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Mastodon.social removes anti-genocide post (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 days ago by timewarp@lemmy.world to c/progressivepolitics@lemmy.world

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I've generally felt like progressives were the first community to call out the genocide being committed by Israel. I also had assumed Mastodon.social was more progressive, although I had seen lots of defense of genocide when Biden was the one supporting it. Recently however I encountered a post claiming Palestinian was a newly invented term to describe Arabs in Gaza, and that the word Palestinian itself was antisemitic & represented the eradication of Jews.

I responded that statements like this makes it easier to dehumanize Palestinians, and that there really is no difference between Nazi Germany & Israel at this point. However, the mods at Mastodon.social removed my response claiming it is Holocaust inversion.

There are plenty of Jews that are against the genocide & mass murder Israel is conducting. It is a real shame that Mastodon.social mods believe the genocide being carried out by Israel represents the views of all Jews worldwide, and the mods intend to use the Holocaust to justify it.

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[+] donuts@lemmy.world -15 points 4 days ago (2 children)

The removal is not necessarily a defense of Israel, but rather a concern about misrepresenting history in a way that could be misleading or inflammatory.

Saying there's no difference between Nazi Germany and Israel trivializes the Holocaust

[–] Entertain529@lemmy.ml 15 points 3 days ago

I think its the genocide of Palestinian's that's being trivialized here..

[–] timewarp@lemmy.world 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

I encourage you to read about Nazi Germany's rise to power & compare that to the actions being carried out by Israel today. Albert Einstein wrote about this over 70 years ago.

[+] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de -7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Donuts is right, though. Adding your analogy with the nazis is almost certainly what got your post removed. That's the rule on places like mastodon.social. Once you confuse or misrepresent the holocaust or draw analogies, you're out. Whether someone thinks this is correct or not, ...it's the rules. If you want to be able to say this, you need to find a different place, and it also needs to be in a different jurisdiction. Or skip that sentence and focus on the first part of your comment.

[–] timewarp@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

First I didn't confuse or misrepresent the Holocaust... I spoke about the similarity between Israel & Nazi Germany. The Mastodon mods are the one who drew their own conclusion to the Holocaust, which I never mentioned.

Second, the guideline they claimed I violated:

No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies.

Make of that what you will, but when you see more people getting locked up or deported for criticizing the atrocities being carried out by Israel, while claiming that anti-genocide positions incite or promote violent ideologies, remember that this is the same position of the mods behind the official Mastodon non-profit.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I know. I wonder if Mastodon has a complete set of terms of service somewhere, because the rules there look more like a summary to me and it's not written in legalese. I would have expected a company to have more fine print...
I can just tell you how it is. Ultimately, Mastodon (who operate the server) are a German company (a non-profit). And as such they have to abide by German law. And you can look it up, it has a specific paragraph on what you did. In fact a lot of countries have holocaust denial rules, in some it's part of hate speech. But Germany is pretty strict, because of history. Unless it includes several million dead people, and then the specific methods the nazis used, and is meant to eradicate all jews, gypsies, disabled people, gay people... You can't say it's the holocaust. You can't even compare it. So what you did will be deemed illegal. They do have a really bad death machinery set up. It's just not the same one. So you need to say this. And I don't think it matters what you were trying to say. I believe with hate speech laws, it's about how it can be perceived by your audience. If they can be mislead by your claims, or someone feels offended... I think that's what hate-speech laws regulate all around the world. They wouldn't work the other way around since every offender could just say, that's not what I meant, and it's an immediate acquittal for anything. But I'm not a lawyer.

So continue criticising Israel, that's completely fine. Even the German politicians in the parliament do that nearly every day, these days. Just don't be stupid and directly violate law, or a post needs to be removed. A company (or even Fediverse admin) can't forward such a post to your followers, they'd be liable for spreading it. Whether they wanted or not...