Rimu recently started a new rant thread. I copied the response of the person they had targeted and in less than a minute Rimu had deleted the comment.

This is the comment Rimu did not want people being able to see: https://feddit.uk/post/53824748/26875911

This is the thread I shared it on: https://feddit.uk/post/53824747

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[+] -25 points 2 months ago (60 children)

There's a number of negative things about the Lemmy devs as well. This isn't a whataboutism, or deflection. One of the lead Lemmy devs account is named for a genocidal dictator. I will give them acknowledgment and props for not perpetuating larger systems of oppression through software. Instead choosing to gleefully micro manage their own fiefdoms by hand doing it.

Point being if you're using the threadiverse, you're not going to find a major backend that isn't it developed by someone with a toxic relationship to power. And ultimately a tool is still a tool regardless of Who develops it.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    What about kbin/mbin? I haven't heard anything terrible about them at least.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    As someone who persistently forgets to give kbin a try for years already, I'm wondering if the lack of notable drama is in part at fault of why people don't know about it / don't use it...

    ...Or, with any luck, it's just me.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago* (2 children)

    I really don't ask for a HUGE amount, I think:

    1. The main maintainer of the codebase isn't a power trippin' bastard (if they are a PTB, then I don't trust them not to surreptitiously inject malicious code into it at some point)

    2. The person who owns/runs the instance isn't a power trippin' bastard (if they are a PTB, then I don't trust them not to basically function as a malicious man-in-the-middle attack at some point)

    3. The instance isn't hosted in the USA (if it is hosted in the USA, then I don't trust the instance to be resilient against governmental overreach and spying) or any other untrustworthy countries

    That's kind of it, really. But so far, I'm struggling to get past point 1. Both Lemmy and Piefed seem to be maintained by nutjobs. I'm honestly considering going back to Reddit. Maybe kbin will be OK...

    EDIT: I mean mbin. Apparently kbin is dead.

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  • [–] 31 points 2 months ago (10 children)

    Your comment is whataboutism and a deflection. Saying something isn't what it is doesn't make it any less is.

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  • [–] -2 points 2 months ago (7 children)

    This isn't whataboutism. Someone asked why people still use Piefed, and for a fair number of people, that is the reason. I personally only noticed the Piefed controversies bubbling up recently. The problems with the Lemmy devs have been known for years (at least to me). And some people may see what Piefed devs do as the lesser evil, whether you agree with it or not.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (6 children)

    It's definitely whataboutism.

    I asked why people use piefed despite the drama, Eldritch's argument was that lemmy devs are bad, and hey, aren't all developers kinda bad?

    That's like if I asked why some people like shit on their chest and they said "some of us don't like getting pissed on."

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Okay.

    So why do you use Lemmy despite the drama?

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  • [–] 12 points 2 months ago

    Preference. I tried piefed and didn't like it. I like lemmy. Lemmy's devs are more objective when it comes to their platform than Rimu is. The way the devs run their home instance doesn't bother me too much. There is no equivalent to .today, in terms of no blocked instances and a viewable modlog, on piefed.

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  • [–] -4 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Your assessment of the Piefed's Devs' actions being worse than those by the Lemmy devs is a subjective one. That's precisely the point: one could argue that what Lemmy devs do is worse than what Piefed's devs do. And to be fair, not everyone knows about every alternative (although I will use the moment to shoutout Mbin, which, as far as I know, hasn't had any such issues - at least not yet).

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Your assessment of the Piefed’s Devs’ actions being worse than those by the Lemmy devs is a subjective one.

    I never assessed such a thing.

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  • [+] -24 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    No my comment was strictly with regards to you calling out users of a particular software. When it comes to rimu. 100% ptb unfortunately. I can't support the authors of Lemmy or piefed. But people are free to use whichever tools they choose in this instance. But good luck constructing that straw man.

