@geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml banned me from !ManufacturingConsent@lemmy.ml (permanently!) and removed my comment from the post, because I dared to note that there are protests in Iran and shared a link to a crimethinc article with voices from within Iran. They call it “imperialist propaganda” if leftist voices from within Iran are distributed.
My comment:
I get it that the western media narrative is incredibly one-sided, focused on ideological bogeymen and focused on getting the monarch back in power. But I’d like to point out that there is in fact quite massive repression going on against the protestors. Leftist orgs in Iran need international solidarity now.
Their “reasoning”:
reason: Ignoring the post to spam imperialist propaganda
I don’t think that person can be reasoned with if they call crimethinc imperialist propaganda, so I’m not getting my hopes up for them lifting the ban.
I also think that they might be a bit butthurt, because I called out their zionistic worldview (i.e.: that judaism equates zionism) a few days ago.
Clueless bastard. Geneva_convenience skirts the line between troll and unhinged, they’re not even Marxist/Leninist, just contrarian.
deleted by creator
Firmly a PTB. Holy shit .ml is never going to ever stop being like this. “Left unity” once again just means Anarchists have to obey MLs, and MLs never have to listen to anarchists.
Regarding the original comment, I don’t believe it deserves deletion, let alone a lifetime ban. In my opinion, it was written in good faith and is in no way propaganda. As for the Crimethinc article, it’s clearly not “imperialist propaganda” as well, but rather wishful thinking. If you read it carefully, you can easily conclude that there is no third “leftist” option for Iran, since the article fails to do the most important thing – name those “leftist orgs in Iran” that could have a real impact and that “need international solidarity now”. When Iran truly could have taken a different path – in the late 1970s and early 1980s – there were many diverse leftist organizations, ranging from Tudeh to MEK, from Fadaiyan-e-Khalq to Sarbedaran, that waged open war against both the Shah’s and the Ayatollahs’ regimes. Nothing like that exists now, and the Crimethinc article actually confirms this, regardless of the authors’ intentions. So, in modern Iran, there is nothing but a few left-leaning individuals with very limited ability to influence anything, and the choice is only between a brutal theocracy and a Trump-loving shahzadeh.
I agree. It didn’t deserve deletion and a permaban.
I want to add the community where the comment was posted, Manufacturing Consent, is about how the western media creates “popular” agreement about some policies that their bourgeois dictatorship constructs. The post was about the (non)enforcement of the use of hijab by women in Iran and how it was portrait by western content creators in social media. I think that Prunebut comment and the link were unrelated (whataboutism?), but of enough value to not be deleted or, if deleted for whataboutism —in the case that the community is flowed by whataboutism—, not ban or, at most, a short time ban.
Of course, if OP has been trolling on the community or the mods have clear reasons to think that hew was acting in bad faith, it should be a YDI. But I don’t think that it’s the case.
PTB. Campists are already labeling the whole thing as “color revolution” and desperatelly trying to defend the brutal Theocracy currently murdering thousands in the streets. So this is expected at this point.
Pre-emptive to whom it may concern: Don’t @ me with your shit takes about how I’m blindly supporting US imperialism.
The contents of the shared article make this ban extra ironic:
And, of course, there are the pseudo-left campists—the self-styled “anti-imperialists”—who whitewash the Islamic Republic’s dictatorship by projecting an anti-imperialist mask onto its façade. They cast doubt on the legitimacy of the current protests by repeating the tired accusation that “an uprising under these conditions is nothing but playing on the field of imperialism,” because they can only read Iran through the lens of geopolitical conflict—as if every revolt is merely a US–Israeli project in disguise. In doing so, they deny the political subjectivity of the people of Iran and grant the Islamic Republic discursive and political immunity as it massacres and represses its own population.
PTB.
But it’s .ml, they only care about pushing propaganda and hate non-ML leftist viewpoints.
Also CrimeThinc are fucking awesome and everyone should go check out the great work they do.
I lean Leninist and am frequently banned from there as well. What they espouse is fundamentally un-Marxist
Also CrimeThinc are fucking awesome and everyone should go check out the great work they do.
I listened to the audioversion of the article another time and it’s chef’s kiss.
Seems solid ptb to me. But yes, I don’t think there’s much likelihood of getting it reversed. You made the cardinal sin of calling for leftist aid for the people of Iran against their murderous anti west government. Which by the transitive property of being anti west, means that the power structure of the government is the good guy and victim here.
I knew the moment our hypocritical dumbass opened his mouth certain groups would use it to delegitimize the protests. But this is a learning opportunity. To understand who your actual allies are, and who’s just reactionarily anti west.
