this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2026
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I assume I can still access them due to being an instance admin, that's how I know what they were.
I explained how that imagery is used by racists, and the previous racist meme is a good indicator it was posted with racist intent.
The first image I definitely agree on. That's fucked up and anyone should know it. This one I definitely don't agree on. It's based entirely on guess and assumption. Nothing about it is inherently racist.
I've honestly never even seen that movie scene used for racist shit. It's a scene tons of people around the world are likely to know, because it's sort of a popular book and movie series. It seems likely to randomly punish innocent nerds who don't have experience with whatever racist image distribution networks you've joined.
Their previous history of racist posting was pretty clearly taken into account, it wasn't some random LOTR fan who happened to get misconstrued.
You may want to look up racist dogwhistles, and how they are used. Equating migrants to an invasion horde is a common racist dog whistle and fearmongering tactic.
For your first point, you're talking about someone who checking shows has an absolutely insane 1.85K posts in 3 months. Through all of them 3 have been questioned on racism. One of those also called him a bot, which doesn't seem true since he messaged me when I first commented here asking if he was banned, and I don't know the situation there. Since that happened on another community, I'd assume the mod in question wouldn't know it either.
They'd likely know about the other that took place in this community, that I agree was definitely something I'd call racist. But one single instance post isn't really a "history of racist posting." Again, I've never seen that scene used as anything racist. I'm not new to the internet, so I'm sure there are plenty of other people who haven't. You don't know it wasn't some random LOTR fan being misconstrued. You don't know that OP didn't feel like a jackass for posting the shitty racist meme and wasn't actively trying to do his best to follow the rules. Did anyone bother to ask? Was there a conversation about any of it? It can be difficult for anyone to read sarcasm in text or silly memes these days, so asking what someone meant by a thing and how they saw it is important.
For the Ceuta issue, I do understand what racist dog whistles are and the asshat strategies to get people to see those with other skin tones or backgrounds as evil. Mostly, anyone who actually looks into it will see the event we're talking about had absolutely nothing to do with race in the first place. The Kingdom of Morocco directly borders the city of Ceuta. You can less than one meter and move from one to the other. This isn't some situation where migrants from a very different culture with a very different skin tone are traveling a long way that racists can use to scare people who don't pay attention. Everyone on all sides shares pretty much the same skin tones.
This is like if the people of Jersey City, NJ swarmed into New York City, NY... except 20x more people than Jersey City even has. Anyone trying to make that an issue of race or ethnicity would look like a complete fucking moron. The only way it could even be considered a racist dog whistle is not knowing that.
I also understand what an invasion horde is. We're not talking about a relative handful of refuges trying to get into a large country that can support them. Wikipedia lists Ceuta's entire population at 83,567, and reports are saying this event included over 60,000 Moroccans.
There's no way in hell you wouldn't feel invaded if a group of people almost matching the entire population of your city started swarming in, even if they were from whatever nation you live in. That's not something someone 'equates' to an invasion horde, it is a literal invasion horde.
It seems more like the mod didn't know the geographical, racial, and ethnic realities of area around Ceuta. Not a big deal, most people wouldn't. They saw a meme of an invasion horde swarming a place, possibly read "migrants" and/or "African" and decided it must be racism and deleted it and banned the user based on that. That's not great. This place doesn't move nearly fast enough for that to be necessary.
And you proudly proclaimed that you as an instance admin would have given a permanent ban instead. Hopefully you'd have bothered to research more before actually pressing the ban button than you did before replying, since as I've tried my best to make as clear as I can the entire situation has nothing to do with race and knowing anything about it more than "migrants, africa" it makes no sense at all to consider the image a racist dog whistle even if it did show an image of a scene from a movie you've seen used that way before.
It's a commonly referenced scene of a commonly referenced movie. Even if you know that many people have been stabbed with pencils and pens over the years it wouldn't make sense to assume everyone you see with one has that intent, because pencils are common.
One of the reasons this response is so long was the second paragraph of yours. Patronizing, condescending dismissal by simply acting like you assumed I was uneducated instead of bothering to engaging with the bulk of what I'd said is childish bad behavior in general, but worse from an instance admin to a new user you're aware hasn't even known how to see someone's moderation history here yet. I imagine you're aware of that.
Notice that the user who received the temp ban went on to complain about it, and even after other users explained why the memes were racist (including the zuckerberg post that you also agree is racist), the user dismisses the racism entirely and just says "not arguing everyone has to like the memes." They are showing zero ability for self-reflection and refuse to acknowledge the memes were racist.
