This will come as no surprise to any one given they are a .ml account, but now that they are attempting to discourage people from voting, they revealed their true face.

Edit: only now seeing they also post links to x.com still. I liked their content because I am anti genocide too, but it’s clear there’s a big the_donald vibe there.

I thought that community had a specific "no lesser evil" rule?

If so, it sucks but this is ydi based on what you said. I disagree with that rule when in place, but we are all supposed to at least glance at rules and not use a community if we're unwilling to follow them.

If my memory is wrong, yup, ptb, which is par for the course

E: that’s a litteral screenshot of the community sidebar at the time of ban, not sure how that gets downvoted?

Your labels are way nicer than mine, but glad to see I'm not the only one 😂

Don't waste time arguing with them on .ml communities, you'll just get banned for no reasons and they'll gloat about it

YDI for continuing to engage with fascists on their own communities.

Fair. I’m not a fan of blocking and banning. Avoiding sure, but if you have a community, you should allow discourse. Manufacturing_consent isn’t a community but an echo chamber where any discussion that doesn’t align with a mod that is noticeably stuck in box-thinking and labeling results in a permanent ban with the label “Zionist”.

I’ve challenged them to a debate.

If we’re truly are trying to rise above Reddit, then the echo chambers have to go. Or as someone else said: label it in your sidebar that you want everyone to agree with you.

A small but unfortunate side effect of the ongoing genocide in Palestine is that it's given a legitimate cause to people who were previously (and still) cheerleading the attack on Ukraine, etc.

Also, this particular account (geneva) is fairly anti-semitic - eg. refusing to distinguish between jews and zionists.

The usual tankie shit.

The name of the community is literally "manufacturing consent," and you're arguing in favor of consenting to genocide. You're the exact kind of reason the community exists in the first place

OPs complete lack of self-awareness is amazing, right? I count this as the third attack against a leftist comm on LW in eight days. I guess the MOG right-wingers are getting agitated, lol. How about the DNC stops standing up pro-genocide candidates, then we might be able to get along.

• https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/77038779
• https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/76743866
• https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/76643735

Yeah those damn anti-zionists and their propaganda, right?

100% agree with you about geneva_convenience's tendency to conflate judaism with zionism. But there's absolutely nothing wrong with calling out democrat (or any other) candidates who are soft on zionism. We need more, not less of that.

There is absolutely no need to debate the merits of zionism. If you want to both sides the genocide in gaza and lebanon and the west bank then fuck you. Biden was just as reprehensible as Trump on the issue of Israel. No question. He made mewling noises while adopting exactly the same policies on Israel. That's the only difference. You can argue all you like about his other policies. But in this respect there was/is no daylight between the two approved parties in terms of support for Israel. By definition, this is 100% manufactured consent for a war nobody wants.

Your labels are way nicer than mine, but glad to see I’m not the only one 😂

i've seen them before but can't figure out how to set them on lemmy. how do you get them?

Tis the season!

This election doesn't offer an off-ramp to genocide

So then it's not a democracy and it doesn't matter if people participate in the sham.

On the other hand, if there is some semblance of democracy, then there is always an off-ramp to genocide or anything else, which is getting people to demand it. By giving your vote to a politician who doesn't offer an off-ramp to genocide, you are choosing not to demand it, you are saying that you find what they're offering acceptable, genocide included.

If a critical mass of people refuse to vote for a candidate over an issue, then they will change their stance on that issue if they care at all about winning. If all you say is, "Hey, we'd prefer if you did this, but it's not going to have any impact on how we vote," then it doesn't matter how many people say that, they're not going to change their stance because you've given them no reason to.

Stop letting politicians tell you what is and isn't possible and start telling them instead.

I swear, the kind of trivial shit that will end a politician's career because people think it's kinda cringe, shit like the Dean Scream, and you think this is just set in stone because they say it is?

Yet somehow, that doesn’t actually stop the genocide and seems to forgo the fact that a never-war gimme my peace prize pedophile started a war you’re paying for at the pump or in your groceries bill.

You can agree that both biden and trump were horrendous for the palestinian people and their cause, but what’s next? All I’m seeing is .ml accounts getting bogged down in ideology and complete lack of action or planning on how to get out of this.

