this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2026
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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.
Very difficult to say this for sure. Some of the acts we've seen are on the same level, frankly. And how could you possibly measure this, objectively?
I don't think this can be argued meaningfully, and so should be removed from your argument.
As to the German law:
Is that applicable here on Lemmy?
Is it up to the mods to interpret German law and apply it?
I was attacked by people from dbzer0 and called "pro genocide" for saying that, but: There is of course a way to measure and compare violent acts. There is a whole academic field called "Comparative Genocide Studies" which, as you can guess, studies genocides, their differences, how they were committed and is trying to compare them or to categorize them. There are also people doing this from a military point of view studying how wars are fought and so on. That is something you can do - but not here on Lemmy.
Yes? Feddit.org is an austrian/german site and therefore has to operate under local rules. The fediverse is not some lawless cyberspace thing. It has servers running in datacenters and those servers have to account for local laws. It has people funding those servers and those people are people living in their home country have to obey local laws.
I don't think we can expect commenters to be as nuanced as an academic specializing in genocides.
On the legal front, it is to me morally obvious that that comment was pretty measured and deleting it was fucked. If you claim to do a fucked thing for legal reason, I think it's fair to demand evidence that you are under legal duress. Is there a history of feddit specifically or german fedi sites.in general being hammered for "antisemitic" comments?
The answer to that would determines how much I am pissed at german authorities for misapplying the law or at feddit admins for being biased and/or cowards.