At HOUDINI, we have always held that spaces for the genuine left must be vigilant, principled, and, above all, safe from the corrosive influence of fascism. It is with disappointment and frustration that we must address the ongoing and escalating issue of one such space: the /leftypol/ imageboard. What was once a chaotic but useful forum for anti-capitalist discussion has rapidly devolved into a haven for the very forces we claim to oppose, aided and abetted by a complete failure of moderation.
The evidence is not hidden; it is posted brazenly and constantly. Users are no longer merely debating right-wing talking points, they are openly reposting literal Nazi propaganda. The rhetoric has shifted from edgy nonsense to full-throated support for white supremacist figures. Most tellingly, we have witnessed users unironically proclaiming white nationalist Nick Fuentes as "a savior of the left." This is not a joke. It is a testament to how deeply the rot has set in.
HOUDINI’s stance on this has always been clear: if you sit at a table with Nazis without protest, you are normalizing their presence. If you platform them, you are amplifying them. And if you, as a moderation team, allow them to flourish, your table becomes a Nazi table. The fact that the /leftypol/ administration allows this to continue is nothing short of disgusting.
This is the same space that continues to permit the promotion of figures like the Fuentes, who famously tweeted "Her Body, My Choice" in gleeful opposition to bodily autonomy. This is who this "leftist" imageboard platform empowers. The irony is palpable and sickening: nothing says “leftism” like promoting a misogynist who co-opts feminist language to celebrate its dismantling.
We understand the argument. Imageboards allow for a much deeper freedom of expression, a raw and unfiltered exchange that can be fertile ground for organic organization. But we are not naive. We've seen this playbook before, and it always ends the same way. The pattern is predictable:
1. Nazis move into a community, testing the boundaries with "edgy" humor and propaganda.
2. Moderation fails to address the issue, hiding behind excuses of "free speech" or "not wanting to be censors."
3. Normal, non-Nazi users, tired of the bigotry and hostility, begin to leave.
4. The space is left to the Nazis and those willing to tolerate them, completing the takeover.
We do not want to hang out with a bunch of groypers. No leftist should.
The lack of moderation is usually excused by a liberal "free market of ideas" hogwash. This is a fundamentally anti-leftist position. The "marketplace of ideas" is a liberal fantasy that ignores how power dynamics and bad-faith actors inevitably poison the well. You might expect this hands-off approach from a centrist, but not from a space that claims to cater to leftists, anarchists, communists, and syndicalists. Tolerance of intolerance is not a leftist value; it is a suicide pact.
HOUDINI has had a tentative relationship with /leftypol/ in the past. We once ran a news page that pulled from the valuable work of users like "newsanon." We admit that, despite the chaos and shitposting, the space has potential to benefit the movement. Boards like /labor/ and /latam/ demonstrated that focused, productive organization is possible even on such a platform.
It is therefore a profound failure that the people who run the site have chosen to allow it to become a safe haven for neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and male chauvinists, rather than commit to creating the principled leftist space they claim to be.
For this reason, HOUDINI can no longer endorse or recommend the /leftypol/ imageboard to anyone. We believe that in its current state, it has not only failed its purpose but has become actively harmful to the movement. It has outlived its use.
The fight for a better world requires spaces free from the poison of fascism. /leftypol/ is no longer one of them.
>>42830yeah I would unban porno 100%, just need to have actual moderation to prevent people from being suspect with it.
I have a full document I wrote up on things I would do if this happened, low key. I would much prefer the moderation actually just, do their thing? but they seem to prefer nick fuentes.
>>42828It's such a fucking shame it had to come to this. You were one of the better posters here. I hope you'll build something new and better.
>>42830It would unironically cheer out loud if that happened.
>>42834>I would much prefer the moderation actually just, do their thing? but they seem to prefer nick fuentes.It's like they don't even care about this place anymore. I have never seen a Left-wing space that let Nazis walk all over them like this and I remember the Revleft days. Trolls are all but openly welcomed and we're told it's a consensus crack if we don't entertain their dishonest points. Raid posts stay up for hours. People like Iron Felix would have been banned a long time ago. Honestly, maybe it would have been better off if it had died a year ago.
>>42856I do look at the logs, and they show dismissing reports of obviously rule-breaking content, removal of posts without reason that were
not breaking any rules, and they can take upwards of 18 hours to remove actually rule breaking material, including literal fucking CSAM. Fuck you jannyfaggot.
