Hello World,
Today, after careful consideration and evaluation of recent events, we have decided to defederate from Lemmygrad.
Regrettably, we have observed a significant increase in hate speech and calls to violence originating from the Lemmygrad instance. Due to the severity of the posts and comments, we are not waiting for the next Lemmy update that will allow users to block instances.
At Lemmy.world, we have always strived to foster an inclusive and welcoming user environment. However, recent posts and comments from Lemmygrad have clearly violated our server rules and, more importantly, our core values. We firmly believe that hate speech and incitement of violence have no place in our community, regardless of personal beliefs or affiliations.
As always, we encourage all users to report any content they deem inappropriate or harmful. No matter one’s stance in any conflict, Lemmy.world will always take immediate action to remove and ban any posts or comments that incite violence or propagate hatred.
We encourage everyone to continue engaging in discussions within the boundaries of respect and understanding. As we move forward with this decision, we remain committed to providing all community members with a safe and welcoming space. We appreciate your continued support and cooperation in upholding our shared principles.
Thank you,
The Lemmy.World Team
Good riddance
They can have their little hate fest in private now! I think they wanted that anyways.
They do it to so many smaller forums too. I saw an old board I used to frequent for game faqs and questions turned into one, under the guise of being mostly transgender positive.
It’s crazy to watch one user create a wannabe cult, user shame everyone and constantly move goalposts with straw men bs. Meanwhile, they had moderators discussing in Discord chats who to drive insane next and pick on. Not to mention using a serious issue as means to divide people that frequent the site by having over 30+ accounts to pad the numbers that agree with their views in topics.
It’s scary how far they go these days, especially considering the site was relatively respected around Y2K era, and now it’s full of republicans pretending to be trans and liberal for a psychotic gimmick.
under the guise of being mostly transgender positive.
The “trans rights to tankie” pipeline is just as weird as the “hippie to fascist” pipeline. I saw a lot of it on Blahaj.
Yeah glad to see those fucks go. There’s been an awful lot of bad takes filling up content sections on certain topics, every time I checked who had posted it it was almost always a lemmygrad user.
Their responses and comments have legitimately prevented me from coming here. Maybe I’ll actually visit and comment again with them defederated, I was so sick of their bullshit and posts clogging my feed.
I need to start checking the instance when someone posts something stinky.
I’d honestly noticed it a lot over the last few weeks and thought oh well, eternal September.
There was a nice little period there where’s there wasn’t much discussion around and those actually poking their heads out were really kind of wholesome. Now I see so many people still coming across in that friendly, inclusive way and I realise it’s just a vocal minority ruining it.
Let’s hold each other to a higher standard.
One love.
One knock-on effect for me is that encountering those folks on here made me want to triple check my tone and emotionality when I post or comment. I absolutely want this to be a better place than reddit, and I constantly find myself going back through my comments, editing to add corrections, or outright deleting them if I realize in hindsight I was being a cranky asshole. I’ve got to admit, I’ve even appreciated the notification-free moderation here - if I got into a fight with someone and our lack of civility broke the rules, I’m happy when a mod wipes out both of our offending comments. Nine times out of ten it takes out the comment that caused me to fight in the first place. And as heated as I can get, after going on an online tear, afterwards I usually feel terrible for being driven by anger. And angry posts almost never do anything except stroke my ego.
Yea, see you sound like a good egg.
Thanks for posting. I’m going to start measuring how emotional I get too. The good of the community is more important than a momentary annoyance. Thanks for describing a higher standard let’s all encourage each other to aspire to it.
One love.
I hardly ever even look at the username - I’m not sure I’ll get to looking at instance names.
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My preference is a good quality dark chocolate, but I don’t turn my nose up at pretty much any chocolate. Hell, I’ll dig into one of those waxy chocolate Easter bunnies if that’s what I’ve got.
Most recent (a couple hours ago) was a very chocolate brownie from a pan I made last night.
Agree
The lemmygrad users think the same
Good for all 19 of them
Big assumption with the thinking
You mean they’re sharing the same brain cell?
