> Greta Thunberg > @GretaThunberg
[https://x.com/GretaThunberg/status/1852331823428247927] > > #UsaElection
#USA2024 #StopArminglsrael #FreePalestine #ClimateJusticeNow > > This year we
have seen many defining elections all over the world. On November 5th, It is
time for one of the most powerful countries in the world ā the USA ā to go to
the polls. It is probably Impossible to overestimate the consequences this
specific election will have for the world and for the future of humanity. > >
There is no doubt that one of the candidates ā Trump ā is way more dangerous
than the other. But no matter if Trump or Harris wins, the USA ā a country built
on stolen land and genocide on indigenous people -will soll be an imperialist
hyper-capitalist world power that will ultimately continue to lead the world
further into a racist, unequal world with an ever increasingly escalating
climate- and environmental emergency. > > With this in mind, my main message to
Americans is to remember that you cannot only settle for the least worst option.
Democracy is not only every four years on election day, but also every hour of
every day in between. You cannot think you have done āenoughā only by voting,
especially when both those candidates have blood on their hands. Lets not forget
that the genocide in Palestine is happening under the Biden and Harris
administration, with American money and complicity. It is not in any way
'feminist.ā āprogressiveā or āhumanitarianā to bomb innocent children and
civilians ā it is the opposite, even It it is a woman in charge. And this is of
course one example among many of American imperialism. I cannot for my life
understand how some can even pretend to talk about humanitarian values, without
even questioning their own role In further deepening global oppression and
massacres of entire countries. > > So, Americans, you must do everything in your
power to call out this extreme hypocrisy and the catastrophic consequences
American Imperialism has on a global scale. Be uncomfortable, fill the streets,
block, organise, boycott, occupy, explicitly call out those in power whose
actions and Inaction lead to death and destruction. Join and support those who
are resisting and leading the change. Nothing less will ever be acceptable.
Mod of !anarchism@slrpnk.net posts a great Greta Thunberg quote, but then tries to use it to justify not voting in the upcoming US election
Multiple people point out thatās very clearly not what she meant
Removed by modRemoved by modRemoved by modRemoved by mod
Using your mod powers to decide who is allowed and not allowed to speak is not very anarchist of you, @mambabasa@slrpnk.net
Mainly BPR imo. I can sympathise with the mod not wanting the thread to be hijacked by crazed Democrats telling everyone to vote, vote, vote, as though that will address any of the concerns raised by Greta. The clear message from Greta is that voting is not sufficent to move the dial on US policy in these areas. She didnāt recommend to vote or not to vote, she just pointed out (correctly IMO) that only voting wonāt move the dial on many problematic US policies that both major parties are aligned on. That requires large-scale direct action.
I think thereās a fundamental misunderstanding by a lot of liberals who think anarchism means āno rulesā and āfree speechā no matter what. Thatās more like libertarianism than anarchism though. Anarchism is more about directly opposing or subverting the existing external power structures (aka authority) of state and capitalism instead of working within them to effect meaningful change (e.g. by voting in a 2-party system where both parties share the majority of policies).
So advocating for not voting but instead engaging in direct action against problematic US policies is entirely consistent with an Anarchist view. But so is advocating for voting and engaging in direct action. So if any libs were advocating for both things and had their comments removed then I think thereās maybe a bit of PTB involved in those cases. But if all they are saying is vote, vote, vote, then itās perfectly reasonable to remove those comments imo.
Hereās what I actually said. Itās three messages:
You realize that allowing Trump to come to power is more Palestinian death, right? Itās literally right there at the beginning of Gretaās statement: This election is hugely important and, however shit some Democratic policies are when compared against what we actually need, Trump is clearly dangerous as fuck on a whole other level. That applies to the Mideast just as firmly as it does on climate change. Personally I agree with 100% of what she has to say here, both the first and second parts.
Youāve mentioned this concept more than once. Can you explain? Are you under the impression that if any number of people donāt vote for Harris, the genocide will stop? Usually thatās how co-signing works, but that is not how this genocide works. Thatās kind of the whole point. Running from a house fire outside into a dangerous blizzard isnāt āco-signing the blizzard.ā It is reducing the harm that this awful thing can do, replacing a certainly deadly thing with one that is less dangerous.
Greta Thunberg would, I think, be disappointed and angry that anyone would take what she said as a justification for ways to help get Trump elected. Let me highlight the very clearly written part that you seem to have missed:
It is probably Impossible to overestimate the consequences this specific election will have for the world and for the future of humanity.
