Over the past months it has become increasingly apparent that the 196 moderation team has a member who does not align with the goals and values of the rest of the team.
196 has a very clear stance on tankies and other authoritarians. No authoritarian apologia of any kind is allowed in our space. It’s not our intent to tell leftists how to be leftist, but we’re not willing to allow somebody we so fundamentally disagree with to moderate our community.
Based on this stance we’ve decided to remove Kittenzrulz from the moderation team.
Why demote Kittenzrulz123?
Kittenzrulz has consistently been opposed to the condemnation of tankies and has made several worrying statements that show that there’s a deep ideological gulf between her and 196.
Furthermore it should be noted that kittenzrulz has not taken part in moderation decisions on lemmy for months, while she is only somewhat active on the matrix (as a mod). This will not be a major change in that sense.
The following is a list of screenshots that should help to showcase what we mean.
spoiler
This one is from yesterday
Demoting Kittenzrulz123
First to be clear we’re not banning her from the lemmy community or the matrix space and she is free to continue to interact with all of us. We still want her around as we think of her as a friend who we care about and want to see happy and healthy, though we understand this decision might cause kittenz some stress.
As of this moment kittenzrulz is no longer a mod of 196. A vote was held and all mods that voted voted in favor of demoderation, with a few mods abstaining (either due to not having an opinion on this or due to being inactive).
And just to make sure everybody is on the same page, this is not a condemnation of kittenz as a person. People can disagree on things and still get along, we’re just not comfortable letting her make decisions on our behalf and want to prevent any further problems we see as a likely outcome.
The problem with tankies has nothing to do with them being communists, and everything to do with what they justify and defend. You mentioned in your comment that the worst mistakes and excesses of Marxist-Leninism can happen under any ideology, which is true. However, defending and justifying those things is also not allowed for the exact same reason. It doesn’t matter if someone is justifying “Operation Wetback,” or the ethnic displacement Kazakhs under the USSR; the Ken State Massacre, or Tiananmen Square massacre. Bad things are bad no matter who does it, and defense of such things will never be allowed, regardless of ideology.
Rule breaking tankie behavior has never been about their particular ideology, only about more universal standards that we apply to everyone. If your beliefs necessitate that you give “critical support” to the terrible actions of particular governments, then maybe you need to ask yourself why? Why do you need to justify terrible things just because you think they have our best interests at heart? Is it really that necessary to define what is right and wrong by who does it? That is something I do not understand; I don’t get having such loyalty to an ideology.
Watch Hexbear’s slop thread linking to this post misread all of this and say you’re actually a fascist transphobe.
They really think Blahaj is a transphobic honey pot.
Ok but the sidebar literally says that “Proselytization, support, or defense of … Nazism, Marxism-Leninism, Maoism [is not welcome]”. So forgive my confusion here please but to me these are contradictory statements. If I defend the actions of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam or the South African Communist Party is that bannable? Because it gets mentioned right after Nazism and I should think that any defend of any Nazi party would get one banned immediately.
Also my comment got removed as “tankie comment” even though I don’t even mention any specific event. So it’s hard to not understand this literally as “Marxism-Leninism is not welcome here, we believe it’s a harmful as Nazism”.
And banning QinShiHuangsShlong as “Tankie” for calling out the racist copy-pasta thereby siding with westerners explaining to him how it’s totally not racist to think its funny that people will get in trouble with the supposed draconian government all but confirmed that this is bullshit. I don’t believe you.