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.
Feddit.org's explanation for this situation seems to fit into a few common variations:
- They accept both pro- and anti-Zionist members, so it's not proof of a bias.
- They [choose to] comply [in advance] with strict German / Swiss / Austrian laws regarding [overly broad] "antisemitic" language, or they might get in trouble.
- Calling for the destruction of Israel must obviously mean you want to kill every last man, woman and child, rather than simply wanting to overthrow Netanyahu's genocidal fascist regime. Because [bad faith] reasons.
- Lots of Euros (and Germans specifically) are pro-Zionist, so they feel like they have to accommodate this view.
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. As such, I am calling for feddit.org to:
- Explicitly prohibit pro-Zionist accounts from joining.
- Take measures to resolve their claimed legal issues, e.g., moving their server location to a less regulated jurisdiction, and ensuring that admin accounts remain anonymous regarding their location.
- Stop referring to folks who call for "Death to Israel" or similar as though they are the terrorists or violent extremists. The Zionist Israeli settlers, the murderous IDF rapists, and the entirety of the Israeli government are clearly the violent ethnostate extremists we should be worried about, not the Palestinians in Gaza who are fighting for their lives every single day against completely disproportionate levels of Zionist violence.
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.
I've also pulled out some choice morsels from the modlog to illustrate the sort of thing we are talking about:
This one says it all... mrdown@lemmy.world being banned for calling out feddit.org users for being Zionist apologists. It's apparently "xenophobic" to state a few hard truths.
If you have had similar experiences on feddit.org, please feel free to share in the comments.
Voting instructions
I am proposing to ban the following communities from feddit.org, which seem to be the most problematic communities in terms of hosting pro-Zionist posts/comments:
- https://feddit.org/c/YUROP
- https://feddit.org/c/europe
- https://feddit.org/c/buyfromeu
- https://feddit.org/c/europa
- https://feddit.org/c/dach
- https://feddit.org/c/deutschland
- https://feddit.org/c/germany
Upvote this post if you want dbzer0 / anarchist nexus to ban these communities.
Downvote this post if you'd prefer not to ban these communities.
Note 1: Votes from external instances do not count, unless one of our admins has vouched for you.
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.
Note 3: Although I don't really expect this to happen, if feddit.org agrees to make policy changes to address these issues then we are willing to reassess the situation.
I don't know how any self-respecting leftist who isn't a Zionist or Zionist apologist could look at a comment like Emopunker's and think this isn't Neoliberal Zionist apologia. Take your whataboutism elsewhere please.
Edit: No links, screenshots, or modlog info on the subject at hand. For all we know this story about a fascist ml user could be made up to apologize for Feddit. Fuck off dude.
So OP posted a dozen examples, and you think they're not sufficient by themselves, and instead have to bring up an another screenshot? That's just solidifying my point.
What definition of zionism do you work with?
What is "whataboutism" here anyway? I'm talking about how people perceive and judge feddit users' comments, which has veered into blanket dismissal of their comments even when objectively justified. That's why I brought up the situation.
Well fuck you too, asshole, have you considered asking me for the links and screenshots before telling me to fuck off? I didn't post them originally because they weren't crucial to my observations. Aren't my own comments still visible on my profile, couldn't you just check there? There will be nothing in the modlog because the user deleted the thread themselves. But here are the screenshots of my own replies and two replies that I still have in my notifications, as the rest is now unavailable:
The OP posted a screenshot of the fascist antisemitic tweet that was also posted to 4chan's /pol/ with a similar caption, you can see it there in the archive that I linked. The title of the Lemmy thread was "Every time".
You can set notifications to see all of them
I was part of that thread your speaking about and regarding the hate boner against feddit_org, I can only speak for myself obviously.
I joined the lemmy-verse via the now defunct feddit_de (now feddit_org) due to the reddit apicalypse. The shit I've seen on there was vile. Not just the zionism but for example a ML comrade made repeated attempts at reaching out, he tried to build a comm and they took his reconciliatory measure of co-modding it and wrecked the comm and bullied him till he just deleted his account. The tone policing was incredible, no one is allowed to get angry or emotional, no matter how offensive something is. I think it was this fatshaming thread that got me boiling over and decide to throw caution and good-faith into the wind. (You can see it live, I'm branchial on there).
The casual racism against muslims (and if a fedditor comes in here saying "muslims aren't a race" so help me god) was standard for germans but seeing it spelled out it's somehow more galling. Or the fact that this is coming from what passes in this cursed country for a left. Maybe both. "Imported antisemitism", "CDU is right for wanting to ban headscarves", "Mosques are used by foreign governments to subvert our democracy and therefore they should be under heavy surveillance" are some of the discussions I had there years ago of the top of my head.