And anyone who tries to move forward is called a zionist. It’s like we’re all 10 years old.

I’m beginning to suspect that the status quo is the goal here. Keep trump in power, because he’s effectively the fastest path to American destabilisation and destruction.

I just wish this .ml cult would say those things out loud. Say out loud you’re proud extremists who are happy to have a pedophile start endless wars and sustain the genocide you condemn because secretly trump is helping you “take down the west”.

By definition and by these broad modding powers on .ml to ban free speech and only encourage monolithic views, this is 100% manufacturing consent for the destruction of western societies.

And that’s fine if you believe that, just say it and don’t pretend you’re “left” and want the people in Palestine to not suffer.

I think it might be app specific.

On Voyager you go to the profile of the user you want to tag, click the three dots in the upper right corner, and select “edit tag”

And I hear all that, and I’m fully on board with getting politicians to stop supporting the genocide, since there are at most 3 who even dare to talk about it, what do you propose we do this election? Just sit it out? Do nothing?

I understand this viewpoint. I think it’s less an opinion and more a neurological condition: being so embedded in an ideology which is by the power of AIPAC impossible to achieve in today’s political landscape. This is a rather neurodivergent absolutist approach hoping for a utopia any smart person know is not achieved within the parameters of today’s power structure.

I think expectating this situation to change first before we consider voting, is not going get us anywhere. So when applying this force of complete inaction to the current situation, you get more trump, more greater Israel. More Canada and cuba invasions, even less pedophile accountability.

And then I have to wonder, who runs .ml? If this ideology is being promoted so radically that people get banned even attempting to discuss this, the only outcome the .ml owners seem to want is to maintain the status quo, which makes them very disingenuous to the Palestinian cause. Come to think of it, they may have been the “never Hillarys” that brought us trump in the first place.

You don’t even need a tinfoil hat to see that if .ml is indeed russian made, trump is a russian plant (buy russian oil), then it all makes perfect sense.

Tldr; if a the response from a so called ultra left wing, anti nazi, pro palestine lemmy instance to the biggest right wing biggot, corrupt pedophile war monger in American history is to NOT vote him out by all means necessary, then that instance has revealed it’s true nature and purpose: to maintain the status quo, keep trump in office and let the situation in palestine further deteriorate.

I’m happy to debate and be proven wrong, but every .ml response I’ve got in the last 24h has been one paragraph indoctrinated slogans, or slurs or responses with very limited vocabulary.

How is encouraging people to vote the same as manufacturing consent?

You can agree that both biden and trump were horrendous for the palestinian people and their cause, but what’s next? All I’m seeing is .ml accounts getting bogged down in ideology and complete lack of action or planning on how to get out of this.

Yes, I do agree. What's next? Fight against zionist candidates and vote for anti-zionist candidates. Seems pretty straightforward. If you have no anti-zionist candidate then sure, vote against trump. Seems sensible. I don't think anyone is arguing you shouldn't vote. They / we are just pointing out that it is unlikely by itself to move the dial on US policy towards the Israeli genocide, without a ton of pressure from the public. I'd love to be proved wrong.

I’m beginning to suspect that the status quo is the goal here. [stuff you completely invented in your own head] And that’s fine if you believe that, just say it and don’t pretend you’re “left” and want the people in Palestine to not suffer.

What have I said to suggest such a thing? Can you point to it? Or are you just projecting your bias onto me?

So little math equations: if AIPAC pays for all electable candidates, you are promoting not voting or voting in a way that can’t make a difference.

Therefore you’re promoting the status quo, allowing a pedophile to continue destabilising the world.

That matches with one man who wants the exact same thing. Coincidence the word propaganda originated from there too.

Sincerely

An anti-zionist

I agree, however, Geneva does the same every election cycle. I first saw them do it with AOC. This is voter discouragement and very well timed too. Never-hillary got us trump in the first place.

Aside from that, in the last 24h I’ve established that several of their .ml communities are designed as echo chambers to promote a very radical agenda and that they most likely don’t even care about zionism or the palestinian genocide. They just want to keep trump in power. And that’s fine, it’s a free world, but that they are cloack and dagger about it and allow this level of mod behaviour is pretty fucked up.