Thank fucking god. It’s exhausting being around people for whom any meme, any post, any comment, has to spin into how good communism is, how bad the libs are, how good China is, and how bad The West TM is. It is exhausting.
Communism good, therefore China good, therefore West bad, therefore Israel bad, therefore dead Israelis good!
What a fucking worldview
Most of them have never spent time living under China / USSR as well lol. I’d like communism in theory, and I still think there’s a possibility of it, but even just in Hong Kong the flaws of the CCP system of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” are very evident — and that’s barely with any of the actual communism in Hong Kong.
Communism in theory is amazing. But it doesn’t take the human animal into much consideration. We’re a highly competitive hierarchical beast. We strive for our personal will to power too much for a pure communist utopia. Basically, we aren’t ants or bees that can pull that kind of horizontal system off.
The idea that humans are fundamentally hierarchical and competitive creatures is just wrong. Of any indiviual trait could be said to be the character of humanity it would almost certainly be cooperation. Practically every hierarchy that humans lives takes a ton of organized forced to uphold, specifically because living in hierarchy is not natural for humans.
That’s true of most people, but not everyone, and the exceptions tend to get themselves into positions of power. Therefore a system built on top-down control of the economy will inevitably become oppressive.
Are you suggesting that every child born is not subject to their parents will? There’s an inherent hierarchy even at conception. Value is given naturally. Communities exist only with some sort of leadership. These are naturally occurring emergent properties of any group of people.
We are cooperative because it is in our self interest. The only inherent trait of humanity is selfishness. Communist leaders who say some are more equal than others to enrich themselves, capitalists who hoard billions from minimum wage labor – they’re the exact same.
In my fairly long time on this planet, my experience of ‘human traits’ has been much more positive than yours. As for leaders, yes, many are selfish. Luckily they and their disease can be avoided, and many people have grown past being infected by it.
Their kind of ‘success’ is reflected in their smallness and misery. Be careful …The old ‘As you reap…’ adage is actually a fact.
I hope you’re right.
I believe our societies are so complicated and complex, it’s tough to run them when the weather is fine. As soon as problems pop up, chaos ensues, and totalitarian regimes often have an easier time dealing with them. That’s the main problem IMHO, humanity having the tendency to take the path of least resistance.
This fundamental aspect of humanity was considered by the old comme guys . Lenin, and that. They thought humans had to be FORCED into that system, then eventually “good” communism would happen. I don’t think the at has ever worked though.
Please show where that is being said by “Lenin, and that”. On the other hand you have Margaret Thatcher:
‘Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul’
Here’s a pretty good source on it. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27026893?typeAccessWorkflow=login
What is this a source of? The article is paywalled and the preview mostly concerns Lenin’s ambition for a stronger democracy.
I’ve spent 23 years living “under” (what an odd choice of word: I’d use “in” myself) China.
What specific things do you think I’ve missed in my 23 years that you know everything about?
I guess I live under China. If you start in China and dig about 8000 miles straight down, you’ll reach me here.
Firstly, I never said that I know everything about anything. Anyone who does say that is either lying, or God. Secondly, I have no idea what you know. Thirdly, I picked “under” because China consistently treats Hong Kong and her citizens as second-class citizens. Not as bad as in East Turkestan, but certainly below the likes of Beijing, Shanghai etc. Look at the difference in response between sentencing of peaceful protestors, response to said peaceful protests (notably the Urumqi protests, where the CCP acquiesced to a much smaller group of protestors’ demands in contrast with Hong Kong where the CCP continues to not even move an inch), and how Hong Kong’s Covid policies remains even when China’s were removed.
First, Hong Kong’s COVID policies were relaxed at about the same time (within a week or so) of when they were relaxed in mainland China. They were stricter for a while than most of mainland China, yes, but so were most major port cities’ (like Guangzhou’s) because, well, you know, massive influx of outsiders means you go a bit more carefully rather than opening the flood gates willy-nilly. “Let 'er rip” is a grossly irresponsible policy for disease control.
Second, Hong Kong’s COVID controls have been shut off completely. Eyeballing this it looks like around June of this year (so six months after the relaxation and about three months after their elimination in Wuhan). I’d have to dig deeper for more precise dates and policies.
