wet forest moon folklorist
10 months after I made this post, it was recirculated by bad faith anime accts to target me for antisemitism, which worked. the post was consequently removed by kolektiva.social and i was suspended from lgbtqia.space. both actions were reversed within a few days, presumably as mods actually read the thread and did their own critical thinking.
but it really showed me how easy it is for bad faith actors to limit speech on the fediverse
wet forest moon folklorist
we're in a precarious situation in regard to free speech in the US. in practice, there is bipartisan political agreement across our federal government that Palestinian lives are worth less than Israeli lives. our journalists do not accurately report on Israel's war on Palestinian journalists, let alone on the contours of the genocide. people who protest are unevenly brutalized, fired, silenced.
this is a refraction of reality that allows one people to kill another people. sound familiar?
wet forest moon folklorist
there is no way you could read through all my posts and construe any kind of genocidal intent, or denial of the Holocaust, or support for fascism, or antisemitism. you will find me grappling with the horror of genocide, thinking out loud about what "never again" should mean in 2024, and using clear and direct language to talk about my thought processes and experiences.
is that the kind of speech we should be banning on the fediverse? is that the kind of speech we should be reporting?
wet forest moon folklorist
here's a report made on some older posts of mine to my admin team last night. the contention is "holocaust inversion" and its not the first such report our admin team has to process on me. of course i'm not the one inverting holocaust on anyone, I'm just pointing out similarities in logic and tactics, which many other people smarter than me are also pointing out
wet forest moon folklorist
its fair to discuss unintentional antisemitism (and racism, misogyny, transphobia etc.) and i'm all for those discussions.
but admins unilaterally deleting people and ideas from audiences is very different -- that has a chilling effect on speech wherein people see the punishment and are then unsure what can or cannot be said, are afraid of being wrong, maybe question their own ideas or feelings on a given topic. it precludes critical thinking rather than engage in it
mivox :ri:
@seachanger “Holocaust inversion” is a new one on me. What horseshit.
scott f
@mivox @seachanger a few days ago there was a blog making the rounds on here saying that any comparison of any actions of persons or people who are Jewish to any actions of Nazis was inherently antisemitic and was equally offensive to using the N-word. I was surprised that the author acknowledged what is happening in Gaza is genocide. However, they said, it's still more important never to compare it to the most famous example of genocide that we all grew up learning about, than to stop it.
wet forest moon folklorist
@scott @mivox i didn't see that but i'm curious if they discussed intent. anyone comparing oppressions with the intent to prevent oppression is obviously doing the opposite of using the N-word, which really seems like an intellectually lazy and inappropriate metaphor to me
wet forest moon folklorist
@scott what's interesting is how many Jews just don't take this position, but how this particular person is acting as if they/we all feel the same way. so this tells me the analogy doesn't work, because we all understand universally not to say the N word, there is no debate among normal people about that one.
just seems like a forced attempt to silence a way of talking that also happens to allow us to talk about Israel's genocide of Palestinians
scott f
@seachanger here's the blog https://miniver.blogspot.com/2024/09/never-compare-jews-to-nazis.html
scott f
@seachanger yeah, after I read it I was reflecting: didn't they just accuse Naomi Klein, Masha Gessen, and Hannah Arendt of rank antisemitism?
wet forest moon folklorist
@scott also its just a very difficult line in the sand to defend because there are so many ways to say what the author says cannot be said. and like you say, many great thinkers do say these things, and certainly not as calculated attempts to invoke trauma, as with use of the N-word (so in a way, they are minimizing n-word use here, which i've learned we really shouldn't do via comparisons like this)
Jeremy Kahn
The latest attempts to silence resistance-to-evil/not-in-my-name opinions on Fedi
...have been a lot
I'm reminded of the (now-fallen) uneasy alliance between (mostly white & privileged) "free speech libertarians" and anti-oppression activists from the early days of the modern Internet (1998-2002?)
the FSLs were so obsessed with "getting the process right" and "never telling anyone they weren't allowed in the room"
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