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  • [–] 25 points 2 months ago

    This has got to be the worst use of "straw man" I have seen on lemmy so far. And I've seen some bad ones.

    Just a tip, you can't call every argument you don't like a straw man. It has a meaning.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago (14 children)

    I dunno that the original dessalines counts as genocidal, despite his attempts to rid haiti of whites. It was more or less a mass murder, and outright unnecessary since he had other options, but I don't know that genocide would be the right term for it? Maybe, I'm not fully convinced either way, just starting a tangent

    That tangent is that the real dessalines was.... complicated. He essentially became a central figure in Haitian liberation. One can argue that the revolution might not have succeeded without him. He was certainly effective.

    He was also effective as "emperor" (in quotes because it's hard to be an emperor of a single nation) for the most part. Made Haiti pitchy officially an independent nation, declared slavery abolished, stripped colonialists of property, and generally kept things running.

    Of course, part of keeping things running was treating Haitians like slaves, just without the label.

    Which shows both why the dev dessalines might have chosen the name, and why it doesn't really fit. Plus, you know, the whole emperor thing being contrary to socialism being weird.

    Fwiw to anyone here for the tangent, there's been a goodly number of books about the real Dessalines. Likely available at your local library, or on the high seas. He was a fascinating figure.

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  • [+] -12 points 2 months ago (10 children)

    Most genocide is Mass murder. You are basically making an argument of ability and scope. Genocide is a genocide. And it doesn't even require murder all the time. Though generally it does include it.

    The fact remains that not only did he target what had become a minority group on the islands and wipe it out. Basically genocide. Worse they had been allies fighting alongside him.

    And the United States certainly weren't the good guys in the whole situation either. They did their normal thing showing up just long enough to kill a foreign leader. Even if the large portion of Haitian population desired is removal. It still doesn't excuse what France did afterwards and how America followed along buddy buddy enabling France.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    I would definitely argue that there's a bit of wiggle room on freed slaves offing their oppressors though. It wasn't just him.

    My hindsight take is that it was a justifiable action considering the history of humanity and how slave revolt tends to be handled. Wiping out the overlords instead of exiling them is a form of preemptive strike.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

    The overlords, and their wives, and their children, and anyone else who looked like them regardless of socioeconomic class. Months after the fighting had stopped. Following assurances they'd be left alone... but weren't allowed to leave.

    You're allowed to endorse the original cause for a conflict and still say that where it ended was kinda fucked up.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Fucked up, yeah. But we're still talking about people that were enslaved, raped, beaten; had their children raped, beaten, and stolen from them, and had ancestors in the same situation.

    I would call the massacre assisted suicide on a historic scale.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Well, we've hit a snag.

    Who is "y'all" in this case?

    See, by that sentence that started "I was assured y'all", you're in/out grouping and making an assumption that not only is there an out group for you to categorize people into it, but that I'm a part of that group.

    Secondary to that, I've never seen a discussion where someone starts thinking in terms of "me vs them" that ended in anything but ugliness. I'm willing to accept that this might not go that way, but I'm dubious as fuck. So, if that's where you are, do us both a favor, don't respond to this, and just block me. I don't have time or patience for that bullshit.

    Besides, it's why I so rarely engage in discussions about the subject matter of a post in this community. It isn't the place for even gentler debates, much less those that run hot.

    That being said, if you're drawing parallels between a slave revolution in haiti and the Israeli pogrom going on currently, be aware that Israel is the slave masters in this case, not Palestinians. The direct equivalence would be if Palestinians got armed and took back their lives. Then, any remaining Israelis were put to death instead of shipping them back home.

    See, you expect a degree of over reaction by oppressed and tortured people. It doesn't make it good, but it is totally understandable, and can even make good sense strategically.

    To redraw the comparison, let's say that Palestinians, now running their own independent nation, had allowed their previous oppressors to remain for similar reasons. What are they supposed to do with them? integrate them into Palestinian culture? When their oppressive neighbors are still planning death and mayhem, and the Israelis inside their borders are just as likely to side with their oppressors?