Please don't bad-jacket me. Whatever you mistakenly believe I'm "promoting", you are patently wrong. I'm not asking anyone to do anything other than support anti-zionist candidates wherever they can. All I ask of others is they stop harassing me for having my own, perfectly reasonable, opinion.

Encouraging people to vote for people who support genocide is manufacturing consent for genocide

These people want trump to win. They do everything in their power to make the left look as bad as possible. They need things to get worse and the west to decend into fascism so their shitty ideology looks like the lesser evil.

No, what happens is that folks like you get whipped up every election cycle into a lynching fervor, because you are desperate for Trump to lose and you have a lot of strong feelings. But instead of employing that energy usefully towards fighting folks who genuinely do wish you harm (i.e. the republicans) you are directing it at leftists and chasing shadows and foreign agents. Why is that? Just please do something more useful and positive with your time.

It would have been really nice if someone had told me that years ago and there’s some “find your way in the lemmy jungle” kind of onboarding, but after 24h of talking to people from multiple instances I’m afraid you’re right.

This is so far to the left they are actually extreme right. You’ve put it very well.

The one thing that needs to be added is that this is mostly the instance admins and the chronically online mods who are no doubt paid. There are a fair bit of accounts on that instance who do not share the ideological views of the masters, and there are accounts on other instances who will peddle the most hardcore version of the .ml founder ideology.

I’m beginning to understand why this will never overtake reddit sadly.

Polar opposite viewpoints, but at least we’re having civil discussion.

Your comment really read to me like you were describing genevas actions.

Just to be clear, geneva is the one who, instead of doing literally anything to improve the plight of the Palestinian people, posts about how mediocre the candidates opposing the republican candidate.

I don’t think you understand the agenda of the aforementioned mod and their instance admins. Instead of outright calling themselves the_donald.ml, they do it under the most roundabout way pretending to be progressive and to care about Palestinian people while in reality just trying to keep trump and the chaos he brings about.

Are tankies allowed to post their opinions in MoG? I think you are making bad faith assumptions based on vibes. Do you have clear evidence of your claims? It seems unlikely to me that geneva_convenience doesn't care about the palestinian people, and it seems unfair to make that claim without substantiating it. You can dislike and criticise their opinions without jumping to wild accusations.

I’m encouraging people to vote. That’s it. Nothing to do with genocide.

And to avoid this from going too long, I’ve had a bit of a side discussion with geneva after this, and after asking multiple times, it’s pretty obvious they are a closet trump supporter, which is incredibly insincere, considering they are using the Palestinian genocide to do it.

Sorry I wasn’t talking about you, I was talking about the .ml instance admins and their power mods.

You were semi defending them in jest I think, so that was my rebuttal to that.

As far as what you want: I want exactly the same. And when no viable anti Zionist candidates are available, rather than letting my autistic brain take me to an absolutist place where nothing else can happen, I see the virtue of pragmatism and getting democratic power back, and start by uninstalling trump. That’s the first obstacle towards a way to resolve the other problems.

Yep voyager, but it’s on device, so doesn’t move across devices or web.

Lol, I must have responded to you like 5 times in different threads and I don’t check the username each time.

We’ve established we want the same thing. You walked into a debate without fully knowing the context possibly. I didn’t have the context either. It looks like geneva and their instance are effectively a pro trump brigade in disguise, which threw me off, because I was assuming that being anti genocide means they would want trump to go too, but they don’t, and they might not even be interested in every genocide.

So they are playing a well organised trojan horse game to get left leaning people to actually leave the right wing establishment in power.

I always wondered how Lemmy is free, and I think I’ve found the money.

Idr why, but I also came to a similar conclusion about that user (like over a year ago I think). Though they might just be an accelerationist.

You did specifically say "vote against Ken Paxton," and the only options for that are a rightwing libertarian, and someone whose official policy position is "Israel has the right to defend its people," which is a straight up dogwhistle at this point

The problem is the lingering Lemmy.ml federation. Because the actual developers of Lemmy own Lemmy.ml it gives it some legitimacy as opposed to the other tankie cesspits.

There are other software's like piefed and mbin being developed that have tools which allow Admins to provide a more curated experience so new users dont sign up and have the first post be "all Americans deserve to die for voting for Joe biden".

