Yet.
Haha, good one tankie. Look, I can hide the sun with one hand! xD
Imagine if Lemmy just totally avoided playground level political debate?
People will stay where they’re right, and avoid places where they’re wrong. See: Facebook groups.
That’s just wrong. Totally ahistorical.
There’s a good chunk of the rest of the fediverse that’s more right leaning, for the most part they’ve actively avoided Lemmy because Lemmy was actively hostile to any kind of wrongthink. It was one of the things that really limited it’s growth because you could only be on Lemmy if you believed exactly what you were told to believe.
I stayed on the threadiverse through lotide despite it all, and despite having some pretty limited takes, I quickly found myself banned or defederated from many instances. To this day I don’t participate on those instances because I’m not welcome. Wolfballs and exploding-heads came to exist, but were similarly rejected and even now the very first thing to be done by many instances is defederating from those instances.
I’ve heard through the grapevine that some of the people who run fediverse instances are considering starting Lemmy instances now that the platform is growing.
you could only be on Lemmy if you believed exactly what you were told to believe.
lol right buddy
A bunch of people who have only been on lemmy for two months are telling someone who’s been here for years how things are.
ah yes we all have just one account XD
I keep getting this too! It’s the lamest gotcha.
Yes, I’m sorry my alt on Lemmy.world wasn’t created… Before Lemmy. world existed?
The only ones not welcome are extremists. If you felt unwelcome you probably are.
There’s also the fact that there isn’t an algorithm trying to keep you doomscrolling by promoting commercial content.
This is underrated. I actually close Lemmy a lot easier and more quickly than I did reddit, it’s not hooking me with dopamine hits nearly as strongly.
As a result, since I know I’ll probably just scroll for a few minutes at a time, I’m more willing to check in more often and toss a few upvotes and maybe a comment or two around.
Yep this is huge. I still scroll on RiF sometimes without being logged in, and I had only ever looked at the subs I was subscribed to until now. I’m shocked by how much infuriating nonsense is being pushed by the site.
I think this is a huge part of it. Occasionally I’ll surf Facebook after checking out the marketplace. Last night I saw tons of posts about that “Try that in a small town” song with tons of people claiming to support it. Just post after post of people saying they don’t see anything racist about it at all, and not a single one pointing out how showing videos of the BLM protests while singing “we take care of our own, try that in a small town” miiiiiiiight just be a little bit racist. Fortunately I usually only click on cat videos and the rare left leaning recommended posts, so I got to see one post with a picture of John Cougar Mellencamp saying something like “I sang about my small town without mentioning violence.” The post had hundreds of comments…all deleted by admins.
Even when you try to avoid the controversy and hateful comments, the system is still designed to keep you doomscrolling. Positivity doesn’t help that…
I need eye bleach - I googled that song and wished I didn’t. You don’t even need to go to a small town - you go 5 feet outside of ANY city in US and everyone suddenly has a Southern accent and half of the people have Confederate flags. My 5 year old was with her mom in a peaceful protest and the fucking sheriff teargassed the group - she didn’t get hit by the teargas but she did almost get crushed by the panicking crowd. Fuck these people. Sorry about the “negativity.” But fuck.
i think its not just the bots but also that the right want their posts to be seen and want to “present” themself and their “opinions”. And i think for that, lemmy is just not visible enough, yet.
Grandpa also doesn’t understand federation
Grandpa actually votes tho
As a grandfather, boomer, white cis male, I suggest you might just be over-generalizing.
“as a black man”
Thinking like this is why people get surprised when right leaning parties get voted for in elections
Lol right? “Right wing politics only seem popular because of bots”. No, left wing politics only seem popular on social media because old people dont use it, despite making up the majority of many populations, and often times are the only people who actually vote in elections.
Left wing politics are more popular in the real world than they are in real world governments. The thing is that extremely online youth have absolutely no idea of just how far left they are.
Among people in general who actually read comments, the left does have a distinct advantage.
If Republicans could read, they’d be real mad
Lemmy also isn’t profit driven, so you don’t get libertarian tech bros.
Not really. I mean that “because…” part.
Leftism is inherenty tied to technology, especially new. It’s part of its lifestyle. EVERY new, massive social “site” (or online service) is expected to be left-leaning by default. It may later change its political viewpoint, but in its relative infancy it’s left.
Rightism is more about actions taking place in real-world. As such, the technology isn’t perceived as more than a tool, used for specific purpose only, rather than part of, or the foundation of a lifestyle.
…and of course there’s a plethora of alternative political views, options and convictions that are a mix of either extremes of the spectrum - if you meet a person online, it shouldn’t be surprisied to learn about “pro-life”, but also “anti-Trump” and similarly puzzling approaches to various aspects of life.
tl;dr: it’s not about bots. It’s because Lemmy/Mastodon isn’t popular enough to serve as a tool for right-wing politics.
I’d say I’m generally conservative and have been dabbling in alternative social media for a number of years. Some of the biggest Mastodon instances are/were right leaning. Gab.ai started off as a proprietary site and then migrated to Mastodon. Truth.social was always based on Mastodon. I’ve never been active on them because I don’t like echo chambers though. I’ve never really had a desire to have my thoughts reaffirmed by strangers…
I would assume they’re presence isn’t felt in the fediverse because the concept of de-federating is working? Gab is likely cut off by others and truth social never federated with others to begin with. I don’t think Truth ever intended to though, and really just wanted something they didn’t have to build from scratch.
The only Mastodon instance I actually have an account with now is somewhat right leaning but it’s not their emphasis. Even then I’m not too active on it.
