A few days ago I came across a comment in one of this Instance’s Communities made by a user of this Instance, which very directly parroted Nazi talking points. Not in a way that was satirising Nazis, but which was endorsing their type of supremacist worldview.
Other comments in that thread noted that the user in question has a history of unironically endorsing a foreign genocidal regime and its actions.
I tried reporting the comment in question, but as of today the comment still stands and the user who made the comment has been as active as ever.
Is this Instance ok with Nazis?
We’re missing a bit of information here. I got your report, went to the thread to get the context.
Firstly, I saw that you had literally screen-capped the comment in question and included it in a new reply. So, removing the comment would have achieved nothing - it would have still been there.
Secondly, the comment was Zionistic in nature, which while especially unpopular in nature is not against instance rules.
Thirdly, I wasn’t aware that the comment in question was similar to something Nazis said. I don’t even know if the user who made the comment knew that. So, leaving it there and letting downvotes do their thing allowed for education as well.
Lastly, the comment was in the Australian Politics community - which is intentionally the lightest-touch moderated community because there’s a difference between political discussion where parties disagree quite vehemently and an outright echo-chamber. If you delete all the users from your politics community that you don’t agree with, what is the point of the community?To answer your question: No, we don’t allow Nazis here. It is literally one of the questions we ask on the application screen. “Nazi talking points” is not on its own a good metric of what is acceptable today. We basically have a whole community in support of Reichsnaturschutzgesetz. I don’t especially take issue with Tierschutz, either. One of the reasons the Third Reich gained actual popular support was some of their early policies were in fact in the best interest of the German people. There is still a Kindergeld today, though giving full credit to the Nazis to that one wouldn’t really be genuine. It is fair to say they supported this policy. So I guess our stance on “literal Nazi talking points” will boil down to other factors and get taken on a case-by-case basis.
Finally: If there’s a user you genuinely don’t wish to see around here any longer, you can hit the little down arrow on any of their comments and block them.
I want to raise a point on the “Nazi talking points” response:
- On one hand, it’s certainly more useful when a report is more specific, yes. I know plenty of fascist talking points which aren’t common knowledge or obvious.
- On the other, it sounds like they’re talking about Lebensraum - “living space”. If we look at it technically, it was a common concept in German politics decades before the Nazi Party was formed. And it’s a far cry away from the various social reforms implemented in the Third Reich you mentioned. But in context, I think it’s clear that someone on aussie.zone reporting a post for “Nazi talking points” is reporting that a post is fascistic, supporting the supremacist aspects Nazism is famous for. People surely aren’t going to report pro-vegetarian posts for this reason, or even anti-union posts (despite the crushing of worker’s organisations being core to fascism).
Lebensraum is a relatively infamous policy, and one which neo-Nazis like the NSN explicitly invoke. They’re never holding up banners saying “protect the wildlife”, “support animal rights” or “fast roadways now!”, this is the bigoted supremacy generally associated with Nazism and carried on by neo-Nazism.
If you delete all the users from your politics community that you don’t agree with, what is the point of the community?
But this isn’t just “all the users you disagree with”, or even just disagreement - if someone, when discussing an expansionist regime, tries to justify “living space”, that makes me think that person might well want me thrown in a camp and killed. It’s no smoking gun, but it’s a loud wolfwhistle.
Lebensraum is a relatively infamous policy, and one which neo-Nazis like the NSN explicitly invoke.
Sorry. While I readily acknowledge that I don’t hang out in those circles, nor really scrutinise their rhetoric, I have honestly never heard that phrase before. In English or German. This does paint the comment in a brighter light, and I probably would have been more inclined to remove it had I been familiar with the term.
That’s good to see, but as of right now the Nazi’s explicit mask-off comment is still up, and they are still not prevented from commenting further in the future.
Fwiw, I didn’t learn the phrase from online discourse about neonazis, I learnt it from education about WWII in its original comment. Until reading other comments in this thread I was not even aware that it was popular among neonazis as a dogwhistle. So we both learnt something unfortunate here today.
I took Seagoon_'s comment to be in support of the ban on particular phrases, by highlighting another dog whistle for nazis. Before this, I (like Nath) did not know this was a nazi dog whistle.
I don’t believe Seagoon_ is a nazi. I do believe they’re a zionist. In Australia as it stands… one is illegal, the other is practically government policy.