Tankies if they existed back in 1917, probably: the Tsar isn’t perfect by any stretch, but he’s doing all he can to oppose and stop the imperialist Kaiser! The so called People’s Soviets and Lenin are just agents of the imperial enemy attempting to install their own puppet!
Here me out. Many of the ‘tankies’ on lemmy.ml, hexbear, and lemmygrad are not actually tankies. People use that insult far too much.
It’s often giving them too much credit.
Here’s an excerpt from a relevant article:
Many of the ‘leftists’ you encounter online fall for the bullshit, as long as it’s anti-western. The esthetic is enough for them because they are invariably young, dumb, naive, immature and/or privileged. For them debating politics is a hobby, not a cry for help or a fight for survival. It’s fashionable and often a phase. They are nothing more than cosplay communists, who pop a Lenin avatar in their profile, but have no grasp of history or Marxism-Leninism. They’re justifiably critical of western capitalism, they watched a streamer, they watched some tiktoks, and have come to the conclusion that any regime that is anti-western is necessarily better. This results in them knowingly and unknowingly parrotting the propaganda of anti-communists, theocrats and outright fascists.
They aren’t like the tankies who supported the Soviets for ideological reasons, who were often willing to overlook or in denial about what happened in Hungary or Tiananmen. My grandparents were like that, and I could understand why they had a hard time accepting that the USSR and China were less than perfect, they had pinned all their hopes on them, and were living in a pre-internet age where western media bias went largely uncontested, and western imperial crimes went unpunished.
Cosplay communists may lie (to themselves and others) that they are critical of authoritarian capitalist states that wrap themselves in the hammer and sickle, but still mindlessly regurgitate the narratives of these billionaire oligarch run states like the useful idiots they are. If you’re genuinely left-wing, it can be comforting to think of these people as allies or make excuses for them, but it’s important to realize that they are not. They aren’t actual allies, just contrarian parrots.
To be clear, this comment does not apply to actual communists. Thank you for attending my lecture. There will be no time for questions.
The esthetic is enough for them because they are invariably young, dumb, naive, immature and/or privileged.
You’re wrong on that. Many MLs are plenty reasonable and mature in general. They’re just misguided. We’re better than these paternalistic insults.
Also, you’re constantly skirting uncomfortably close to ableist insults for this instance. You have to stop painting people you disagree as unintelligent. There’s plenty of other ways to make your point.
We’re better than these paternalistic insults.
Condescending or patronizing. Paternalistic implies benevolent intent, not contempt.
:)
I’m not sure where I got this info. But I think I readonce that even Kropotkin argued for fighting the Kaiser.
Oh I’m mocking modern campists, saying they’d probably support the establishment over a people’s revolution, if they were around back then. Probably should have made that more clear. And you’re right, Kropotkin was one of the signatories of the Manifesto of the Sixteen supporting the Entente.
Yeah, I got that. Just wanted to share trivia. (:
IKR? I’m Antiathoritarian and Anti-Vanguard Party. If the CCP decided to help overthrow Trump, I would accept their help. They would still be next, but I would accept their help.
It’ll be interesting to see the narratives change, if the regime in Iran falls.
I’m not on twitter, but I was reading that a lot of Scottish pro-independence accounts suddenly went quiet, when Iran closed down the internet.
I assume they’ve also infiltrated leftist spaces.
A reminder to always be critical, especially in the age of the hyperreal, where it’s becoming increasingly hard to differentiate reality from its representation through technology and in the media.
Yes, that’s happened with other groups and I would expect no difference here. I remember reading just a few weeks ago about some internet outage over in Europe taking out a large chunk of maga posters and influencers. It’s an attack the United States famously used as well.
Let me preface with saying Iran is indeed an authoritarian regime that killed many opposition. But Iran is rightfully anti west . The US and British did a coup and put the the shah instead who killed many people and when Iranians took back control of their country and kicked out the western agents the west retaliated with sanctions .
If the west want to be liked it should stop supporting settler colonialism, it should stop being complicit with multiple conflicts and genocides around the world
Oh, I never implied otherwise, and I agree 100%. But that doesn’t make the government good. It’s possible to be anti west, but not repressive and slaughtering your citizens in the street.
Did you read my first sentence?
Yes, did you read and understand both of mine?
I’d say most here are pretty up to date on the situation in Iran. Though thanks for the recap. To be frank, I don’t care if anyone likes the west. I live here and I don’t. Though thanks for the downvote. 🤟 If you’re reading anything here and getting “please like the west” try again. The United States stole my family’s homes and lands. The United States tortured, starved and persecuted my family. The United States death marched my family cross-continent. Dumped them off in an arid, strange land that they’d never been too before and left them to fend for themselves. Fuck the US historically and trump/Republicans/fascists contemporaneously. Yeah, there’s lots of good reasons to dislike the west and other rigid unanswerable hierarchies of power.
