We, the admin team, decry all forms of settler-colonialism, and we recognize that Zionism is a pro-settler-colonialist position.

Therefore we propose that should no longer be accepting of any Zionist accounts on our instances.

Please upvote for agree, downvote for disagree.

Note: we only count votes by instance members of dbzer0 and anarchist.nexus, plus a few vouched-for external users.

Hi mateys, I’ve kept things simple in the above text, for brevity, but in fact it took the admin team quite a while to get to this stage. We have discussed the policy change extensively, and a variety of different perspectives emerged. I will attempt to sum them up below as best I can:

  • The “this isn’t that complicated” school of thought goes something like this: If someone is consistently posting comments that mirror Hasbara talking points (e.g. justifying the genocide in Gaza, consistently painting Palestinians as terrorists and Israel as the victim), then they should be instance banned. It’s just not acceptable for Zionists to be allowed on our instances.

  • The “slippery slope” / “purity test” school of thought is that banning people for having an “unpopular” political opinion would potentially mean banning half the fediverse, if more and more of these policies were enacted over time. To attempt to mitigate this we are keeping the scope of this rule as narrow as possible, and I also don’t think many of our users will be affected. Also, we typically don’t have frequent policy changes, and I have no reason to expect that to change moving forward.

  • Another important discussion point was “how do we decide whether someone is pro-Zionist or not?” We can’t always be 100% sure of someone’s true intentions, we can only go on what they have posted and that is subject to interpretation. I don’t feel there is an easy answer to this one, except to say that we would have to be pretty certain before issuing a perma-ban.

  • The “geopolitics don’t matter” school of thought is that trying to be on the “correct” side of every issue is kind of pointless because nothing that happens in lemmy chat forums will ever make an ounce of difference in the real world. Don’t bother moderating users over political/ideological differences, just let people argue if they want. While I can totally empathize with this sentiment, I can also see the case for taking a clear stance on this topic in accordance with our values and the overwhelming support for the Palestinian cause among our users. Personally, I am advocating in favor of the resolution.

Please add your comments below if you want to provide your own thoughts on the topic, or have any questions.

expiry: 7

  • mrdown
    11·
    6 小时前

    It is common for college debate classes and clubs to have a party argue Nazism That’s pure bullshit

    It’s a thought experiment where you must represent a side which you don’t agree with

    Not what we talk about though, we are not talking about subjective matter to use the word agree/disagree . We are talking about being the devil advocate for people committing genocide .

    • Knightfox
      22·
      6 小时前

      If you’re going to quote me, please don’t add your own response into the quote as if I said it. Also, you’re now conflating two different things:

      • Do college and high school debate classes/clubs debate Nazism as a topic?
      • Whether or not I should be allowed to playing Devil’s Advocate for a topic because objectively one side is in the wrong.

      You don’t seem able to separate debate to ensure faithful argument from debate to be right. Just because I argue that you should eloquently represent yourself without devolving into logical fallacy or poor argument doesn’t mean I support genocide. Try to represent your opinion without the presumption that you are correct.

      • mrdown
        11·
        6 小时前

        The only one who does logical fallacies is you. The case of school telling a side to defend nazirs was widely condemned and stopped doing it . You should not try to defend morally wrong stuffs end of the story . There is zero faithful argument to defend settler colonialism, killing innocent civilians and committing genocides.

        I represent my opinions without the presumption that I am correct when it is a matter of opinion which it is not the case here

        • Knightfox
          22·
          6 小时前

          The only one who does logical fallacies is you.

          Point one out

          The case of school telling a side to defend nazirs was widely condemned and stopped doing it

          Do you have any proof of that because it was a thing less than 10 years ago when I was in school, and here is an article about it in 2017.

          I represent my opinions without the presumption that I am correct when it is a matter of opinion which it is not the case here

          So you lack the ability to properly represent your opinions without relying solely on what you feel is correct.

          • mrdown
            11·
            6 小时前

            Point one out False equivalency . You can’t seem to understand the difference between playing devil advocates for objective morality and just unpopular opinions

            So you lack the ability to properly represent your opinions without relying solely on what you feel is correct.

            Again opposing settler colonialism , murdering innocent civilians and genocide is not a matter of opinion

            Do you have any proof of that because it was a thing less than 10 years ago when I was in school, and here is an article about it in 2017

            https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/apr/14/nazi-essay-new-york-yeacher

            https://www.npr.org/2021/10/15/1046389474/texas-holocaust-opposing-critical-race-theory-southlake#%3A~%3Atext=In+one+Texas+district%2C+teachers%2Cmeeting+from+an+unnamed+employee.

            https://www.syracuse.com/schools/2017/03/oswego_county_boces_homework_assignment_asks_students_to_defend_the_holocaust.html

            Within a few days, an alternative assignment was offered. Jordan wrote about America’s AIDS crisis and response. Archer wrote about the internment of Japanese-Americans and compensation paid to survivors.

            • Knightfox
              22·
              5 小时前

              You changed your post again after I responded to it to add links so I’m responding twice.

              In the first link you provided, the teacher asked the students to specifically write hate speech. If you read the rest of the article the spirit of the assignment was to provoke empathy in the students. The professor assigned them to write hate speech, research Nazi propaganda, and then planned to read have the class read “Night” by Elie Wiesel (which I also read in high school). I think the main problem here was having the students try to write anti-jew hate letters. It’s one thing to assign students to write hate mail, it’s another thing to talk about the rest of Nazi Germany.

              In the second link you provided was a school administrator stating that holocaust denial literature should be treated equally with holocaust documentation. The difference here is that we have nearly 80 years of research and documentation showing that the holocaust did in fact occur so holocaust denial books don’t need to be treated equally.

              Also, promoting holocaust denial at an institutional level isn’t the same as debating the merits of Nazism as an exercise in debate rhetoric.

            • Knightfox
              22·
              5 小时前

              Again, please fix your quotations because they make it seem like your statements are my quotes.

              1.)

              You can’t seem to understand the difference between playing devil advocates for objective morality and just unpopular opinions

              You don’t seem to know what the definition of “Devil’s Advocate” is. Cambridge Dictionary defines “Devil’s Advocate” as:

              “someone who pretends, in an argument or discussion, to be against an idea or plan that a lot of people support, in order to make people discuss and consider it in more detail”

              Oxford Languages defines it as:

              “a person who expresses a contentious opinion in order to provoke debate or test the strength of the opposing arguments.”

              2.)

              Again opposing settler colonialism , murdering innocent civilians and genocide is not a matter of opinion

              You also don’t seem to understand what an opinion is either. Moral absolutism is different from subjective morals. Just because you are right in a universal perspective doesn’t mean how you feel isn’t an opinion. It seems like you can only see in black and white, either you’re right or you’re wrong, and because you know you are right you can’t discuss any alternatives that might be somewhere in the gray.