Dbzero Governance Vote Post https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/63525728
Ahoy mateys!
A few of our users have recently pointed out that a lot of the pro-Zionist accounts on the fediverse nowadays seem to come from the feddit.org instance.
But whatever the excuse happens to be, they need to do better imo. Israel is currently the most violent, fascist and genocidal nation state in the Middle East (if you exclude the US military bases there). And yet feddit.org seems to regard the Palestinians fighting against Israel’s ongoing illegal occupation of their land as the real terrorists. …
More context
Our instance already voted to ban pro-Zionist accounts (see https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/60585441 for reference) and the rule that was implemented is here: Golden Rule #8.
As further context, you can find relevant comments and discussion in this post by a banned feddit admin in MoG (that fact they chose to post in MoG is in itself quite telling), and this post about their defederation from quokk.au over anti-semitism allegations has recently become active again. …
Note 2: If you think feddit.org deserves a full instance ban instead, or have alternative suggestions, then please leave your comments below. If enough people think that’s the better option, then we’ll do that instead.
In the end the Post had around 70% of support by dbzer0 users, who in the comments also called for defederation.
Here is a Link to Dbzer0 instances tab https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/instances where if you go to blocked instances you can see fedddit.org is now defederated
i dont think feddit has made a post now, but when they do i will add it
This all stems from a fundamental misunderstanding that no one seems to be interested in clearing up.
The original post that brought the allegations of feddit being zionist to more people is this one, and the one that originated the allegations is this one.
The feddit.org admin inside explicitly states that the removal of the comment being talked about by the original thread is not about pro-zionism or anti-semitism.
Now what does the person claim it is about? That seems to be majorly ignored. Let me rephrase it in my own words.
In Germany, after national socialism, we have very strict rules on how you are allowed to talk about it, because there were unfortunately a lot of people still denying it or not believing it. One of those rules is that no statement may be made that makes national socialism seem better than it was. So something you can’t say for example is “Trump’s ICE is national socialism!”. This seems extremely weird from an outside (the person saying it’s) perspective, because obviously, yes, the tactics Trump uses are directly borrowed from national socialism.
However, if you look at national socialism as a whole, it was much worse than just ICE. Millions were killed etc.
Now, the person who makes the statement “Trump’s ICE is national socialism!” is obviously using it to express that ICE is terrible. But if you want to look at it from a certain way (which German law likes to do) it’s also saying that they’re roughly equal, which, since Trump and ICE is currently not quite at the level of full national socialism, would minimize the severity of national socialism by bringing it “down” to the same level as the Trump regime and ICE.
Obviously, from a perspective of a person today, this seems ridiculous, because the current threat is ICE and not national socialism, so who cares about “how national socialism is talked about exactly”?! Isn’t it much more important to make sure that ICE is taken appropriately seriously? And you would of course be right. But the stance is that the ends do not justify the means, and it is very much possible to fight against ICE without comparing it to the whole of national socialism.
This is what is being talked about by the mods/admins. It has nothing to do with either anti-semitism or anti-zionism.
Now, if you say something like “Trump’s ICE resembles early national socialism!”, that is a completely fine statement to make in the eyes of the law. You are actually comparing ICE to what it actually is, “early [stages of] national socialism”, and not “national socialism [in general]”.
Feelings are running high, even as I type these words, I can imagine it. But please try to think about this stance for a moment and try to see that it is not Trump ICE apologist, or trying to minimize what ICE is doing. It is simply trying to pay heed to two important issues at the same time, of which one has much more immediacy and current real impact on people’s lives than the other.
I used this ICE example on purpose because it is even nearer than the genocide in Gaza. And because it is farther away from “full national socialism style genocide”. I hope I could make the thinking in this example clear, and I hope at least a modicum of rationality can be attributed to this.