    What then? Send those people back to Israel, where their resentment and sense of entitlement will continue to be a problem? Or wipe them out and be done with it? Sending a message at the same time of "stay the fuck out".

    Now, is that morally "good"? Fuck no, we're all supposed to take the gentler path when we can. But put yourself in the place of either peoples. Are you so certain of your moral superiority that you wouldn't make the strategic decision to eliminate a threat? A proven threat in both cases. Remember, the Haitians were coming off of centuries of slavery, rape, torture, and not just "regular" slavery, chattel slavery. The Palestinians? Holy fuck, for it being a relatively recent reoccurrance of violence against them, they've had a violent boot on their neck for generations too.

    Me? I'm not that confident in my ability to pretend moral superiority in the same situation. Hell, I'm pretty damn confident I'd be willing to do the killing. I'm a nice person, but I am not a good person when it comes to protecting me and mine. Oh, I could be talked into holding off if leadership had a good plan in place, after all, the cycle of killing is hard to stop just because you were justified; that's how we get generational warfare.


    It's also interesting to look at the ww2 comparison. Me? I have said publicly that the worst mistake humanity ever made was in letting nazis live. Some shit needs to be crushed as hard as possible. Not because it prevents the insanity from coming back, but to draw a line in the sand and say "nope, if you pick up that banner, you will share the same fate."

    I think that's what the Haitians did back then. They said nope, fuck slave masters, and anyone thinking they can try it again.

    Is it a moral good? Nope. But I am absolutely okay with an oppressed people making bad choices while they get their feet back under them.

    Maybe you're a better person than me. Since I don't believe in a real deity, I suppose only the collective consciousness of humanity can be the judge of that. But I just can't find it in me to care that a bunch of ex slaves went hard. I don't blame them. Maybe if they hadn't been treated worse than animals, they would have had a chance to be the kind of people that don't make the choice. But they were, and I suspect that any group of people so treated would as well. Which seems to me a matter of ideals vs reality, not a pure morality

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  • [–] 11 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    fact remains that not only did he target what had become a minority group on the islands

    The American Civil War was actually the oppression of a South American minority group (white European slave owners)

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  • [–] -1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Did Sherman hunt down their families, after the slaves were freed?

    When you start bayonetting all children of the wrong ethnicity, because shooting them might be too noisy and let others escape, it doesn't really matter what justifications started the conflict. There was a line and it is behind you.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    The line was subjugating and enslaving people - the colonists got their children killed. Also, how the fuck do you look at America today and conclude Sherman went far enough?

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  • [–] -3 points 2 months ago

    Systematic killing of children cannot be justified by a war that's already over, no matter how justified that war was. Dessalines rode from city to city making good and goddamn sure those children got murdered for being born wrong.

    Nobody with criticisms about reconstruction thinks the right answer was genocide.

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  • [+] -7 points 2 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 14 points 2 months ago*

    Have they not hung up men with heads downward, drowned them in sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in mortars? Have they not forced them to consume faeces? And, having flayed them with the lash, have they not cast them alive to be devoured by worms, or onto anthills, or lashed them to stakes in the swamp to be devoured by mosquitoes? Have they not thrown them into boiling cauldrons of cane syrup? Have they not put men and women inside barrels studded with spikes and rolled them down mountainsides into the abyss? Have they not consigned these miserable blacks to man-eating dogs until the latter, sated by human flesh, left the mangled victims to be finished off with bayonet and poniard?

    I don't know why he chose that name but it seems like a deliberate provocation. That violence begets violence, and still without violence we cannot resist the oppressors. And that you can only liberate yourself and others by getting your hands dirty.

    So I think it's hypocrisy to reduce the historical figure Dessalines to a genocidal dictator. To use a thought terminating cliche about simplistic "good vs evil" ethics and derail a discussion that was about something else.

