Feddit.org announced today that they are changing their rules to match German law despite their server not being hosted in Germany.
Feddit.org now bans
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The sentence “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”
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Comparing Israel to the Nazis
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Calls to end Zionism
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Calling for the dissolution of Israel
And much more. The full original post can be found here, or
Click here for full text of original post:
Hi.
In the past few days, discontent regarding mod decisions in this community has been brewing, particularly when it comes to comments on Palestine, Israel, and Israeli politics and actions. There are also misunderstandings regarding mod intention and German law. We hope to clear that up with this post.
While the servers of feddit.org are in Austria, most of the mods of this community as well as admins of this server live in Germany. Speaking of, our server admins have also posted a write-up on the same topic.
And with that, let’s go:
In Germany, antisemitism is specifically sanctioned in German criminal law, both for speech and as a motivation for other criminal behavior. In addition, Germany seeks to protect the Jewish state of Israel (the so-called “Reason of State” introduced in 2008) and thus verges toward protecting Zionism as well. Certain criticism of Israel/Israelis is also categorized as “Israel-related antisemitism”.
Since criminal law is involved, enforcement can mean things like police raids and device confiscations. After such police action, it does not really matter if it was appropriate or if cases are dropped or never charged: The damage is done. All told, it’s not that fun.
There is also no point in engaging in discussions about the veracity of statements that could get us into legal trouble. In addition, we believe that you can express most opinions without breaking rules.
If your comment contains the following, it will be removed from this community:
- Calling for the dissolution of Israel, or calling for a one-state solution without specifying equal rights for all people; Jewish in particular.
- Calling for a destruction, annihilation, an end of all Zionism or the like.
- Equating Israeli actions and (historical) Nazism.
- The slogan “from the river…”
- Endorsement of or justifications for Hamas or Hezbollah, or slogans or graphics positively referring to these organizations. These are considered terrorist organizations in Germany.
- … and obviously: Any of the common antisemitic tropes or calls to violence against Jews or Israelis
Comments will not be removed for the following:
- Denouncing genocide.
- Denouncing Israeli war crimes.
- Criticizing Zionism as an ideology or political movement.
- Referring to the current Israeli government as “criminal,” “expansionist,” or “far-right”.
If your comment is removed nonetheless, these are not the reason. I’d also like to stress that this community was never a free-speech-absolutist zone: It is a (usually lightly) moderated community. There may also be times when bans go too far. In such cases, please DM the @EuroMod@feddit.org account (which all mods have access to).
To help you understand why, I'll leave an assortment of sources here (translations via DeepL).
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Berlin in mid-May [2024] around 6 o’clock in the morning. A loud, continuous “banging” against the apartment door wakes student Alina T. from her sleep. […] When her husband opens the door, several LKA officers, two employees of the district office and the SEK “storm” past him into the apartment. Puzzled, he looks at the search warrant. […] The background to this was a Facebook entry in the student’s profile: "From the river […]
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In November 2023, the Federal Ministry of the Interior and for Home Affairs also issued a prohibition order against Hamas.[60] According to the order, “the slogan ‘From the River to the Sea’ (in German or other languages)” is a distinguishing mark of Hamas[61]. […] the current legal situation [regarding “Denial of Israel’s right to exist”] is - contrary to what the statements of the Federal Ministry of Justice suggest[63] - anything but clear. Whether incitements to eliminate the State of Israel are prosecuted depends on the respective legal opinion and the prosecution will of the respective public prosecutor’s office.
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Press release from the previous government:
In this context, Section 111 StGB, which covers public incitement to commit crimes, may also be relevant. Incitement to extinguish Israel’s existence by force may be punishable under this provision. The same applies to calls to publicly display the Hamas flag. If Hamas attacks are publicly cheered and celebrated, this may also be punishable. This means that people who cheer on Hamas’s actions or publicly express their sympathy with the attacks may constitute the criminal offence of “approval of criminal acts” under Section 140 of the German Criminal Code (StGB).
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In connection with the controversial Palestine Congress in Berlin, the German authorities have also imposed an entry ban on former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis. “In order to prevent antisemitic and anti-Israel propaganda at the event”, several entry bans have been issued, the news agency AFP learned from security sources on Sunday. One of these concerned Varoufakis. (Notably, Varoufakis would have spoken about one-state solutions …)
federal reverse (on behalf of the mods of !europe)
thank you
…equal rights for all people, Jewish in particular.