>we have to allow nazis here bc we can change third minds :~)
You can't be serious. What is this, Jubilee? Free market of ideas much?
Every corporate part of the Internet is explicitly designed to promote right-wing content, whether that's Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, whatever. Every fucking part of the Internet has been co-opted by the Nazis, by the right-wingers, and you fucking idiots think that if we allow Nazis to come hang out with us on our leftist image board that we can change their minds, and that this won't result in our one little bastion being overrun with the worst kind of person because, hey, I don't want to post with fucking Nazis, so I'm just gonna use the site less and less. And that's me, who's a chronic shitposter with a tripcode. Imagine what a casual user is thinking. Imagine what someone who just pops in and is like, why is there a white supremacist general? Why is there a Nick Fuentes general on this leftist image board? They're gonna click off the fucking site and never come back. And you know who is gonna come back? The Nazis, who are like, yeah, we can hang out over here. Dipshit, dipshit, dipshit. Do better, dude. It's really not that difficult. Set up a word filter. They have bots you could use. I'm sure there is a solution to this problem. You could communicate with the user base better
>>42828Simple solution to this problem.
1. Ban transphobia. By this boards rules, transphobia is idpol- so if people start making ahistoric claims, calling trans peeps bourgoise, or start making excuses to justify homophobia/transphobia, this should be a case to bitch slap them back to /pol/. For example, stating that queerness is a western capitalist invention should be grounds for a ban.
2. Principled anti-campism/anti-imperialism. More often than not, when people take issues with the more reactionary issues relating to far right wing entities like Russia, it's often met with being called a servant of empire. This has allowed more reactionary types to operate here with impunity as they have allowed bad faith argumentation and this bullshit strawman position to fester. Simply remove the Zoids and you will remove the fascists.
3. Anyone trying to make excuses for more reactionary figures/e-celebs ought to be banned too. Now the mods, to their credit, have been cracking down on the fuentes poster, but it's likely we're going to get such
4. The establishment of a form of programatic unity and conduct.
These are rules of conduct that we can establish on leftypol- such can include grounds for what may be considered bad faith argumentation, reactionary takes, or ill behaviour.
Shitposting is all well and good, but it gets to a point where making excuses for reactionary behaviour can only get you so far.
So for instance, I personally think the anti-idpol shit has run its course. What we can do to ensure liberalism doesn't infect this board is ban arguments of
"you wouldn't understand x because you're y" while also allowing discussions on feminism and lgbtq issues. Simultaneously, we need a militant pro-lgbtq stance that's founded in Communist theory. If Cuba and Phillipino Maoists can be pro LGBTQ, there's no reason we can't be, or should throw LGBTQ people under the bus for the revolution.
To put it plainly, we can criticise Burkina Faso's anti-LGBTQ policies, and say this sucks, but the second you start advocating for the French to return and overthrow Taore, you ought to get banned.
We need to move away from the edgy "unlimited genocide on the first world" misanthropic rhetoric, to "we ain't free, till we're all free". To allow the "critical" aspect of "critical support" to be voiced, and reject the bullshit binary form of thinking when it comes to these convos. Cheesy as it may sound, we could afford to be more open minded and dare I say compassionate to our anons while being vigilant and tough on nonsense. There's a difference between a curious anon who knows little about LGBT issues and wishes to learn to an anon who deliberately ignores evidence when presented to him and doubles down on his bullshit rhetoric.
Fascists hate nuance, as do all reactionaries and cultists. If the mods can follow these examples and rules, no doubt /leftypol/ will likely enter a new golden age and be free from the /pol/yps who brandish red flags.
>>42891Engels said some dumb shit about Mexicans too. You can realise the problematic aspects of theorists and revolutionaries while understanding their contributions, while being careful not to repeat or emulate their flaws.
Just because Engels was acting like a fuckwit doesn't mean you should be too.
Bumping this.
Want to say the mods so far have been doing a good job cleaning up reactionaries and polyps with a red flag, while stamping out transphobia- they've also been clamping down on Fuentes posters.
I would add that it would be good for mods to engage moreso with posts and proposals such as this
>>42916to ensure more transparency and to have a modocracy with a human face, as well as provide feedback on proposals.
