety of other.
This says it all: you think that the Nieto case is inherently about whether the police officers feared for their lives, and the Swartz case is inherently about how poor Aaron was prosecuted unjustly.
That is one perspective.
Another perspective would be the inverse: the Nieto case is about how an innocent man got shot for no good reason, and the Swartz case is about how a naive and perhaps somewhat entitled young man made a series of stupid and entirely avoidable choices that led, predictably, to his being prosecuted.
In other words, one could make an argument for blaming the victim in both cases. While it is apparently inconceivable to you that anyone should think of doing this in the Swartz case, it is so obvious to you that this is what we should do in the Nieto case that you can't even grasp the alternative.
> > This says it all: you think that the Nieto case is inherently about whether the police officers feared for their lives, and the Swartz case is inherently about how poor Aaron was prosecuted unjustly.
> That is one perspective.
It is a perspective in which one can hold a different opinion of these government actions based on contexts other than race. You seem to have both acknowledge this and moved the goalposts.
> it is so obvious to you that this is what we should do in the Nieto case that you can't even grasp the alternative.
This is just pointless bickering at that has no basis in reality and borders on an ad hominem argument. I am quite capable of grasping alternatives and putting thought into those alternatives. My personal opinion on either case isn't neither here nor there.
The point is that you made generalizations and heavily implied that race was the motivating bias or context for people holding these different opinions. I am pointing out that you failed to make that case and, as a counterexample, provided another context in which people could reach those same conclusions without considering race.
I don't claim to know why people think about Nieto and Swartz in such different terms. I am just pointing out that they do. Objectively speaking, Swartz was much more at fault for his death than Nieto was, and yet for whatever reason, many people here are much more willing to blame the victim in the Nieto case. I think racism probably plays a part in that, but I can't look inside people's heads. What other (good) reason could there be for seeing Swartz as a victim but not Nieto?
(Let me add that I'm not saying that Swartz was at fault for his death simply because it was a suicide. I don't think that we should blame people for killing themselves. What I'm getting at is that he freely chose to engage in civil disobedience without having properly thought through the potential consequences, which fairly obviously included at least some jail time.)
You've boiled two cases down to a single factor: race. You've ignored the fact that Swartz was charged with non-violent crimes and that some of the charges were disputed and seen as prosecutorial overreach. Even the B&E charges may have been nonsense, because they were linked to an attempted felony. And you ignore the fact that Swartz was doing what he thought was right.
You've also heavily mischaracterized the Nieto case. 911 was called because a man was seen pointing a taser at people and a dog. Whether the actual caller saw the weapon is irrelevant. The fact of it is not in dispute. The only disputed fact is whether Nieto pointed the taser at police. Given his previous behavior, and the fact that his weapon was found on the ground (i.e., not holstered), it seems at least plausible that he pointed at the police, or at the least, that he was drawing it or had drawn it. So it seems like, yes, it was largely in his control whether police would show up and how they would respond to him.