And now let’s go back to the original zionist accusations. The original comment was removed because of the last part of it, which said “Providing material support to Israel is no different from providing material support to Nazi Germany”. As much as people don’t want to see it, the situation in Gaza is actually different than the situation in Nazi Germany. The Jewish population in Nazi Germany never launched rockets at Germans, in fact, jewish people in Nazi Germany were exceptionally peaceful. In Gaza, there is genocide happening, there is a power differential, and Palestinians need to fight back, but there is simply no rational denying that it’s not the same as the genocide in Nazi Germany.
Obviously what is happening in Gaza is terrible and Israel needs to be condemned, but what they’re doing is still not on the same level of evil as Nazi Germany. And thus you could argue that comparing the situation in Gaza to national socialism is minimizing the severity of national socialism. And thus the same kind of argument applies as in the previous example with ICE, it just is even less understandable for a person who didn’t know/understand/agree with this argument.
I’m basically sure I’ll be condemned as a zionist now, or whatever, go ahead.
Obviously what is happening in Gaza is terrible and Israel needs to be condemned, but what they’re doing is still not on the same level of evil as Nazi Germany.
As someone with a relative who died in a Nazi death camp, I resoundingly disagree. The scale may be relatively smaller, given that they’re attempting to steal a much smaller area of land for their Lebensraum, but the level of evil is the same.
Look into the story of Muhammed Bhar or Hind Rijab and tell me it’s not. I’ll tell you your soul is compromised.
about the later’s Zionist Bar Problem
I’d prefer to have a less biased title for this thread because this is a very one-sided point of view and just parrots what the db0 admin claims without questioning them.
Edit: Thanks for putting it in quotation marks, OP.
Disappointing how many downvotes you have, especially given zero other responses thus far. You’ve got a valid point, and the mod/admin teams at db0 already have their own behavior issues, so there’s surely more to the story than this.
Yay anarchists! 👍
Boo zionists! 👎Fuck anarchists, tankies, Zionists, regressives and bigots in general.
Y’all just different shades of the same crazy.
Everyone is crazy, except your team, right?
a predictable lemmy.ml user retort.
Lol, go back to reddit
Relevant username? :)
Classical Lemmy.ml comment
I thought .ml were disgusting authoritarian tankies, now also anarchists are tankies? Almost as if it was a left-punching slur all along :o
I meant the inability between distinguishing moderating hate speech and supporting genocide.
Lemmy.ml definitely has its problem with nuanced positions.
Yes, we should be moderating hate speech and opposing genocide. The hate speech and genocide direct at the Palestinian people by the Israeli Settler Colony.
There is no nuance in settler colonialism and supermasist ideologies
Especially since the .ml-ers are mostly Putin bootlickers and authoritarian fans. I hope real anarchists can see that.
Echo chambers make you stupid.
I think this is a stupid move, but it shows the shitty mindset, that evolved on db0. Bye!
The shitty mindset of checks notes not wanting Zionist fascists in a queer-friendly online space.
Showing your true colours here.
I didn’t notice c/europe was zionists. I just typed israel, I see highly (legitimately) upvoted posts against it.
I’m sure you can find some unsavory stuff, but I haven’t stumbled upon it once.
On the other hand I’ve been confronted to authoritarian bootlickers too many times from ml. If you don’t defederate from them too then you’re not being consistent.
Zionists eat shit.
I’ve noticed this too and have been following the conversation. However, I think self-isolation isn’t the answer. Allowing r/The_Donald to go private didn’t stop the far right.
What works is challenging these people, constantly. Mockery, abuse, whatever it takes. But building up echo-chambers, or allowing echo-chambers isn’t the solution.
its not really an echo chamber, lemmy unlike reddit is decentralised, so nothing is stopping a dbzero user from just making an account on feddit.org and interacting with them, in reddit if the admins decide to ban a community that community is just gone.
also having an echochambers isnt bad, like an instance like blahaj should be allowed to exist and not federate with instances that have a lax policy on transphobia, and thanks to lemmy’s decentralised nature you can join or make an instance that does have wide federation
Just because lemmy is decentralized doesn’t mean it doesn’t for echochambers. I mean look at ml. Or look at what squid did as a moderator to worldnews and political memes.