    Every time you start a war you accept that war crimes will happen. It is inevitable in wars. There are no clean wars. War is slaughter, and when soldiers or the oppressed are put into extremis some will act like animals.

    So how much of the guilt for the massacre lies with the slavers?

    Yet liberals pretend that they do not put people into extremis. That their reasons were justified and intentions noble, that their wars and their hands are clean. But violence begets violence.

    That is what the name of the user tells me, and what that comment tells me.

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  • [–] -3 points 2 months ago (27 children)

    A genocidal dictator? Do tell, which one? Hitler? Netanyahu? Bush??

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  • [+] -13 points 2 months ago (26 children)
  • [–] 32 points 2 months ago (10 children)

    Under the rule of Dessalines, Haiti became the first country in the Americas to permanently abolish slavery.

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  • [+] -10 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    Oh so that makes it okay that they rounded up all the white polish etc minority on the island that had fought alongside them. And then exterminated them? That's some moral relativism right there if I ever heard it.

    I differentiate between the people of Haiti and their first self-proclaimed emperor. My sympathies lie with the people of Haiti. After fighting one revolution for their freedom. They had to turn and cooperate with bad faith actors like the United States. To assassinate their own ruler so they could actually have it. Only to then be fucked by France and the United States for the next Century afterwards.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    start reading argument about Lemmy and Piefed

    somehow end up reading about Haitian racist genocide.

    Internet be hittin today, bruh

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    When one of the lead devs of the Lemmy backend names their online presence after the enactor/leader of said alleged genocide, it's bound to come up at some point.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    I'm legit surprised it doesn't come up more. Yeah, Dessalines the OG is a bit more obscure than Louverture, but the fediverse in general and lemmy in particular run heavy to folks that appreciate revolutionary history.

    Hell, I'm not even that into Haitian history, and I've read a little bit here and there. Been ages, but still enough to recognize the name when I saw it. When you also consider some of the drama around lemmy dessalines, that nobody looked it up is surprising too

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago

    Oh so that makes it okay that they rounded up all the white polish etc minority on the island

    Famously the one group that was spared.

    Only to then be fucked by France and the United States for the next Century afterwards.

    The US and France had fucked over Saint Domingue long before Dessalines was overthrown. It was Dessalines who was forced to sign the treaty which indebted the entire nation as price for their freedom. It came with support from slaveholders like Jefferson who correctly, saw the Haitian Revolution as an existential threat to their way of life.

    The point is to highlight the concept of Critical Support. Dessalines isn't someone to idolize like Toussant, he was a ruthless thug. But Napoleon rejected the alliance that Toussant offered. So faced with the choice of re-enslavement under Napoleon and Rochambeau, I would've taken Dessalines any day.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (6 children)

    Kinda weird that you don't mention the whole former slave who led the resistance to abolish slavery and free his country thing.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    Okay, see? That's a strawman. Now you know.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)
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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago

    Eldritch commented on Desalines' choice of name without important context, as though to posit the question: Why name oneself after a genocidal dictator? I added context in case anyone else wondered the same thing and hadn't heard the name before.

    There's no reason to believe I excuse anything.

    For everything else, feel free to visit your local library.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 months ago (7 children)

    Do you even know the history of Haiti and why it is globally relevant? You CANNOT divorce that from the context of this.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

    I didn't say any of those things, I am pointing out you are carrying water for european slavery empires by stripping the context.

    If you cannot get over the individual to understand the context, your understanding of people and history will continue to be egregiously broken and myopic.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    I don't really think you have done what you say, and if you have in this thread it has been from a defensive and reactive standpoint that concedes context and nuance rather than willingly invoking them.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 months ago

    The Haitian massacre did occur, but you're making claims that white allies were killed. You specifically cited the Poles in Haiti who were among the population of whites granted amnesty and citizenship for their role in rejecting the French.

    You were categorically wrong and are trying to breeze past it.

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