after the recent disgraceful behavior in YPTB where @deceptichum@quokk.au was banned by @MrKaplan@lemmy.world for being a “troll”, I banned MrKaplan preemptively from !anarchymemes@anarchist.nexus, as I do anyone who displays zionist tendencies. the ban reason was for “zionism, genocide apologia”. calling someone pointing out the FHF’s long history of zionism and protecting zionist users a “troll” and saying they are acting in “bad faith” is absolutely zionism, and zionism is genocide apologia. at the same time, I also banned @recursive_recursion@lemmy.ca for also banning @deceptichum@quokk.au, with a suspiciously similar ban message.

this aggravated @MrKaplan@lemmy.world, who then started asking around about me to find out more information. they quickly found my profile, which as anyone who has been around AN or dbzer0 might know, has always been rather spicy when it comes to the US and Israel.

“scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds”

queer armed militant anarchist. death to the United States, and death to Israel! the only good zionist is a dead zionist.

my display name at the time was also Luminous5481 “Murder all zionists” [they/them]. this wasn’t aimed at MrKaplan, but rather zionism as an ideology in general. it has long been my very vocal opinion that there is no appreciable difference between the state of Israel and Nazi Germany, nor between zionism and nazism. both nations are guilty of having engaged in genocide over the span of years, something determined by the ICC, if not the eyes and ears of anyone who has seen the shocking scenes of Israeli terrorism coming from Gaza these past years.

however, this rightfully calling for the death of a ideology that is incompatible with anarchism, and the rest of humanity in general, was enough for MrKaplan to not only instance ban me, but entirely defederate the instances under the control of the FHF cabal from Anarchist Nexus.

but that wasn’t enough. they also contacted other admins of popular instances, and encouraged them to defederate from AN and dbzer0, claiming that the other admins of the flotilla had refused to do anything about it, despite MrKaplan immediately defederating as soon as he raised his concerns with our team. this obviously is a blatant lie, likely to cover for the fact that he most likely did not bother reaching a consensus with the other LW admins over his actions before he took them. but idk about that, it’s only my speculation. I only know what he and other admins have said behind closed doors to our team.

the fact of the matter is that wishing death to zionists is a popular opinion among leftists. it’s one that I’ve held for years, and it didn’t suddenly go away when Israel accelerated their genocide in 2023. nor did it go away when the German government, and certain German instances and users threw their support behind a genocidal regime intent on wiping out a race and religion they see as subhuman. did I say it more often or more plainly than plenty of other leftists? sure! but do not assume that the opinion is not shared by many who oppose an ideology that, like the nazis, is the enemy of all mankind.

for now, I have graciously offered to step down as admin, in the hopes that the FHF will stop throwing their weight around to bully smaller instances and suppress the free speech of the people. it’s one thing to ban a user for a viewpoint you don’t like. it’s another thing to defederate from an instance, and then threaten other instances to get them to defederate as well. it’s another thing to go around telling everyone they should defederate simply because you are offended at an opinion that should be shared by all who love humanity. of course, some might say that this is entirely because I accused the “FHF team members of being zionists while simultaneously calling for zionists to be murdered”. but if that were true, then why has MrKaplan not also defederated from lemmy.ml, despite many of their users being just as vocal as I am ? there’s a big difference between AN and ML, and that difference is user count. MrKaplan feels he can get away with throwing his weight around and demanding other instances censor themselves according to his views when it’s an instance that’s smaller than LW. and I’m not asking to be unbanned. I really do not care about “missing out” on LW. but at the very least? MrKaplan should not be censoring other instances and maliciously attacking them behind their back by seeking defederation from other admins. and he certainly should not be doing it in the dark, where nobody can see or comment.

UPDATE: @rimu@piefed.social also banned me for “death threats”, something which doesn’t show up in the modlog because I’ve never used that instance for anything.