As the fediverse grows normal people will push out extremists. Early reddit was full of extreme reddit content.

Accelerationist or just kalingrad payroll completely not having any ideals or values whatsoever.

I did say that, because context matters. This is a SENATE race in TEXAS. You get shot with cop applause if you say you’re a democrat or anything other than maga over there.

And i agree its a dogwistle, but what’s the alternative. Get people in Texas to keep Paxton and therefore Trump?

Get both houses blue, impeach trump, remove at least Thomas through impeach too, possibly that other kluklux justice with the upside down flags, and then install more progressives, preferably with a grassroots funded superpac, or get a better SC to overturn citizens united, roe v wade and that other one that unlimits campaign finance. And only THEN do I see a reasonable pathway to dislodge US politics from insane levels of zionist influence.

Anyway, learned a lot today about who pays for Lemmy. Turns out I walked away from one spez right into the arms of a bunch of spezzes, except these guys live in hiding.

Yep, except here the MAU numbers are dropping every month, and we’re not going to make it with this high level of infighting this early on. I hope I’m proven wrong, and I’m working every day here to have that not be the case, but the MAU stats this year are really discouraging, doubly so now that I’ve discovered lemmy.ml was the_donald.ml all along.

What is MoG?

I think you might find that this very well could be a payrol person who has very much no values or beliefs whatsoever, and just astroturfs for a living.

My updated opinion on geneva is based on this little sidebar (which may not be up for long, as I’ve essentially invited them to instance ban me)

I want the same and then some.

No, it's not obvious, at all. It's just a wild, unsupported, bad faith accusation. None of the examples you provided do anything but make you look clueless about the whole topic. Minimizing the genocide in the way you are doing as though it's just a niche side issue after you deal with Trump, is exactly the sort of thing that gets principled people offside.

Quit while you are behind.

I believe you can, under the orignal convention of the fediverse, picking your instance does not have to define your political stance.

I’ve just asked a few .ml users how they view their instance, and those who are radical ‘anti-imperialist’ to the point they want to keep the most imperialistic US president in office, are a very small and vocal minority by the looks of it. And of course that same minorty is moderating their bigger communities and rule with impunity, because they are effectively soldiers for the instance admins.

It’s just a matter of perspective my friend. I am talking about getting people to vote to get trump out, and this particular vocal minority, fully armed with typical pro-trump supporting talking points comes in with what is essentially, ‘but what about the genocide’ whataboutism.

“How dare you say a genocide is whataboutism” Yes, exactly, that’s how whataboutism works. You derail, because you don’t like the original objective of getting people to vote, because your work for or are ideologically aligned with trump.

So, I’ll put you through the same test: are you a trump supporter?

That question was asked 3 times to geneva, and then they blocked me. If you, after all that happened, can’t say for sure your are not in favour to have the most corrupt creepy guy leading the most overdeveloped military in the world, you have in fact shown your true colours.

So you sweeping in here to defend that type of behaviour doesn’t look all that promising, but I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt.

They are actively bulldozing institutions and knowledge as we speak. Revolution is coming. It’s up to the silent majority how it shakes out. Status quo is no longer an option.

I see. You mod this place.

Even though you’re removing comments that encourage voting as off topic (which they technically are) but you can just let voting sink them to the bottom, I do want to commend you -despite clearly being much more aligned with geneva than with me, for not bulldozing my comments. I respect you for that.

And then I have to wonder, who runs .ml? If this ideology is being promoted so radically that people get banned even attempting to discuss this

You were banned from a community, not the instance. The community is run by Geneva_Convenience (who I have some problems with, but don't really disagree with in this case).

You don’t even need a tinfoil hat to see that if .ml is indeed russian made, trump is a russian plant (buy russian oil), then it all makes perfect sense.

You do need a tinfoil hat. You've constructed a conspiratorial worldview where everyone who disagrees with you, no matter why can be dismissed as secretly working for sinister foreigners. Even if one group disagrees with you from a left-wing perspective and another disagrees with you from the right, even if some are Marxists and some are anarchists, it's all "RUSSIA! RUSSIA! RUSSIA!"

