So I posted this in [email protected]:

Let’s say this:

I have no idea if you are a shill or a genuine person. But, there are some behaviors that are bad things to do regardless of which you are:

1. Recasting your opponents’ views as other ones that make less sense and are easier to argue against, consistently, as a way of muddling the discourse, instead of being honest about what you’re saying and what you are disagreeing with and why, and just letting your point of view speak for itself whether or not I personally would agree with it
2. Consistently posting a drumbeat of memes in support of your viewpoint (within that same dishonest framing)

I mean, you can do what you want to do. I’m not gonna try to tell you you are or aren’t allowed to say whatever suits you. But to me, saying “fuck the whole US politics join my coalition for positive change we need a level of change that the current system will not allow” would make sense. Sounds great. I actually would be right there in that coalition. Anything from Bernie Sanders to Ralph Nader to someone further out-there who is working for something to produce actual change in some other way.

But if instead of that, you misrepresent the “other side”'s viewpoint “fascism is so bad that we need to resist it even if the alternative involves continuing the US’s longstanding policy of allowing some war crimes,” as if it was “I <3 war crimes and genocide”, and post a drumbeat of attack against specifically the least war-crime-friendly big contingent in US politics, I think people will wind up accusing you of bad faith. They’ve got a right to say that too.

I mean, does that seem fair? If you were posting a big stream of memes about how to put pressure on Biden to do more (like, a fuck of a lot more) to stop the crimes, or in favor of some faction that was plausibly able to produce a better outcome, I don’t think you would be getting near this level of derisive responses. But the message you’re sending doesn’t match the outcome you say you want. I think that’s why you are getting these maybe unfair accusations.

Removed. Rule 1, civility.

I got a permanent ban for some other, less friendly, interactions on the same day. But that one decision always stuck out to me as a shining example of the moderation quality on Lemmy.