cross-posted from: https://feddit.nl/post/16246531
I feel like we need to talk about Lemmy’s massive tankie censorship problem. A lot of popular lemmy communities are hosted on lemmy.ml. It’s been well known for a while that the admins/mods of that instance have, let’s say, rather extremist and onesided political views. In short, they’re what’s colloquially referred to as tankies. This wouldn’t be much of an issue if they didn’t regularly abuse their admin/mod status to censor and silence people who dissent with their political beliefs and for example, post things critical of China, Russia, the USSR, socialism, …
As an example, there was a thread today about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. When I was reading it, there were mostly posts critical of China in the thread and some whataboutist/denialist replies critical of the USA and the west. In terms of votes, the posts critical of China were definitely getting the most support.
I posted a comment in this thread linking to “https://archive.ph/2020.07.12-074312/https://imgur.com/a/AIIbbPs” (WARNING: graphical content), which describes aspects of the atrocities that aren’t widely known even in the West, and supporting evidence. My comment was promptly removed for violating the “Be nice and civil” rule. When I looked back at the thread, I noticed that all posts critical of China had been removed while the whataboutist and denialist comments were left in place.
This is what the modlog of the instance looks like:
Definitely a trend there wouldn’t you say?
When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.
Proof:
So many of you will now probably think something like: “So what, it’s the fediverse, you can use another instance.”
The problem with this reasoning is that many of the popular communities are actually on lemmy.ml, and they’re not so easy to replace. I mean, in terms of content and engagement lemmy is already a pretty small place as it is. So it’s rather pointless sitting for example in /c/linux@some.random.other.instance.world where there’s nobody to discuss anything with.
I’m not sure if there’s a solution here, but I’d like to urge people to avoid lemmy.ml hosted communities in favor of communities on more reasonable instances.
All instances, except for the lightly moderated ones, have censorship issues from time to time. You can say one thing on one thread, and that same thing can get you banned in another thread on the same instance. This is an issue with the great degree of political polarization on Lemmy.
My point is that Lemmy is multipolar. It’s divided between the right-leaning instances like Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, the left-leaning instances like Lemmy.ml, slrpnk.net, blahaj.zone, and dbzer0, and the leftist instances like Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml. Mods and admins on each instance are guilty of maintaining the “instance line.”
When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.
While I won’t repeat what got me banned, this is what got me banned from Political Memes on Lemmy.world, this isn’t just a Lemmy.ml thing. This is also when one of the moderators claimed they weren’t censoring anyone and were incredibly fair on a comment chain calling out their censorship, and refused to elaborate. They would not even tell me how I could edit my comments to comply with their rules.
What does this all mean?
Honestly, I think close to everyone knows that Marxists dominate Lemmy.ml, Lemmygrad.ml, Hexbear.net, etc. I think close to everyone knows Liberals dominate Lemmy.world. I think everyone knows that anarchists dominate dbzer0, slrpnk.net, Hexbear.net, etc.
If your call to action is to defederate Lemmy.ml, then that’s just contributing to this polarization effect, as people would jump ship from .world and .ml to the other if it fits their views better. If your call to action is that people should move communities from Lemmy.ml to other instances, this has already happened a bit, this thread gets reposted very frequently. All it really seems to me is that you’re spreading drama.
What do I recommend?
Rather than trying to consolidate communities across instances, replicate communities as needed. Communities on Lemmy are more like hashtags for an instance, and instances are more like subreddits of old. Instances have their own cultures and values, so a Gaming thread on Hexbear, for example, is going to be different from a Lemmy.world Gaming thread, and that’s a good thing. All sorting can still let you see other instances, there’s no need to risk moderator dominance over communities by trying to consolidate on a single instance. Heck, this community is an example of that very process.
Neither .world nor .shitjustworks are “right leaning” they just hate the tankies most vocally lmao. Neither would it make too much sense to call a tankie “left” leaning given their raging hard on for authoritarianism. I also think most of Blahaj would be offended by being lumped in with them.
Lemmy.world is extremely liberal, I wouldn’t classify it as left-leaning. Both .world and sh.itjust.works are generally liberal, maintaining MeanwhileOnGrad leads to more right-wing people. I did not say far-right, or even right-wing, but right-leaning.
Marxists are absolutely left wing, not sure what your point is here. Marx and Engels were both called “authoritarian” by their contemporaries so much that Engels wrote On Authority. I don’t think it makes sense to separate Marxism from Leftism, and redefine leftism as Anarchism.
muh libs aren’t left leaning
And you expect me to take anything you say after that seriously
When I say Leftist, I am using the typical definition, anti-Capitalist. Socialism, Communism, Syndicalism, Anarchism, and all their myriad forms.
When I say right, I am using the typical definition, supportive of Capitalism. Social Democrats, Liberals, American Libertarians, fascists, and all their myriad forms.
Considering Lemmy is an international site, it doesn’t make sense to use the Overton Window. If we went by, say, the American Overton Window, but another user lived in, say, Spain, there’s a significant difference there. That’s why I am using the standard definitions, and not going off of any one country’s Overton Window.
Hang on now. Fascists are historically the “third position” (which is why both the left and the right got together in about 1939 to stomp their collective shit in.) They’re neither “right” nor “left.”
Since you linked to another Wikipedia article, you should know that Wikipedia defines fascism as far-right:
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
And it also defines it as third position, as per the article I linked earlier. Again, some define fascism as “mommy said I can’t go to the party” so oooooohhhhh.
Fact of the matter is fascists, if you’ve ever talked to a real one, are neither capitalist nor communist (again, hence that whole “World War Two” fiasco they teamed up for.) Thus “third position.”
Fascism is described as both “Capitalism in decay” and as “Imperialism turned inward.” It served and serves the bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie against the Proletariat and Lumpenproletariat, and historically arises when the Petite Bourgeoisie is facing proletarianization. That’s why the most violently MAGA are small business owners and the like, and why they think immigrants are the ones proletarianizing them.
I highly recommend reading the first chapter of Blackshirts and Reds by Dr. Michael Parenti, which covers the material conditions surrounding fascism and who it served.
Fascism has been described as a teacher telling a student to shut up in class too, just because someone says something doesn’t make it true.