To say anyone in support of the new legislation in QLD is a nazi, as you have implied, is an extreme take on the situation. I have many issues with the legislation as it has been passed, but do not believe supporters of it are automatically nazis.
As Nath has commented, as a rule we let human to human discussions run their course… unless they’re going off the rails. Simply posting something you do not believe, or you do not agree with is not grounds for a comment to be removed.
To be clear, I fully believe that the user in question is a Nazi. There is no other rational explanation for their behaviour. Any space that allows that user is a Nazi bar.
The legislation itself I do not believe is only supported by literal Nazis. But that the ideology in support of them is a similar far-right reactionary one. It necessarily involves gleeful support at the slaughter of thousands of innocent people, including the deliberate killing of medics and journalists whose only job is to reduce suffering and expose how awful the regime inflicting this is. It also necessarily involves support for the restriction on civil rights including freedom of expression. It may not be capital-N Nazi necessarily, but it is certainly far-right authoritarian, of the sort that might have attracted a less formal lower-case-n “nazi” label a decade ago, when actual Nazis were more closeted. But that shouldn’t be surprising. My point was to demonstrate that being a Zionist, in 2026, necessarily puts you ideologically very close to Nazis, even if you don’t necessarily cross the line into actually being a Nazi, like this particular user obviously does.
I fully believe that the user in question is a Nazi. There is no other rational explanation for their behaviour .
There are other explanations, such the one from my comment you replied to. You may not agree with my interpretation, and Seagoon has not posted to clarify the thinking behind their comment. If it becomes clear that a user is a nazi, I’ll take appropriate action, as I have done with previous users.
Any space that allows that user is a Nazi bar.
I disagree with your characterization of Seagoon as a nazi, this is categorically not the case.
Seagoon has not posted to clarify the thinking behind their comment.
You see how that’s a bad thing, right? Surely. If they don’t clarify their stance is anti-genocide in very unmistakeable terms, one must conclude that they are, in fact, a Nazi. Choosing to remain silent should not be allowed to give someone ranting about lebensraum the benefit of the doubt during an active genocide.
That’s good to see, but as of right now the Nazi’s explicit mask-off comment is still up, and they are still not prevented from commenting further in the future.
Which you’re clearly good with, since your screen-capped version of the comment is also still up. The purpose of moderation is to prevent people from being exposed abhorrent content, spam, unsolicited nudity, scams and other harmful content. I’m reluctant to step into discussions that are clearly between actual humans as a general rule, unless they are being abusive or derailing threads. I could also count on my fingers the number of human user accounts I’ve needed to actually ban from the site. Whatever a power-tripping mod is, I am not.
The next time you think a comment should be removed, I would recommend that you don’t go out of your way to be sure more people see it as you report it. As things stand, I see more value in this moment as a learning point. Yours is still the only report that particular comment received. The truly offensive stuff, I can be pinged by half a dozen reports within 30 minutes of the comment being posted. I also remain unconvinced that the user who made that comment would self-identify as a Nazi. Zionist, sure - though that is apparent more from other comments than this example.
The purpose of moderation is to prevent people from being exposed abhorrent content
That may be one purpose. But it isn’t the only one. Another is shaping the norms of a community and what is acceptable. I’ll share the parable of the Nazi Bar, but put it behind a collapsible spoiler in case you or anyone else is already familiar:
The Parable of the Nazi Bar, by Michael B. Tager
I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, “no. get out.”
And the dude next to me says, “hey i’m not doing anything, i’m a paying customer.” and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, “out. now.” and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed
Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, “you didn’t see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them.” And i was like, oh ok and he continues.
“you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.”
“And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.”
I’ve shared my thoughts on why this particular user deserves the label Nazi elsewhere in the thread, and my reply to Lodion in particular also includes some of the justification for including the screenshot. But I’ll elaborate on that particular point here.
I don’t think mere exposure to that kind of Nazi rhetoric causes direct harm. Which is why I did not think it was causing harm to screencap the comment. Instead, it is the long-term permissibility of that content which causes harm. The Nazi Bar. If Nazis’ views are permitted, you get more Nazis.
I shared the comment first of all to highlight that user in particular to anyone viewing the thread to warn them off from engaging. And also to highlight that same parallel that I made in the reply to Lodion. That even if one person may not themselves be a Nazi, they are engaging in some ideology that is dangerously close to that of Nazis. Highlighting an actual Nazi whose views they would agree with was supposed to serve to emphasise that parallel, while serving as a dis-endorsement of the Nazi’s own view. I think that sharing harmful views in the specific context of highlighting both that and why they are harmful is not at all similar to simply having those views and sharing them sincerely.
