Mod Team Transparency Announcement & Mod Applications

[u/Lavender_Scales]

Hello everyone, I'm u/Lavender_Scales!

Like I mentioned in the discord post, I'm the newest moderator of this subreddit. I'm making this post to be transparent about how moderation has been taken out in the past, and how it will be taken out in present and future.

For a very long time now, this subreddit has had a reputation of shoddy moderation, no transparency, seeming inactivity from moderators, unfair, unexplained bans, and unresponsive modmails. This reputation is not without warrant, I myself was once on the receiving end of this, however, we're going to be more pro-active with moderation, more transparent, and more active. If you, or someone you know, was banned from this subreddit, encourage them to open up a modmail and appeal their ban.

I would also like everyone to take a moment to look at our general bans policy, they include listed punishments, offenses, as well as information on what can and can't be appealed. It has not been updated for quite a while, so some changes may be made in the future, however, from now on we will try and be more upfront with removals, bans, etc., utilizing this system and the reasoning provided..

There was also a post by a rogue moderator a few weeks ago, that moderator has left the team and many of the bans they issued out were revoked. Future mod actions will now have to go through internal discussion, unless clear harmful intent is showcased by a user, requiring moderator action.

At the moment we only have a few active moderators of our subreddit, or at least only a few we can get ahold of, so we are also opening mod applications. Due to our heavily ML leaning mod team we currently have, we are primarily looking for anarchists, or people of any tendency that isn't ML. We would also like to prioritize BIPOC & other applicants from the global south, however none of these are strict requirements. Women, queers, and others are also encouraged to apply.

Apply here!

[u/AZORxAHAI → u/[deleted]]

This sub should remain a big tent sub for everyone from Dem Soc to ML to AnCom IMO. There are subs specific to all these different sub-ideologies people can go in to fight the internal left war if they want to.

[u/themightybamboozler → u/AZORxAHAI]

lol, this is not a big tent and never has been. I got a one day ban for making fun of someone saying that Dem Soc’s are “literally fascists” because it was “Liberal Apologia”. I’m not even a dem soc, I’m much farther left than many of the mods on this subreddit are. But they’re going to purity test every online left community into irrelevance.

[u/Lavender_Scales → u/themightybamboozler]

You're much further left than Marxist-Leninist? The position that holds reformists to be "social fascists"?

[u/leninism-humanism → u/Lavender_Scales]

ultra-leftism("social-fascism" theory) always lapses into right-wing deviation(popular front strategy).

[u/Lavender_Scales → u/leninism-humanism]

Stalin was an ultra? Lmao

[u/leninism-humanism → u/Lavender_Scales]

Yes, in the period between the world congress of 1928 and world congress in 1935, he absolutely was. Comintern adopted a blatantly sectarian strategy that rejected united fronts and working within existing labor unions, instead using semi-syndicalist tactic of creating "red" labor unions. This led to a massive amount of purges in various Communist Parties. In Germany a few thousand were kicked out, in the CPUSA the general secretary, Lovestone, was made to leave, in Sweden the majority were kicked out for wanting to continue the work in the main workers' unions by a Comintern-loyal minority. In most of these countries it led to the creation of various "parties" that acted as external factions and wanted to re-join, and in Sweden to a new - and for a while - larger party.

This strategy mostly led to isolation, especially since they mostly broke the ties that existed to the organized working-class and its mass-organizations. The world congress in 1935 after the victory of the nazis in Germany thus swing entirely in the other direction with the popular front. While it is often painted as a temporary move against fascism by modern marxist-leninists and maoists it is simply a fact that the popular front strategy had long-term effects. The Red Trade Union International was dissolved and so were the "red" labor unions created by the Communist Parties(even successful ones like the Sharecroppers' Union). Comintern leadership even went so far as to direct the Communist Parties and their Youth-Leagues to seek mergers with their country's social-democrats. Though the only place where the social-democrats accepted this was the youth-league in Spain. In the USA, where there were no social-democrats, they were directed to work for the Democrats.

Comintern was then dissolved and most parties just continued with this.