Hey all. I'd like to open an official discussion regarding the upturning of the prior Hexbear party line on an :israel-cool: emote proper with the unambiguous Zionist flag.
I want to preface this by saying this is not in a 'ceding the issue' way. Over the past year I've been trying to engage in self-crit w/rt the chauvinism I've internalized growing up in a Liberal Zionist household, and my personal viewpoint on it did a 180 some months back, so I want to reopen this discussion proper in my personal capacities as Self-Appointed Emote Czar.
The reason it's taken long enough beyond that is prior to July, I was essentially half-engaged with the site in order to finish out my degree. After that, it’s been mostly inertia of confirming with the admins and other /c/Judaism mods, as well as having to be rigorous about my job search personally giving me little free time to coordinate this.
I do not want to center myself in this conversation more than I inadvertently already have, so I will leave my own opinion on the issue as a comment rather than explaining further here.
The consensus we've roughly come to is to open up the discussion in an official manner for a day or so. After that, I'll weigh the discussion in an entirely vibes-based manner (sorry Dean Norris enjoyers) and we'll alter Hexbear party line on it accordingly.
You agree, I hope, that that vigilance is needed regardless of the emoji and doesn't change given the emoji?
And for many, I think that the emoji is just the flashpoint for the fact that there is still a level of acceptance of zionist positions with relation to Jewish culture and history as legitimate, and its the easiest proxy to attack that
Of course. I just don't think people loudly demanding this emoji are using their time well, there are plenty of ways to articulate our thoughts on Israel without needing an emoji, and I'm just a bit hyper-vigilant when it comes to emojis and things because fascists fucking love co-opting them and building their own dogwhistle culture within a larger site culture. And an emoji like this is the perfect "foot in the door" for them to use because it would already exist and will be used frequently by quite a few of our users. I've had to deal with similar bullshit with places I moderate, and while Hexbear being very left wing does insulate it against that sort of infiltration a lot more, it doesn't make it immune to it. And this emoji is pushed for by fascist infiltrators for exactly that reason, it lets them hide their dogwhistles behind plausible deniability.
I don't want this emoji to end up causing either a culture of witch hunts, where anyone using it "a bit too much" is viewed suspiciously, and the opposite, where Hexbear ends up becoming infiltrated by actual anti-semites who use the emoji as a dogwhistle or a "foot in the door" for their anti-semitism is far worse. I don't think either of these scenarios are super likely, but I do think it is worth discussing and considering the implications of this for site culture. Most likely, it'll just result in people being lazier and less articulate. Why write up a paragraph of how you feel about a news article discussing the entity when you can just post a bunch of emojis instead?
As I said in my previous statement, I think the emoji is ultimately NBD, but I don't want it to draw in fash like moths to a flame.
It adds 0 foot in the door relative to anything else we already do and accept here. The moment any of our anti-zionist accepted claims is used for anti-Semitic purposes, we should and will treat that the same. I genuinely have no idea why you all think that there is some significant difference between this and anything else we have for its utility to fascists.
Thank you for understanding and not jumping on the line Z_poster is using to smear me as some sort of Zionist and even laughably calling me a white supremacist for calling out the white supremacism underlying Zionism. People seem like they really just want an outlet for aggression and frustration in our feeling of powerlessness in the face of this genocide and the rising tide of fascist momentum all around the west, but taking that out on one another only further aids our enemies.
I think you got very unfairly characterised in that thread, and someone using sockpuppets to create the illusion of their position having lots of support when it doesn't is just fucked up, and ruins any online forum, turning it into reddit.
A discussion and attempt to reach a consensus is a good thing and we should strive towards it, and actively prevent people from being anti-social wreckers. (not in the "destroy leftist groups" sense, but in the sense of just turning a conversation into a shouting match, or accusing others of supporting absurd things in order to poison the well against them)
This thread is proof that this was not just ZPoster using alts, but a diverse group with that opinion. Don't fall into that lie because of some ban evasion. The ban evasion obscures that, of course, but this thread makes clear that it was never just that. The amount of people here calling for de-mod-ing nakoichi also contributes to that.
I'm saying that ZPoster using alts was the only part of the discussion, but it was a problem.
ZPoster using alts creates mistrust within the community, how can we tell if any opinion or thought is organic if a few power posters with no life flood a thread with their personal opinion but masquerade as a crowd to astroturf support for their position? Take the removal of mod powers from Nakoichi for example, it has popular support, but what if something similar happens to another mod, or someone seeking to take on a mod role? Someone sockpuppeting can trick the rest of website into supporting ideas, or creating a rift between the mods and the rest of the site, and in turn, just wrecking everything by destroying any sort of organic discussion through their astroturfing. Maybe I'm too old, but I've seen way too many internet forums back in the day collapse due to people sockpuppeting and just generally being shitty and abrasive, and people taking the worst possible bad faith interpretation of other people's ideas.
Oh I agree entirely, and I'd be totally up to deal with that as a separate topic. I will defend making an alt specifically to avoid an incorrect ban, but the trend should be dealt with separately. Probably deserves its own post to discuss how to deal with it and ZPosters tendency to use them. But that has no bearing on the given situation and the treatment of other comrades in regards to this topic
I feel like the goalposts have been moved so much on this discussion no one can even see them anymore. I'm glad we managed to have a fruitful talk on the matter, you're right, talking about sockpuppeting and general abrasive behaviour would probably be better suited for a different discussion. I've been considering what you've said to me and I think a lot of my worries here are pushed by people being just really abrasive about this topic, but I think part of the problem is people talking past each other and considering different topics (much like I have been doing this whole time, talking mainly about sockpuppeting, not the actual topic at hand).
My main concerns with regards to the emoji specifically have been coloured by this previous exchange from two weeks ago: https://hexbear.net/post/5761214
I do think that once the emoji is made official, we will see suspicious accounts using it a lot and often inappropriately, but fash are usually terrible at infiltration and it will most likely be spotted sooner or later, I just like talking to people here, and I don't want this very unique place on the internet to just turn into the nazi den that the rest of the internet has become.
Well we already have at least one fucking zionazi coper doing hasbara somewhere in this thread. Support for pissrael and zionazi talking points is undoubtedly fascism and should be purged immediately, epecially since the zionist entity and the west are currently slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people and are endangering the lives of some of our own users either directly, through proxy in the west, or basically how the west (mastermind and main backer of this genocide being america) uses police brutality to brutally oppress pro-Palestine activists. There is no excuse for blatant support of fascism especially the type that disgustingly uses past genocides as a rhetorical shield.
I bet some will, and we should be having the conversation of whether mods can handle that, but I would guess it's a very limited amount. Doesn't seem like there's that many fascists trying to come in, but the ones that are are dicks and should be handled as such.
Thanks for seeing the complexity we're sitting in! I've been trying to limit myself to the topic at hand, but the Zposter part is just too intermingled to be clear about at the moment, it seems