If you come back down to earth, surely you must understand that not everyone agrees with you on everything. It seems like liberals have this extremely narrow range of what "disagrees with me, but isn't a foreign asset" looks like and I'm pretty sure it's just Bush-era neocons. It's legit crazy. I seriously think y'all just need to read books, like, not even leftist theory, just anything outside of the present day culture war. Just to understand that other perspectives exist, beyond Fox News and CNN.

I understand this viewpoint. I think it’s less an opinion and more a neurological condition: being so embedded in an ideology which is by the power of AIPAC impossible to achieve in today’s political landscape. This is a rather neurodivergent absolutist approach hoping for a utopia any smart person know is not achieved within the parameters of today’s power structure.

"Impossible." You sure like to throw that word around. What's really impossible?

Every year, the gap between the rich and the poor increases. Every year, carbon emissions increase and the temperature rises, the weather itself becomes more and more unstable, making it harder to grow food. Every year, there are more refugees displaced, both from climates becoming uninhabitable and from the bombs we drop on innocent people for no good reason.

Nothing that we are doing right now, as a society, is sustainable. Which is to say that it is impossible for the things we're doing to be sustained. The reasons why they're unsustainable are not just because of human systems or individual politicians, but because of physical, natural laws.

Now, you say it's "impossible" to divert course, and physics says that it's impossible to stay the course, who do you think is gonna win? If we make a law that says we can flap our arms and fly, and the laws of physics say we can't, who wins? And you say I'm the one with a "neurological condition?"

This mortal, human system can insist that it's "impossible" to change all it wants. But it will. If it does not bend, it will break. I would prefer it to bend, I am trying to make it bend, and you keep telling me that it's "impossible" for it to bend. Alright then, it will break. Not because of anything I do or say, not because I want it to, but but because it is physically unsustainable.

Any strategy or plan I present, you'd just pick apart and dismiss, because you don't grasp that. It doesn't matter what the system claims is impossible, there won't be a system if we can't make things happen. If you understood that, you'd be in the same boat as me, looking for a way to make the necessary changes and dismissing any strategy that just aims to uphold the status quo. But if you believe that you can sustain the unsustainable, or that you can trump physical laws with human laws, there's no real point in discussing strategy because we're not viewing the situation the same way.

MAU has been steady for 2 years which is pretty good. If you include nodeBB its grown. I think its hard to break out and reach new users but they can be retained.

I think we are on the same boat. But the mod of this community might delete comments because we are getting off topic so I’d rather not write a 5 paragraph response only to have it deleted. Point me to place where we can continue this discussion and I’ll join you.

We are in the same boat, I’d say our differences of opinion are merely because we don’t know each other well enough and some minor differences can’t be avoided.

Ok, last numbers I saw we were only stay somewhat flat and that was mostly because of an influx of nsfw content.

I’d say flatlining in a world where centralised monopolistic social media networks are now clearly aligned with fascism inside an internet which is still growing in size, is not all that great. We’re on our way to becoming the floating flotilla of outcasts, but I hope your optimism will turn out to be justified.

This is a rather neurodivergent absolutist approach hoping for a utopia any smart person know is not achieved within the parameters of today’s power structure.

This is a very ableist way to make this point. I know what you're trying to say here, but you're also saying that neurodivergent people are not smart because you're saying "any smart person" would not have a neurodivergent approach.

Most neurodivergent individuals have much higher levels of intelligence. A side effect of some neurodivergent conditions is to try and make sense of the world through labeling and absolute solutions to complex problems. Particularly social issues we have a very hard time with because they are infinitely complex.

In the last 24 hours on Lemmy I’ve been called a Zionist, a misogynist and ablist. Eventually we’ll get to that utopia where we’re all welcoming and the last bastion of free speech, unless you mention Israel, gender or any neurodivergent condition.

I guess the people on the internet know me better than I do, and it’s time for that long hard look in the mirror.

But hey, at least I discovered a massive hornets nest on the internet full off self proclaimed leftists who secretly want trump to continue suppressing information about pedophile rings, bomb school full of girls, and shoot American citizens with other Americans, because all Americans are bad, and that’s the only way the genocide will stop.

Sorry if you’re neurodivergent and I hurt your feelings with my comment, that was obviously not the intention.