It wasn’t a hostile discussion or anything, i didn’t even go full “the kulaks deserved it” (although the mod that single-handedly banned me did go full “the kulaks did not deserve it”). I just laid out plainly and calmly that revolutions are inherently authoritarian, that Luxemburg said “the revolution will be as violent as the ruling class makes it necessary” and that there’s one Trotzki quote i 100% agree with: “If the October Revolution hadn’t succeeded, the world would have known a Russian word for fascism 10 years before Mussolini’s March on Rome”. Basically the whole “Jakarta Method” train of thought laid out clearly and without calling anybody names.
Note that this was on an explicitly left-leaning server that does not allow cops and troops to join. Also after several days of another poster starting destructive, aggressive bad faith arguments in the politics channel until a number of users went “disengage” on her and the channel had to be frozen until recently, when she immediately started being hostile and arguing in bad faith again, which got her not one, but two warnings from the same mod without further consequences. Meanwhile, when i defend AES without attacking anybody, that’s apparently too much for her to handle. No advance warning, no “sis, you’re talking to me as a mod here”, not even a notification that i got banned.
The best part is that according to screenshots a friend just sent me, she’s now completely going off about “authoritarians”. The nerve some people have.
Sorry for posting pointless internet drama here, i just needed to vent.
I’m sorry that happened to you.
There always seems to be a political bias against communists, especially in this new phase of the red scare, and mods will find any pretext to ban communists because they’ve been so heavily indoctrinated against communism.
Once things have cooled off, I would consider messaging that mod and pointing out that you didn’t attack anyone, you just defended your political position, and you were banned without warning although the person who was slinging personal insults got multiple warnings and was treated with kid gloves. I personally wouldn’t want to be invited back but I would put a little bit of a barb in the end of my message by saying that the mods actions not only were an expression of authoritarianism by silencing dissenting voices on the left but that their actions are a tacit approval of the tyranny of a political orthodoxy that permits slinging personal insults so long as the person has the “correct” political beliefs. Then I’d say that they are a parody of anti-authoritarianism and they’ll probably justify their actions and inaction to themselves because the spooky tankie is pointing out uncomfortable truths which is further evidence of how they cannot be permitted into these spaces (because otherwise you’d be forced to confront your own cognitive dissonance - the horror!)
Note that doing so will not earn you any friends. But sometimes people like this need to be called to account and, perhaps over time, cracks will start to form in their anti-communist indoctrination.
Yeah, i’ll try to fix this as best as i can. It’s not easy, i can’t message her if she doesn’t add me as a friend because we do not share a server anymore. So she can just ignore me without listening what i have to say. But a friend of mine will try to get a word in with the mods, she’s been unhappy with that one mod’s moderation style for some time now, and maybe that’ll help. IDK.
I’ll be honest here, i would actually want to get back into that place, i really like a lot of the people there and don’t want to be cut off from them. I’ve only exchanged DMs with a handful of them because i’ve just been there for a few months and don’t go DMing people out of my own, but that handful now includes people i’m meeting irl. I’m actually having vegan sushi with a girl i met there tomorrow. I just click with a lot of the transfems there and idk if there’s another server with users from my country where that’s the case. I’m looking around rn, but it’s not looking good, the other big servers tend to have transmed and / or chaser problems and that’s an instant hard nope for me. It’s not made easier that i just don’t feel very comfortable around dudes and am not interested in servers that aren’t overwhelmingly transfem.
Ah, fair enough.
In that case I’d avoid slinging shit at the mod and just keep it to the fact that you were stating your own political beliefs, you weren’t using personal insults against anyone, and despite that fact you were given no warnings you were immediately banned. I’d also mention that the other user was given multiple warnings for actually breaking the rules and yet they weren’t banned.
If you can get a message across to the head mod, try to explain that you feel as though the mod that banned you allowed their own personal bias to influence their actions in a way that was unjustly harsh against you, unjustly tolerant of the other user, and how this ultimately crrates a hostile community that could rapidly become toxic if allowed to continue.
I think in future, especially in broad left spaces, I’d recommend hiding your power level and avoiding getting too involved in ideological debates. There’s a time and a place for that stuff and when you are marginalised it can be hard to come across safer spaces for finding community and, unfortunately, it often means that you have to bite your tongue and then vent later on in a place like Hexbear or you can take out your ideological frustrations on some unwitting “anti-tankie” on some other platform.
I know it fucking sucks to find a place that accepts you and is safer only to find out that it’s openly hostile to your politics (despite being for leftists 🙄) but often it’s a choice of whether you want to be right or if you want to be accepted. (I’m not trans myself but I’m queer and very much neurodivergent so there aren’t that many spaces which are welcoming and supportive for me that are actually safe enough. I often find myself needing to compartmentalise my capital-P politics in these spaces.)
Congrats on finding someone to meet up with! I hope you enjoy the sushi.
Good luck with it.
Yeah, i normally do that, but it’s a server where it’s fine to post guillotine memes about billionaires and one girl was talking about how she wanted to join a trot org yesterday. There’s daily active posters with hamsic profile pics. I was under the assumption that voicing my opinion in a non-sectarian way would be completely alright, my posts also got a few thumbs ups and
under them as well. That place isn’t hexbear, but it was the last place outside of here or lemmygrad where i would’ve expected to get into trouble for letting the mask slip. Like i said, the ban came completely unexpected, it’s purest sectarianism or maybe personal animosity against me or both, idk.
😔
Oh, and thanks for that, too. The pics on the menu look delicious and the girl i’m going with is just the sweetest person all around, i’m sure it’ll be great.
It sounds like it is possible that the other mods would significantly disagree with your ban
That’s possible, but i have no idea how to reach out to them.