Third, and this is the key point, you are entirely, 100% ignorant of how Chinese governance actually works. You have a “cartoon villain” view of authoritarianism and it shows. How it really works is the central government (who are, make no mistake, a crowd of hypocritical, authoritarian assholes!) sets policy and goals. They will also make strong recommendations on process, but actual on-the-ground procedures are run by provincial-, prefectural-, and city-scale government (as appropriate). Indeed this can fall down fractally to individual neighbourhoods in many cases. So even in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, the city of Wuhan’s procedures and regulations were completely and utterly different from, say, Dalian’s, or Zhengzhou’s, or Chongqings, or … you get the drift. (This, incidentally, caused all kinds of trouble for people trying to travel and/or do business across provinces and cities. A lot of people visiting Wuhan, for instance, wound up cooling their heels in quarantine when coming from, say, Nanchang because they didn’t follow the complex web of regulations surrounding travel to Wuhan.)
Now of course if you don’t follow the central government’s advised procedures, and if your results are a fuck-up, you’re in deep shit. (Ask the pre-2020 government of Wuhan or the pre-2020 Hubei health authorities … oh, wait, you can’t. Most of them were removed for incompetence; the rest were executed for malfeasance in handling the outbreak.) Basically at that point a team from Beijing is parachuted in to take the reins directly until competent people can be found to take over.
So …
What this means is that the procedures in Hong Kong? Those are brought in by the Hong Kong government, not by Beijing. Now the truth is they’re likely being harder on things than other cities because they don’t want the bureaucratic paratroopers to be invoked on them, but this doesn’t change the fact that the people effecting those (now shut down, I should stress) procedures were the HONG KONG government, not the Beijing government.
Now as for Urumqi vs. Hong Kong, let’s take a look at the full names of both of those territories and see if we can’t see a reason for why the difference between their handling.
- Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region
- Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China
Do you see some key differences in their legal status perhaps? If you can’t, I’ll summarize for you: both are “autonomous” in that they have their own legislatures and can enact their own laws that are different from the rest of China. But the SARs have extreme levels of autonomy and thus extreme levels of responsibility. And your laughable “peaceful protests” in Hong Kong were nothing of the sort. (I don’t view pouring gasoline on an elderly man and lighting him on fire “peaceful”. Nor do I view putting flaming barricades on the metro system “peaceful”. Perhaps your standards are different from mine.)
But, again, law enforcement in Hong Kong is Hong Kong’s. The “PLA” (in reality “PAP” but I don’t expect people outside China to actually give enough of a shit to know the difference, important as it is) isn’t even allowed to operate in Hong Kong; they garrison there but can’t leave that garrison (as a force, I mean: obviously they can go to town as individuals) without explicit invocation by the Hong Kong government. So that “oppression” you’re seeing of “peaceful” fire-using protestors? That is, again, Hong Kong’s own police force under Hong Kong’s own government.
Now are they doing this because they fear Beijing coming in and just rubbing them out and taking direct control? Indubitably. (In that regard they’re like the MPAA being fucking morons with movie ratings because they were afraid of government censorship, so did worse than what the government was likely to have ever done.) The Hong Kong Executive, Legislature, and Judiciary does not want to be removed and replaced, so they are likely being “tough on crime” to appease their Beijing overlords. (Kind of like how American politicians are “tough on crime” to appease the bloodthirsty masses.)
But in the end it is, in fact, the Hong Kong government and the Hong Kong Police Force, neither of which is part of the Beijing apparatus, that is cracking down on the “peaceful” protestors.
remained* My typo, apologies. Hong Kong had much stricter policies on Covid for a long time compared to even mainland China.
Yes, most of the ones who fucked up in China were removed. That’s a good thing. None of them who fucked up in Hong Kong were or are ever removed. And yes, it is the Hong Kong government — but who appoints them? Who extremely recently reformed the system such that even less say is given to Hong Kongers on who govern them? 人大.