Lol
Palestinians, remember the following: you can resist your occupation but ONLY on the occupiers terms.
For the rest of us, remember the following: you can protest genocide, but ONLY on the genocider’s terms.
I did not leave reddit to come to a fucked down version of political censorship. fuck you and begone. I’m blocking their instance
THATS how we vote.
How do i do this from a browser? Edit- Hilarious this got under someones skin enough to downvote. Bootlicking fascist. Censor me harder daddy. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free
How do I do this from an app like Boost?
Don’t know if it’ll be much help but on my app (thunder) you go to the instance, press the little (i) and then block community. It will probably be something similar on most apps.
You just helped me block a couple thanks bud
Man, seeing Germany side with genocide once again was fucking not on my bingo card.
I don’t imagine things will get better under the new right-wing government either.
Comments will not be removed for the following:
- Denouncing genocide.
- Denouncing Israeli war crimes.
- Criticizing Zionism as an ideology or political movement.
- Referring to the current Israeli government as “criminal,” “expansionist,” or “far-right”.
How is that siding with genocide?
Users can engage in regulated quantities of vague and pointless criticism of the ongoing genocide, as a treat.
Feddit.org now bans
- The sentence “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”
- Comparing Israel to the Nazis
- Calls to end Zionism
- Calling for the dissolution of Israel
Missed opportunity to also drop a Phoenix Wright gif
They ban supporting or advocating actually stopping the genocide
Are you claiming that the German government is running that instance?
The instance behaves according to current German law.
It doesn’t have to though.
“While the servers of feddit.org are in Austria, most of the mods of this community as well as admins of this server live in Germany.”
The admins live in Germany, so they have to comply with their local laws.
Local law doesn’t require them to enforce German law on non-Germans on a non-German server
Why does the country that gassed people think they have any moral authority to tell others right from wrong
Tbh, I can understand it. There have been police raids kicking in doors of families with small children at 5 in the morning for having a Facebook post saying “from the … to the …” (I am also in Germany…). The police went through all of the families belongings and took all web-connected electronics.
The situation is really rough here in Germany.
Lets not validate the intimidation tactics of the g*rman police. From the river to the sea.
Yeah, you have to chose your battle. You can have your life and the future of your children get ruined only once.
Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Kommunist.
Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.
Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.
Als sie die Juden einsperrten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Jude.
Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.
martin niemöller
Ich sage nicht mach alles mit. Ich gehe regelmäßige auf Palästinademos und bin bei Mera25. Aber ich bin nicht so blöd mir das zukünftig unmöglich zu machen, wegen eines Sprüche, den ich sinngemäß ersetzen kann, ohne Probleme zu bekommen.
They’re validating the policy of the instance on the basis of the police tactics potentially being used against them, not the tactics themselves
thereby showing the police “your tactics are effective”
Well, they are, aren’t they.
if people give in as easily as the feddit.org mods then yeah
That’s some fine nuance in there
Let me guess, nobody batted an eyelid when Netanyahu used the phrase to assert Jewish supremacist sovereignty “West of the Jordan”. Like you can say from the river to the sea as long as your extremist statement has the opposite of the proscribed polarity.
“From the river to the sea” but its the Likud.
Do you have a source about that incident? Reminds me of a dude arrested in russia for holding a blank piece of paper.
Here is the first entry of a google search. But it happened several times. Many people, probably several thousands by now, have been arrested and/or sued for saying or writing this phrase.
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/gesellschaft/antisemitismus-216.html
Sorry, it is in German.
Mind that SEK stands for Special Task Force. Those guys come in full armour, masked and armed with full auto weapons.
And yeah, that is what the mods and adminis of feddit are afraid of. It is a very realistic fear.
From what I gather from that and a couple other articles, the reasoning is either “this is a slogan for a terrorist organization” or a “that is a negation of Israel and therefore antisemitic hate crime”.
germany wtf
Yeah, it became difficult. Whatever you say publicly, you first have to consider if it could be intentionally misinterpreted to silence critical voices. There are too many malicious actors.
Many people lost their livelihood for that and imprisonment is always possible.
And another instance gets blocked
sounds like grounds for defederation. protecting fascism is fascism.
I find it more disgusting than .ml and even hexbear, Chinese Human rights violations lean towards cultural genocide, Israel is killing, starving, dislocating and destroying their culture, ethnicity, community and land, it is as bad as it can get, any defence of Israel is disgusting for me, and criticism of Palestine on that front is very ill timed in that manner, you can’t worry about ‘terrorism’ when the alternative is extermination
Wanna take bets .world won’t defederate Feddit because muh freeze peach?
