Aug 4, 2026, 3:32 PMNice!
"Mastodon is currently considered *the* alternative to Twitter. SURF [the IT cooperative of Dutch education and research] and Universities of the Netherlands are therefore jointly exploring how a Mastodon environment for education and research in the Netherlands can take shape."
https://www.surf.nl/en/mastodon-pilot-for-research-and-education
Aug 4, 2026, 6:21 PMOh this is the same instance where the admin posted yesterday about how Israel "controls the West" and "has done so for 80 years" (ie all of its existence).
Is making allusions to Jewish lies, Jewish control of government and delegitimatizing a state's existence considered acceptable?
@serge social.edu.nl seems to be the one, indeed.
[Clarification: the current pilot instance; doesn't mean it will stay the only one]
On a first glance, I don't seem him listed as admin there; but his affiliation with SURF is obvious.
[Correction: He is listed as admin, I simply didn't see it]
Not statement I condone in the slightest & makes me, once again, cry out "why can't we just have nice things" :/
Aug 4, 2026, 7:13 PM@serge Thanks for pointing that out, I appreciate it
For the record (and for other people reading this):
The part about "80 years" is the one I personally take issue with.
I don't necessarily see the other part about "enabling by the 'reasonable center' and the 'silent majority' in the West" as being an allusion to "Jewish control of the West"; while I also see Serge's point.
Aug 4, 2026, 9:29 PMThe thing with such people is that if they didn't go so far, I wouldn't have an issue.
There's nothing wrong with talking about the issues in the West Bank per se (though I'd ask why not discuss other human tragedies and only talk about Israel) but when one talks about Israel as an illegitimate state or makes allusions to antisemitic tropes, it's clear this absolutely doesn't belong on a site like this, and never from an admin.
The Israelian government is largely seen as racist colonialistic and genocidal. It is always, ALWAYS a good moment to be reminded of that. And if we allow public officers to wear turbans or a kippah, we certainly should allow a Mastodon admin to remind us of who is who.
@KoosPol You speak of "Israelian government", but then about allowing "public officers to wear turbans or a kippah" - which is already conflating Israel with Jews elsewhere.
Also, allow "to remind us of who is who" - wtf are you talking about?
1) weirdly conflating religion of unrelated people with the action of a state
2) not the act of reminding, but the focus of "80 years", i.e. the whole existence, is what I take issue with
@lavaeolus @serge @stefan Hi there. Yes, I agree. My mind is usually much quicker than my fingers. In my mind it was a pretty solid argument. But ofcourse, if you look at it from the outside it's pretty flimsy. Let me fill in some side comments should have added in the first place:
The turbans/kippah mention was about double standards. Generally we allow people to speak out for what their (not necessarily religious) beliefs are. Even by public officials. I see so issue with a Mastodon admin making a stand. This is in no way a conflation of religion and state.
The 80 years "frame" (for lack of a better word, English is not my first language) does not exist in a vacuum. It's sort of a whataboutism. We can't solve all the problems of the world. But if we see one, it's worth addressing. And then we shouldn't drag other problems to it and complain that that one wasn't solved too.
I hope it makes more sense now.
@KoosPol Well, you see how your original post can be very easily misunderstood.
For the record, I disagree with @serge calling you a "Nazi".
In the same way the admin is allowed his speech, Serge is allowed to point out the potential issues with the way he phrased things (phrases do not exist in a vacuum, too). And in the same way, I'm allowed to voice my displeasure with those phrases.
Nothing more happened, nothing less.
@serge @lavaeolus @stefan Oh, and your choice of words like "such people" and "perse" is nailbiting.
Aug 5, 2026, 4:11 AM
@serge so, we're doing quotes now as if we're citing something, but that thing we are supposedly citing is not even written in that post?
If they had actually written what you are purpoting, that would be unacceptable. But they didnt write that.