Yes, the fire was in Urumqi. However, the protests were nationwide, and China reacted in a month’s time. Hong Kong protested for years peacefully and were treated to arrests and nothing more. 2014. 2019, before June 12. Every July 1st since the handover. A fifth of the population went on the streets on June 9, and the government tried to force the bill through. Then afterwards, a quarter of the population went on the streets to protest again on June 16th. Nothing. I wonder why there’s violence. Or would you like to suggest that Palestinian resistance, South African anti-apartheid resistance, American Civil Rights resistance, etc. are justifiably responded to with extreme levels of force? The majority of Hong Kong “violent” protests pale in comparison both to those, and to the government’s response. Or is shooting an unarmed teenage protestor and then arresting him and sentencing him to jail for years justice? Not to mention the crackdown on pan-dem politicians who have done nothing of the sort? Or arresting and attacking medics, or using ambulances to transport police?
In addition, of course, are very convenient “suicides” like a 15 year old swimmer randomly drowning after being found naked and ASAP cremation, a protestor randomly falling from a building that police operated at not long ago… or the literal triads they released at Yuen Long, or the police themselves attacking bystanders and planting evidence on the MTR on 831… and even several different cases of covered-up rapes widely reported by journalists whose newspapers were forced to close. If the Chinese government is not either complicit or approving, surely any reasonable government would step in immediately to tell Carrie Lam to change course? Instead, they promoted John Lee and Chris Tang, Secretary for Security and Commissioner of Police, to Chief Executive and Secretary for Security, a clear stamp of approval for any future protests.
Oh and regarding the PLA, (which by the way, any reasonable person would know that police and armies are separate entities, and besides the garrison is the PLA, even if there are PAP in there) there is a lot of evidence out there suggesting that they were involved. Anti-riot HK police gear found at the garrison, unmarked vans traced back to them, and even more obviously segments of the police consistently using Mandarin to communicate — unless you intend to suggest that policemen would use their third language to communicate otherwise?
Also, the actions at consulates such as that in Manchester. Attacking and attempted kidnapping of protestors in a foreign country. Only recalling after 2 months, and not allowing prosecution, while never once denouncing the actions, and in fact denouncing the protestors, who were doing so peacefully? Including from the Consul General himself? And setting up police stations in other countries without the permission of said countries, thereby violating sovereignty, and violating international law with the Sino-British Joint Declaration, and putting a bounty on the heads of people who have done nothing except lobby their governments. Even Israel isn’t this much of a bully.
Speaking of that autonomy: Beijing has said that the entire constitution of Hong Kong is only as valid as the laws it makes with the National Security Law being equal to the Basic Law, thereby bypassing and ignoring its illegitimacy. Might I remind you that the NSL did not pass LegCo, as is required by law. Legislation which did not go through the legislative body. What is the point of a supposedly autonomous legislative body if such a body can be bypassed whenever convenient for the state? And for the autonomy in East Turkestan, what use is autonomy when the people there are being ethnically cleansed, and Han Chinese are being migrated there in much the same way as Israeli settlers, or indeed most settler colonial movements? There is a well-documented genocide there, which the Chinese government continues to deny. I’m not even going into Tibet.
In summary I absolutely agree! Hong Kong’s government is much, much worse than the national government. They have literally concluded that boobs can be used as a weapon of assault, which I believe even the CCP wouldn’t stoop to, for example. That does not excuse the national government for what it has done to not only encourage but incite such behaviour from them. If Israeli settlers conduct violence, or the IDF, the responsibility lies on Bibi’s fascist government. Most of the West takes responsibility for its previous crimes, including most notably the Holocaust. How is it different, then, for China? If China doesn’t approve of the actions Hong Kong has done, why have they not only helped them but provided the tools specifically to allow them in the National Security Law? Why does it continue treating non-mainland non-Han peoples as second-class citizens? And if the CCP is good, why does it conduct genocide in Uyghurstan? Why does it bully people protesting peacefully who aren’t even living there — setting bounties, dragging them into consulate grounds to beat them up, arresting their families in Hong Kong, and more? I can go on and on and on.