Another is shaping the norms of a community and what is acceptable.
This is incorrect. The community shapes itself. The community is lovely. We are not it’s shapers.
You’ve been here about as long as the instance has existed. In the almost three years we’ve been at this, have you ever seen us shaping discussion? Who the hell am I to dictate to everyone what the norm is, anyway? I’m just some guy on the Internet.
I was reluctant to remove a reported post on /c/worldnews the other day, despite it being in clear violation of the sidebar rules.
One neat thing about Lemmy is moderation is all transparent. The modlog is just down there on the bottom of every page. You’ll see that just about all the accounts I ban are for spam with a smattering of troll accounts. We are accountable to the users and not some secret group manipulating discussion out of sight.
To suggest that lebensraum is just some random policy that Germany happened to have in the '30s and '40s, and wasn’t one of the core things that made the Nazis the Nazis (as in, the personification of and byword for evil itself that they have since become) is an absolutely wild take to have, in my view.
I screen capped it because I did not want to engage directly with a Nazi. But it was nevertheless important to publically call out that behaviour for what it was. I don’t believe it has no effect to ban Nazis while also, in the relevant context, to use Nazis’ words as examples of what to look out for with other Nazis. If others disagree with me there I would be happy to have a respectful conversation on the topic of whether my comment should have been removed or edited. But I do not believe that there is that nuance to be had with whether the Nazis themselves should be welcome.
I think you should engage.
How else are you going to change minds than by engaging.
A profound lack of awareness or an actual troll.
“I don’t want to engage with Nazis.”
“You should engage. How else will you change my, I mean, their mind.”
“I think you are a disgusting vermin, and anyone remotely like you, should be killed.”
“That’s interesting. Let’s unpack that.”
You honestly think any kind of productive conversation is gonna happen between these two parties? Tolerance of intolerance in action, right here, folks.
Fyi you’re currently talking to the Nazi who caused this conversation to start.
That’s a Texas sized 10.4
Sorry but I’m afraid this time I’m the one who has to admit to not understanding the reference.
( Oh, and also: this is an Australian Community. In that context, Texas is kinda small. It would be Australia’s 6th largest state or internal territory. :D
)
It’s a Letterkenny reference. Just acknowledging the new info provided.
So Western Australia has two electorates larger in land area than Texas.
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‘Tinpot’ Texas is 695,662 sq/km
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‘Oceanic’ O’connor is 1,126,937 sq/km
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‘Big Dog’ Durack is 1,410,947 sq/km
So, I think this Letterkenny fan should be saying ‘Thats a Durack sized 10-4’ if they’re coming onto Aussie-zone slinging sick quotes.
-
Seagoon’s not a Nazi or promoting Nazi shit. I’ve seen them posting here and on reddit for years now. Something has been taken out of context.
Their rhetoric is very much Nazi aligned. Have a look at their longer comment in here. Claiming to be taken out of context and that meaning “not evening crossing” their mind, before immediately stating they did mean the “living space” remark in a genocidal manner. Just on behalf of the Palestinians.
To claim those being genocided are actually the ones who are genocidal, which implies post-hoc justification of Israel actions against them (alongside the protestor rally tangent), is Nazi behaviour.
To respond to someone providing the figures for the appalling number of civilian casualties over a short time frame with “at this rate it would take 300 hundred years to exterminate 2 million of them ” is Nazi adjacent behaviour.
Maybe they’re just a particularly uninformed Zionist. However, neo nazis don’t typically wander around saying “that hitler guy is pretty swell amirite guys”. They excel in skirting around moderation online and irl. Hence the nazi bar anecdote; they use free speech as a shield and coded language/dog whistles. If they aren’t a Nazi their behaviour and rhetoric needs some serious introspection.
Edit: I spent too much time going through their post history. Given they post all throughout the day, say they “work at home 7 days a week” and their references to their age; I would guess they’re a retiree that mainlines sky news or adjacent media. Given the boomer - social media to alt-right, brain rot pipeline - checks out with a lot of their remarks on Muslim’s/the Arabic sphere.
It’s hard to take the word of someone who evidently has a history of genocide denial and who then turns around and talks about lebensraum as anything other than an admission of a Nazi-like ideology.
