Lemmy.zip and the OSA
lemmy.zip

My first months on Lemmy were spent on Lemmy.world, which was the biggest instance at the time. I had no experience with Hexbear because .world had defederated that instance. I sometimes saw it being described as a “tankie” instance, but it was nothing specific.

After I moved to .zip, I came across !games@hexbear.net, which seemed to be free from anything overtly political and reminded me of r/Gamingcirclejerk, so I subscribed to it and occasionally made comments related to gaming.

Today I made multiple comments to a post about an article on the STALKER game developers having removed the Soviet symbols and the Russian audio in the remastered edition of the game. I would argue that in the thread, there were no comments from me that could be construed by a reasonable person as defensive of Nazism, fascism, or even hinting at it. For example, in one of the comments, I linked a Ukrainian law that prohibits the use of Nazi symbols, though I highly advise looking through all my ten comments as to avoid any misunderstanding or false impressions.

Conversely, one comment posted by another user dismissed Holodomor as Nazi propaganda, which I reported, but a moderator of that community just ended up calling me out for that and taking no action, followed by them banning me.

The thread containing all of my untouched posts is still available via lemmy.zip. My comments are also available for viewing via my user page. They are not available on hexbear due to the ban.

  • Damarcusart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    33·
    1 day ago

    Also if you’re a self described leftist stop trying to be one of the good ones. You’re never going to be a model minority for liberals. They don’t care. You’re not winning anything by claiming to be a leftist, but not like those scary Chinese, but rather like the good nice white Swedish. It’s not gonna work. In fact the whole exercise of denouncing the West’s enemies before calling yourself a socialist is demonstrating your obedience. You’ve showing that you’ll always play a little game before saying anything of substance, you’ll eagerly waste your own time. It doesn’t go anywhere

    There’s a reason the “dirtbag left” upsets liberals so much, by refusing to play their games, refusing to engage in the complex liberal ritual of dancing around a topic while never explicitly condemning it OR committing to it, it just breaks their brains, it makes them so mad that someone could actually stand for something, and not just empty token gestures, and not sacrifice their own morals in the sake of “civility” either. They hate it, because it is a reminder that they are not the inherently good people they think they are, and that liberalism is a path of failure and destruction, not centrist enlightenment.

    • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      18·
      1 day ago

      I’ve been thinking about it, and honestly I’m not so sure this is always the case. There’s definitely cases where being flippant and uncouth goes to our detriment, even when someone is engaging in bad faith. Like, it’s one thing for the opponent to make a bad faith attack then do a rebuttal with a pigpoop at the end, and it’s another to respond to their bad faith attack with nothing but emotes. If the context of the conversation can lend credence to their argument, the lack of a serious counterargument can speak volumes. The onlookers get the wrong message.

      More concrete example: someone here says that it’s a shame Al Qaeda seized control of Syria. Lemmitor comes and says Assad was using chemical weapons so regime change was justified. They get nothing but PPBs in response.

      Will an onlooker have their beliefs about so called “tankies” challenged? Or did we just give them license to keep dismissing us? Wouldn’t it be helpful if on top of being rude, we could be ruthless and actually thoroughly debunk their claims?

      I miss how Egon would do this relentlessly, I think that kind of dunking is a lot better than (only) namecalling.

      Edit: I checked the original thread this is referencing and nevermind, everyone did a good job of actually engaging in the conversation with good sources and solid points.

      • Damarcusart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        17·
        1 day ago

        Oh, yeah, I didn’t mean just “hurl insults until they go away” is effective, but treating their attitude and opinions with the respect it deserves is very effective. The dunk is an important part of that, and what I was thinking of. I haven’t really seen any examples where a lib says something ignorant and the only responses are insults and PPB, that isn’t just several lines deep in a comment chain already (where others have tried and failed to explain things to them.) Not saying it doesn’t happen, just that it wasn’t what I was thinking of, I was probably imagining the same scenario you do, where people call them out for their ignorance, attempt to educate them and refuse to coddle them.