this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025

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Mastodon.social removes anti-genocide post (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago by timewarp@lemmy.world to c/progressivepolitics@lemmy.world

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I've generally felt like progressives were the first community to call out the genocide being committed by Israel. I also had assumed Mastodon.social was more progressive, although I had seen lots of defense of genocide when Biden was the one supporting it. Recently however I encountered a post claiming Palestinian was a newly invented term to describe Arabs in Gaza, and that the word Palestinian itself was antisemitic & represented the eradication of Jews.

I responded that statements like this makes it easier to dehumanize Palestinians, and that there really is no difference between Nazi Germany & Israel at this point. However, the mods at Mastodon.social removed my response claiming it is Holocaust inversion.

There are plenty of Jews that are against the genocide & mass murder Israel is conducting. It is a real shame that Mastodon.social mods believe the genocide being carried out by Israel represents the views of all Jews worldwide, and the mods intend to use the Holocaust to justify it.

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[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I wondered why there was so little Palestine content on Mastodon but that explains it.

People called me a Nazi yesterday for using Twitter where pro-Palestine content is widely available. Looks like Mastodon is even worse.

[–] timewarp@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I think it is important to note that Mastodon.social is the official instance maintained by the same non-profit behind Mastodon. So when the mods on Mastodon.social are removing anti-genocide content, you can pretty much assume it is the position of the official Mastodon project (not that of separate instances though).

[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Sounds extremely similar to Lemmy.World.

Pretend to take a non-political stance while in reality enforcing the position of the Western hegemony.

[–] timewarp@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

So true. I'm still banned in some of the largest "left-wing" communities at this point for merely pointing out instances of Democrats supporting genocide, and this was prior to them losing the election. And then they act surprised that they lost & still blame people like me.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Where is the link to the removed post?

[–] timewarp@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Here you go:

https://mastodon.social/@devgnostic/114624118505068269

BTW, here is the post that was being responded to:

https://mas.to/@Dingsextrem/114622072481693290

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago

Looks like neither archive.org nor archive.today captured it :/

Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Christians are no less Palestinian than Palestinian Muslims, all of whom lived together in relative peace for centuries before European settler-colonists came and ethnically cleansed Palestine and formed an apartheid ethnostate on their land. If Arafat called the settler-colonial génocidaires “foreigners,” he was as correct as when Native Americans called European settler-colonists foreigners. And yes, obviously the genocidal ethnostate ought to be dismantled, just as the apartheid South African ethnostate should have been and was.

The OP also claims that settler-colonialism “definitely is not happening in Gaza,” and that he is both antifascist and Zionist. Standard German socdem brainworms.

[–] rumimevlevi@lemmings.world 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Palestinian was a newly invented term to describe Arabs in Gaza, and that the word Palestinian itself was antisemitic & represented the eradication of Jews

This is dumbest argument even if Palestine is a recent world which it isn't even Herzl father of Zionism used it , the people there(Palestinian) was people living there for centuries and Zionists was immigrants

[–] Baaahb@feddit.nl 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Forgive me but is not Palestine ~ Philistine?

[–] kreskin@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

It was into King Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Baylonian empire conquered the city states that comprised it in 504AD.

Its been named many things, but its always been close to or included the word "palestine". You can read up on it yourself in Britanica and wikipedia.

[+] donuts@lemmy.world -15 points 3 days ago (2 children)

The removal is not necessarily a defense of Israel, but rather a concern about misrepresenting history in a way that could be misleading or inflammatory.

Saying there's no difference between Nazi Germany and Israel trivializes the Holocaust

[–] Entertain529@lemmy.ml 16 points 3 days ago

I think its the genocide of Palestinian's that's being trivialized here..

[–] timewarp@lemmy.world 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

I encourage you to read about Nazi Germany's rise to power & compare that to the actions being carried out by Israel today. Albert Einstein wrote about this over 70 years ago.

[+] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de -7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Donuts is right, though. Adding your analogy with the nazis is almost certainly what got your post removed. That's the rule on places like mastodon.social. Once you confuse or misrepresent the holocaust or draw analogies, you're out. Whether someone thinks this is correct or not, ...it's the rules. If you want to be able to say this, you need to find a different place, and it also needs to be in a different jurisdiction. Or skip that sentence and focus on the first part of your comment.

[–] timewarp@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

First I didn't confuse or misrepresent the Holocaust... I spoke about the similarity between Israel & Nazi Germany. The Mastodon mods are the one who drew their own conclusion to the Holocaust, which I never mentioned.

Second, the guideline they claimed I violated:

No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies.

Make of that what you will, but when you see more people getting locked up or deported for criticizing the atrocities being carried out by Israel, while claiming that anti-genocide positions incite or promote violent ideologies, remember that this is the same position of the mods behind the official Mastodon non-profit.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I know. I wonder if Mastodon has a complete set of terms of service somewhere, because the rules there look more like a summary to me and it's not written in legalese. I would have expected a company to have more fine print...
I can just tell you how it is. Ultimately, Mastodon (who operate the server) are a German company (a non-profit). And as such they have to abide by German law. And you can look it up, it has a specific paragraph on what you did. In fact a lot of countries have holocaust denial rules, in some it's part of hate speech. But Germany is pretty strict, because of history. Unless it includes several million dead people, and then the specific methods the nazis used, and is meant to eradicate all jews, gypsies, disabled people, gay people... You can't say it's the holocaust. You can't even compare it. So what you did will be deemed illegal. They do have a really bad death machinery set up. It's just not the same one. So you need to say this. And I don't think it matters what you were trying to say. I believe with hate speech laws, it's about how it can be perceived by your audience. If they can be mislead by your claims, or someone feels offended... I think that's what hate-speech laws regulate all around the world. They wouldn't work the other way around since every offender could just say, that's not what I meant, and it's an immediate acquittal for anything. But I'm not a lawyer.

So continue criticising Israel, that's completely fine. Even the German politicians in the parliament do that nearly every day, these days. Just don't be stupid and directly violate law, or a post needs to be removed. A company (or even Fediverse admin) can't forward such a post to your followers, they'd be liable for spreading it. Whether they wanted or not...