Lemmy

I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, "no. get out."

And the 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."

And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven't forgotten that at all.

https://nitter.ca/IamRageSparkle/status/1280892535024619522#m

Imagine if you will, you decided to have a neighbourhood block party. You say, this is an open and inviting space, and everyone is welcome!

So lots of different people show up, but a few of your guests are uncomfortable. You ask them what's wrong, you want everyone to feel safe here.

They say, "that guy over there, he's always saying things like we're not really people, or we're sick in the head, or we don't deserve rights. He threatens us and talks gleefully about the day when we'll finally be outlawed as degenerates because we're queer and Black. He and his bigot buddies all talk about the Great Replacement, and how they can't wait to rise up against the establishment in a war to put Trump back in power."

And you know this is true. He doesn't hide it. In fact, he's mentioned those hangouts at your barbeque, and said that everyone at the barbeque is also welcome to join them for those hangouts.

But instead you say, "Yeah, but he hasn't said those horrible things here. So you should just chill out, it would be wrong for me to kick him out of this party just because when he's not at this party he doesn't believe you're human. That's an important part of everyone feeling welcome and safe here. Do you get it? Do you feel safe around him now?"

That's why someone who comes on here, a Leftist instance, and who has, through their own volition, outed themselves as the bigoted wolfballs admin account, should, in fact, be banned. To do otherwise is to just prop up bigots as long as they know when to "mask on."

It's not like you should be hunting for everyone's other platform activity, but he provided links to that content himself. He promoted that alt-right shithole right here on lemmy.ml. He took his own mask off, and it's pretty gross not to ban him.

Just for transparency, I was the one who banned them. In my personal opinion, I still think the ban was appropriate, but because someone who outranks me reversed it and has told me their rationale, I'm conceding the issue.