anarchiddy

It’s true that PJ didn’t acknowledge the distinction. They may not have realized that was the source of the pushback. But regardless, I still don’t think that’s enough to say the ban was retaliatory.

PJ listed 'sexual assault denier' as the reason for the ban, seems pretty clear that - at the very least - this interaction was top-of-mind when he was issuing it.

I haven’t seen PJ actually claim that it was systemic but they could be implying it by seemingly trying to use that quote as a contradiction to OP saying that it’s an Israeli lie.

This is the thing I'm pointing to as a pattern with him:

• Felix says "anything that follows 'Israel says' is usually a lie"
• PJ jumps on it and quotes the UN finding that SA occurred (leaving out the second part of the original claim by Israel which is addressed later in the UN report that they didn't find it 'systemic')
• Felix responds with the drop site article that discusses that exact claim (that the SA was systemic)
• PJ ignores the topic of the article, jumps on the specific part that mentions the Dinah Project, pulls the commonly sighted quote from it that says they found 'patterns' of SA (but the next sentence says they could not verify any instances due to Israeli obstruction)
• Felix then responds with the item in the article he was referring when he linked to it (that the UN does not have evidence of systemic sexual assault). Note that the quote he is pulling is referring to a statement made by a top UN official, not to the link PJ is harping on
• PJ then incorrectly attributes that statement to the article he is talking about, which is the one felix's article is criticizing as being used by Zionists as evidence of systemic violence despite that report saying explicitly that they did not have evidence of systemic violence, only "patterns indicative of sexual violence" but of which individual instances could not be verified due to obstruction

Whether or not PJ went into that interaction knowing felix's intent is hard to say, but it should have been clear to him by the end that there was no actual disagreement being expressed. In the end, PJ mis-represents the source material and doubles-down on his accusation of SA denial in his ban reasoning in the modlog. An interaction that should have ended in clarity instead ends in him banning the user, if not for the stated reason in the log, at-best for downvoting posts in another comm.

It's a pattern with PJ that he dives headlong into an argument making an assumption about a user's intent, and then when the user clarifies their position against his accusation, he doubles-down by either misrepresenting that user's statements or by twisting source material to fit the accusation being made. By the end of that argument, all he's doing is accusing felix of lying by mis-attributing the source material he's using. He's being unnecessarily hostile when, in the end, there wasn't an actual substantive disagreement between them.

I don’t follow Lemmy politics enough to remember much of PJ’s history other than that they are a big enough contributor to be a familiar name and that they were involved in some drama with 196.

He's a prolific poster/commenter and a mod of probably a dozen communities. I don't care about the history comms he spends a lot of time in, but I do often see him pop up in political gossip/snark communities like 'tankyjerk' and 'meanwhileongrad'. Most of his original content he posts is fine, if not good - but he often gets into it with other users on politics and does exactly this kind of rage baiting, occasionally posting it to the political snark comms if he's worked up enough about it.

170+ comments in a day is not simply 'arguing about politics'. Even then, though, not every community or instance allows just any kind of arguing, and not every mod will tolerate a flood of reports about a single user arguing just a bit too aggressively. Especially when the specifics of the argument are borderline rulebreaking by themselves.

We seem to have moved the goalsposts from “he’s abusive” to “he was banned from blahaj which as everyone knows means he definitely actually did something” to “he argues about politics how dare.”

Sorry, who's moving the goalposts? You accused the admins of 'harassing' him, then backed down to 'unfairly singling him out'. It would be impossible to 'single him out' any more than he has already distinguished himself by the shear volume of his activity. A one-off heated comment is very different than dozens and dozens.

I am aware of your personal political alignment with PJ, so I understand you may identify with the content of his commenting - but the shear volume of it is enough on its own to warrant intervention.

It's only a temp ban, anyway - a glorified time-out. I'm fine with leaving it as a disagreement.

I think even you have pointed to it, but PJ is a prolific poster. If he's having a bad moment (as everyone does on occasion), it's not just a couple of comments, it's hundreds.

When pugjesus gets into it with someone or about something, it's a bonafide flood of activity. If it were any other user I might even agree with you that it's unfair, but pugjesus is not 'any other user'. Having been on the receiving end of his ire before, I really have to say that it's appropriate to hand out a temp ban.

Everyone needs time to touch grass sometimes -not more than when you're days-deep into a posting bender.

Jokes aside, it was on another level recently. I feel like i've seen him go through a wave of activity like this before, so I guess even this episode might not be unique for him. But I can't imagine he has time to have been doing anything other than lemmy just based on his activity for the last 3-4 days. 170 comments (not including posts) over the last day alone, many of which are a part of deep, 20-30 comment long arguments where nothing substantial is communicated other than anger and disgust.

We usually only talk about 1 or 2 offending comments by users in this comm, but in pugjesus's case it's been near constant antagonism for days. Most people would have enough after a few hours but I gotta hand it to him - he's got some serious stamina.

It’s a pattern of instance admins harassing this guy

Someone should really ask for receipts on this one.

it does seem like OP’s source citation agrees with PugJesus’s “western propaganda” that there is evidence of sexual assault, but not enough to call it systematic.

PJ does this a lot. The original post article was claiming that SA was being used as a 'genocidal strategy', which is an extremely bold claim and would need to show not only evidence of SA happening, but a coordinated and premeditated intent in order to drive Israelis from Israel.

The pull-quotes PJ is pointing to are acknowledging instances of SA - and really only acknowledging what little evidence beyond first-person accounting there is - but explicitly not 'systemic and coordinated' SA.

OP was pointing this out, even in his replies with PJ that he linked. PJ was ignoring the distinction and trying to bait a stronger reaction, and ended up banning OP as a result. He tried doing a similar thing with me a few days ago while defending/downplaying atrocities committed by the mujaheddin just so he could reframe responsibility for the Taliban around Pakistan.

I'm usually pretty lax with mod actions, because they're free to protect their communities they way they want to. But PJ has been on a tear the last few days, and was clearly not in a place to be acting as a mod. He's been starting fights and baiting people all week and deserves some mandatory time off.

Prominent is certainly a choice of words

I wouldnt be surprised if he was the source of the majority if mod reports the last few days - some time off would do him good.

PTB.

He legitimately seemed to be going through something the last few days though, he was picking fights with everyone in a bunch of threads and I ended up catching strays along with a bunch of others

The more he runs away from this the more likely that nobody will believe whatever explanation he lands on to dismiss it. Even if there really isn't a list, and he really isn't on it, and they present some evidence that proves it conclusively, there's zero shot anyone will believe it.

The conspiracy vibes are so strong that even reality couldn't kill them.

I hate that we keep rolling the dice on platforming these out-and-about fascists.

I understand that there are some that will be so disgusted with seeing this spoken out-loud that they'll solidify their resistance to fascism, but there's always this small chance that there will be more people attracted to fascist political movements than repelled from them.

I don't feel like I have a good handle on the overall sentiment in reactionary-coded spaces to say for sure, but jesus christ does it make me nervous whenever I see these clips go viral.

“Biden 2020 Voters Who Did Not Vote For Harris”

Which could mean a bunch of things, including the thing right next to it that I highlighted: "who cast a ballot for someone besides harris"

I’m sorry, is there some secret cabal of “Harris/the DNC did nothing wrong” poster

This is some next-level denial.

It literally fucking does, at the top, in big fucking letters.

This is what I see:

No one fucking here on Lemmy is questioning whether the Dem party is at fault

To use one of your own phrases, "fucking what"