“I was not in my uniform, and at no point in my interaction with the staff did I identify myself as a member of the law enforcement community,” Sheriff Owens said. “At no point did I indicate my position, nor did I ask the responders to do anything that they would not, had not, or have not done for anyone else who makes a business dispute call.”

That’s disingenuous. The 911 operator, who works for the police department, obviously knows the name of the sheriff. Any police department flags calls from police officers, including non-emergency calls. The sheriff should have known better than to waste public resources to strongarm a business when he could have simply emailed a complaint to corporate.

Obviously, I am thinking for myself by rejecting your argument that fascism is “not hard right wing”. And you still haven’t provided any sources for your argument. It’s clear to me that fascism is both far-right and authoritarian, and being authoritarian doesn’t prevent fascism from being far-right.

You’re calling fascists “moderate right” and liberal democrats “far-right” because Nazis did some things that you agree with? What exactly did the Nazis do that makes you think fascism is more moderate on the left-right axis than liberal democracy? It looks like you’re either completely ignoring the social policies of fascism, or your understanding of the terms “moderate right” and “far-right” is way out of line with how most people understand them.

I’ll take Wikipedia over a Lemmy comment with no sources that is arguing that fascism is more moderate than it actually is. The Wikipedia articles I linked to are cited, and the citations look very credible to me.

(I’m fully aware of the two-axis political model you mentioned, which is why I distinguished libertarianism from right-wing politics even though libertarians in the U.S. tend to be right-wing.)

Fascism is the dictionary definition of far-right politics. You’d be hard pressed to name a similarly prominent political ideology that is even father to the right than fascism. Likewise, Leninism’s revolutionary ideals place the ideology in the far left, despite its implementations not achieving those ideals. An ideology being authoritarian doesn’t make it moderate on the left-right scale. Instead, the more authoritarian governments tend to be hard left/right instead of moderate left/right.

I have to disagree about right-wing ideology being about “liberty and freedom”. That’s the realm of libertarianism, not right-wing politics. Libertarians in the U.S. tend to be right-wing, but libertarianism and right-wing politics are distinct ideologies. Right-wing politics emphasize traditional values, nationalism, and hierarchial social structures.

Calling Leninism “moderate left” is like calling Project 2025 “moderate right”.

News tip submission forms for Roanoke, Virginia:

• The Roanoke Times
• WSLS (NBC)
• WDBJ (CBS)
• WFXR (Fox)

@UnpopularCrow, since you have more information about this than the rest of us, would you mind submitting the details to these news organizations?

They’re nothing special. Look up “shredded memory foam pillow” on your favorite big retailer’s website and you’ll find a better deal, especially when you add the shipping fee.

Russian forces invaded Donbas in August 2014, when Petro Poroshenko was the president of Ukraine. Russian propaganda tries to deny the fact that Russia invaded Donbas in 2014, but the evidence is crystal clear.

While you certainly are free to not care about lemmy.ml mods blocking users from unrelated communities for criticizing China or Russia anywhere on the fediverse, which effectively silences lemmy.world users, there are currently 1,019 upvotes vs. 92 downvotes on the “Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem” post, which suggests that most lemmy.world users who are aware of the issue do care.

Nobody is claiming to be trying to change the minds of lemmy.ml mods. We just don’t want to have to worry about whether posting something mildly negative about China or Russia on a post anywhere on the fediverse that somehow catches the attention of lemmy.ml mods will cause us to lose the ability to participate in a community such as [email protected].

Condoning this censorship from lemmy.ml corrupts the “marketplace of ideas” because it distorts the discourse visible on lemmy.world to favor the political preferences of lemmy.ml’s mods. This affects every lemmy.world user, whether they block lemmy.ml or not, because there is no way to opt out of the chilling effects other than defederation.

The political content published in lemmy.ml isn’t the main problem, it’s the fact that lemmy.ml moderators are banning users from general interest communities, including non-political communities, when they criticize China or Russia elsewhere. This happens not only when the criticism is posted within a lemmy.ml community, but also when the criticism is posted outside of lemmy.ml.

The behavior of these lemmy.ml mods corrupts the “marketplace of ideas” that you’re describing. lemmy.world should not present or promote general interest communities that only allow users to participate if they avoid making comments critical of China or Russia on the fediverse. This kind of bad moderation creates a chilling effect.