for anyone who wasn't around for the dustup when r/ContraPoints declared war on the old subreddit, here's a sample of the moderation team's style:
I've asked you
TWO
Extremely clear questions.
ONE:
CAN YOU ABIDE BY OUR COMMUNITY'S RULES?
and
TWO:
WERE YOU TRYING TO CALL ME A LIAR?
These are questions I asked YOU.
You can answer them -- or not.
And you can participate here.
Or not.
The moderation team of /r/ContraPoints is the moderation team of /r/ContraPoints.
YOU are NOT on it.
Before 35 minutes ago, you'd never participated in our community.
How we run our community is our business, and the business of the people who participate here in good faith.
We don't allow disrespect; We don't allow verbal or emotional abuse; We don't allow people to brigade our subreddit and post off-topic posts and metadrama.
What YOU think you know about our moderation team is informed solely by third-hand hearsay and screenshots released by someone abusing their position, edited and therefore cherry picked to support a narrative.
That narrative is abusive.
It will not be allowed.
No one will be allowed to come here and back-seat run our subreddit, or light torches and brandish pitchforks.
So now,
THREE Questions:
The first two still must be answered,
and
AM I PERFECTLY CLEAR THAT YOU ARE NOT A MODERATOR OF THIS SUBREDDIT?
I re-read the r/ContraPoints ban message, it's a permaban that you can APPEAL if you're willing to grovel after 72 hours
here’s a more recent addressing of his allegations.
The TL;DR is that the dude’s an evangelical Christian tied to Neo-Nazi and reactionary entities like the Victims of Communism Foundation, who can’t speak Chinese, and can’t even do basic maths.
If you want more on XJ generally, Qiao Collective has a decent writeup.
If you want to see the best arguments of the anti-China side, I’d suggest the Made In China journal, or Chuang.
Chaung had imo a good history of the period here: http://chuangcn.org/journal/two/spirit-breaking/
Out of 47 footnotes, 2 are translated documents from Zenz (unfortunate, but they only cite what the documents said), and 1 source is from a radio free asia interview from an anonymous official. Whether or not that is true well, stuff they've reported has been true and false before, usually interviews where they've labeled the town it came from have been true with respect to other things like labor strikes. However there's just no way to know. Qiao (a much more pro CPC site) itself on those RFA interviews are like IDK, they're definitely sourced in a biased way, but it's unverifiable whether they true or not. Similar thing happens in the US constantly with anonymous Trump officials doing interviews but not giving documents. Some of it's false, some of it's turned out to be true.
I've talked with people from Chuang before, and they are very sincere, but do not have the money or power to go pay for independent research outside of Hong Kong and certain coastal cities for labor reporting from people that they have that are already there/have connections. Their Xjinjiang articles are all from people who at different times have spent significant time in the region doing different academic work though.
Made In China journal is also great, I have a copy of their Afterlives of Chinese Communism collection. They had a recent article with examples of how state desecration of shrines actually works, lots of photos: https://madeinchinajournal.com/2020/08/24/the-spatial-cleansing-of-xinjiang-mazar-desecration-in-context/
here's a pretty good twitter thread from Roderic Day
https://twitter.com/RodericDay/status/1287411708374454273
Do they get paid? I don't think I even browsed 275+ subreddits, that's insane.
A huge downside of any group that relies on volunteer leadership is that you can easily attract sickos who are in it for petty power and little else. They're the ones most willing to shovel the necessary shit for free, and the "thankless job" defense excuses all sorts of conduct that wouldn't be tolerated in almost any other environment.
This and all similar problems are exacerbated when your leadership goes from part-time to full-time (as one must be if they're modding dozens of subreddits).
“Another important God-given authority structure that Satan is attacking through the postmodern spirit is that of gender authority structures”, Zenz continued. "Through notions of gender equality [...] the enemy is undermining God's unique but different role assignments for men and women."
I remember how one of the r/contrapoints mods tried to paint CTH as rabidly transphobic on AgainstHateSubreddits.
like hard disagree cth was a chapo trap home also if my memory serves if you were transphobic on a post on the sub you would just get dog piled and someone would just explain why it was bad in case it was an actual accident so really wild stuff
Not like me, who is impervious to developing parasocial relationships through the use of FACTS and LOGIC and the VOLCEL POLICE
That describes like all reddit mods who take their shit way too seriously. I got banned from r/communism101 for asking a question a while back about the ussr, which means I'm banned from r/communism too. I got banned for 2 weeks from r/socialism for posting the new gravel institute video and the excuse they gave me was ridiculously condescending like "go learn what real socialism is" wtf lol these people gotta fucking chill jfc
Is that one of the left subreddits that filters out ableist language? That's the only reason that would make any sense.
i thought it was just an auto remove, they permabanned you for that?
weird didnt know they ban ppl for that, i mean not using ableist words is fine but they do have pretty strict rules about some i dont really agree with lol
I am not sure why com101 banned me but I honestly think it was for saying in a comunist utopia there would be no tv commercials
I’ve asked you
TWO
Extremely clear questions.
ONE:
WHO IS YOUR DADDY?
and
TWO:
WHAT DOES HE DO?
Stop idolizing CHINA BAD celebrities so much. Just don’t listen, don’t pay attention. I remember, right around September 2020, Adrian Zenz was on CNN. That’s what they said, they said “We got Adrian Zenz on the phone. Let’s see what Adrian’s thoughts are on this tragedy.” Who gives a fuck what Adrian Zenz thinks at a time like this, my dude, this is ridiculous. I don’t want to fuckin’ read CIA propaganda, I’m suspicious as fuck. I want some answers that Adrian Zenz might not have right now. You think when bad shit happens to me, I’ll be in the crib like, Oh my god, this is terrible. Could somebody please find Adrian Zenz, get ahold of this motherfucker, so I can make sense of all this? Where is ADRIAN?"
Do you think they were at half-mast while writing this or are they naturally the sort of person to talk like Brian Blessed during a 'roid rage episode?
if you asked them that online they would accuse you of ABUSE and SEXUAL HARASSMENT
I'd ask them to get their keyboard checked because their CAPSLOCK randomly CAPITALISES words
Jesus, they write like a boomer sending a passive-aggressive email
What YOU think you know about our moderation team is informed solely by third-hand hearsay and screenshots released by someone abusing their position, edited and therefore cherry picked to support a narrative.
Well... Whatever they thought they knew about the modteam was just completely confirmed by the way you just treated them in that modmail sooooooo.
Bardfinn is absolutely fucking unhinged.
Like, the work of AHS is great, but the stream of absolutely pedantic libshit in psychotic formatting they consistently post is horriffic
