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What are the first signs of a hostile fascist take over a fediverse instance? (piefed.ca)
submitted 4 days ago by to c/askacanadian@lemmy.ca
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It would probably follow the Reddit model that began in 2018. Maybe Lemmy.today is the first example of this.

  1. Admins ask members left of liberalism to keep the conversation in the centre.
  2. Rules are no longer enforced and are watered down.
  3. Frivolous bans.
  4. Removal of moderators.
  5. Defederation from other instances.
  6. Ads introduced in the sidebar and posts.
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[–] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

edit ahhh I missed the community name somehow, I am not Canadian sorry facepalm

With respect to 1. the opposite state is just as likely that rules become endlessly byzantine to avoid dealing with fundamental questions or irreconciable truths.

This is really why a lot of absurdist literature and film tends towards the byzantine, it is to make the political apparatus of fascism strangling art and individuality concrete in some way that can be perceived by an audience through aesthetics and motif... which is often through endless arbitrary rules and measurements that categorize and categorize endlessly in a way that feels bluntly unbiased because of an association with sorting, order, measurements, names and numbers but is in architecture silencing of narratives that attempt to weave categories together in different ways or find meaning.

A dystopian society run by a totalitarian state, where departments with names like the Ministry of Information oppress citizens through empty rhetoric and labyrinthine bureaucracy; an everyman protagonist (Jonathan Pryce) longing for escape who resists the authorities through an illicit romance with a similarly rebellious lover; a sinister room of torture where his hopes are finally broken – the literary influence of George Orwell’s 1984, as well as the bureaucratic absurdity of Franz Kafka, is overtly clear in Brazil (1985).

https://www.bfi.org.uk/lists/brazil-terry-gilliam-influences

The lack of this closure is one of the hallmarks of weird fiction. The inexplicability and productive ambiguity emphasized within the mode ensures that the unsettlement of the narrative is mirrored for both character and reader, avoiding closure for either, thereby channeling Robert Aickman’s dictum that an effective piece of weird fiction “must open a door, preferably where no one had previously noticed a door to exist; and at the end, leave it open, or, possibly, ajar.” Weird fiction doesn’t enclose discordant energies or possibilities; it thrives in their ungraspability.

https://ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2025/05/02/reading-weird-fiction-in-an-age-of-fascism/

edit Exhibit A. https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/77525991

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago (2 children)

    I think you might want to distinguish between rules and bureaucracy.

    Often, rules/laws become excessively vague to allow inconsistent enforcement. Bureaucracy becomes byzantine to prevent easily changing the results of the initial enforcement action.

    I think a more realistic example would be:

    Written rule: no bigotry.

    Appeals process: message the appeals mod (not listed) on Friday the 13th under a full moon on a good day and include your face scan, ID and credit card number.

    The rule itself seems perfectly innocent and good, even, but is intentionally extremely vague, allowing power to arbitrarily decide what constitutes "bigotry". Questioning that decision is also, technically, possible.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 child)

    Yes but the phenomena I am specifically trying to underline is the way in which a community of conversations can be silenced by simply applying overly restrictive categorization "THIS isn't the place for THAT" type moderation rules to communities.

    This both makes it so that people who hold a view that is in conflict with the architects (not necessarily the majority) are forced to attempt to create new alternative communities and try to get them off the ground and it also allows narratives to be silenced through selective moderation according to a byzantine set of rules that you are pretty much always breaking (and nobody cares 99% of the time).

    The censorship is spatial, it is never complete, it is like being told by your parents to ask the other parent for permission in an endless ping pong that doesn't ever provide a space for a conversation to happen while simultaneously leaving you nowhere specific to point your finger and blame.

    This is a very similar phenomena to society making so many things illegal that the average person can be assumed to be breaking the law by law enforcement and thus law enforcement is able to enact biased policing policies under the guise of unbiased enforcement of byzantine and impossible rulesystems....

    ...which again is precisely why absurdist theater and literature plays so much with these patterns and motifs as a form of wholistic resistance.

    edit To be clear I am not arguing that "this isn't the place for that" isn't needed to some healthy degree, but people don't think about what happens when you don't monitor the growth of that tendency like how in Jurassic Park they assumed the dinosaurs couldn't reproduce so why have the capacity to count any more than they started with...? It is dangerous in a way people assume is benign.

    Lemmy.world I am afraid is a great example of this.

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