We’re missing a bit of information here. I got your report, went to the thread to get the context.
Firstly, I saw that you had literally screen-capped the comment in question and included it in a new reply. So, removing the comment would have achieved nothing - it would have still been there.
Secondly, the comment was Zionistic in nature, which while especially unpopular in nature is not against instance rules.
Thirdly, I wasn’t aware that the comment in question was similar to something Nazis said. I don’t even know if the user who made the comment knew that. So, leaving it there and letting downvotes do their thing allowed for education as well.
Lastly, the comment was in the Australian Politics community - which is intentionally the lightest-touch moderated community because there’s a difference between political discussion where parties disagree quite vehemently and an outright echo-chamber. If you delete all the users from your politics community that you don’t agree with, what is the point of the community?
To answer your question: No, we don’t allow Nazis here. It is literally one of the questions we ask on the application screen. “Nazi talking points” is not on its own a good metric of what is acceptable today. We basically have a whole community in support of Reichsnaturschutzgesetz. I don’t especially take issue with Tierschutz, either. One of the reasons the Third Reich gained actual popular support was some of their early policies were in fact in the best interest of the German people. There is still a Kindergeld today, though giving full credit to the Nazis to that one wouldn’t really be genuine. It is fair to say they supported this policy. So I guess our stance on “literal Nazi talking points” will boil down to other factors and get taken on a case-by-case basis.
Finally: If there’s a user you genuinely don’t wish to see around here any longer, you can hit the little down arrow on any of their comments and block them.
eureka@aussie.zone 1 day ago
I want to raise a point on the “Nazi talking points” response:
Lebensraum is a relatively infamous policy, and one which neo-Nazis like the NSN explicitly invoke. They’re never holding up banners saying “protect the wildlife”, “support animal rights” or “fast roadways now!”, this is the bigoted supremacy generally associated with Nazism and carried on by neo-Nazism.
But this isn’t just “all the users you disagree with”, or even just disagreement - if someone, when discussing an expansionist regime, tries to justify “living space”, that makes me think that person might well want me thrown in a camp and killed. It’s no smoking gun, but it’s a loud wolfwhistle.
Nath@aussie.zone 1 day ago
Sorry. While I readily acknowledge that I don’t hang out in those circles, nor really scrutinise their rhetoric, I have honestly never heard that phrase before. In English or German. This does paint the comment in a brighter light, and I probably would have been more inclined to remove it had I been familiar with the term.
eureka@aussie.zone 23 hours ago
Yep, exactly, and that’s why I say it’s more useful when a report is more specific - most people are lucky enough that they aren’t exposed to online neo-Nazism enough to know their rhetoric, euphemisms, codes and symbols (beyond the swastika).
Zagorath@aussie.zone 14 hours ago
That’s good to see, but as of right now the Nazi’s explicit mask-off comment is still up, and they are still not prevented from commenting further in the future.
Fwiw, I didn’t learn the phrase from online discourse about neonazis, I learnt it from education about WWII in its original comment. Until reading other comments in this thread I was not even aware that it was popular among neonazis as a dogwhistle. So we both learnt something unfortunate here today.
Nath@aussie.zone 10 hours ago
Which you’re clearly good with, since your screen-capped version of the comment is also still up. The purpose of moderation is to prevent people from being exposed abhorrent content, spam, unsolicited nudity, scams and other harmful content. I’m reluctant to step into discussions that are clearly between actual humans as a general rule, unless they are being abusive or derailing threads. I could also count on my fingers the number of human user accounts I’ve needed to actually ban from the site. Whatever a power-tripping mod is, I am not.
The next time you think a comment should be removed, I would recommend that you don’t go out of your way to be sure more people see it as you report it. As things stand, I see more value in this moment as a learning point. Yours is still the only report that particular comment received. The truly offensive stuff, I can be pinged by half a dozen reports within 30 minutes of the comment being posted. I also remain unconvinced that the user who made that comment would self-identify as a Nazi. Zionist, sure - though that is apparent more from other comments than this example.
lodion@aussie.zone 10 hours ago
I took Seagoon_'s comment to be in support of the ban on particular phrases, by highlighting another dog whistle for nazis. Before this, I (like Nath) did not know this was a nazi dog whistle.
I don’t believe Seagoon_ is a nazi. I do believe they’re a zionist. In Australia as it stands… one is illegal, the other is practically government policy.
To say anyone in support of the new legislation in QLD is a nazi, as you have stated, is an extreme take on the situation. I have many issues with the legislation as it has been passed, but do not believe supporters of it are automatically nazis.
As Nath has commented, as a rule we let human to human discussions run their course… unless they’re going off the rails. Simply posting something you do not believe, or you do not agree with is not grounds for a comment to be removed.