We, the admin team, decry all forms of settler-colonialism, and we recognize that Zionism is a pro-settler-colonialist position.
Therefore we propose that should no longer be accepting of any Zionist accounts on our instances.
Please upvote for agree, downvote for disagree.
Note: we only count votes by instance members of dbzer0 and anarchist.nexus, plus a few vouched-for external users.
Hi mateys, I've kept things simple in the above text, for brevity, but in fact it took the admin team quite a while to get to this stage. We have discussed the policy change extensively, and a variety of different perspectives emerged. I will attempt to sum them up below as best I can:
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The "this isn't that complicated" school of thought goes something like this: If someone is consistently posting comments that mirror Hasbara talking points (e.g. justifying the genocide in Gaza, consistently painting Palestinians as terrorists and Israel as the victim), then they should be instance banned. It's just not acceptable for Zionists to be allowed on our instances.
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The "slippery slope" / "purity test" school of thought is that banning people for having an "unpopular" political opinion would potentially mean banning half the fediverse, if more and more of these policies were enacted over time. To attempt to mitigate this we are keeping the scope of this rule as narrow as possible, and I also don't think many of our users will be affected. Also, we typically don't have frequent policy changes, and I have no reason to expect that to change moving forward.
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Another important discussion point was "how do we decide whether someone is pro-Zionist or not?" We can't always be 100% sure of someone's true intentions, we can only go on what they have posted and that is subject to interpretation. I don't feel there is an easy answer to this one, except to say that we would have to be pretty certain before issuing a perma-ban.
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The "geopolitics don't matter" school of thought is that trying to be on the "correct" side of every issue is kind of pointless because nothing that happens in lemmy chat forums will ever make an ounce of difference in the real world. Don't bother moderating users over political/ideological differences, just let people argue if they want. While I can totally empathize with this sentiment, I can also see the case for taking a clear stance on this topic in accordance with our values and the overwhelming support for the Palestinian cause among our users. Personally, I am advocating in favor of the resolution.
Please add your comments below if you want to provide your own thoughts on the topic, or have any questions.
expiry: 7
One of my favorite hobbies over the past few years is following the internal collapse of online communities that passionately support an incoherent political ideology. There's something entertaining in watching events of the downfall unfold as predicted. This community is going down that road and there's not stopping it.
It's really not hard to see why. Anarchy is a fundamentally incoherent ideology. The ideology goes against human nature. There's a reason why it never worked out in history and never will. Like with all other inherently flawed ideologies, anarchy is too rigid, idealistic, and out of touch with reality. It can't adapt and its inadequacies can't hold up to criticism. Therefore, in order for the ideology to stay intact, authoritarianism has to step in and limit the discourse.
And so the censorship hammer begins to swing. Political censorship always after specific targets rather than specific behaviors, which means that it's designed to be weaponized. This is usually done with the implementation being intentionally unprincipled and vague which removes accountability from the censoring authority, thus giving them the wiggle room to censor whoever they don't like. Which is another thing, political censorship is always framed as a necessary moral purification rather than the liberty erosion that it is. This gives the censoring authority the power to ban any critics of the censorship as being immoral or supporting immorality. It's the same old tired textbook that we've time and time again.
The thing is? It will happen. There's no point in arguing for or against something like this, it will pass with thunderous applause... which is ironic for an anarchist space, but that's just how things go. Once it does pass, it WILL be followed up with a similar proposal soon after and then another and another, and the discourse here will continue to slowly but surely get more limited and more extreme. This will remain the case until the community snuffs itself out and only a shell of what it used to be remains. This community's future is going to be similar to what r/conservative or lemmygrad are like now. If that's how it's going to be, then I might as well as sit back and enjoy the show.
I don't know if you're right, but I already have registered for a new instance and will be deleting my account soon. And in my country, I would be considered to have very liberal views on the Middle East conflict... I've been called "loser" and "shit" and "horrible" and someone supporting "mass murder," even after I said I support greater ICC funding for war crimes prosecutions. Not only am I done with this instance, but I won't get involved in supporting the 2 state movement or ICC prosecutions or really doing anything to support causes to decrease Palestinian suffering. These people fucking hate me... there's other movements to reduce suffering in the world that won't hate me and other instances.
Well thanks I guess for stopping your involvement in settler colonial propaganda because people were horrified by your views. Hope you mean it.