Echo chambers are absolutely a thing on lemmy. They exist at different scales (instance, sub, individual) but they absolutely exist.
I mean look at ml.
You mean the place constantly flooded by disagreeing liberals? Let’s be honest here; by “echo chamber” you just mean “place where my ideology isn’t the default”
Deleted by author
This solidifies my decision for migrating my account from there to piefed.social
but I also don’t actively participate in deep political discussions especially regarding Israel/Palestine
Showing your true colours here. By the way, it’s not “political discussions regarding Israel/Palestine”, call it by its name: genocide of Palestinians by Israel.
Deleted by author
I don’t think you have bad intent here, but I think Riverside didn’t like the implication that “deep political discussions” are necessary to understand that “Israel/Palestine” is in fact “the colonial genocide of Palestinians by Israel”. I think that’s fair. It’s OK to not want to discuss politics online, but you don’t need “deep discussions” to know that colonialism is always wrong.
This thread even 18 hrs later:
It has created some funny interactions, the best part is that it still has one more day left in the all/active tab
So many comments jesus. I ain’t reading all that. Free Palestine and Death to Israel.
And Death to Germany!
Dang and I just made this account too. Time to find a new instance… Any recommendations? How is lemmy.today?
This whole process has looked sus to me. And on top of that, I don’t think voting by up/downvoting the post itself is a good way to call votes — it means a minority can pass a rule without it being even seen by the majority (not sure that matters in this case). Voting should be done in a top-level comment.
You can come to feddit.org, we have mostly normal people instead of armchair internet warriors lol
This will probably be unpopular but the leftist - liberal infighting is my least favorite part of the fediverse and why I usually end up having to give people a warning before telling them to get on the fediverse.
This drama is kind of the epitome of that
Before Lemmy, I didn’t know it was possible to go so left that you hated liberals.
Liberalism is supportive of capitalism, leftism begins at anti-capitalism. What did you think the left was before Lemmy?
Liberalism was the original leftism: see the French revolutionary National Assembly. It doesn’t intrinsically have anything to do with capitalism. In general, liberalism is neither left nor right. It promotes individualism. Historically, it progressed from humanism.
leftism begins at anti-capitalism
Not the political science definition.
General definitions & the historical development of liberalism are academic.
liberalism, political doctrine that takes protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual to be the central problem of politics. Liberals typically believe that government is necessary to protect individuals from being harmed by others, but they also recognize that government itself can pose a threat to liberty.
Some of the earliest liberal practices are found in the US Declaration of Independence, which predates the French revolution spreading the practice of liberal ideals throughout Europe. The US declaration pretty much rehashes core tenets of liberal philosophy
- inherent equality of individuals
- universal individual rights & liberties
- consent of the governed (governments exist for the people who have a right to change & replace them, & authority is legitimate only when it protects those liberties).
Note how capitalism isn’t mentioned anywhere: it’s nonessential. Capitalism predates & isn’t liberalism. Liberalism is moral & political philosophy, not an economic one.
The philosophy is a natural progression of humanist philosophies from the Renaissance through the Protestant Reformation & the Enlightenment that stress the importance of individuality, secular reasoning, & tolerance over dogma & subservience to unaccountable authority. To address unaccountable authority based on dogma & traditions, English & French philosophers defined legitimate authority based on humanist morality pretty much as expressed in the US declaration. They argued that political systems thrive better with limits & duties on authority & an adversarial system of institutional competition whether in separation of powers, adversarial law system with habeas corpus & right to jury trial, competitive elections, dialogue, or economic competition.