There is no doubt that one of the candidates ā Trump ā is way more dangerous than the other.
If you want real positive change, listen to Greta and fight for change outside the system. If you want third parties, support RCV and proportional representation, to make them viable. If you want the end of the fucking world, then donāt vote, or vote for spoiler candidates within the current system that makes them unelectable.
The part of your statement where you say:
So if any libs were advocating for both things and had their comments removed then I think thereās maybe a bit of PTB involved in those cases.
I can agree with, except for the part where you said āmaybe a bit of.ā
So if any libs were advocating for both things and had their comments removed then I think thereās maybe a bit of PTB involved in those cases.
I can agree with, except for the part where you said āmaybe a bit of.ā
Ok, fair enough from your perspective. From my perspective, it is still entirely consistent with anarchism to outright reject calls to participate in a 2-party democracy by voting though. While personally, I see no harm in doing both things (voting + direct action) and wouldnāt remove comments advocating for such, another anarchist might see one thing as taking away from the impetus for the other, which is why I qualified my remark.
Using your mod powers to decide who is allowed and not allowed to speak is not very anarchist of you, @mambabasa@slrpnk.net
But this comment shows a fundamental misunderstanding of anarchism vs libertarianism/free speech and really isnāt a valid criticism.
I think if your āismā involves telling me Iām not allowed to point out an urgent threat to both of our well-being and advocate for a partial solution, mechanically enforcing silence on me if I persist in talking about the threat, then your āismā is a bunch of garbage.
There may be a way of applying anarchism which isnāt subject to that laughably obvious danger, in which case I have no problem with that alternative way. Like I said, I donāt think this person is an anarchist. Most of their posts seem to be about the election, with only a small minority being anarchist stuff.
Speaking as a moderator, moderating communities isnāt exclusively about ideology. I believe, ideologically, in freedom of speech - but Iām not going to let shitheads shit up my communities just because they have the legal or moral right to spout off. I have the right to keep a clean house - to not provide a platform to whoever wants it. Hell, this extends to the simply irrelevant - if someone, genuinely and innocently but insistently - started posting fantasy artifacts in !historyartifacts@lemmy.world, I would remove their posts in a heartbeat.
Freedom of speech doesnāt mean giving everyone your platform to speak out - anarchism doesnāt mean communities cannot be curated. Though, I believe, in terms of praxis it would mandate a more democratic means of curating communities, but as has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, Lemmyās not really got the tools for that.
Yes. Lemmy seems like itās got this tempting authoritarianism-trigger built right in and readily accessible, which doesnāt seem like great design. I get the necessity of moderation so that things donāt become a cess, but in practice it seems like it tempts people into policing allowed points of view in a sizable minority of communities.
Nobody is āmechanically enforcing silenceā on you. Thereās plenty of other mainstream communities and instances to share your opinion. But you donāt have the right to present your opinions in an anarchist community any more than you have a ārightā to come into my home and berate me about voting. Thatās just a libertarian free-speech(ism) mentality.
I think this is a difference of opinion between two different views which both have some level of validity. I may expand my response into a whole essay not directly connected to this issue, but to cut it short, my personal view is that a forum about anarchism is not equivalent to the moderatorās āhome.ā I donāt think the comments sections and content from other users ābelongā to the moderators, to curate viewpoints within as they choose.
I think being able to take it somewhere else and continue the discussion is a nice type of harm reduction when that does happen. But a quick look at Reddit, lemmy.ml, and so on will clearly tell you that having the idea that particular comments sections ābelongā to the mods in question, like their home, such that they delete comments they officially donāt agree with as part of their duties, leads to a toxic result.
I like that we can continue the conversation elsewhere. Thatās the reason you and I can have this conversation, and itās great. What Iām saying is that making little safe spaces where youāre not allowed to disagree with certain viewpoints is not the type of network I want to be a part of, regardless of what the viewpoints are, or whether I agree with them. I think thatās probably the majority view among Lemmy users.
In an anarchist community, itās anarchists who should decide what sort of content and posts they want in their community, not a bunch of electioneering liberals who want to swamp the entirety of lemmy with their US-centric liberal viewpoints.
The alternative is that smaller communities like the subject of this post routinely get swamped with off-topic comments from larger communities and rapidly devolve into a shouting match between community members and a bunch of folks with no understanding of the community who just happened to chance upon the thread.
imo Lemmy communities shouldnāt be treated as just another communication channel that the Democrats get to monopolize every time there is a US election cycle.
