cross-posted from: https://feddit.nl/post/16246531

I feel like we need to talk about Lemmy’s massive tankie censorship problem. A lot of popular lemmy communities are hosted on lemmy.ml. It’s been well known for a while that the admins/mods of that instance have, let’s say, rather extremist and onesided political views. In short, they’re what’s colloquially referred to as tankies. This wouldn’t be much of an issue if they didn’t regularly abuse their admin/mod status to censor and silence people who dissent with their political beliefs and for example, post things critical of China, Russia, the USSR, socialism, …

As an example, there was a thread today about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. When I was reading it, there were mostly posts critical of China in the thread and some whataboutist/denialist replies critical of the USA and the west. In terms of votes, the posts critical of China were definitely getting the most support.

I posted a comment in this thread linking to “https://archive.ph/2020.07.12-074312/https://imgur.com/a/AIIbbPs” (WARNING: graphical content), which describes aspects of the atrocities that aren’t widely known even in the West, and supporting evidence. My comment was promptly removed for violating the “Be nice and civil” rule. When I looked back at the thread, I noticed that all posts critical of China had been removed while the whataboutist and denialist comments were left in place.

This is what the modlog of the instance looks like:

Definitely a trend there wouldn’t you say?

When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.

Proof:

So many of you will now probably think something like: “So what, it’s the fediverse, you can use another instance.”

The problem with this reasoning is that many of the popular communities are actually on lemmy.ml, and they’re not so easy to replace. I mean, in terms of content and engagement lemmy is already a pretty small place as it is. So it’s rather pointless sitting for example in /c/linux@some.random.other.instance.world where there’s nobody to discuss anything with.

I’m not sure if there’s a solution here, but I’d like to urge people to avoid lemmy.ml hosted communities in favor of communities on more reasonable instances.

  • @ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    -2•18 hours ago

    And it also defines it as third position, as per the article I linked earlier. Again, some define fascism as “mommy said I can’t go to the party” so oooooohhhhh.

    Fact of the matter is fascists, if you’ve ever talked to a real one, are neither capitalist nor communist (again, hence that whole “World War Two” fiasco they teamed up for.) Thus “third position.”

      • @ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        -3•16 hours ago

        “From the article I linked:”

        The term “Third Position” was coined in Europe and the main precursors of Third Position politics were Italian fascism, Legionarism, Falangism, Prussian socialism, National Bolshevism (a synthesis of far-right ultranationalism and far-left Bolshevism) and Strasserism (a radical, mass-action, worker-based form of Nazism, advocated by the “left-wing” of the Nazi Party by brothers Otto and Gregor Strasser, until it was crushed in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934). Neo-fascist, neo-Nazi author Francis Parker Yockey had proposed an alliance between communists and fascists called the red-brown alliance (Red being the color of communism and Brown being the color of Nazism). Yockey lent support to Third World liberation movements as well.

        In the United States, Political Research Associates argues that Third Position politics has been promoted by some white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups such as the National Alliance, American Front, Traditionalist Worker Party, Patriot Front, and White Aryan Resistance, as well as some black nationalist groups, such as the Nation of Islam, since the late 20th century.[16] In 2010, the American Third Position Party (later renamed American Freedom Party) was founded in part to channel the right-wing populist resentment engendered by the financial crisis of 2007–08 and the policies of the Obama administration.

        During his early years in Nazi Party as SS-Gauführer, Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler worked briefly as a deputy of Gregor Strasser, then head of party propaganda department. Influenced heavily by Strasserist ideas, Himmler attacked capitalism and viewed socialism as “the natural economic system” during the 1920s.[4] Germany’s Chancellor, General Kurt von Schleicher (in office 1932–33), attempted to induce the more left-wing Strasserist segment of the Nazi Party to merge with the trade unions as way of forcing Hitler to support his government, but his plan failed.

        Jfc lmao. You’re wrong, deal with it loser. Neither right nor left, “Third Position.”

        • @taipan@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1•16 hours ago

          Your quote from the article describes the Third Position, not fascism in general. It does not say that fascism in general is neither left nor right. No need to get mad because you misread a Wikipedia article.