Defederating was the right call. The_Donald is being hosted on sh.itjust.works.

Jeze3D@beehaw.org to Chat@beehaw.org – 332 points –
i.imgur.com

The admin of sh.itjust.works has been approached but as of yet has failed to reply to concerned Lemmy users. I’m glad Beehaw admins look out for us by cutting off instances that host communities like this.

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OK, anyone can create a community on that instance so this is not yet a reflection of their values. HOWEVER, if that instance is still there after a bit it DOES say a lot about that instance and specially about the admins

I like people and humanity as a whole, but I lack the faith that everyone is a good actor or has good intentions. In theory the negative freedom of not being restricted from creating whatever community one wants on a site is a pleasant idea, but in reality it's like leaving unlimited matches in a room with a huge number of children where most of them are responsible. There may even be a lot of nice uses of matches but...

In this case it's more like there's an entire town with thousands of people, and there's someone who's on a walled garden yelling slurs, and the towns all around are yelling to close the doors to the "racist town because they don't boot that racist old man". Which in a sense is kinda like yeah maybe there's this duty there to boot the racist old man. But it's just one guy and everyone can just erase the garden from their existence with one button. If it were beehaw. No doubt, boot the guy. But unlike beehaw sjw is not the banhappiest instance, and seems instead like the banunhappiest community lol. So judging them by judging your immediate surroundings is setting too high of a standard.

In your example, you referred to an individual who was easily dismissed by everyone who heard them without exception. If there was nothing to fascist rhetoric, I wouldn't worry about it. The issue is that it can be very compelling if you are not its victim and don't have reason to critisize it.

I used fire in my example because even though it can start small, it can spread rapidly. Fascism spreads wherever it's allowed. I've watched it happen and known people who were unprepared become seduced by it. Please don't assume it's benign.

Your post reminds me of The Crust Punk Bar

Here's the story

dude next to me says, "hey i'm not doing anything, i'm a paying customer." and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, "out. now." and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, "you didn't see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them." And i was like, ohok and he continues "you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it's always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don't want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too. And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it's too late because they're entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down" And i was like, 'oh damn.' and he said "yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people."

I'm not sure it does. It's not as though it's very active. All I've heard about it is how people are blocking it.

I think it comes down to community philosophy. Should we just ban communities on a user level? Maybe. Until it poses a bigger issue I'm fine with trying that approach. I'm quite confident if it became big or a nuisance the admin would remove it.