Which mods/admins were being Power Tripping Bastards?
@PugJesus
What sanction did they impose (e.g. community ban, instance ban, removed comment)?
Community ban, comments wiped from modlog
Provide a screenshot of the relevant modlog entry (don’t de-obfuscate mod names).
Provide a screenshot and explanation of the cause of the sanction (e.g. the post/comment that was removed, or got you banned).
Unable to find comments in modlog
Explain why you think its unfair and how you would like the situation to be remedied.
I was community banned after the mod falsely smeared me as doing genocide apologia. Not just me but also the hosts of the Blowback podcast Brendan James and Noah Kulwin, as well as Noam Chomsky. According to PugJesus, we are all actually pro genocide.
Context:
In this post about the victims of the Iraq War, I shared Season 1 of the Blowback podcast as it does a phenomenal job covering the war and aftermath while humanizing the victims. PugJesus falsely smeared them as “campist cretins” to discredit the entire podcast. I pushed back.
PugJesus brought up a previous discussion where they also tried to discredit the Journalists and Podcast based on tweets. Here, as with the more recent post, pushed back.
The tweets in question:
According to PugJesus, this is evidence that Brendan James and Noah Kulwin are pro Russia and pro Ukrainian genocide. I completely disagree.
To clarify my position. I have always maintained the position that Ukraine is fighting a war of self defense and fighting for their sovereignty. I have always maintained that Putin’s war is illegal and unjustifiable; and that what Russia should do to pull out completely and enact reparations. I have always maintained that I am in complete support of supplying arms to Ukraine, same as any other people fighting against Imperialism and/or Colonialism. I also consider Putin’s invasion justifies the need of a European security pact, although I’d prefer it to be one without the US. And yes, Putin’s war is a genocide, as multiple genocide scholars have expressed.
I do not consider the US to be a benevolent and altruistic actor. Instead I consider the US to not have the best interests of Ukraine at heart; using the opportunity to expand NATO for the benefit of US Hegemony and to extract capital out of Ukraine. I believe those are worth criticizing and not remotely “genocide apologia”
The two contentious points are as follows
Has the US escalated the conflict to further its own foreign policy goals? Or is saying so genocide apologia?
From the evidence I have seen, yes the US has escalated the conflict. That does not mean Ukraine is to blame, which they aren’t. Nor does it mean Russia hasn’t escalated the situation more than the US has, which is an easy argument to make and has merit. All it means is that there are actions by the US worth criticizing as they at the expense of Ukraine.
Sources:
- Chomsky and Barsamian, In Ukraine, Diplomacy Has Been Ruled Out
- Noam Chomsky & Vijay Prashad: U.S. Must Stop Undermining Negotiations with Russia to End Ukraine War
- Senators say Israel blocking transfer of US-owned Iron Dome batteries to Ukraine
- The Russia-Ukraine Crisis: A Scorecard on Biden’s Response
Has the US used the conflict to exploit Ukraine financially? Or is saying so genocide apologia?
I think the US has certainly exploited Ukraine, in particular with the usual neoliberal model of loans and privatization via the IMF and World Bank. This is a criticism of the US and of Neoliberal economics, not of Ukraine who’s facing an existential threat.
Sources:
- Ukraine’s Debt: an Instrument of Pressure and Spoliation in the Hands of Creditors
- US corporations cash in on Ukraine’s oil and gas
- Ukraine moves closer to large-scale privatization breakthrough
Of course both these criticisms are peanuts when it comes to Trump’s complete alignment with Putin’s foreign policy aims.
I’m no expert on Russia/Ukraine, if anyone has sources I’ve overlooked please share. My main concern is the discrediting of Blowback and the Journalists who host it, who have done phenomenally detailed and sourced work on the Iraq War, Cuba, Korea, Afghanistan, and Cambodia. Likening them to “pro-genocide” is disingenuous at best and discrediting their work on that is an injustice.
Like I said, not getting into the subject matter.
My goal in this community is to try and keep things as limited as possible to a loose standard.
That standard holds no acceptance for bigotry. Beyond that, it’s about whether or not mod decisions are scaled to the offence.
It’s your bailiwick, you make the calls. I’m basing my opinion here on what’s visible via the post itself, any relevant user history, mod logs and general mod etiquette. Again loose standards, but that’s how I parse these things to minimize my own bias.
It’s impossible to entirely dump bias, though I’m at least average at doing so on most things. But the more I let myself be swayed by subject matter that is controversial, the less the process matters for me. Like, what’s the point of me even coming here and wasting people’s time if I’m just going to bandwagon on the external subject? It would be douchebaggery for me to do that.
For my part, I support the use of preemptive bans as a mod tool. I have opinions about how and when they are or aren’t power tripping, but as a tool, they’re valuable.
I stand by my reasoning of why this specific mod action was mid level PTB. Not egregious, but above the threshold of there being no overreach.
Since you are kinda asking, what I would have done first is warn them to stay away from any C/s I mod with the bullshit, or they’d catch a ban faster than a Ukrainian drone up Putin’s ass, and done exactly that if they showed. Then, when they fucked around, finding out would be an expected outcome because there wouldn’t be any doubt.
Or, a preemptive ban if I suspected them likely enough to fuck around no matter what the warning was.
But, again, I can’t see the removed comment in the post itself, and couldn’t when I wrote the comment. So there’s wiggle room in all that. So could any un-linked conversation, or sections that were linked and I missed.
Repeating again, it doesn’t matter if I agree or disagree with you, or op. As it happens, I agree with you on the Ukraine issue. But that shouldn’t matter for this community, or I might as well just fuck off.
Just making clear my position. Temp bans, on the subject of disinfo and genocide denial, are senseless to my eyes for the reason stated.
Fair enough :)