But there’s no excuse to turn against the people when they stand against one those hierarchies, and another hypocritically endorses them. If you do that you’re no ally of the proletariat, just a reactionary and apologist. None of the many horrific things the west has done justifies or excuses what the ayatollah and his zealous security forces are doing. Full stop. Fuck each and every one of these power structures, east or west. I hope that clarifies the sentiment here.
Your first comment made it look like being anti west is objectively always bad due to lack of details as opposed to my comment where my first sentence is about Iran being an autocratic country with human right abuses yet you keep telling me what I already know as if I think Iran is not as what you described
I’d suggests you should take a look again at context clues. I used the term re-actionarily anti-west. As in if the west likes cookies. Therefore I hate cookies. I don’t know if English is not your primary language. I know I would definitely struggle on any secondary languages I know. And if that’s the case, no shade against you. But I was pretty clear that it wasn’t just about being anti-west.
Iran is not re-actionarily anti-west. It always the west who start with escalations against Iran then wonder why Iran hate them back. Opposing Iranian authoritarian and bloody regime is justified complaining about Iran relation with the west is not. The west hide under the facade of human rights to target Iran to sanctions Iran for opposing the terrorist state of Israel and for their right to develop it’s civilians nuclear program and it’s defense program. Where are the sanctions on the state of Israel(not just one or two settlers and one or two ministers), where are the sanctions on the UAE for backing the RSF committing a genocide in Sudan, where are the sanctions on Saudi Arabia for the same exact human right abuses Iran does?
PTB. Geneva is a bit of a nutjob and this is far from surprising behaviour from them. You won’t miss much from being banned from any community they moderate.
That one was kinda interesting, though.
PTB, although I can’t say I’m surprised with the comm name. It’s annoying that so many leftist spaces just end up being campist authcom echo chambers
It’s .ml, there’s nothing actually leftist there
You are not helping.
Sorry, what am I supposed to be helping with?
If you want to defeat secterism you need to open a dialogue. If you start telling yourself and others you or your faction are the real leftists. You too are a campist.
I know we all wear our feelings on the outside ATM, but the makes it even more important to try talking.
Opens dialogue
Immediately banned
“You need to open a dialogue”
… ah, yes, mhm, yep.
This is … you’re doing parody, right?
… right, this a bit, right?
Kind of hard to have a dialog on your instance because of shit like what this post is highlighting.
Dialogue also tends to get you banned from .ml if the admins don’t like it, even if mods like Geneva don’t ban you first.
The admins straight up ban you from communities you’ve never posted in if they don’t like your brand of leftism. They only want to hear the opinions of those who confirm their views.
A db0 member was banned from Hexbear for no reason.
The mod log didn’t say anything and the mod from Hexbear who showed up on their .ml alt said it was for something but also didn’t give links, and changed the reason why to “you always deserved it”.
Literally live Big Brother levels of editing the narrative.
True, however this isn’t that instance. And ideally shouldn’t be like it regardless of how successful over all it is in reality. 🫤
There are plenty there I have no good will for. And it’s pretty mutual so I’m okay with that. But there are a number of prominent ones on .world …and even here. I may be reflexively wary of posters from the .ml because of the way the instances being run selects for a type. But users aren’t their instance. It’s something I’ve gotta keep my head on straight with too. Let the individuals speak for themselves. Then form an opinion. Otherwise we end up like those we don’t like. And that does no one any good.
Oh yeah, I agree with all that. I assume good faith and tag people when they say crazy shit so I remember them for the future.
Thank you
Then maybe you need to start by telling your instance admins to stop banning anybody they disagree with…
When they ban anytime you do help they disagree with, they ban you.
You question it, they ban you.
How are you meant to do that when they ban you consistently for this? Clearly they don’t want it.
Your first mistake was posting in lemmy.ml
I’ve tried blocking the instance but it keeps showing up anyway, so now I just block each community when I see it pop up
that’s because lemmy does not have actual blocking, for some reason. you need to move to a piefed instance.
Then why does it give me an option for it, if it doesn’t actually do anything?
Does piefed instance block .ml?
it does block some things, it just doesn’t block everything completely. it’s more of a filter than a block, from what I understand.
Does piefed instance block .ml?
if you are on a piefed instance and block a domain, then every person and community from that domain is totally blocked. nothing any of their users post will ever appear to you, and none of their communities will ever show up. it’s a total and complete block of everything from them, everywhere.
there’s also filtering options. for example, if I never wanted to see anything about Elon Musk, I could add a filter for Elon and Musk and then any posts or comments that mention those words could be either hidden or made so that they show up semi-transparent. I could make it so the filter only applies on the home page, or also in all communities.
honestly, piefed is just a much better option than lemmy. it’s much more feature rich, and way more flexible than lemmy will likely ever be. the only downside is that there is only a couple mobile clients that have experimental support for piefed. the most popular is voyager.
