I thought FUD was a cryptobro term.
this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
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Ye Power Trippin' Bastards
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This is a community in the spirit of "Am I The Asshole" where people can post their own bans from lemmy or reddit or whatever and get some feedback from others whether the ban was justified or not.
Sometimes one just wants to be able to challenge the arguments some mod made and this could be the place for that.
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I went on there for about 30 seconds and found a "The Donald" successor with UniversalMonk posting a little stream of total fantasy about how good the tariffs are and how Trump is going to save us.
I think now that the literal concentration camps are up and running, and people are going into them, it's time to say that the modern Republican regime is today's Nazi Party.
I'm actually fine with talking with a Republican online or in person, maybe I'm in the minority here in that. But we've all learned from experience that, at least in its current anonymous-online-forum behavior, that openly pro-Nazi contingent is never just looking to have a conversation and be reasonable about expressing what they honestly believe because they think it's helping the country as a whole, and come to understanding. They're always going to start threatening people over DMs after a while. They're always going to post a steady stream of total fantasy, which they don't actually believe or try to defend, just to try to manipulate the landscape by having it exist as a little offensive torrent which helps them in their work. They're always going to manipulate the narrative and censor opposing speech in spaces they control. "Free speech" is always going to turn out to be a fiction once it's speech they don't agree with. Because that is their ideology: That it's okay to cheat as long as you're on their team, and the other team doesn't deserve any type of human rights.
"Free speech" doesn't mean one moderator can run their forum however they want. It doesn't mean we have to listen to one person forever, however much they want to say, but they don't have to listen to us if they don't want to. It doesn't work the way you're saying it does. It's a philosophy of freedom of ideas. It's a shared social contract that comes with obligations, not just grants of what you're allowed to do. It's the idea that you may not agree with someone, but you need to hear them out and then engage honestly with what they're saying. That we need to live together and protect the weakest or "wrongest" among us. That being a society as free humans with our inalienable rights is more important than our team winning. It's not a set of code that provides everyone write access to the space, or a total-openness-of-moderation policy. It is a commitment to the idea that if we talk honestly with each other and respect each other, even if we don't agree about something, we'll be able to work it out, because even someone who you think is wrong as hell might have a point. The crucial piece you're missing is that it has to cut both ways. Someone who's claiming the shield, has to be also willing to provide the same shield to others in the space, and otherwise it is completely fair not to welcome them. That's why every public servant has to swear an oath to the constitution. The oath is not "Now that I'm in charge I solemnly swear to do whatever the fuck I want, until someone else gets in charge and they can do the same to me."
If someone's not on board for it cutting both ways, but they're hijacking some kind of open tool or democratic public space to make a pretense that they do so they can advance their agenda of killing or imprisoning their enemies and shutting down democracy in a place it used to exist, most reasonable people will tell them to get the fuck out. That's not censorship. It's self-defense. It's the same as ejecting from a public meeting someone who blows hard on a whistle every time their opponents try to speak, passes them notes that they might be killed or their house burned down if they keep talking, and then stands up with a quavering voice and swears their commitment to open society and freedom, and says they can't understand all these people who are aiming such hateful behavior at them because they said they were a bad person. I can easily find examples of all of that on your instance, I can be specific if you want me to. Do you want me to?
I'm not trying to bully you or your instance or anything personal towards you. But you guys have suffered reputational harm at this point because you've welcomed people who are actively trying to do harm to the rest of us. Not just harm but literal death and literal imprisonment. A lot of us, I assume, are thinking about fleeing the country, getting weapons to defend ourselves. A lot of us are real fucking worried about friends and family. We're wondering what the fuck we even do now. We're within our rights to want nothing more to do with you, if you welcome the viewpoint that all of that is okay. Or, not even that: If you welcome people who are okay lying about their own viewpoint and manipulating the space to try to advance that work and make it more effective.