That peter griffin chart where freeze peach is for the whites
Freeze peach is when you advocate for murder of brown people, otherwise it’s white genocide to not advocate for murder.
yes, it took a while, but the western world order is all but over. There is no justice, honor, decency, or dignity here. Its just pariah states with hollow shells of what used to be democracy. US, Germany, Britain, France-- all failed states playing pretend.
betting 100 dollars (not going to you of course) that feddit will remain federated for .world, sh.itjust.works and my home instance, discuss.online
Damn, I could use that 100 buckazoids 😔
I posted several threads asking for that and got REAMED.
The devs are tankies, the largest instances indirectly support fascism (and the tankies), and the biggest European instance is explicitly choosing to support neonazis.
Lemmy is dead.
CuLtUrAl GeNoCiDe
Go to xiaohongshu right now and look at all the uyghurs sharing their music, food, language, stories, spreading their culture freely on a predominantly chinese app!
Whole ass street festivals in the main streets going on in xinjiang of uyghurs celebrating community
easiest fake news to dispel but god forbid (redd/lemm)itors step out of their bubble
Bro I just got banned for pointing this out today. Like seriously talk to one chinese person in your life feddit mods
samesies!! they will need you to be careful with how you criticize the occupation regime of west palestine for their genocide but bash china for a completely imagined one and ban anyone who disigrees.
has boy boy made a video on Xinjiang I can watch yet?
no idea who youre talking about
They’re a youtube channel run by a pair of leftist Australian rascals. They even have a video where they try to enter a CIA base in Australia.
Calling for the dissolution of Israel, or calling for a one-state solution without specifying equal rights for all people; Jewish in particular.
Calling for a destruction, annihilation, an end of all Zionism or the like.
Zionism means colonialism not just in practice, but from its very inception:
And yet every self-declared pro-Zionist I’ve talked to says Zionism is just the right of the state of Israel to exist, and so being anti-Zionist is being for the destruction of the state, and being for the destruction of the state is being for the death or dispossession of every person in the state.
I think the German state is probably more inclined to interpret discussion of Zionism the way the pro-Zionists I’ve spoken to have describe the term.
I think the historical description in the text that you link is accurate, but if you’re trying to argue that Germans should be able to critique Zionism however they want because of that, it’s like literally getting into an argument about the literal meaning of literally with people who use literally to mean figuratively, but instead of a random teenager or twee linguistic descriptivist, you are arguing with the state.
Yes, and you are free to critizise Zionism for that on Feddit.org. The legal problem is not that, but that the German authorities don’t play word games and tend to equate Zionism/Israel/Jews as a shortcut and leave it to courts to decide later if that was justified or not.
They clearly state in one of the rules that I just linked, that calling for an end to zionism is a bannable offense.
The german state is full of witch-hunters and its people have learned nothing.
Yes and as I explained already there is a very specific legal reason for that, but this doesn’t mean you can’t critizise Zionism or call it a terrible settler-colonialist project.
As for learning from past mistakes… I think you of all people should not throw the first stone there 😅
there is a very specific legal reason for that
A misguided or intentionally malicious reason, for what the effect of that law is. Codifying into law the conflation of Judaism/ethnic Jewish identity with zionism is itself antisemitic. Calling for the end of Zionism isn’t the same as calling for the end of Jews or Judaism. What is the use of being allowed to criticize Zionism the ideology when you’re not also allowed to advocate for its end?
“Zionism is a settler-colonial ideology.” <- Ok “Zionism is a settler-colonial ideology, and Israel as a Zionist project should be dissolved in favor of a single-state that provides equal rights for Palestinians” <- Not ok, somehow?
The law as written only allows abstract and dissociated critique of Zionism, but forbids any criticism that comes too close to threatening Israel’s existence as a ethno-nationalist state. That’s a huge problem.
I didn’t make those laws, and I agree that the German government should make more of a distinction between antisemitism and anti-zionism. But it doesn’t and honestly in your above example you could just say:
“Zionism is a settler-colonial ideology, and Israel should become a state that provides equal rights for Palestinians”
An no one would object 🤷
This singular and persistent focus on the destruction of the (unfortunatly) already existing state of Israel, really makes it likely that many people rather use that as a dogwistle for antisemitism.
