I am curious about the reason why they were banned.

  • Ephera
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    134 years ago

    Well, no one called him a Nazi. The problem is that it’s a damn slippery slope, and an extremely unnecessary one at that, to compare Nazis to any group. Panzerfaust by himself wasn’t the problem, the problem is that more extreme people will feel welcome, if that’s the general tone of the discussion.

    As for the name, again, by itself I wouldn’t see it as problematic either. The word “Panzerfaust” is used in German for any type of shoulder-fired rocket launcher, but I also would expect more extreme people to understand it as a reference to Nazism and feel more welcome than they should.

    • @abbenm
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      4 years ago

      This is what I think apologists just can’t figure out.

      So much of the transmission of nazism isn’t outright. It’s purposely put behind plausible deniability, it’s done through signalling, it’s done through co-opting, it’s done through bad faith arguments about mod policy and free speech, it’s done through half-jokes that aren’t really jokes, it’s done by ‘just asking honest questions’ that reinforce nazi framing etc.

      And that in and of itself is enough to do the damage they want to do. Those who are rushing to the defense of these trolls are, for lack of a better term, just serving as useful idiots without realizing it.

      • @ksynwa
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        44 years ago

        Hmm Trump has used the ok sign 41 times in public. If he does it 59 times more we will know for sure that he is a Nazi.

    • @wraptile
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      14 years ago

      the problem is that more extreme people will feel welcome, if that’s the general tone of the discussion.

      The communism discussions on lemmy are already quite extreme and so was this mod’s reaction: banning someone for offending your political views — kind extreme, isn’t it?

      • Ephera
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        14 years ago

        I agree on both of those points and I still think, it’s a necessary evil for multiple reasons:

        1. A ban isn’t actually that harsh of a punishment on here. Sure, Panzerfaust might be done with the platform and he did post some good content. But for him personally, he can find a different instance or a different Reddit alternative. Or if he really wants to stay, he can absolutely just create another account.

        2. No one needs to hold the political opinion that Nazis weren’t that horrible. There’s aspects where free speech is harshly necessary, e.g. if you’re not allowed to criticize your government. But if you’re not allowed to praise the Nazis, that has no impact on anything.

        3. Pretty much all prior Reddit alternatives have been overrun by right-wing extremists. If this Lemmy instance doesn’t want to undergo this same fate, yes, they have to piss off some people. Just tolerating all opinions under the guise of free speech, doesn’t work, if you don’t want right-wing extremists on your platform.

        If you disagree and you’d rather have as little moderation as possible, at the risk of a few right-wing extremists on there, that’s also fine. You can find a different instance or Reddit alternative (as I said, there’s plenty that are overrun by right-wing extremists; who will probably also ban someone for holding left-wing ideas, but yeah, feel free to choose your own poison).

        • @wraptile
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          4 years ago
          1. No one needs to hold the political opinion that Nazis weren’t that horrible

          Who said that? Panzerfaust said that Nazis and Commies are awful and the planet would have had been better off without them. Which we can all agree with, right? No one is praising nazis, what are you even on about.

          Imagine reddit admins banning someone for a comment like this — the fucking site would implode.

    • @PamalaRobida
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      -14 years ago

      The nazis and communists were both socailists. Maybe just maybe that is the real problem, the mass of “society” stepping on individuals for some grand believed “betterness”.

      • Ephera
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        14 years ago

        Or maybe just maybe that is some really fucking dumbass backwards reasoning.

        Most of the socialist structures that existed during Nazi Germany were enacted by Otto von Bismarck in the 1870s and still exist today. The Nazis just called themselves “socialist”, because they didn’t want to call themselves “the bad guys”.

        And the strategies of the Nazis would still work perfectly fine in “raw” capitalism. You just need the general population to be poor and then repeatedly tell them that this is the fault of the Jews/Mexicans/Syrians etc…

        In fact, I would say that a socialist system helps to prevent this type of propaganda acceptance, a.k.a. poorness. In Nazi Germany, it worked anyways, because the general population was just really fucking poor after WWI and the stock market crash in 1929.