This was around the start of the west waking up to piSSrahell's evil and every anti-pissraeli talking point got put under a microscope while hasbara got a pass because the good newspapers were repeating it verbatim. Stuff like "nooo pissrael wouldn't bomb hospitals, that was clearly a hamas rocket misfiring" (it wasn't), the "mass rape" hoax is still being repeated by fedditors! The nova festival massacre is being blamed on "khhhamas" &c. you get the picture.
And in the past couple years I have never had a fedditor make me question my resolve to not bother with a good faith counter. They are so "aware" of antisemitism that they don't see their islamophobia.
Their ignorance is only rivaled by their arrogance. They are consistently the most "let me explain to you how the world works sweaty" stereotypical westerner that is marinated in imperialist propaganda but somehow thinks everyone else is getting a distorted picture despite now years of evidence of our media being in lockstep with the US state department. All of them will repeat the same lies in unison but most damning of all is the collective silence on the uncomfortable truths. But somehow the fedditors don't think this is an issue with their "free" press.
This is not true of every single individula yadda yadda but a @feddit.org behind a username is a damn good predictor of it.
With no proper segue let me also give my thoughts on the topic of antisemitism in antizionism. I belive we need to be very charitable with antizionist comrades particularly in international spaces. We can't expect an arab to know anything about western nazi's dogwhistles. They might retweet or like a tweet by "PepeLover1488" completely unironically, I don't know the .ml poster in questions background but I've seen them around enough to know that they aren't an antisemite. And so a fedditor "already knowing" that said poster is an antisemite and playing coy with how they know this is not going to be interpreted charitably. Westerners are projecting their many centuries of antisemitism onto arabs who just don't have that past. It's not the arabs fault their oppressors are jewish and asking them to be mindful of that is like pointing at the armenian genocide and asking some colonial country to be mindful of their oppressors christian faith. Zionism is a jewish supremacist movement, and any "fuck the jews" coming from a non-european has to be interpreted like "fuck the christians" from a queer person or indigenous person who is oppressed by the christian supremacist movements (and anyone trying to link them by talking about "judeochristian values" should get the wall). Here is a much better explanation of what I'm talking about.
Wonderful comment and unironical truth nuke.
Also wir_iel was a tragic development 😔
thank you and yeah it was rip to the comrade you taught me a valuable lesson about trusting anti-comms on the left.
You are expected to provide some proof of your claims as it would not be the first time Zionist apologists have come here making up stories to apologize for the Zionist behavior of mods or admins. Thank you for providing some screenshots at least. @Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com Can you see the post this commenter is referencing?
Please understand, after seeing a Feddit admin outright provide neoliberal talking points justifying the occupation of palestine, as well as neoliberal justifications for silencing anti-Zionists and antifascists under the guise of "complying with german law" I don't have a lot of patience for ""skeptics"" like you, who might actually mean well or who might be Zionist apologists acting in bad faith. It's impossible to tell
It is clear you don't have a very full or complete picture of the Feddit situation because our users have quite a bit of experience with Feddit users and their administration banning anti-Zionist and antifascist views either citing a flawed definition of antisemitism, or using liberal respectability politics. This includes an admin of Feddit coming here to argue with a user justifying their Zionist positions as "Just complying with German Law" and then whining when another instance admin elsewhere banned them for that.
If you think respectability politics is important even when it comes to human lives, you will find very little agreement here. If you think Feddit being critical of real antisemitism means they have a point when dismissing anti-Zionists as antisemitic bigots, you will again find very little agreement here. You really shouldn't expect people to feel warm towards your dismissive sentiment because it is the sentiment that leads to bad actors like Feddit's admins being dismissed as "misguided" or "well meaning" while perpetrating harmful ideology and suppressing the criticism that highlights that.
Are we on Wikipedia or in the court, perhaps? No, this is just a forum. You only had to ask and I would post the screenshots. It is quite obvious why I didn't post them initially (if the thread was still up I'd have linked it) - they're large and would probably detract from the point, like I'm still arguing with the guy from .ml instead of talking about a somewhat different matter here.
I've read the OP text and some of the comments. So you're effectively agreeing that all of this still doesn't provide a very full picture. Apparently I had to interact with Feddit users elsewhere enough to come to your conclusions. But I didn't, so the reasonable thing to do for me for now is to stay by my vote "against", because I can't make conclusions based on things I don't know about.
I said what I saw and how I made my conclusions based on that. I asked you for your definition of zionism, to try to figure out what exactly is the problem with the screenshot you posted and to understand your viewpoint better in general, but you haven't provided it yet. It seems you're expecting me to read minds and/or spontaneously agree with you even while you're insulting me. I can't do that.
And that's reasonable, those are two different things indeed, and I hope I haven't conflated them.
You are expected, not required. This is just a forum, discussing a serious issue.
You've got nothing
Comments in your example: