Skip Navigation
commrequest @hexbear.net
deathtoreddit @lemmygrad.ml

c/people's court (to talk publicly about ban appeals)

Let me be honest and say that this is due to @borschtisgarbo@lemmygrad.ml getting banned for a badly worded anti-Zionist post. I was hoping you'd may be publicly talk over it and reconcile

Note: welp I think I came off the wrong way with this post, well I'll get out of your hair

Outside of the specific user who was banned I wanted to address meta communities.

The previous attempts at a meta community or even a ban appeal pinned post have caused more drama in each new post as new discussions of the mod actions occur…

Often times restarting contentious discussion where folks are talking past each other and assuming bad faith.

We are available on matrix for people who wish to discuss their ban but ultimately it is very easy to make a hexbear account and as a result very easy to get banned.

This core aspect of site administration has been here since the start and if it wasn’t for the handful of spammers I deny each day I would remove the application entirely.

I’m open to a hexbear user discussion on a meta community but a local user in good standing must apply to be a moderator if a meta community is to be made.

We have been using !feedback@hexbear.net and !hexbear@hexbear.net as meta communities in addition to the Matrix space mentioned in the site sidebar for the past year or so.

16 comments

  • Outside of the specific user who was banned I wanted to address meta communities.

    The previous attempts at a meta community or even a ban appeal pinned post have caused more drama in each new post as new discussions of the mod actions occur..

    Often times restarting contentious discussion where folks are talking past each other and assuming bad faith.

    We are available on matrix for people who wish to discuss their ban but ultimately it is very easy to make a hexbear account and as a result very easy to get banned.

    This core aspect of site administration has been here since the start and if it wasn't for the handful of spammers I deny each day I would remove the application entirely.

    I'm open to a hexbear user discussion on a meta community but a local user in good standing must apply to be a moderator if a meta community is to be made.

    We have been using !feedback@hexbear.net and !hexbear@hexbear.net as meta communities in addition to the Matrix space mentioned in the site sidebar for the past year or so.

  • Honestly, his post isn't that far off from various Palestinians I've seen online. Their main thing is that anti-Zionist Jews can't simultaneously complain about people conflating Judaism with Zionism while at the same time not taken up arms for the sake of saving Judaism from Zionism. If the IOF is Jewish ISIS, then where is Jewish Hezbollah or Jewish Ansarallah to send Jewish ISIS to hell and punish the Zionists for their shameless desecration of Judaism?

    But I also haven't paid attention to the history of the poster. There's also a difference between a Palestinian whose grandparents were expelled from Palestine during the Nakba saying this and some presumably white non-Jewish dude saying this. And I don't agree with his assessment that Jewish people have been completely subsumed into whiteness. As a whole, Jewish people are white. You have white people of Jewish ancestry who are otherwise completely indistinguishable from your average WASP at one end and you have Hasidic Jews at the other end.

    Edit: It turns out the dude is Estonian. That's, uh, not in his favor lmao.

    • Honestly, his post isn’t that far off from various Palestinians I’ve seen online. Their main thing is that anti-Zionist Jews can’t simultaneously complain about people conflating Judaism with Zionism while at the same time not taken up arms for the sake of saving Judaism from Zionism. If the IOF is Jewish ISIS, then where is Jewish Hezbollah or Jewish Ansarallah to send Jewish ISIS to hell and punish the Zionists for their shameless desecration of Judaism?

      As a diasporist Jew, Palestinians have a moral standing to make that demand.

      If a Palestinian says something questionable. I don't give a single fucking shit. The Zionist entity that is destroying their homes and their families is the source of their belief about Jews. The Zionist entity tells the world that its actions, it's interpretations of scripture and its decisions are representative of all Jews. The Zionist entity itself is a source of ethnonationalist supremacist garbage and I cannot fault the people it oppresses for believing what is written on the sides of its bombs. It's entirely correct that if we believe that it is a genocide, we should give them latitude in expressing their anger as it relates to their oppressors.