Being someone who you can have a conversation about other subjects with does not affect that. Then turning around and denying it does not change anything.
The only thing that might change my mind would be a complete retraction of both the lebensraum comment and the “there is no genocide” ones.
In this case, with the understanding of your comment… there is no point for them to try and engage further, for the reasons others have noted.
Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I think you chose a bad phrase to make your point and have not clarified this in subsequent comments.
“You’ve made Nazi comments and been informed of them, then tried to defend them, and haven’t changed your mind… But I still am not sure if you’re a Nazi”
Is basically what you’re saying right now.
From another of my comments (the news article the comment was made under referred to banned phrases in QLD):
I took Seagoon_'s comment to be in support of the ban on particular phrases, by highlighting another dog whistle for nazis. Before this, I (like Nath) did not know this was a nazi dog whistle.
If you delete all the users from your politics community that you don’t agree with, what is the point of the community?
mobilisation.
Is there a particular reason why you’re dancing around saying what they actually wrote, or naming the “foreign genocidal regime”?
Because I don’t want to bring attention to an actual Nazi. The admins have received a report on the comment in question and I’ll happily provide more details if they request.
The comment in question was justifying Israel’s invasions with reference to “living space”—exact words.
If you really want to, you can go back through my comment history. It’s only about 3 or 4 days ago and I called out their behaviour at the time.
deleted by creator
The user in question posted two top-level comments
Uhh, no. They posted exactly one comment, and it was explicitly a Nazi talking point. I didn’t check their history myself, but according to @Aussieiuszko@aussie.zone they have quite a history of pro-Israel comments. With that context it’s impossible to read their comment as anything other than endorsing the genocide. Not even the sort of genocide denial Israeli supporters usually go for, but explicitly saying “this is genocide and it’s good.” If that’s not worth banning I don’t know what is.
I don’t see this as, as much of an acceptance of Nazis problem than a lack of moderator problem. There is one active moderator for that community, that moderator also happens to be a rather busy bloody bee, seeing as they are the AZ admin/owner, and they’ve stated their personal life business before.
This is a problem I’m actively concerned about with communities I moderate. I advocate for more moderators per community, and to ensure those moderators are still somewhat active.
If @lodion@aussie.zone wants help with moderation I can jump on board with the community in question.
I’d also advocate lodion inviting by P.M. another one or two people to help out with moderation as well. Because many hands = light work. And a bank of moderators could help smooth things when issues such as inactivity of mod accounts arise.
I get every report about every community on the instance, even if I’m not listed on the Community. They come as notifications to my phone. It’s pretty rare for any report to take longer than an hour or so to be looked at.
Yeah, i realised the admin angle I’d overlooked after I posted this and saw you’d responded this arvo as well.
I’ve said it before and will continue to say it the A.Z admins don’t give a fuck about stopping this sort of shit and are happy to leave it and the users who say it alone.
FWIW I’m not okay with Nazis and their Nazi bullshit. I can be a dickhead online for sure, but I’m pro-peace and anti-genocide.
Awesome name, on the kinda dickhead we need!
Good to know that aussie.zone is not willing to remove Nazi users and prefers their company.
I don’t see the point in beating around the bush.
A glance at the homepage tells us that Nazism would break the first 3 instance rules, there’s no reason to expect it to be allowed. The difficulty comes when bigoted rhetoric is subtle enough to go unrecognised, or has been normalised. So it would help to know which comment is repeating which talking points.
The “Nazi talking points” that aren’t mentioned could be a bait, and be something as simple as anti communism or economic reforms that stimulate production/employment through public works (e.g. the autobahn)
They may not be the things the Nazis are hated for…
It was a user suggesting that Jews need “living space” (exact words) and that this justifies Israel’s multiple invasions of its neighbours.
wouldn’t that be ironic use of the phrase? making the jews seem like nazi’s?
It’s not ironic when the nation of Israel is actually acting like Nazis.
As much as I tire of pro Palestine activism in Aussie spaces, as no one is really going to disagree with it beyond minor things (like terrible slogan choices for example), that dude is definitely Zionist leaning towards Nazi. The all caps liar in response to old mate vastly understating initial incursion numbers and using the term exterminate in a subsequent “not enough ovens” type reply is pretty telling. Before I read the older thread I assumed it ironic as well but now I doubt it.