Like I say: There is a genuine viewpoint that's adjacent to what you're saying that I agree with. I don't think most of the Republican rank-and-file is our enemy (even if we might wind up in a war with them soon, depending). I don't think shutting out particular honest political viewpoints is the way. I think we have to be able to talk to each other to even be able to begin to approach and heal from this fucking chasm in our society. It goes deeper than just the current Republican regime. But, like I say, once we get back down the rank-and-file level of individual people:
IT
HAS
TO
GO
BOTH
WAYS
!lemmysilver
Thank you. Not that it did a damn bit of good. Dude seems like he’s stuck on all output no input. Like I said, I really tried.
It was a very clear, very coherent, passionate and informative explanation of why some important things are important. Thank you for taking the time to write it. Lots more people will read it than respond to it. People like you make lemmy a better place.
He is definitely a Trump fanboy, I really don't care about Trump that much - it's OK to see things differently. I personally cringe at that community too, but they are not breaking our rules. My personal views have nothing to do with it.
I think it is an insult to anyone who has had to endure the horrors of nazi concentration camps, to make that comparison so loosely. They were nothing like what is happening today in America, not even close.
I'm not going to dive into actual US politics (are Republicans nazis, are the Democrats nazis, etc) since I'm not even American and that's a cesspit I have no business in. Depending on who you talk to, someone else is always the nazi. What I can say is that our instance has clear rules on the type of content we accept, just like everyone else, and we certainly do not tolerate "nazi" content, such as calls for violence, racial discrimination, ultra nationalism, etc. You will not find anything that resembles that.
On a human level, I agree with the points you make. I certainly wouldn't want you to subject yourself to content you don't like either, and Lemmy has come a long way to give users control over what they see. All I'm pointing out is that HC would welcome anyone under the same rules. We are no more a Republican instance than we are a Democrat one. I can't control if people agree or disagree with you, but I have no tolerance for personal attacks, for example. You will find that starting a community on HC would really be no different than starting a community somewhere else.
If people legitimately wanted HC to be a different instance, then they would join it and transform through their own content, to the point where it becomes majority. But people do not want that, it's easier and more convenient to point the finger and accuse us of being baddies.
Trump has been sending Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador that claims to have "expanded" in order to hold them all, but satellite imagery just shows them digging a big trench. That feels pretty damn close to me.
Yes. That's the issue with your instance. That is your decision, and why people tend to shun you and have no interest in making communities there to "transform through their own content." Why would anyone go to the Nazi bar when there are others?
Besides: If I started a community on HC which was devoted to posting your name and home address, talking about you and your daily life, and constantly amping up totally untrue nonsense about you (on a similar truth scale to what can be found on your instance about the people who are being "deported" right now, or about sub-Saharan immigrants' impacts on European countries where they go), I have a hard time believing you'd be so committed to free speech. But because, instead of it being you in direct personal danger (even of a pretty mild theoretical "I feel queasy about this" type), it is merely a bunch of Central and South American migrants in the US in direct personal danger (of an extremely severe and realized type), you're okay with it. In the name of "free speech."
If you disagree, DM me your name and address, and I'll start that community and we can see how long you're in favor of it. I am curious if your uncaring nature towards who might be endangered by this type of "free speech" applies to you, or just to hundreds and thousands of American Hispanic or Muslim people (soon to progress, I am sure, to the rest of us). I'm completely serious. I promise not to post any personal attacks, calls for violence, or racial discrimination.
Who said I was making it loosely? I can point you to actual concentration camp survivors who in 2016 were saying that Trump's way of doing things was eerily similar to Hitler's. They were pretty qualified about making the comparison, for beyond-obvious reasons, but they said the overall pattern was terrifyingly similar. All his enemies are vermin, not even human, everyone is lying about him, he's going to save the country, we have to be vicious in dealing with all of these traitors who are threatening our way of life. There's no other way. Trust me. Everyone else is lying, they lie all the time, I'm telling you the truth. Put me in charge. I'll fix it and punish the guilty, because they're so guilty, you wouldn't believe, but with me in charge, finally you'll be safe and happy. But I'm going to have to be ruthless to get it done, because they're such murderous dangerous elements that nothing else will do. Trust me. Give me power and I'll get it done. I promise. Trust me. Give me power forever.
