Today, i couldnt upvote a post from anarchymemes@anarchist.nexus so i decided to check it out on my pc. i noticed that i was banned from the com even though i havent posted anything on the com nor the instance. i guess the reason for the ban is that i posted a meme to different comm a while ago. The meme is homophobic but i didnt know it when i was posting it. After finding out it was homophonic, i added a disclaimer to my post.
i dont think i deserved the ban, and i want to hear your thoughts.
no, because the anarchist principle of freedom of association also means the freedom to disassociate. and in this case, the active community agreed in discussion that they did not wish to associate with this person if they are making homophobic jokes. we’re currently discussing it again in Matrix, due to this thread, and the consensus is still that the person in question is not welcome because they have not renounced their earlier behavior, despite admitting that they know it is homophobic.
there is no anarchist principle that demands you must allow someone to be a part of your community if the community can not accept their behavior. this is why anarchist collectives such as the Zapatista exile people who are guilty of serious breaches of community trust.
they are still free to use the fediverse. they can even create their own c/anarchymemes community. but to insist that they be allowed into our community, when our community has decided they don’t represent acceptable anarchist views of solidarity with all peoples would be to establish a hierarchy of them above the community.
The community decided that, or the mod team did? Is the whole community a part of that Matrix chat?
yes, the people who post to the comm or regularly comment are all active members of the flotilla Matrix. it’s not a requirement, but that is how things turned out because the comm is targeted towards anarchists in general, and specifically the members of the three anarchist instances that make up the allied flotilla. Divisions By Zero, Anarchist Nexus, and Quokk.au.
it is against the rules for liberals or authoritarian leftists to comment in the community, and those outside the flotilla instances are not allowed to downvote posts at all. were it currently possible to set specific communities to not federate outside the trusted instances set in the Piefed settings, the greater fediverse would not even be able to see the community. it is ours, and we aren’t interested in association outside of with fellow anarchists. there are other anarchy communities on the flotilla for that.
the whole point of the community is to post agitprop, memes that will anger people who aren’t libertarian leftists. if you don’t identify as that, then the community is not made for you, and that has always been pretty clearly laid out in the sidebar.
Note quokka is not part of the flotilla as they voted down the suggestion
I call them honorary members. Qk posts some good memes to c/anarchymemes
They exercised self-determination in deciding against joining, but you deem it appropriate to disregard that and group them with something they chose not to become part of?
well if you find even a single Quokk.au member who is offended by this, then let me know and I will ask @tenchiken@anarchist.nexus to take them off the trusted instances list so that they can’t downvote memes in !anarchymemes@anarchist.nexus.
thoughts here, quite simple:
Crypt has a point but I’d like to bring some details.
1: while quokka.au chose to not join us in the flotilla, they still share many similar takes and values with us. We have reasons to trust many of them, and anarchy is about mutual support of each other.
2: any single user level action has little bearing on whether the quokka.au community on a whole is trusted. If there were systemic activity with admins knowing and ignoring, or condoning, then trust would break down.
3: communities have control over their own rules of conduct. So does the server. If you violate these, even accidentally, there can be consequences. You can appeal these, but if the mods and or admins believe there still remains an issue, then so do the consequences.
Directly put, your own actions and consequences have little to do with quokka.au . If you want the flotilla to specifically take any actions related to our relation with a fellow server, regardless if they are a part of the flotilla, that would need governance involvement and related vote. Bringing up that kind of issue over a single user ban for a bad attempt at a joke gone wrong is not appropriate avenue for this.
Dissociation would be blocking someone you don’t like. You banned them from a community. You personally, unilaterally made a decision on behalf of others without input, discussion, or community involvement. This is a perversion of anarchism.
first of all, we use Piefed, which has better blocking than Lemmy. anyone I block is shadowbanned from the communities I mod anyway.
second of all, disassociation can absolutely mean exiling people from your community. it’s literally how modern day anarchist collectives such as the Zapistista work.
again, absolutely wrong. I made the decision after originally discussing it with ALL the active community members over Matrix, as everyone who has ever posted to c/anarchymemes is a member of the flotilla Matrix and are active daily. I also discussed it again yesterday with the members of the community.
you shouldn’t say things like this when you have no fucking idea what you’re talking about. you don’t know us, so don’t presume to know how we think or feel.
there are many anarchists, all of whom have their own personal idea of what anarchism means. but as the AFAQ says, there’s no real definition of anarchism that everyone accepts. to me, your idea that anarchists must allow those who do harm to be among them is the perversion. I do wonder to what lengths you would take such a ridiculous notion. you have no issue with homophobia, obviously, so would you extend this idea to rapists? murderers? child molesters? at what level of immorality or intolerance is exiling someone from an anarchist community no longer a perversion of your idea of anarchism?
don’t bother answering, that was rhetorical. I’ll be shadowbanning you now, as you suggested I should do.
You’re right that I don’t understand how your community works. I’m glad it was discussed democratically, but there is someone you clearly forgot to include or this post wouldn’t exist.
You are putting defamatory words in my mouth, and I think you are aware that you are doing it maliciously with intent to defame. To me, this only further confirms my suspicions about you. The only person doing harm here is you. My generation has sacrificed too much, I have personally sacrificed too much, to stand quietly while decades of progress won at unimaginable and horrifying costs is undone by privileged children that can’t tell the difference between homophobia and situational humor that has nothing to do with our community.
I recommend you look at the discussions that Deceptichum and I just had, then calm down, collect your thoughts, and process what exactly I am saying. It is important that you understand the harm you are doing to those you claim to care about with behavior like this.