Hey all, I recently left reddit like many of you. I have a question regarding lemmy and the fediverse on the history of banning and defederation. I have noticed several posts calling for varying communities to be disconnected. were these removal requests as prevalent before the mass migration? Usually I am all for communities existsting in their own spaces, barring illegal content. I am hoping that the new users are coming here with the intent to learn how this community works, before we try to remake the community we just left.

    • HelixDab@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Most instances also defederated from lemmygrad (commies) so its not generally politically left either.

      IMO, Stalinists aren’t exactly tolerant either. You’re still talking about a totalitarian and authoritarian viewpoint, even if they’re on the left on economic matters.

      IMO, if your point is to make a community welcoming, then you have to get rid of intolerant voices. That–broadly speaking–means that you have to remove people advocating for any kind of absolutist, authoritarian rules. It’s easy to see at a macro level, but it’s all fuzzy at a micro level.

      • BaldProphet@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        A lot of people in the Fediverse don’t seem to appreciate the concept that the political left is just as capable of intolerance and extremism as the political right.

        • HelixDab@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Anyone that is familiar with the ways that communism has existed in Warsaw-pact countries, in China, in southeast Asia in general, etc., should be able to see that. LGBTQ+ people were, if anything, even more fucked in most communist countries. There certainly wasn’t any meaningful religious tolerance, since religion was banned in at least some communist countries (or wholly controlled by the gov’t).

          I’m in favor of communism in principle, but not in practice. I’d love to live in a commune, but I don’t think I’d want to live in a communist country.

          • cacheson@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            I’m in favor of communism in principle, but not in practice. I’d love to live in a commune, but I don’t think I’d want to live in a communist country.

            You might be interested in anarcho-communism. I’m not one myself, but they’re the only kind of communists that I’m okay with.

          • Sandra@idiomdrottning.org
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            1 year ago

            It’s true that self-proclaimed communist states have been awful in this regard. You’re not wrong.

            It becomes a question of semantics, ultimately. If I go on I’ll just fall into the “no true Scotsman” line of reasoning. “If by ‘whiskey’…”

            Glad we’re ultimately on the side of supporting gay rights & black lives, whether or not that’s called right, left, red flag, blue state…

        • Sandra@idiomdrottning.org
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          1 year ago

          🤷🏻‍♀️

          The shift of the political battle from workers-vs-owners to populists-vs-pluralists has been driven by the far right and has been an explicit goal of the right since 1922.

          The populist ideology uses intolerance and bigotry as a tool. Hate on a group to get the workers to vote for the rich-get-richer economics the right wing favors.

          Ideally a group they can describe as disgustingly weak in one breath and a dangerous threat the next.

          So it’s de jure the case that the left a.k.a. pluralists oppose intolerance and bigotry. That’s what makes us the left.

          • BaldProphet@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            So it’s de jure the case that the left a.k.a. pluralists oppose intolerance and bigotry. That’s what makes us the left.

            Many on the left don’t actually understand pluralism, though. It has become pretty mainstream to shut down voices one disagrees with.

            • HelixDab@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              If by pluralism you mean competing viewpoints in political systems, then the ability to shut them down means that those voices have failed to successfully compete. That’s like saying “No one wants to work anymore!” when you don’t want to pay workers the prevailing wage, and then crying because your business fails.

          • BaldProphet@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            I’m not talking about parties, I’m talking about the political spectrum. There is no “Right-Wing Party”, nor is there a “Left-Wing Party”. Conservatives and liberals can be found in both of the actual dominant American parties.