The Agora
In the spirit of the Ancient Greek Agora, we invite you to join our vibrant community - a contemporary meeting place for the exchange of ideas, inspired by the practices of old. Just as the Agora served as the heart of public life in Ancient Athens, our platform is designed to be the epicenter of meaningful discussion and thought-provoking dialogue.
Here, you are encouraged to speak your mind, share your insights, and engage in stimulating discussions. This is your opportunity to shape and influence our collective journey, just like the free citizens of Athens who gathered at the Agora to make significant decisions that impacted their society.
You're not alone in your quest for knowledge and understanding. In this community, you'll find support from like-minded individuals who, like you, are eager to explore new perspectives, challenge their preconceptions, and grow intellectually.
Remember, every voice matters and your contribution can make a difference. We believe that through open dialogue, mutual respect, and a shared commitment to discovery, we can foster a community that embodies the democratic spirit of the Agora in our modern world.
Community guidelines
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Voting History & Results
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Bigotry and swearing are not the same thing, and you fucking know it. A site named We Are Racists™ does not get the benefit of the doubt, unless it's instantly evident that's some kind of joke. This site named for extremist conservative rhetoric proudly declares it's for extremist conservative rhetoric and exclusively contains extremist conservative rhetoric.
They're not acting fascist because it's funny.
Reactionary conservatives 'owning the libs' is fascist behavior. It is extreme right-wing rhetoric. It is rooted in a worldview that's all bad faith, campism, and proudly intolerable behavior. Why the fuck would you ever excuse it.
Why the fuck don't you dislike racist blogs, for their racist bias? They could be doggedly accurate in the specific details of their reporting - and they'd still be doing it from a hateful and divisive worldview, with intent to spread and deepen that over bigotry. Accurate statistics about gang violence and birthrates don't make hyperfixation on those things any less racist!
You are defending the honor of a literal Nazi newspaper, on the basis of 'hey, maybe they did good field work.' We are talking about people tried at Nuremberg. "Don't buy it" was obviously not a solution, despite your diehard libertarian bent. Sometimes problems come and find you.
Nobody needs "all ends of the political spectrum," when that includes Nazis. We don't need Nazis. Bigotry, as a political worldview, is explicitly forbidden on this server, and good fucking riddance. No service needs to be all things to all people, and hey guess what, most people choose services based on what they don't include. Reddit being cool with fascists was a world-changing problem, and a big part of why I fucking left.
You are why bigots spread. 'Nazis should get a voice so long as they act polite and bring evidence' is a literal invitation for bad-faith "scientific racism" horseshit. Free speech means the government won't arrest you for being asshole - not that assholes deserve any better response than "fuck off, asshole."
I didn't claim it was, I also don't claim "maga" is bigotry. I'm saying both are something someone could take offense to.
What matters is the content and the admin/moderation team. Our instance has fantastic admins IMO, and I haven't had issues with mods either. I don't know what the mods/admins look like on maga.place since nobody seems to be interested in that, only the name of the instance and the posts in their conservative community.
I think it's just saying the quiet part out loud. That type of behavior happens all the time from the left side of the aisle as well.
Look at all the people calling anyone remotely conservative "fascist," do you think that comes from a careful review of the facts, or more from tribalism? I think it's the latter. Yes, there are fascists on the right, but that doesn't mean everyone on the right are fascists, just like there are communists on the left but not everyone on the left is communist.
Sure, and the same can be said for leftist content with high factual accuracy (e.g. Mother Jones). I read both, as well as "neutral" news (minimal overall bias) to get a good idea of the facts. Spin is fine, provided I'm aware of it and can find the opposite spin with similar factual reporting.
I'm not talking about honor, I'm talking about freedom of speech. I'll also defend the right for communist, tankie, and other far left content to exist on the same grounds. One of my favorite musical artists is Rage Against the Machine despite never agreeing with their political message, because I love that they can be so blatantly against our current system. I want more speech that I disagree with, not less, because challenging closely held ideas is how we make progress, because we're forced to elucidate why we hold them.
But we do. Nazism was a popular movement, and we need people to understand it or we're doomed to repeat that era of history. If we hide it, people will forget why it was so bad and it'll fester until it gains enough power to cause problems.
I recommend watching some of Peter Thiel's talks, because he makes interesting points, while doing the thing he warns of. It's incredibly interesting to see how blind he is to what he's doing. Basically, he says people are so obsessed with security that they'll give more power to the state, which will bring about the Anti-Christ (i.e. someone like Hitler), who sells "safety" in exchange for absolute control. And then you look at his company, Palantir, which provides the tools to the government to do that exact same thing, provide security in exchange for absolute control.
Being so scared of fascism that we won't allow publication of fascist works is a huge part of this obsession with security in exchange for freedom. I reject that.
I believe the safest society is one where people feel so uncomfortable that they take that responsibility on themselves instead of outsourcing it to someone in power. I believe we need to strip entities from centralized control and provide tools for individuals to make decisions for themselves. I avoid fascist content because I find the ideas bankrupt, not because it's unavailable to me. In the context of Lemmy, it's a decentralized system, so we should be trying to decentralize moderation as much as possible instead of relying on admins to defederate when something looks scary.
That's not why I left. I left because they removed choice by closing their API, which meant I was forced to use their clients. I stayed away because they cracked down on moderators who protested. I was never really happy with the way moderation worked, but I was able to vote with my subscription and move to subs whose moderation I liked, so it worked well while Reddit stayed out of it. The moment they asserted top down control is when I left.
This is also why I like sh.itjust.works. The admins have a very hands off approach and only step in when there's actual abuse, and leave the rest to the users. That's how platforms should work IMO.