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Hacktivist deletes white supremacist websites live on stage during hacker conference
(techcrunch.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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Eh, I want to like this statement because I hate these people, but I can't in good conscious call it something it isn't. This sort of thing is the essence of debate because we have good people doing bad things to bad people and then have to justify why it's ok despite it being bad. It's justice vs righteousness, it's lawful neutral vs lawful good. The only reason why this is acceptable is because it's against people that we deem not worthy of legal protection, but as a precedent that's dangerous territory. As soon as the definition of people not worthy of legal protection changes it suddenly becomes a problem.
At it's core this person probably committed a crime, but people don't care because it's against a bad ideologue. It's like if we said it's ok to round up and execute neo-nazis, a lot of people would rejoice, but if you change that to most any other group they would cry about human rights. At the end of the day rounding up and killing anyone is a bad thing no matter who it's against.
At some point the scales will not balance well and you need to be ok with that. There is no paradox of intolerance, for example, because tolerance is itself part of a social contract that bigots broke all on their own and once that’s out the window they do not get to reap the benefits of it. Social contracts aren’t easy math but they do make sense.
This isn’t blowing up a furry website because someone thinks that’s weird. White supremacy is an incredibly dangerous ideology that has no place in whatever better society we claim to be aiming for. No one killed them for it, either. White supremacy built a website and a better person removed that website the same way one might paint over a swastika but leave the nice mural.
I agree with the sentiment, but sadly can't agree with the implementation. Laws exist in a neutral environment, you can't bypass them just because the other party is someone society disagrees with. Even if they are committing crimes you can't unilaterally exact justice against them due to vigilante laws.
This event took place in Germany, Crimical Code §§ 202a-d criminalizes unauthorized access, interception, and manipulation of data, with penalties ranging from fines to imprisonment, covering acts like phishing and data espionage. Within German law this should be a crime. Germany has laws against neo-nazis, but this would be vigilantism which Germany also prohibits.
It's a slippery slope to ignore your own laws because they support the popular narrative.
You can actually, self-defense to stop someone from committing a felony is legal in the US.
In no court in the world would you be able to say you were acting in self-defense while acting from 6000 km away.