And now, we have in addition to ICE detention facilities, a big secretive mega-prison where random innocent people are being sent, and the ruling regime is saying it has every right to do that, to them and to anyone who displeases it for any reason. Including very notably a lot of their political opponents, who are enemies of the state.
Yes, it is 100% a concentration camp system. It's even, for now, for one designated particular racial grouping almost all of the time. And yes they mean to accelerate putting people in them, and they are building more. There is an extremely important reason why they are resisting any judicial oversight or legal basis for what they're doing, and why ICE has started doing this stuff in plain clothes in hurried secretive snatch-and-retreat operations and circumventing and explicitly challenging the usual branches-of-government restrictions on their power.
It is no way an insult to anyone who lived through the camps to say it is happening again. It is giving weight and memory to what they went through, amplifying in some cases their own firsthand words, by doing everything we can to stop it now happening again, before it reaches the same level that the Third Reich was able to scale it up to.
Pull the fucking other one.
I don't know, man. You've got a right to be clueless about American politics if you want. I have a hard time believing that, at this point, that kind of cluelessness could stem from anything but a deliberate desire to be clueless. Or maybe, you are just lying about what you believe because you know that self-identifying as a Republican isn't going to work, so you feign ignorance about what's even going on. That, honestly, seems more plausible to me than that you want to run an instance where US politics is a key defining feature but you "have no business" in "that cesspit" of US politics.
(Is there anyone in the world who is this ignorant about the difference between saying "Democrats are Nazis" and "modern Republican regime is Nazis"? I kind of doubt it. What is happening is global news at this stage. It's not politics anymore, any more than World War 2 was politics.)
I thought about typing up more but I feel like that's enough. Racial discrimination and ultranationalist propaganda is incredibly easy to find on your instance. Calls for individual violence, I didn't see, but clear violent behavior like snatching some innocent person from the street and sending them to turbo-prison forever because the ultranationalist leader said to is easy to find. Is this not enough to say?
I mean, the people in this thread are exercising their free speech to do exactly that: To announce to each other that your instance contains content no one here wants, that alarms them because of its criminality, dishonesty, and connection to real present danger to them. You decided to make it that way. That's what happens in a free society sometimes, is that everyone decides someone's an asshole because of what they hosted and who their colleagues are. Good luck with your strategy.
I hope this doesn't come across as hostile. I'm just talking, honestly, like you are. Free speech. I don't really know where you're coming from, which is why I give you the respect of taking some time to really try to express what I mean about this and why you are getting a negative reaction. I think there's at least a chance that you actually mean what you say and what your thinking is on this, so I'm just trying to explain in detail why people are going to continue to shun you and yours for as long as you are doing this. Hopefully that makes some sense.
Where on HC have you seen anything that even remotely resembles doxxing? We will ban anyone with impunity for anything of the sort. Where have I said otherwise? I have always pointed out that we have rules around content, and everyone has to agree to them when joining HC. Personal attacks in general are not tolerated, let alone calls to violence or doxxing - that's an insane take to suggest otherwise.
You are making some very disingenuous correlations.
I'm saying that your content directly endangers the lives of people in the United States. That's not at all a "disingenuous" correlation. It is an illuminating one.
I'm saying you would react differently if it was directly affecting your safety, in the same way that for example "El Salvador Blocks Sen. Van Hollen’s Visit with Deported Illegal Alien" directly endangers Garcia's safety by deliberately misleading people about his legal status (such that a lot of the US really can't tell up from down on that issue as well as many others, which will mute the effort to try to get him back before some really bad things happen to him if they have not already).
This kind of lying on the internet and in the press used to just be for fun and profit, but now it's really gotten developed to weapons-grade and become deadly serious. That's why people react so negatively when you host it. I'm not saying at all that anyone should host anything that endangers you personally. We should all be safe. I'm saying that your alarmed reaction at the idea of being doxxed should also apply to the idea of published professionally-crafted excuses for armed thugs wandering the streets of the US snatching people up and doing whatever they want with them.
I think this is a good example of something we will have to agree to disagree on.
Sure. Up to you. I'm just taking some time to try to explain why I think people have such a negative reaction to your instance, if you're interested to hear it.