Liberalism arose as a bourgeois ideology to use against the feudalist systems, the equivalent in feudalism being the clergy and the church. The mode of production capitalism is based on individual ownership of capital, and claiming the labor-power sold by workers is equal in position to the capitalists buying the labor-power and selling commodoties.
Liberalism was left when feudalism was dominant. Putting it in its historical context, it helped overthrow feudalism. However, there is no “Absolute Idea” of Hegel, what was progressive at one point is still reactionary at a later point. In the era of capitalist decay, socialism is on the left, the progressive ideology.
Corporate media didn’t want you to be exposed to any ideas outside of the Overton window.
Sometimes the further left extremes I’ve heard hear are indistinguishable from conservative Q-Anon. I legitimately need to check users post histories to understand which extreme they are on
It’s very easy to distinguish if you actually act in good faith, which you clearly don’t
I legitimately need to check users post histories to understand which extreme they are on
If you can’t tell the difference between “media companies serve the interests of their owners and managers” and Q-Anon, that might indicate a problem with you rather than with others.
Ain’t much difference between MAGA and tankies.
They are very clearly distinguishable, just not to you yet. Until recently, you’d only ever heard disagreements coming from your right, so you confuse disagreements coming from your left with them.
- ‘Horseshoe theory’ is nonsense – the far right and far left have little in common
- Are the far-left and far-right merging together? That’s what the ‘horseshoe theory’ of politics says, but it’s wrong
Liberalism in fact has more in common with fascism than socialism: they’re both capitalist ideologies. Previously.
I joined to talk about math and programming. It’s a letdown that this Podunk platform seems to consist mostly of the weirdest, loudest people who saw the political compass meme and took it way too seriously.
Leftist vs liberal infighting has been going on since the late 1700s.
Of course what you really have to ask yourself is, if they’ve been infighting since basically the beginning and if their ideals are diametrically opposed then is it even in fighting?
Liberals love to call it infighting because it allows them to take credit for all the progress that happened thanks to leftists. And yet they’re always on the right-wing side of those “infights”.
I can’t think of any “leftist organisations” that support Zionism ? Maybe you’re confusing fascist with leftist ?
I mean “leftist organization” is a weird term and I would more speak of currents. And there is definitely the Antideutsche or Anti-Germans.
The German left, at least the loud one, is publically dividing between this topic. On demonstration you see a lot of people openly supporting Hamas, wearing the red triangle etc. For me it is only natural to fight this form of anti semitism. That makes you a “Zionist” on Lemmy, as there is often only “anti genocide and pro genocide” in online discussions. But the world is very complex and there is a large continuum between Islamic and Jewish ethno state philosophy.
Hemming and hawing over genocide is disgusting.
What is a good alternative instance for me that is not supporting Zionism, but also not db0 as I feel some of the communities on feddit.org don’t really have the Zionism problem?
You could use an instance that federates widely (such as lemmy.zip) if you want to be able to interact with as many communities as possible.
Oh, yeah, “They removed my comment where I’m just an asshole and telling people to kill themselves, they are such zionists 😭”
The fuck is wrong with you guys?
Yeah, the good old “You are a Nazi for following rules”-thing. Because everyone who follows rules does so indly, except for oneself.
One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
- Martin Luther King Jr. in Birmingham Jail 1963
How would you categorize the community rules “Be nice to each other”, “Don’t insult each other” and “Don’t call for violence”? Just or unjust, dair or unfair, sensible or dumb, expedient or not?
How would you categorize the feddit.org admin using a snark comm to get people to send DM harrassment to users who upvoted the feddit.org defederation thread?
is that ‘being nice’?
I followed your link. It shows a comment you made, yet with another link to a comment by Emopunker@feddit.org. And you claim that they harass people. The comment by Emopunker shows a screenshot where three usernames are listed that share similarities. Emopunker says that they have the suspicion that the shown users are the same person with alt accounts.
In conclusion: I wonder whether you forgot to attach some context, because based on this alone I don’t see anything that support your claims.