“Zionism is a settler-colonial ideology, and Israel should become a state that provides equal rights for Palestinians”
Except the moderation rule feddit has implemented does not allow for this statement, unless you specifically say that jews deserve equal rights in a single-state solution - which is similar to those who respond to ‘black lives matter’ by saying ‘but all lives matter’. Saying ‘Palestinians deserve equal rights’ wouldn’t be necessary if equal rights were already afforded them, and the point of making that statement is to draw attention to the fact that they currently aren’t
This singular and persistent focus on the destruction of the (unfortunatly) already existing state of Israel, really makes it likely that many people rather use that as a dogwistle for antisemitism.
Nobody who is advocating for Palestinian liberation uses the word “destroy” or ‘destruction’ when referring to the dissolution of Israel - I only ever see those words used by people trying to make this inference between anti-zionism and antisemitism. The only people who take statements of liberation as a threat against Jews are people who are collaborating or benefiting from the oppression Israel conducts in their name.
Sorry, but you are misinterpreting that rule. What I said is perfectly compatible with the rule. The extension that this also applies to Jews is solely to preempt the common “equal rights and the Jews are free to leave” dogwistle.
And you are highly mistaken that there are no people advocating for the destruction of Israel, in fact it is quite common.
It’s so funny how you types are constantly hiding behind the law and saying, “I didn’t make the law, I don’t agree with it, but they have to do this to avoid legal liability, hands are tied” and then five seconds later you say stuff like, “criticism of Israel is a dogwhistle for antisemitism.”
You’re a coward, refusing to admit your real positions because you know you can’t defend them.
Please don’t put words in my mouth. My real position is crystal clear and I am happy to stand by it.
but that the German authorities don’t play word games and tend to equate Zionism/Israel/Jews
Sounds like they very much do play word games then.
Oh I see. Which is why the admins/mods of Feddit.org are also publicly coming out criticizing the German government for this crackdown on nuanced speech, right? Right?
Who got the oldest artifacts in Palestine? Doesn’t seem colonizing if you have one of the earliest histories somewhere, right? That’s why Russia has a right to reclaim Ukraine /s
Who has the oldest artifacts in the Americas? Or Australia?
Oh I fully support America and Australia controls should be handed back to the respective natives if in either situation they would have conflict about territory
Do Greeks get Constantinople, Marseille and Syracuse back?
Serious mental gymnastics lol
So they’re basically declaring themselves a fascist instance. I mean calling for end of Zionism is calling for an end of a fascist ideal, therefore that instance is declaring itself a fascist organization. Simple. Yeah no one should be Federated with this place.
Calling for the dissolution of Israel, or calling for a one-state solution without specifying equal rights for all people; Jewish in particular
This part floored me. As if it wasnt Israel that was currently denying equal rights to Palestinians and not the other way around… this is just the zionist version of ‘all lives matter’ bullshit.
But have you thought but the guy doing the genocide asshole?!?!
How dare we ignore the trauma of those committing violent oppression?!
So they’re joining the Nazis. They can fuck off and die.
Sometimes joining the bad side is the only way not to die. I wish you strength to do the right thing (and a family in a far away safe place) when you’re in such situation.
I promise you, the feddit mods are not going to die if they don’t ban criticism of Israel. Seriously, have some perspective.
I was reacting to an extreme comment, as you can see above.
It was extreme, but I don’t think it changes the fact that the feddit mods aren’t really facing serious consequences for not doing this.
I used a hyperbole to fight a hyperbole.
weren’t the na*is litterally against that group of people?
no they supported israel since they promised to help with “the jewish question” by resettling them.
The nazis hate jews and israel took advantage of that to get more bodies to settle their frontier. Notably they even helped the nazis circumvent a boycott going on at the time to achieve this.
ah hell yeah found the book
https://archive.org/details/zionist-relations-with-nazi-germany
No, Christians were against the Jews. The nazis just took advantage of that hate. If you think that the nazis somehow had legitimate complaints against Jews or that those complaints were required to be in anyway accurate, then you have completely misunderstood the history of the last 100 years.
Oh, I see it now! I was looking at it the wrong anglw
Removed by mod
I wonder if “Jews and non-Jews can’t live together, and thus Jews must be exiled to Israel” will be allowed…
well, fuck feddit.org then. Any place thats too busy fellating genocide deserves to be abandoned and blocked. If they think they matter, they are wrong.
