I just got banned from SpaceBattles for an introduction post. Not for doxxing, not for threats, not for spam—just for expressing opinions and interests that didn’t fit the approved worldview. Apparently that’s enough now.

What’s wild is that this isn’t an isolated case. I looked back at an older thread out of curiosity, and roughly 80% of the people who were active when it started are now banned. Read that again. That’s not “keeping the peace.” That’s systematic purging. When most of the original voices disappear, you’re not moderating a community—you’re curating an echo chamber, enforcing ideological cleansing. Strip away the forum UI and polite language, and what you’re left with is authoritarian repression: a system where dissenting voices are removed until only the sanctioned narrative remains.

In the real world, this kind of logic doesn’t just stop at bans and deletions—it ends with people being permanently silenced. History is full of examples. Look at Jeju Island, where American-backed South Korean forces massacred huge portions of the population for protesting, all under the excuse of “restoring order.” That’s where this mindset leads when it’s given real power.

SpaceBattles used to market itself as a place for creative freedom. Now it feels like a NATO-flavored circlejerk where deviation from consensus is treated as a personal offense. There’s an orthodoxy, and if you don’t kneel to it, you’re out. No warning, no real engagement—just deletion and exile.

The irony is hard to miss. People can openly believe in a supernatural entity watching everyone’s thoughts and actions, and that’s treated as normal, untouchable, beyond critique. But have an opinion that challenges mainstream political narratives, media framing, or power structures? Suddenly it’s an inquisition. Labels come out, motives are assigned, and the ban hammer drops.

We’re constantly lectured about “authoritarianism” abroad, yet this kind of censorship is defended as virtuous because it’s done by the “right” people. At least some countries are honest about controlling speech. Here, it’s wrapped in the language of safety and community standards while dissenting voices quietly vanish. Call me cynical, but when a forum erases most of its long-term users for wrongthink, that’s not a healthy community—it’s ideological hygiene.

What really gets me is the smugness. The absolute certainty that silencing is the same as being right. That deleting posts is the same as winning arguments. These are the modern book burners: not torching paper, but scrubbing perspectives, rewriting history, and pretending the absence of disagreement proves consensus.

If your ideas are so fragile they can’t survive contact with uncomfortable opinions, maybe they’re not as solid as you think. And if a forum can’t tolerate a blunt introduction post, it’s probably not about “rules”—it’s about control.