As much as I tire of pro Palestine activism in Aussie spaces
Surely not as much as we tire of anti-Palestine actions being taken by our state and federal governments.
If Albanese’s government were sanctioning Israel instead of selling weapons to help with their genocide, and if Crisafulli had banned pro-Israel messages rather than pro-Palestine ones, you would probably see a hell of a lot less pro-Palestine activism in Aussie spaces. Because for many of us, the activism isn’t about directly affecting anything in the Middle East—we know we can’t do that—it’s about affecting how our own government acts in response.
That’s the thing. It annoys me because it justifies it, if you get what I mean. Israel’s actions are that of a genocidal rogue state and yet the government seems to be more concerned about policing activist than overtly stating that what Israel is doing is wrong. Like plenty of “Israel has a right to defend itself” at the start but now practically crickets when Gaza has been bombed into oblivion, disproportional civilian casualties and starving them out. Don’t get me started on the fact that Netanyahu has conned the US’ dope in chief into assisting them widen the campaign to Iran.
Censorship is what nazis do.
And even tho seeing nazis and nazism distresses me greatly I would rather talk with them and try use good sense and facts
because exclusion is only going to make them more set in their beliefs
You’re right. Discussion and healing is how we fix these things not banning them.
OK. So you took my comment totally out context.
what you wrote never even crossed my mind
what did cross my mind was the saying " River to the sea" , which is about living space and I wrote living space ironically
River to the sea is a dog whistle
I was in the protest on Oct 8th 23 when the protest leader called River to the Sea and the crowd answered, Kill them.
Oct 8th there was no genocide
You know who else I have heard use the concept living space? A Rwandan. I met a Rwandan when I was a member/speaker at the Marxist Institute in nyc. I asked why he did it, he said it was traditionally their land and they needed the land to live. I was shocked and asked, Even children.
I left and was very shaken. Left the Marxists shortly thereafter.
I’m sorry you are so frightened of me, that you are so unable to question information presented to you, that you are behaving like you are in a cult, that facts and reason to do not make you question your own beliefs.
I won’t post here again because you are just too fragile and there is no point.
OK. So you took my comment totally out context.
Wat, am I missing something here. Doesn’t really seem out of context at all. Seems like you’re claiming it was an ironic remark on behalf of the Palestinians, accusing them of genocidal intent with the chant? Misinterpreted maybe. Which is shown by:
You know who else I have heard use the concept living space? A Rwandan. I met a Rwandan when I was a member/speaker at the Marxist Institute in nyc. I asked why he did it, he said it was traditionally their land and they needed the land to live. I was shocked and asked, Even children.
So you know it has at least genocidal connotations then? Which seems to contradict.
what you wrote never even crossed my mind.
From a quick interpretation it seems you’re claiming “I was making an ironic remark implying people being genocided are the ones being genocidal, not a Nazi dog whistle.” Which ya know, the first kinda contradict the second.
The rest, i.e the protest stuff is anecdotal and even if it did happen, doesn’t really add anything to this particular discussion. Given a lot of comments under the post OP is referencing seem to question the meaning of your comment maybe providing context there would have been the move. For all the good it would have done.
It applies to each comunity and instance separately. Some instances(like Lemmy.ml) not may only allow some inappropriate behavior, but their admins may do similar things actively(not Nazi stuff, they spreading pro-russian propaganda and nationalism ideas). So, if writing Nazi comments is against policies of comunity and/or instance, this user most likely will be punished. Otherwise, you may be punished for interfering with Nazi doing its stuff in Nazi place.
This is a user on aussie.zone on the meta community of aussie.zone talking about a user of aussie.zone.
And it’s bizarre and ridiculous to claim that lemmy.ml allows Nazis.
That’s the point. I didn’t say that. Lemmy.ml welcomes pro-russian propagandists and nationalists. So you comment it irrelevant from this point of view.
What I meant is that if communinity/instance does allow some ideas, there is nothing you can do. If it doesn’t allow them, then, well. You can report this person.
Read carefully comments next time, please. But, I admit that I have done some grammar mistakes making my text appear with other context.
Lemmy.ml is super commie and Nazis are anti commie, I don’t understand how this is a coherent line of thinking
I read people echoing Russian propaganda here all the time. 99% of the time they are just useful idiots
I’m an aussie.zone user commenting on !meta@aussie.zone to understand the aussie.zone admins’ and users’ stance. I’m not sure what any of your comment has to do with this.