I do think
>>42866 is also right. /leftypol/ used to be a place where if reactionaries were curious they'd be able to lurk and engage in a level of "debate". But that time has passed. We're no longer on 8chan and we're not surrounded by /pol/. We've created our own little /comfycommune/ and it's about time we go harder on reactionaries who don't want to change their ways.
>>42931while I appreciate the gusto, the proposed amendments are already practically covered in our ruleset, and we doubt that more explicitly outlining them in the rules will make people suddenly start obeying them. We've tried overly-verbose rulesets before and it just makes them more likely to be ignored if anything, so something more short and sweet is preferable.
in reality none of the people we are banning on a semi-regular basis are under the pretense of following the rules to begin with. a lot of them are e-poisoned retards - the one in particular that you are talking about is a pro-haz 3rd worldist who is terminally on the /prc/ and /isg/ thread, along with /siberia/, using a lot of VPNs to try and ban evade constantly. users like him constitute roughly 95% of our bans in the log, nuking their VPN service's IPs until they cough up the money to start using another one. if you come at moderation expecting that there is a baseline of compliance from those who tend to break the rules, that is a grave error. the entire leftypol security state apparatus is mostly forged around corralling in handfuls of retards - but those handfuls of retards are what so often brings down other small independent chans by trying to drown out conversations they don't like and astroturf those they do like, until they are the only ones that remain and they get bored of it all.
>>42935>>42936Well I appreciate the honesty and openness. Im just sad that this place seems to attract folks like that, but at least you're doing a good job at curtailing them.
>We've tried overly-verbose rulesets before and it just makes them more likely to be ignored if anything, so something more short and sweet is preferable. Could it be possible to add simplified rules which cover and or illicit the same amount of explicitness?
>>42938>Im just sad that this place seems to attract folks like thatTbh that is just moreso chans in general, from consorting with a few of the other independent chans. I think having the big stinker in 4chan is a big part of it - that place is a hotspot of schizophrenia and far-right politics which naturally engenders intense alienation and obsession. Mind you that the entire soy khaganate situation spawned out of the intense retardation going on in 4chan. If and/or when that place goes down, I think the general chan experience will wildly decrease for like 3 months before rapidly improving to be better than it was.
>Could it be possible to add simplified rules which cover and or illicit the same amount of explicitness?Possibly. We have an entire committee for rules drafting - that is where the whole "provisional rules" via ordinances came from. Adding a few new ordinances to specify those topics wouldn't be too much of an issue. Usually we reserve that for when it's a tendency of a group of raiders or bad actors rather than the actions of some lone retards, however.
>>42828Pedantic point: Power dynamics are precisely why you can allow a certain Nazi presence. The optimum amount of naziism on a leftist entertainment imageboard isn't zero - it's perhaps less than 1%, but you want just enough that there's a constant on-site battle against it, lead by the userbase. The moderation team's job is to make sure it doesn't rise above that low level, but not to exterminate it entirely.
(If you want another metaphor: Naziism is a virus, not a poison. You don't want enough of a dose that you get sick, but you do want to be inoculated against it by being exposed to a very tiny base level.)
/leftypol/ was much more culturally active and relevant in 2017 when it was an outpost on what was for all purposes a nazi site.
The problem, ironically, is one of the market of ideas: "The market of ideas" or "no nazis!!" are both much more appealing slogans than "manipulate the discussion so that people are encouraged to argue against nazis, but the nazi is always outnumbered 100:1 in a sort of inversion of /pol/, since that way people will engage productively with the problem, invent new novel anti-nazi arguments and rebut new nazi arguments, etc", which is both unseemly and difficult ("when do i delete this nazi thread?" becomes a personal judgement call to be made based on how interesting and enjoyable the thread is for a leftist reader, rather than a simple "i don't" or "immediately")
>>42866The aim is not to change the minds of nazis, but to change the minds of the userbase.
The mods ultimately hold the whip hand over every single user of the site. That's a structural factor of the nature of site ownership - corporate sites use this to promote right-wing ideas, yeah, but a left-wing site can easily flip things. After all, corporate sites allow a token leftist presence because they - and remember, they've got money on the line here - know that it's better to keep people in a controlled and monitored place and use them as target practice for their ideological allies. /leftypol/ isn't big enough to maintain a nazi zoo, but the very nature of the site means it's safe to host the occasional freak-show.
>>42956It is a pedantic and moot point. The mods are incompetents (bigly, majorly) so there will always be hostile nazis getting through (for hours on end). You do not have to make it policy. Again, same end result.