I wonder what you suppose the job of a community moderator is exactly? I guess itās open to debate, but keeping things on topic and preventing dogpiling is certainly part of the job. The reason leftists donāt let Nazis post swastikas everywhere is the same reason anarchists donāt want liberals posting about their particular brand of politics all over anarchist communities. If you want to have a liberalism vs anarchism discussion, then maybe pick a community that is more geared towards those sorts of debates, instead of inviting yourself in to an anarchist community just to tell them about how your opinion is better than theirs, and insist that your voice is heard. Your attitude just reeks of entitlement tbh.
In an anarchist community, itās anarchists who should decide what sort of content and posts they want in their community, not a bunch of electioneering liberals who want to swamp the entirety of lemmy with their US-centric liberal viewpoints.
The alternative is that smaller communities like the subject of this post routinely get swamped with off-topic comments from larger communities and rapidly devolve into a shouting match between community members and a bunch of folks with no understanding of the community who just happened to chance upon the thread.
imo Lemmy communities shouldnāt be treated as just another communication channel that the Democrats get to monopolize every time there is a US election cycle.
The weird thing isā¦ if I squint my eyes up a certain way, I actually competely agree with you here.
I think that the anarchism communities on Lemmy should be free of a person coming in and posting faux-anarchism, whose post history is:
Kamala Harris = genocide
Kamala Harris = genocide
Democrats = party of genocide
Kamala Harris = genocide
Democrats = genocide
Greta Thunberg quote
āElect the Democratsā satire
āVote Democratā satire
āVote Democratā satire
āVote Democratā satire
āDonāt think, just voteā satire
āVote Democratā satire
āDonāt think, just voteā satire
Thatās the top of Mambabasaās user page, going down as far as I really wanted to go down. Notice a pattern? Thereās some general anarchism stuff, but the things they really put some energy and consistency of posting into, have often been electoral things in the recent past. They werenāt really that active until the election started coming to the fore.
They claim theyāre not American, but they sure do care about the American election. They claim theyāre posting about anarchism because they are an anarchist, but they sure do seem to care a whole lot about who gets to win this particular contest for US state power.
I think the anarchist community should be free of that. Thatās the sense in which I agree with your statement here. I think someone who really wants to talk electoral politics, and comes into the anarchism community with a kind of āBoy that Kamala Harris, she sure is a stinker fellow anarchists, amiriteā type of energy, at length and repeatedly, should maybe not be allowed to hijack the discussion away from the real anarchists.
I spent some time talking with this person this week, just discussion back and forth, which is fine, and I just now today really formed a firm opinion that theyāre probably mainly trying to influence the election in favor of Trump, and not just an anarchist talking about anarchism things. Yes, I think protecting the anarchism forums against that is important.
I wonder what you suppose the job of a community moderator is exactly? I guess itās open to debate, but keeping things on topic and preventing dogpiling is certainly part of the job.
I mentioned before that I think there are multiple valid opinions about this. My opinion is that they shouldnāt be censoring things purely because of a viewpoint. I recognize that there are other opinions on it.
In my opinion, Mambabasa is dogpiling an anti-Democrat (not anti-politician, but very specifically anti-Democrat) viewpoint into a community where it doesnāt belong, and the structure of Lemmy allows them to do that, because they are for some reason a mod. I think thatās a problem. More so than people coming in and disagreeing with them. I would never go in and say āDemocrats Democrats Democrats!ā as you seem to be strawmanning that I did. If I see someone in the anarchism forum already talking about Democrats, I might also say my opinion on it. I think thatās a useful check, maybe the most realistic one that can exist in a system like Lemmy, against someone doing which it looks pretty clear to me that Mambabasa is doing.
Can you find a comments section in an anarchism post, where the OP didnāt first start talking about Democrats, and some Democrats came in and started talking anything about Democrats out of nowhere? That whole thing where people are coming from the wider community and just talking trash to the minority because theyāre a minority, sounds like a strawman to me. Maybe it happens on !conservative@lemm.ee. I know it often happens in the other direction, where some outsider comes into a minority community and all the existing members of the community dogpile on them about how the existing community viewpoint is the right one. But even then, I donāt really think itās a problem. Itās just people talking, which is the point.
In an anarchist community, itās anarchists who should decide what sort of content and posts they want in their community, not a bunch of electioneering liberals who want to swamp the entirety of lemmy with their US-centric liberal viewpoints.
As far as I know, nobody complained about anything in the community, only the mod who decided to remove half of the comments, ban people making reasonable comments and locked the thread.
