There's been a lot of talk about Fosstodon as a "Nazi bar". If you haven't heard the analogy and the story behind it before, here's a good discussion.

The point of the analogy is that (at least initially) most of the people in the bar aren't Nazis. But once you let Nazis -- or fascists, or white supremacists, or anti-trans bigots -- in, it becomes a place where Nazis know they're accepted, and it goes down that path. How to Radicalize a Normie talks about how once fash get a toehold in a community they recruit and radicalize others ... and that's exactly how they've operated in the punk scene.

OK, maybe Fosstodon's now-former moderator wasn't an actually card-carrying Nazi. But his views were anti-immigrant, white supremacist, authoritarian, hostile to free speech, and anti-LGBTQ+ ... so, close enough.

And by the way it's not just this latest incident. Remember a couple of years ago when Fosstodon reprimanded a membr for referring to a Nazi as a Nazi? If I recall correctly, the person who was being referred to had even been legally convicted of being a Nazi! But it was still considered hate speech by the moderators at the time.

The good news is that it's not an irrevocable path. Continuing the analogy, the bar now has new management, and there are lots of people there who don't want it to be a Nazi bar. It's harder to push fascists out after they've gotten a toehold, but it can certainly be done -- I've hung out at punk bars that have told Nazi punks to fuck off, and talked with organizers in small towns in Washington who pushed the Aryan Nation out when they were on the verge of taking control back in the 1990s.

So Fosstodon's new management has a great opportunity to work with the people there -- and elsewhere on the Fediverse -- who don't want Fosstodon to be a Nazi bar. Let's hope they pull it off!

#fosstodon

@thenexusofprivacy
That Upworthy page is broken. It had embedded links to Ragesparkle’s original Twitter thread, but he’s deleted them (maybe deleted his Xitter account). So the core story is gone.

@Voline thanks very much for letting me know! Very strange. I'm seeing images of the tweets on the page in Firefox (and I just checked Chrome and Safari, all on a Mac -- and I'm in the US, just in case they're showing different stutt in different geographies). So, no idea what's going on. Software, smh.

The embedded video doesn't render, on Firefox it says it's only directly viewable on YouTube, but I figured that was okay. Not sure how it looks on other browsers though.

@thenexusofprivacy
I shouldn't have immediately assumed that Tager had deleted his Xitter account. I just checked it in another browser and it's there. I'll need to loosen up the parameters in 1Blocker for Safari. Thanks.