One last question for you as a person, not as a political point, but as a person. Why do you consistently insist on ad hominem attacks? Why do you think I don’t know as much as you just because I disagree with you? I’ve lived through protests at scales China hasn’t seen since Tiananmen, which your government still covers up. Perhaps you should ponder why such movements can reach such scales so consistently in Hong Kong, despite leaders constantly being arrested, despite changes made specifically to counter them, despite the sheer power imbalance, instead of assuming anyone who disagrees with you is immediately wrong.
Tired of arguing with someone who clearly doesn’t want to respect me, but I will point out how hilarious that someone first says they lived under (or in, as they seem to prefer) China for 23 years and then claims to be Canadian, treating it like a “gotcha”.
And if the CCP is good, why does it conduct genocide in Uyghurstan?
Dude. I literally said the fucking opposite. Read what’s in front of you, not what the voices in your head are telling you is there. I’ll leave finding this as an exercise for the student: see if you can find where I said the exact fucking opposite of this. Then come back and talk like an adult instead of a tantrum-throwing toddler.
I’ve lived through protests at scales China hasn’t seen since Tiananmen, which your government still covers up.
The Canadian government covers up Tiananmen? That’s news to me. I’m going to need some citations here.
… instead of assuming anyone who disagrees with you is immediately wrong.
Given that you couldn’t read very plain statements that are directly the opposite of what you said, and that you made idiotic assumptions on top of that, I’m going to go with “yeah, dumb fuck is wrong” until you show some basic reading ability and stop stupid assumptions.
Very thorough explanation. It truly was quite insightful.
I appreciate your comments and effort. I don’t think it got through though.
Well given that the idiot thinks I’m a) Chinese and b) in favour of the Chinese government, you’re absolutely right: nothing got through.
Tiananmen Square for one.
Oh, this is going to be juicy!
Tell me what you think happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989. I’ll wait with the reams and reams and reams of corrections on standby. (Hint: There’s a very good chance that literally everything you “know” about Tiananmen Square is wrong. Just as a taste of what’s to come if you take the bait: “tank man” wasn’t run over by a tank. No matter what you think you know.)
What I know about Tiananmen is less important than what I know that China has done afterwards.
Look at how these Chinese citizens act when they’re asked about it.The people who know anything are afraid to talk about it.
Whatever propaganda you want to spew, anybody who watches this video will know there is something deeply wrong with China.
… how could the Chinese government enforce this vast national amnesia of a major, recent event in their country’s history, one in which the government sent troops to slaughter perhaps 2,600 peaceful protesters?
In the very first paragraph Vox gets it wrong.
Not a surprise.
Here’s a little hint: look up Columbia University’s Columbia Journalism Review and see if you can tell why I’m laughing at Vox right now.
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Nothing of value has been lost
Value was gained instead.
Stonks📈📈📈
Addition by subtraction
I just gotta say, the moderation here makes me so happy I joined this instance.
Thank goodness.
I’m reminded of a story I read a while back - not sure where - about how if you let a Nazi into your bar, you eventually end up running a Nazi bar. I think the same applies to online forums. You let Nazis overrun a forum, everyone else leaves, and eventually you might as well just be running Stormfront.
Karl Popper’s “paradox of tolerance”
In my other (non-Lemmy) life, I’ve written extensively about the paradox of tolerance, and how recognizing it de-fangs the arguments of wanna-be totalitarians.
For people not in the know, Popper proposed that infinite, unrestricted “tolerance” is paradoxically self-destroying, because it necessarily means tolerating attempts to destroy tolerance.
The solution is simple and obvious in retrospect, but so many people have trouble finding it and worry about whether they’re hypocrites or not for refusing to tolerate Nazis and the like. The solution is this:
Recognize the fact that you never promised to tolerate Nazis.
No one ever promised to tolerate everything without caveats or restrictions. Instead, we promised to tolerate each other, to respect one another’s right to exist. In other words, tolerance is a peace treaty.
As soon as you realize that, it becomes obvious that you needn’t tolerate Nazis, because they have broken the treaty. You are not bound by it when it comes to them. In fact, given the nature of people like that, they were never really signatories to the treaty in the first place, because they start from a basis of intending to destroy it.
Oh, how they hate it when people realize this and refuse to put up with Nazi bullshit or apologize for that refusal. Well, sorry, Nazi turd burglars, we never promised to put up with your shit in the first place, so y’all can fuck right off.