But don't let me stop you. I find people that have not given up on nudging this "leadership" in the right direction downright precious.
>>42956>you want just enough that there's a constant on-site battle against itWhy on-site? I doubt anyone here only uses this site.
This just seems like debate addiction seeping in.
>>42948Different context but I got an answer that
kind've explains porn bans in general, but not feral specifically.
>>42898>We constantly tiptoe around what's permissible not only by law but also by the service providers that we use. This is an issue for us because those restrictions are often arbitrary, judged on a case-by-base basis, and non-negotiable (worst case scenario, Leftypol gets shut down for a while); and not only that, but they (our service providers) are not 100% clear on what they don't allow.I'm personally hoping its that their hosting provider states something about bestiality or zoophilia that is too vague to exclude drawings, because otherwise it's a really bullshit rule.
>>42966So I just noticed the wording on the ordinance thread, of ordinance 8:
>>37647>per modocracy vote passed on 2025-01-11I'm assuming there was some discussion about this amongst the mods, and considering it was appended to the rules rather than being lifted, what exactly was the conclusion? If it really is an issue with hosting providers, would you kindly consider finding hosts that are not going to coerce you into censorship.
>>42935>Admire to banning and humiliating people as a hobby >I'm…I'm astroturfed guysDie. I swear to God if I see you I'm putting a bullet in your neck you're gonna die way more painfully than Charlie Kirk fag.
I want feds to know it too. I would infact slit your little butt boy's throat over here. You just feel entitled to treating people like shit and I'm sick of it. I'm sick of you. You just don't need to be alive if that's the case.
Fuck you, fuck the rules you made up, I will find you, will kill you, or you owe me money money money money for this. I'm just not putting up with it. Mods get the rope.
>>42828Gaslighting, the post. Most of this is true ONLY in the most vaguest of ways or in very specific, reddit-pilled mindsets. Oh no, Fuentes made an edgy joke online, Oh the TRAGEDY! Oh the HORROR!
Irony, sarcasm and freely shitposting had always been part of leftypol and anyone that looks up the archive.is of 8ch.net and old bunkerchan will see that.
Nazis posting here is also not a bannable offense, or it wasn't, because in the years before Reddit banned libshit circles like Chapo (and made their cunty asses move here), this place actually knew how to take a joke, ignore bait and debunk Nazi propaganda without throwing a hissy fit about 'le bad wordz'. /edu/ still has an old debunk thread where a nazi was being debunked by lengthy debate, I wrote those posts and they actually have substance.
>nothing says “leftism” like promoting a misogynist who co-opts feminist language to celebrate its dismantling.This right here is what I mean. Someone saying something edgy is not "misogyny". It may be crass, but this isn't reddit, it's an imageboard, crass is standard, picking and choosing what sort of crass you allow is subjective at best, hypocritical at worst. This is pussification, plain and simple. There's a difference between actual misogyny and a joke, a difference between critique and slander, and clearly you retards can't differentiate, mostly because you're either poorly read ignoramuses, or drank too much liberal-capitalist coolaid about idpol.
>Moderation fails to address the issue, hiding behind excuses of "free speech" or "not wanting to be censors." This is the most laughable part, the moderators have always been criticized here for being way too heavy-handed and hypocritical in how they enforce rules, going back to the waning days of bunkerchan and the leftychan split.
>creating the principled leftist space they claim to be. It was never supposed to BE a "principled" leftist space, it's leftyPOL - Leftist POLITICALLY INCORRECT. Literally /pol/ but better read and ideologically educated, nothing more or less. Anything else was irrelevant. Your personal opinions of porn, fiction and so on were banter material. Idpol used to be mocked universally, antifa and the alt-right two sides of the same capitalist coin; scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds etc.
>>42916>transphobia is idpolSo is shilling support for trans by your logic. Trans used to be discussed quite civilly here years back, with objective critique of the movement in the USA and how it exploits alienated people. This began to be banned en masse and people with good faith discussion stopped posting, leaving only the shitposters to bait the thin skinned rainbow capitalists shilling pro-idpol rhetoric, since they just hop IPs to evade bans anyway. The moderation itself has killed any good faith discourse you speak of
>stating that queerness is a western capitalist invention It is, OWS was proof of that. Every single time these movements come up in a country it's a vehicle for reactionaries and fascists inciting color revolutions. Intersectionality and identity based politics are inherently anti-socialist. If it isn't within the lens of class dialectics, it's no more than a glowie scam.
