Beehaw is defederated from lemmygrad.ml because it’s an abusive instance full of hateful, vitriolic trolls. lemmygrad.ml resolves to the same IP as lemmy.ml. The creator and head admin of that particular instance is a neofascist who has previously been banned from online communitues, most notably r/socialism on reddit, because he posted Nazi propaganda there. You don’t have to take my word for it, you can actually read him bitching about it to his nazbol pals. Warning: the link is full of disturbing content, including denial of genocide.
I want to be clear that I’m not making anything up about this admin, I’m not saying anynhing that can’t be verified. For example, I’ve heard that he demanded to be unbanned from r/socialism by telling their mod mail that putting Uyghurs in concentration camps doesn’t count as cultural genocide because they’re extremists, but I can’t verify that. I can verify that he tried to back up his argument that There Is No Uyghur Genocide by using articles from globalresearch.ca, a “publication” best known for Holocaust Denial.
I can also verify his vociferous defense of the LaRouche movement and his refusal to repudiate endorsing their rhetoric. For those of you who don’t know what LaRouchists like Dessalines believe in, here’s a sample:
Soros is one of the what in medieval days were called Hoffjuden, the “Court Jews,” who were deployed by the aristocratic families. The most important of such “Jews who are not Jews.” are the Rothchilds, who launched Soros’s career. They are the members of the Club of the Isles and retainers of the British royal family. This has been true since Amschel Rothschild sold the British Hessian troops to fight against George Washington during the American Revolution. Soros is American only in his passport."
tl;dr lemmy.ml is run by a neofascist nazbol who is in bed with anti-semitists and genocide deniers. He uses lemmy.ml as a vector to let lemmgrad.ml gain legitimacy, and he endorses their bigoted views. We need to defederate permanently or our talk about being a safe space for marginalized people is just talk.
Honestly this is too extreme the problems werent with the instances themselfs it was that a lot of users from over there were overwhelming the moderators and admins and something had to be done in the end the defed was chosen because it is the only option currently provided by lemmy if you look into the comments you can see that the admins dont want to push the big red defed button but thats the only option they have this issue isnt black and white
My understanding is that the problem with lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works was that their hateful vitriol was spreading over here too. While that particular admin’s politics are reprehensible, I’m not sure that justifies defederating from them.
We need to defederate permanently or our talk about being a safe space for marginalized people is just talk.
That’s a bit uncharitable, don’t you think? Maybe this issue isn’t quite as clear cut as you make it seem?
My understanding is that the problem with lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works was that their hateful vitriol was spreading over here too. While that particular admin’s politics are reprehensible, I’m not sure that justifies defederating from them.
That’s a bit uncharitable, don’t you think?
So is Holocaust denial.
Maybe this issue isn’t quite as clear cut as you make it seem?
It is as clear as pure water. Only weird free speech absolutists would insist on staying federated with an instance that was designed to stay as a lifeline for a den of subversive hate speech.
Although this admin obviously sounds awful, the lemmy.ml rules somewhat overlap with ours and considering that lemmy.ml is the largest instance (36000 members, about 3 times beehaw) i think we would need more serious reasons for defederation to be worth it. If we defederate from every instance we risk making beehaw somewhat unusable, and that would mean there wont be safespaces anywhere near to this level.