Tolerance and peace are both treaties. We agree to leave each other be and not take up arms in exchange for the other to do the same.
You have no obligation to be tolerant of someone who is intolerant or preaches intolerant ideology.
You have no obligation to be peaceful to belligerence and violence.
Isn’t that also kind of what is happening to Twitter right now?
Yep. In welcoming back the Nazis, Elon made it clear he intended to make it a Nazi forum. Oh, he said a few things about “free speech zones” or something, but when you peel back the veneer of idealism, you just find a bunch of Nazis.
They love “free speech zones,” because no one wants to share a forum with Nazis and leave when the Nazis take over.
Whenever someone makes a big deal about allowing “free speech,” it always ends up meaning hate speech.
Freedom to speak is not freedom to be heard.
Exactly.
Semi-relevant:
You can value free speech without supporting that.
Indeed, and most places do.
I’d hope so, but I hardly see anyone mention free speech without painting it as being on the side of bigots and bringing up arguments against it.
Because bigots love to wield it as a weapon and use the term in bad faith.
A stupid thought that I just had. An X is 4 bars from a swastika.
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Or 4 bends. You’re not the first one to realize.
These are not Nazis being blocked
I think this is for the best, there are some seriously disturbed people posting on Lemmygrad. I saw comments cheering on and celebrating the Hamas attack and talking about how they hoped the people who were kidnapped get tortured. Whatever your politics, that is super fucked up and not “legitimate discourse”.
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Lost all respect for lemmygrad when they deleted a comment i made about voting for the lesser of 2 evils being the correct course of action to advance the interests of the Prolitariat in the United States. They care more about larping as revolutionaries than enacting change that actually helps the Working Class.
Good Job! You make my experience of Lemmy continuously better! You cleaned that CSAM up with the speed of light (I’ve never even noticed it), you managed the Piracy Community Troubles very well and now you made an well thought through decision about Lemmygrad. Well done Mods! And thank you all very much!
Tankies mad
“Cowards” lol
They literally just ban you if you start to pick apart their bullshit opinions.
Proudly banned from [email protected]
“You chose to not have to listen to our bullshit? Cowards!”
We don’t fear you, we pity you, so we put you in the pity party corner. Come back when you develop emotional regulation. Bye Lemmygrad!
Lmao posted to the Communism community. How is this about communism? It isn’t. It’s just that to them, everything is about communism.
When you’re called a coward you know it’s a W because it just means you don’t want to be dragged down to their level
🍿
tankies gonna tank
I understand that they are staunchly pro-communist and also take a pro-Palestine, including some of them (many of them?) a more clearly pro-Hamas stance. And that all of this could annoy many of the centrist liberals that seem to dominate here. But from perusing the lemmygrad link I do not see clear signs of hate speech, certainly not a clear hate speech agenda as you would see with some hate groups. And judging by the comments on here many seem to be happy to be “rid of them” because they are “annoying”, or “immature”, or “tankies”, or whatever. It really reads largely like “their opinions annoy me” so I’m glad they’re gone.
There may be more to it, I don’t know, but personally I wouldn’t like lemmy.world, an otherwise fine instance by all means, to become a centrist liberal silo where no other opinion outside (mostly US-centric) liberal orthodoxy is heard. So yeah, not convinced that this was the right decision, basically because of a lack of evidence.
This will be a much better experience for new Lemmy users browsing /All.
omg it’s him
The one and only.
It’s Picard Lemmy himself
Lemmygrad is a cesspool of pseudo intellectual unemployed neckbeards complaining about how oppressed they are under the yoke of capitalism, from their mother’s basement in Wisconsin.
Good riddance to it.
Before I saw lemmygrad: wtf are we doing?
After I saw lemmygrad: glad we defederate…
Free speech is important. Every opinion should be heard and considered. However, your freedom ends when it crosses over someone else’s. Good riddance, i had blocked most of lemmygrad’s communities anyways, since all they did was spread propaganda and hate.
Love the mod team (being ex-reddit, never thought I’d say that), the transparency and clarity of their communication with the community is great!