Aug 5, 2026, 11:25 AMHes says two things in the original version:
"This behavior is what you get, and what you make possible, when you spend 80 years talking about the #Palestinian “conflict.” This is not just about far-right #apartheid nationalists in #Israel.
It is all about 80 years of enabling by the “reasonable center” and the “silent majority” in the West."
There are multiple dog whistles at play here. It's a lot of careful writing. You can read it either as Jews are covering up the situation by "re framing" (ie lying) or you can read this as an allusion to the "Jewish Question" 100 years ago in Europe, aka that the existence of Israel is akin to the Holocaust.
I took the *less problematic* view in this post, which is "just" that Jews someone control the West.
But re-reading it today, it's far more obscene in that it's a clear allusion to Holocaust Denial, rather than Jewish governmental control.
@serge or you could read it as a critique of Western people, whom he believes to be "enabling" human rights violations against palestinians by using the word "conflict".
(Which is another take that one could agree or disagree with)
You can read it in a lot of ways. But see what I did here? The words I put into quotation marks are actually verbatim of what he wrote. One shouldn't use quotation marks for things we are interpeting only.
Aug 5, 2026, 11:51 AMWhen someone is actively advocating genocide or ethnic cleansing of 7 million people, or half the world's Jews, as this person does in implicitly calling for the destruction of the state of Israel through de-legitimization, then my read of everything else they say is going to be less generous then it would be otherwise.
If he had simply referred to the issues in the West Bank, ongoing violence, encroaching settlements, unequal treatment by the law, statements by the far-right ministers in Israel- all of which I find morally repugnant, I would have no area of disagreement.
When he starts to de-legitimize the state itself, that shifts the conversation and his specific and deliberate use words and phrases undergo far deeper scrutiny.
Could I be wrong in my interpretation? I might be. But even if you omit the issue of lies, or holocaust denial - the de-legitimization of Israel as a nation is deeply problematic from an official in this position.
Aug 5, 2026, 11:58 AMAs for the use of quotes, they're functioning in my post not as verbatim excerpts but as explainers.
Endantisemitism does it differently. They just put a single word or phrase, eg:
https://mastodon.social/@endantisemitism/116235532159121068
My quoting is trying to capture the same information of addressing the accusation, in a larger context. For me the poster's offensive and hateful comments were problematic, but far more problematic was who was saying them- someone who is representing the Dutch government in an official capacity and is acting as the editorial gatekeeper.
My experience has been an evolution over time.
I used to do long explainers, no one read them.
I then pointed to external resources, people argued with them.
Then I made my own website, people didn't click through.
Now I just put the hate meme in quotes. I'll consider changing that. But let's not let this slide into tone policing, ok?
Aug 5, 2026, 11:35 AMShould I go back and focus on the Holocaust Denial part then, rather than the lies?
@stefan so fucking rad. We love to see it.
Aug 4, 2026, 6:51 PM@markwyner @stefan hi, waving from that fucking rad Mastodon server :)
Aug 4, 2026, 6:56 PM@stefan Mastodon is decentralized, just open some instances for the universities and schools already! 😎😁
@stefan this is the highest liked post ive seen today at 250 likes. Shit ain't twitter
@stefan When Elon bought Twitter it became my corporate contact only, if I needed to contact companies and nothing else. When Trump got elected and I've seen what bs they were doing together including the literal double nazi salute, I just deleted it and opened Mastodon. Never looked back. I wish Mastodon would become the sane version of Twitter and now X...
Aug 5, 2026, 6:33 AM@Bradley_JF @rejzor @stefan
Very much this. Would help some to not panic over business presence here:
"I am gonna block instance X or Y if they ever alow ads!!!"
- Yes ads are horrible but if coca cola has an account on a big instance it wont give them tools to track you automated and their posts are just posts (technically).
- If they open their own official instance for their brands, products and employees then their fanbase can happy connect and the rest can ignore it.
"Twitter"? Sounds like the article from 2023?
Aug 5, 2026, 12:12 PMThere is a non-manager in their IT dept who can have an instance running by quitting time.