This wasnāt a case of someone going to an anarchist community and starting arguments about why strong central authority is necessary or whatever, when you make a post, you donāt use your mod powers to pick and choose which comments you like, which you donāt and then lock the tread with a grand total of 10 comments.
And if anyone was swamping lemmy, it was the mod who posted like 15 anti-Harris memes within one hour and made it half of the local slrpnk feed that day.
Mainly BPR imo. I can sympathise with the mod not wanting the thread to be hijacked by crazed Democrats telling everyone to vote, vote, vote, as though that will address any of the concerns raised by Greta. The clear message from Greta is that voting is not sufficent to move the dial on US policy in these areas. She didnāt recommend to vote or not to vote, she just pointed out (correctly IMO) that only voting wonāt move the dial on many problematic US policies that both major parties are aligned on. That requires large-scale direct action.
I think thereās a fundamental misunderstanding by a lot of liberals who think anarchism means āno rulesā and āfree speechā no matter what. Thatās more like libertarianism than anarchism though. Anarchism is more about directly opposing or subverting the existing external power structures (aka authority) of state and capitalism instead of working within them to effect meaningful change (e.g. by voting in a 2-party system where both parties share the majority of policies).
So advocating for not voting but instead engaging in direct action against problematic US policies is entirely consistent with an Anarchist view. But so is advocating for voting and engaging in direct action. So if any libs were advocating for both things and had their comments removed then I think thereās maybe a bit of PTB involved in those cases. But if all they are saying is vote, vote, vote, then itās perfectly reasonable to remove those comments imo.
Hereās what I actually said. Itās three messages:
The part of your statement where you say:
I can agree with, except for the part where you said āmaybe a bit of.ā
Ok, fair enough from your perspective. From my perspective, it is still entirely consistent with anarchism to outright reject calls to participate in a 2-party democracy by voting though. While personally, I see no harm in doing both things (voting + direct action) and wouldnāt remove comments advocating for such, another anarchist might see one thing as taking away from the impetus for the other, which is why I qualified my remark.
But this comment shows a fundamental misunderstanding of anarchism vs libertarianism/free speech and really isnāt a valid criticism.
I think if your āismā involves telling me Iām not allowed to point out an urgent threat to both of our well-being and advocate for a partial solution, mechanically enforcing silence on me if I persist in talking about the threat, then your āismā is a bunch of garbage.
There may be a way of applying anarchism which isnāt subject to that laughably obvious danger, in which case I have no problem with that alternative way. Like I said, I donāt think this person is an anarchist. Most of their posts seem to be about the election, with only a small minority being anarchist stuff.
Speaking as a moderator, moderating communities isnāt exclusively about ideology. I believe, ideologically, in freedom of speech - but Iām not going to let shitheads shit up my communities just because they have the legal or moral right to spout off. I have the right to keep a clean house - to not provide a platform to whoever wants it. Hell, this extends to the simply irrelevant - if someone, genuinely and innocently but insistently - started posting fantasy artifacts in !historyartifacts@lemmy.world, I would remove their posts in a heartbeat.
Freedom of speech doesnāt mean giving everyone your platform to speak out - anarchism doesnāt mean communities cannot be curated. Though, I believe, in terms of praxis it would mandate a more democratic means of curating communities, but as has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, Lemmyās not really got the tools for that.
Yes. Lemmy seems like itās got this tempting authoritarianism-trigger built right in and readily accessible, which doesnāt seem like great design. I get the necessity of moderation so that things donāt become a cess, but in practice it seems like it tempts people into policing allowed points of view in a sizable minority of communities.
Nobody is āmechanically enforcing silenceā on you. Thereās plenty of other mainstream communities and instances to share your opinion. But you donāt have the right to present your opinions in an anarchist community any more than you have a ārightā to come into my home and berate me about voting. Thatās just a libertarian free-speech(ism) mentality.
I think this is a difference of opinion between two different views which both have some level of validity. I may expand my response into a whole essay not directly connected to this issue, but to cut it short, my personal view is that a forum about anarchism is not equivalent to the moderatorās āhome.ā I donāt think the comments sections and content from other users ābelongā to the moderators, to curate viewpoints within as they choose.
I think being able to take it somewhere else and continue the discussion is a nice type of harm reduction when that does happen. But a quick look at Reddit, lemmy.ml, and so on will clearly tell you that having the idea that particular comments sections ābelongā to the mods in question, like their home, such that they delete comments they officially donāt agree with as part of their duties, leads to a toxic result.