I see. So is it a separate thing entirely? I thought it was just another instance on lemmy.
But if it’s a different forum entirely then I’ll probably switch over there cause there’s too many tankies on lemmy
it’s a separate software. it federates with lemmy, so you can still see any communities from instances yours federates with. piefed.social is the largest piefed instance.
I see. Thank you!
PTB - Power Tripping Bots
This seems like the normal ideological purging that takes place in any externally managed echochamber.
Remember, data scientists have proven that around 30% of all posts and comments leading up to the US election in 2020 were from automated accounts managed by threat actors linked to Russia, Qatar, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.
Those same data analysis tools indicate that in the post-LLM era bot traffic has grown 10x since then.
We know that the strategy of these groups is to occupy, support and promote the most extreme positions on any topic.
It stands to reason that these same threat groups are active on Lemmy and that should make you INCREDIBLY skeptical when you encounter an account/community/instance that displays extreme ideology. You’re never going to win an argument with them, because they’re not people who are trying to defend a position… they’re trying to make sure that anybody reading will only see their
positionpropaganda.This is done by using multiple accounts to post comments along with a brigade of cheap throwaway accounts which can be used for vote manipulation. It doesn’t matter if you make a devastating argument that clearly shows the OP/commentor is wrong if you’re buried under downvotes so nobody sees your comment.
This also extends to communities/subreddits.
An easy example that most people on the left are familiar with: r/conservative . It’s very clearly not an organic subreddit made up of a random assortment of the population, the comment section is so heavily pruned that you think Reddit is broken when you click ‘show 28 more comments’ and there is nothing there. If you post there with any comment that doesn’t imply your tongue is tickling Trump’s duodenum you will be banned very quickly.
I look at any instance that houses these extreme opinions in the same way. While I’m sure there are real actual human people who arrived at their position on their own and hold some of the ideas being promoted there, I’m equally sure that there are a huge amount of the ‘people’ and moderators are operating in bad faith if not outright maliciousness.
Benn Jordan on YT (music/DIY tech youtuber, not a political content creator) lays a lot of this out, with citations: https://youtu.be/GZ5XN_mJE8Y
Not sure if I’m ready to assume/accept that. But good video and good to keep in mind. Thanks.
It’s an odd situation that we’re in where everyone understands that social media is swarming with bots and also are mostly unwilling to believe that it is affecting the social media that they personally use.
I don’t think that lemmy is a big enough target for that, frankly. It’s not like this is Twitter, instagram, bluesky or Facebook.
On the scale of intelligence agencies it requires very, very few resources to pay some minimum wage call center workers to manage moderator/admin accounts on every social media site where they’re capable of creating such accounts.
We know for a fact that they use Telegram channels, population around 80-100k, to push content. It doesn’t seem a stretch to think they’d be interested in communities on Lemmy with similarly sized userbases.
I mean, it could also just be people who have been conditioned by social media to be primed for outrage and self-righteousness or a mod having a bad day.
That being said, if there are bots on social media (and we know there are), where they would want to be and what they would want to be doing? Hosting a far left instance (or far right instance) is on brand as is forming an echo chamber by purging non-aligned members.
It may not be a duck, but it’s sure quacking and eating a lot of peas
It is inappropriate to suggest, in the middle of a Mossad/US hasbara operation, to provide suggestions for Iran governance. Permitting Zionazi speech results in Zionazi rule in democracies. Whether you said something dumb instead of hasbara, referring to Mossad paid rioters as protestors was the faux pas that overstepped their senstivities.
You got banned for ignoring the post. You ignored the post.
In what way was I “ignoring” the post?
Edit:
Also:
- how is a permanent ban an adequate reaction?
- which rules make this reaction clear?
How were you ‘engaging’ with the post?
Also:
If you want professional behaving mods go to a community that has professional mods.
The post was clearly in reference to the current protests in Iran, so the comment was on topic.
So you agree that the mod is a PTB.
YDI. Iran is being threatened with imperial violence more than ever. Now is not the time to be promoting imperial propaganda. Nobody cares about your “but akshualllyyy”. Save it for the libs who completely support zionism, colonialism, etc. If the imperial “revolution” succeeds, the leftist groups that you supposedly support will be the first to be attacked like anywhere else.
Show me where I “promot[ed] imperial propaganda”. Did you read the article which clearly condemns the imperialist actors?
Edit: also, the comm actually doesn’t have any rules and the instance rules shouldn’t apply, either, afaik.
SYBAU 👎
Typical technocrit, always trying to stir the pot. Yawwwwwwn.