I still would've given a permaban based on the evidence at hand, were it my community. You can disagree with that and give them more and more chances, but posting one blatant racist meme which is indisputably racist (even you agree), shows that we're not working with some innocent lamb who just isn't keeping up with modern dog-whistles.
If someone had only posted the LOTR meme without that previous history, then I would give benefit of the doubt, and just remove it and explain why.
No, I can't see that link. From how you've described that conversation it seems that I can see his end on his user message history, but can't open the post so I'm assuming they deleted the it.
Yes, the Zuckerberg thing was racist, but it's also what I'd consider an example of some of the tamest and most common racist jokes. It's very common to hear from people of all skin tones, and before the last 10 years or so it was extremely common. Most people I know would just roll their eyes at it, some being a bit hurt or annoyed inside and some not. It sucks, but that one has become extremely normalized to the point where plenty of black people would post it as a dumb meme joke. It's the type of thing a lot of people would need to have pointed out as racist, with genuine effort put into explaining and educating and not just insulting and assuming they're an awful person.
Going to the official support community to complain about being called racist... people do that when they feel wronged and are looking for support. A racist getting firmly told that shit isn't welcome and then complaining to the same crowd of people would just be opening themselves up to more insults. They're herd animals. They're comfortable vomiting up their bullshit to one another because it's safe and they know it's welcome. When they test the water in a new group and get smacked down most of them would react by putting back on the same face the huge majority of racists we deal with in public every day are wearing.
You also didn't quote his full message in your last comment. It was "I’m not arguing everyone has to like the memes. I’m objecting to the leap from “this post violates our rules” to “you’re racist.” Those are two very different claims. If the content isn’t welcome in that community, that’s the moderators’ call. But labeling someone’s character based on a single meme is a much more serious accusation, and I don’t think that’s justified.""
It bothers him so much people are thinking that way about him that he went to post for support.
There are a lot of genuine conditions that could lead to a person to spend so much time between Reddit and here they have 2k posts in 3 months, also have little interest or comfort in conversation so a lot less message history, not have the best grammar and typing, not understand why the first meme they found on Reddit wasn't ok but also not argue when only the post was deleted, but on the second instance when they're banned with the reason being racism to start looking for help and support with their entire focus being on it being wrong to call them racist, and fail to understand in that conversation how a meme from a popular post they saw on Reddit with lots of up votes could possibly be racist since it wasn't there.
That cause being that that person is racist isn't even one I would consider. You're thinking you're being noble and just while you're punching down.
"They are showing zero ability for self-reflection and refuse to acknowledge the memes were racist."
I have to admit that made me laugh a bit. No insult intended, but I hope you're willing to have some self-reflection.
Doing apologia for racist material, and wanting moderators to go real easy on people who post it is an odd stance to take, and not one I agree with.
The user was temp banned for racist material, complains about it being called racist, other users explain why it's racist, and they dismiss their explanations entirely. If they are not willing to acknowledge that it's racist, they're likely to post more racist things that they think isn't racist. From a moderator's perspective, that's not someone you want in your community, as your users don't want racist stuff showing up their feed.
The user was shown why their stuff was racist, it's now on them to learn from that experience, or not. If they don't, they're going to keep getting banned if they keep posting that content. It's not terribly relevant to a moderator that a particular user is incapable of understanding their content is racist even ever being informed of it.
That last reply from me got fucked up and sent while moving things around, so you probably read a garbled version.
tl'dr:
There are a lot of genuine conditions that could lead to a person to spend so much time between Reddit and here they have 2k posts in 3 months, also have little interest or comfort in conversation so a lot less message history, not have the best grammar and typing, not understand why the first meme they found on Reddit wasn’t ok but also not argue when only the post was deleted, but on the second instance when they’re banned with the reason being racism to start looking for help and support with their entire focus being on it being wrong to call them racist, and fail to understand in that conversation how a meme from a popular post they saw on Reddit with lots of up votes could possibly be racist since it wasn’t there.
That cause being that that person is racist isn’t even one I would consider. You’re thinking you’re being noble and just while you’re punching down.
And for your little "Doing apologia for racist material, and wanting moderators to go real easy on people who post it is an odd stance to take"...
I spent 5 years in a state prison for something I genuinely had zero involvement in because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time while being black. Not everyone willing to take their time actually putting thought and reason into understanding someone that seems to be wrongfully accused of something is doing it because they're guilty of that that. And we both know you absolutely intended the implication that that I was defending this guy because I'm a racist.