>far right wing entities like Russia Fed lapdog take. Russia is a far cry from the USSR, but to call it far-right is so beyond disingenuous as to be outright neo-nazi propaganda, it has been debunked many times as literal /pol/shit. By your own logic you ought to be banned for this for ethno-national essentialism.
What the mods REALLY need to do is a hard refresh of the main leftypol board. Archive/Purge every single thread and let people start from scratch, same for /siberia/.
Rules wise they need to step back and stop responding to posts with emotional lash-outs, be objective. If you don't like someone's opinion, respond or ignore unless it's just outright fascism. Also cut down the rules to some base essentials.
1) No Pedophilia, Zooshit, and other illegal content.
2) No promotion of identity politics left or right.
Caveat: Critique and discussion of specific identity politics must be done from a socio-economic stand-point, not an emotional one (I would personally have a specific idpol discussion cyclical thread, and ban any idpol discussion outside of it.)
3) No Samefagging
4) Spoiler porn outside of siberia (the sfw overboard exists for a reason) Spoiler gore.
Obviously more details need to be written out, but I still believe that the current rule set is far too excessive, it reads like a Discord ToS. Half of the rules are unnecessary or strangle conversation. Good faith posters aren't going to be spamming reactionary shit, but because the moderators are feels>reels for the majority (other the Misato, they're cool) all we get are bad-faith shit-posters and redditors too stupid to not swallow the former's bait.
>>43088>Caveat: Critique and discussion of specific identity politics must be done from a socio-economic stand-point, not an emotional one (I would personally have a specific idpol discussion cyclical thread, and ban any idpol discussion outside of it.) This site and its users don't have the intelligence to do a honest dialogue, let alone a critique of the global economic system of intentionally created crime known as the war on drugs, the effects of prohibition as inhibitors of the productive forces and their vitality rather than a defense of public health, the effects of stagnation of the development of science - chemistry and botany or the necessity for enhancement of the human condition through drug use or other means, if it downs down to it all positions which stand against transhumanism or are fence sitters on the question of the development of mankind as transhumanism are in effect reactionary. The only reason this hasn't come to fruition is simple - religiosity is presented as compatible and thereby social conservativism is served in a "modest" dressing, no one would dare to accept that religiosity is in fact identity politics, because of course they have to shill for their favorite Islamic warriors and bourgeoisie Christian liberal theology, just bashing things together and ignoring the contradictions at this point modernization sees no problem with being a queer Islamic "Marxist-Leninist-Maoist" or any such type of amalgamation from how much it has been normalized to present these as completely normal positions in the name of decrying "sectarianism". It has been pushed through historical errors and abnormalities into being normalized by figures in the ilk of Tolstoy, Gutiérrez and completely compromising positions taken up out of an appeal for popularity rather than seeking to change the social order. The premise of this site in itself, stemming from a drive for "leftist unity" and "anti-sectarianism" in premise cannot do anything else other than to allow contradictions to espouse as any position in the broad of "leftism" is invited to dialogue and even some outside of "leftism". Such an abomination cannot engage in self-reflection since it believes it to be outsider criticism from "the right", it immediately jumps to a conclusion that if a critique is once spoken by "the right" it belongs to "the right" and no farther analysis is required, even if the critique were to point to crucial contradictions. Only in sentiment does "leftism" care about contradictions - only when the mood to point them out is correct are they allowed to be investigated, when not in favor they are dismissed as provocative and wrecker behavior.
There is nothing to criticize when the situation is undialectical and you get banned for pointing out the contradictions between being religious, being queer and being a communist or even an anarchist - it is literally a bannable subject that provokes mass reports for "/pol/ behavior", "sectarianism" and such since they expect you to look away in order to appeal to a broader audience. A subject is undialectical when it fails to follow reasoning by ignoring contradictions.
There is no position to be had, the site's existence thrives off of outcasts with incoherent positions and LARPers which wish to present their idiocy. This is also an issue within the broader current of "leftism".
So there is nothing to fix, you get what you come for.
If you're lucky you may piss in the rain and present your own position without getting banned only for it to be dismissed and buried beneath a pile of bullshit replies which appeal to the mood of the miscreations that make up the userbase.
What I would suggest if you want a productive current is to go make your own social circle with likeminded persons and try to expand on that.
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