I like that we can continue the conversation elsewhere. Thatās the reason you and I can have this conversation, and itās great. What Iām saying is that making little safe spaces where youāre not allowed to disagree with certain viewpoints is not the type of network I want to be a part of, regardless of what the viewpoints are, or whether I agree with them. I think thatās probably the majority view among Lemmy users.
In an anarchist community, itās anarchists who should decide what sort of content and posts they want in their community, not a bunch of electioneering liberals who want to swamp the entirety of lemmy with their US-centric liberal viewpoints.
The alternative is that smaller communities like the subject of this post routinely get swamped with off-topic comments from larger communities and rapidly devolve into a shouting match between community members and a bunch of folks with no understanding of the community who just happened to chance upon the thread.
imo Lemmy communities shouldnāt be treated as just another communication channel that the Democrats get to monopolize every time there is a US election cycle.
I wonder what you suppose the job of a community moderator is exactly? I guess itās open to debate, but keeping things on topic and preventing dogpiling is certainly part of the job. The reason leftists donāt let Nazis post swastikas everywhere is the same reason anarchists donāt want liberals posting about their particular brand of politics all over anarchist communities. If you want to have a liberalism vs anarchism discussion, then maybe pick a community that is more geared towards those sorts of debates, instead of inviting yourself in to an anarchist community just to tell them about how your opinion is better than theirs, and insist that your voice is heard. Your attitude just reeks of entitlement tbh.
The weird thing isā¦ if I squint my eyes up a certain way, I actually competely agree with you here.
I think that the anarchism communities on Lemmy should be free of a person coming in and posting faux-anarchism, whose post history is:
Thatās the top of Mambabasaās user page, going down as far as I really wanted to go down. Notice a pattern? Thereās some general anarchism stuff, but the things they really put some energy and consistency of posting into, have often been electoral things in the recent past. They werenāt really that active until the election started coming to the fore.
They claim theyāre not American, but they sure do care about the American election. They claim theyāre posting about anarchism because they are an anarchist, but they sure do seem to care a whole lot about who gets to win this particular contest for US state power.
I think the anarchist community should be free of that. Thatās the sense in which I agree with your statement here. I think someone who really wants to talk electoral politics, and comes into the anarchism community with a kind of āBoy that Kamala Harris, she sure is a stinker fellow anarchists, amiriteā type of energy, at length and repeatedly, should maybe not be allowed to hijack the discussion away from the real anarchists.
I spent some time talking with this person this week, just discussion back and forth, which is fine, and I just now today really formed a firm opinion that theyāre probably mainly trying to influence the election in favor of Trump, and not just an anarchist talking about anarchism things. Yes, I think protecting the anarchism forums against that is important.
I mentioned before that I think there are multiple valid opinions about this. My opinion is that they shouldnāt be censoring things purely because of a viewpoint. I recognize that there are other opinions on it.
In my opinion, Mambabasa is dogpiling an anti-Democrat (not anti-politician, but very specifically anti-Democrat) viewpoint into a community where it doesnāt belong, and the structure of Lemmy allows them to do that, because they are for some reason a mod. I think thatās a problem. More so than people coming in and disagreeing with them. I would never go in and say āDemocrats Democrats Democrats!ā as you seem to be strawmanning that I did. If I see someone in the anarchism forum already talking about Democrats, I might also say my opinion on it. I think thatās a useful check, maybe the most realistic one that can exist in a system like Lemmy, against someone doing which it looks pretty clear to me that Mambabasa is doing.
Can you find a comments section in an anarchism post, where the OP didnāt first start talking about Democrats, and some Democrats came in and started talking anything about Democrats out of nowhere? That whole thing where people are coming from the wider community and just talking trash to the minority because theyāre a minority, sounds like a strawman to me. Maybe it happens on !conservative@lemm.ee. I know it often happens in the other direction, where some outsider comes into a minority community and all the existing members of the community dogpile on them about how the existing community viewpoint is the right one. But even then, I donāt really think itās a problem. Itās just people talking, which is the point.
deleted by creator
As far as I know, nobody complained about anything in the community, only the mod who decided to remove half of the comments, ban people making reasonable comments and locked the thread.
This wasnāt a case of someone going to an anarchist community and starting arguments about why strong central authority is necessary or whatever, when you make a post, you donāt use your mod powers to pick and choose which comments you like, which you donāt and then lock the tread with a grand total of 10 comments.
And if anyone was swamping lemmy, it was the mod who posted like 15 anti-Harris memes within one hour and made it half of the local slrpnk feed that day.