I've tried to show that racism might not have been the reason for anything the OP has done or said and that all of their actions make complete sense for much different reasons, spending a great deal of time and effort to try showing it's wrong to judge a user so quickly and harshly. In response you've been brief, condescending, dismissive, didatic, and insulting towards me multiple time.
Cheering on the very likely punching down on a DD user trying to contribute to a near dead platform and convincing yourself you're a moral champion for doing it wasn't enough to make you feel like a big man? You can go fuck yourself Mr Instance Admin.
Whether or not a poster considers themselves racist is irrelevant from the perspective of the moderator. Their job is to keep racist material from being submitted to their communities, and if someone is unwilling to adjust their perception of that content even if the community tries to inform them why it's not welcome to post it here, that is the user's problem, not the moderator. If they get a perma ban from that community, they still can post elsewhere with the knowledge that that type of content isn't popular here and choose whether or not to keep posting it.
If they still refuse to reevaluate that type of content, keep getting reports on their content, and an admin instance bans them, then at worst they'll have to make a new account on a different instance. throughout all of those steps the user has the opportunity to try to understand on their end why their posts are getting this negative reaction. If they decide that everyone else is wrong and continue posting things that are perceived as racist, then that's on them. 🤷
You're misrepresenting this entire thing to again try to make yourselves and the moderator in question seem noble and just. The scenario where "someone is unwilling to adjust their perception of that content even if the community tries to inform them why it’s not welcome to post it here" and that is why they end up banned never happened. The person posted a meme that the majority of humanity would be very unlikely to call racist, that deals with a situation that was in no way race based and was banned with zero communication. No one tried to explain why that wasn't welcome before the person was banned. They didn't fail to adjust their perceptions or actions in any way prior to being banned.
After being banned they complained that it wasn't right to call them racist. That they didn't mind if people didn't like some content or decide to delete the content from their community, but that it was wrong to judge the character of a person and call them racist. They said that the same image was up elsewhere with thousands of views, and correctly pointed out that very clearly not everyone interprets it in some sort of racist way. Which given the realities of everything in and around Ceuta makes complete since, as for the 20th time race and racism was in no way involved.
This situation is simple. A moderator banned a user for posting an image that isn't actually racist. The moderator, and apparently you, have the instances where large numbers of people crossing a border into another place is something that involves two distinct races and the times those instances have been used by racists to try to increase the fear and distrust of the outsider so firmly on your minds that simply seeing a situation where a lot of people crossed a border causes you to assume they were of varying races and assume a post likening it to an invading horde was a racist dog whistle.
But neither of those assumptions are correct. There is nothing at all racist about the image, and the situation (awful as it is) makes even considering that to be laughable. This isn't a pattern of a user insisting on posting racist content and being "unwilling to adjust their perception of that content even if the community tries to inform them why it’s not welcome to post it here."
This is an example of moderators and administrators not bothering to take the time to understand a situation and/or communicate with a user before banning them. Then when called out on it, you refuse to accept your interpretation might be incorrect, refuse to admit anyone in charge ever did anything wrong, blame the person who was banned for a LotR meme with no warning, blame them again for trying to seek help on being called racist for said meme, and then while never saying any official response was incorrect and always being sure to blame the user explain how very many different instances and communities there are for them to move to if they were (never wrongfully) banned from one.
Are you interested in a job working in PR? With your willingness to and experience in ignoring any presented logic and factual evidence by those trying to explain why an officer's interpretation of a person's actions as a crime was incorrect, misrepresenting the nature of the entire event in question to best describe the citizen corpse as a repeat offender who refused to listen or learn to officers trying to teach them how to do better multiple times before being put down and the people with the masks and guns as being the noble champions of justice who only did what they did to protect themselves and others from harm the facts you've been presented with show was entirely imaginary I think ICE might be willing to offer you quite a nice income.
The two things I seem to agree with you on is that racism is bad and self-reflection is good. I had five years of nothing but self-reflection, thought, and reading. You're willing to criticize others for presumed lack of self-reflection, but it doesn't seem likely you've put a lot of genuine time into it for yourself. Hopefully one day you're willing to change that. But as you've still never once bothered to acknowledge or interact in any way with the basic facts on Ceuta I presented to show you that there was nothing racist about the meme that led to the banning, I'm simply going to block you now.