      I am not going to give a Westoid the same latitude. You haven't earned it. Your cities aren't ash. You have never seen an Israeli bomb in your life unless you were signing it. You haven't known terror for your entire childhood, you haven't been deprived of education, health care, safety, food and family since birth. That is the reality for most Palestinians. So yeah, I'm not going to really take it too hard if they have some funny ideas about Jews. Westoids have no such excuse.

      Likewise this doesn't explain the differences within Jewry. Beta Israel were oppressed by Israel itself. Not only did Israel originally refuse to allow them to make Aliyah, but after they did they were sterilized. We're not all just Ashkenazim (though I am).

      A Westoid saying Jewish Supremacism after being accused of antisemitism is ZOG shit and I literally agree that Israel has created an extremely powerful outsized role for itself in the politics of many Western nations.

      And I don’t agree with his assessment that Jewish people have been completely subsumed into whiteness. As a whole, Jewish people are white*. You have white people of Jewish ancestry who are otherwise completely indistinguishable from your average WASP at one end and you have Hasidic Jews at the other end.

      This doesn't even encompass all European Jewry.

      • Big agree on this post

        A lot of westerners fundamentally misunderstand the concept of ethnicity and boil everything down to race. The OP above you's description of Jews as just white WASPs and Hasidic Jews on a narrow spectrum is pretty fundamentally wrong.

        White or white passing Ashkenazim are usually front and center to what the average western perception is of Jews but, there's Sephardic, Mizrahi, Beta Israel, Indian Jews, Yemenite Jews, Chinese Jews, the list goes on. And lots that your average westerner would definitely not consider a white WASP. I am a Black Ashkenazi Jew.

        Israel doesn't represent all Jews and yeah, Jews are still oppressed throughout the world. Real antisemitism, not whatever bullshit the ADL cries about when someone even mildly and rightfully criticizes Israel.

        The whiteness that some Jews are granted is conditional, and right now Zionist Jews are a useful prop for the USA but I guarantee they will be dropped as soon as it is convenient to the fascist projects. Fascists still shoot up synagogues and they don't give a shit about how any of us feel about Israel.

        Meanwhile Westerners are just spouting the same Protocols shit they've been doing for centuries, but now Westerners feel like they can say it louder than before because of what Israel is doing to Palestinians.

        Agree with you here on giving Palestinians latitude because yeah, they are actively being genocided.

        At the end of the day, I do feel it is important for those of us who are diasporic Jews who oppose the genocide to be loud about it - it is Israel's goal to make people think like the original banned poster, so that they can further their settler project by getting Jews to leave and move to Israel. I will say that shit with my whole chest until I die, free Palestine and fuck Israel, they do not get to decide and speak for the rest of us.

        Idk where im going with this post, I'm just rambling at this point but shit like the banned user's OP just pisses me off, its so uninformed, and at the same time its definitely not anywhere as bad as what Palestinians are suffering through - we can focus on dismantling, organizing against, and denouncing the genocide without resorting to antisemitic talking points because there is a life or death task at hand

  • I also looked through that users post about this on lemmygrad and it looks like they were willing and did engage in some self-crit so I wanna just link to that post here too. link

  • didn't you have c/userunion for this kind of thing?

    • I believe c/userunion got the axe for being a breeding ground for struggle sessions and shit flinging, and not particularly helpful when it came to productive discussions

      • yeah it got replaced by the equally bad c/selfcrit

        honestly the way bans are handled on Hexbear can be annoying especially because of this. Not that I think admins/mods should HAVE to respond/consider ban appeals, but it seems like the only thing someone can do if they get banned is just...make another account - which is dumb if they're like a lemmygrad or other instance user.

  • Just need to say that the People's Court theme immediately popped into my head when I read this. I think this could be a good idea but would probably need a lot of pretty strict ground rules on participation and such to prevent slapfights. I'd also think there would need to be pretty heavy moderation from people skilled at mediating

16 comments