EDIT: Two responses from admins who dishonestly reframed the events of my ban and apparently refuse to explain it. Apparently “long time users” get different treatment.
EDIT2: The reason was finally given that “Have you stopped beating your wife?” in response to someone trying to put words in your mouth and ask loaded questions is a banworthy set of words. Incredible I know.
I would like explanation for the thinking that led to me being recently banned and branded a racist.
I was randomly attacked by a bad faith troll who later let slip that she was bearing a grudge based on some other encounter from 8 months ago. The attack consisted of an attempt to paint me as a racist for this simple and honest reading error.
I am a principled Marxist Leninist, active in real life and any reading of my contributions will support this and refute this slur on my character.
I can, at most, stretch to forgiving the ridiculous idea that I was the one being “toxic” here, and not simply holding up a mirror to the toxicity of the troll who attacked me for an innocent mistake, fantasised about me doing hypothetical racist things, asked me loaded questions and tried to put words in my mouth to fool credulous onlookers.
What I cannot ever accept is the allegation that I somehow engaged in “racism” anywhere in this interchange or in any of my other comments in the years I’ve participated on here. I deserve an explanation as to what you think you saw as racist in any of my comments.
I expect a complete apology, a clearing of my name and censure against my attacker and abuser. Those involved shamed themselves with their actions. You have an opportunity to make amends and undo that injustice you’ve inflicted.
I run a large ML forum with weekly views of tens of thousands and I recognise exactly the temptations you’ve allowed yourselves to succumb to of abusing your power for a false sense of righteousness based on petty bullying and unfair treatment. I know that I’m not the only one who’s been a victim of this on lemmygrad.
The contributors to this forum deserve better moderation and better judgement from the admins in general. The current process of banning people without right of reply is abusive and dishonourable. That can be a separate discussion.
I don’t think anyone needs further comments with the body of content readily available below but it’s customary that we leave a comment when we lock a topic.
Long story short everyone who commented on this thread disagreed with Larkin’s sequence of events, and eventually it was reflected that most of them were getting tired of him insulting them and trying to rile them up when they were just trying to help as third-party observers. It’s right around here in this comment chain: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5943585/5296505
This was the main prompt for Larkin’s final, permanent ban. I’m locking the topic because there’s not much else to say here now that he’s been banned.
The other factors for this ban were that he was changing his discourse depending on where the other person was sympathizing with him, showing he had no good faith. We knew that from the moment he posted this thread (you can read the OP above) but this is the purpose of this community, to let people appeal their ban.
His attempts at splitting this community over imagined mod abuse didn’t take and I have no doubt that he’ll go into his other communities crying about what an injustice this is but this entire thread is available as evidence, so you can judge for yourself.
edit: because this was also a point of contention and seems to be sparking a discussion, Larkin makes references to a thread that he considers to be “kiddy porn” even though it’s not porn by any stretch of the imagination but whatever. He claims to have made reports about the thread at the time (15 days ago) but I’ve been ctrl+f’ing in the reports log and cannot find any report about this thread or its comments in the timeframe. The log is a bit difficult to navigate but it should still show up with a search.