Both of those sites have been ostracized (defederated) from the mastodon fediverse. The mastodon fediverse is in general quite left.
Yes, I said that. Well technically I said Gab was. Truth was so forked I don’t believe there was even an option to defederate them. They intended on a walled garden on their own.
From what I gather, Mastodon attracts little attention in conservative circles.
One of main reasons I’ve heard is that “there’s hardly anyone to talk with”. Beats me if it’s default, general conservative opinion…
I mean, they’re there to talk to… If you like jacking each other off… I don’t.
Thanks to Big tech censorship, there are lots of people who are more anti-establishment right on the fediverse. Lots of fairly large instances. Some of them are real nasty pieces of work filled with folks dropping n bombs and swastikas, some of them are filled with some of the sweetest religious right folks you ever met in your life.
I think one of the biggest differences is that you don’t have the Jerry Springer algorithm trying to match up a bunch of black people with a bunch of KKK members. Most far right instances don’t defederate anyone, but many of the far left instances defederate the moment anyone looks at them funny so despite sharing a platform, typically there just isn’t that much engagement between the two groups. In the middle of there are instances that are more than happy to federate with both as long as they aren’t too big of jerks.
Yet despite the clear creation of echo chambers, which I think is inevitable given how freedom of association works so smoothly and easily online, the Fediverse forces them all to “live next to each other”.
It’s not an entirely separate service I need to go on if I want to see what all the Nazi kids are up to these days.
This forced adjacency and inability to create any blocks stronger than defederation (which is pretty weak, really, compared to what other services can do) is going to have overall beneficial effects in the long-run, I think. Though it’ll certainly cause its fair share of headaches too.
I’m actually happy to see the reduction in echo chambers for myself because it does 2 things:
- It reminds me that the people I think I disagree with have good points I need to remember, and
- It reminds me that the people I think I agree with have terrible points I need to remember.
For someone who thinks for themselves, seeing extremism in some cases actually makes you less extreme because you see it and realize you don’t agree with it at all.
Did you come up with “Jerry Springer algorithm” expression? Very apt way to express it.
After realizing that it would put a bunch of black guys and a bunch of KKK members in the same space intentionally because it drives overall engagement, it became clear that’s what it was. haha
Agree with this ,RW is having an elongasm on twitter while most of my lefties moved to mastodon
Leftism is inherenty tied to technology, especially new.
I don’t know, there has always been a huge libertarian contingent of the tech industry as well. I’m not sure which is bigger. I hope the leftism.
I feel that comment is on the vibe of “liberals are leftists”.
Edit: “that comment” as in the one above the one I’m replying to…
Libertarians are not leftists.
They most definitely are.
I don’t know anyone who considers communists to be right-wing, and communists are as classic as libertarianism gets.
Communism and libertarianism have nothing to do with each other. What are you even talking about?
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Ayn Rand style, “Don’t tread on me” objectivists, no. But they just co-opted the term. Libertarianism is pretty much anarchism, which is incomoatible with right wing beliefs, no matter what an-caps try and tell you. A right wing social order necessitates hierarchy, which anarchism is diametrically opposed to.
While yes, libertarian is originally a leftist term, that’s not what I meant.
I meant the first comment saying most people on new tech are leftists is wrong. Most people who are technophilic are liberals. As in US style Democrat liberals. Which are NOT leftists. At all.
Why on earth would you say most tech heads are liberal?
Why would you say they aren’t ? They all buy in hard into capitalism.
Where are all these leftist techies?
Libertarians promote “natural” hierarchy; the ones based on slavery, inheritance, and other mechanisms of white supremacy. And ultimately, the hierarchy of money which translates to power. To say they don’t believe in hierarchy when they’re the party of the robber baron who believe the bosses have the right to murder striking workers, even child workers, is frankly silly.
It’s not on anarchist ideology really because of this and only appeals to disinfranchised people if they haven’t bothered to do the math.
It’s like you only read two words of my comment. The dickhead rightoidswho call themselves libertarian are NOT libertarian. It is a left wing ideology. You cannot have a society that is both right wing and libertarian. It is impossible.
That is exactly why those fuckheads bring in bullshit like “natural hierarchy”, to jam their square beliefs into the round hole that is a classless ideology.
They took a word that already had a meaning, and tried to invert it.
Yes, it is beyond bonkers to suggest that crypto fascists want to flatten hierarchies. That is why it’s maddeningly stupid for them to call themselves libertarians. Agreeing with them and calling them libertarians is just feeding their lie.
My point was that anarchism is not compatible with capitalism because capital is a form of hierarchy.
And I read your post. Yes, tea party libertarians ultimately lean more big government authoritarian than strict libertarians should.
But libertarians, even ones that aren’t in bed with the GOP, aren’t anarchist because they ultimately use the power of money and privilege to create hierarchy and control others. They just don’t want democracy (i.e. governments) interfering in that power.
That’s not anarchy but feudalism.
Depends on which libertarian ideology is being expressed. Left libertarians - anarcho-syndicalists libertarian socialists, anarcho-communists are all libertarians. The right wing of anarchism aren’t leftists, the left wing are.
Yeah crypto bros aren’t exactly leftist, neither is the hypercapitalist Silicon Valley crowd, and I’ve encountered plenty of other tech enthusiasts with worrying opinions.
Most smart right wing people (not me obviously), long ago gave up trying to discuss anything important with the left.
It’s not productive, and everyone that I know has just gone to more private chats and channels and don’t even have social media accounts.
You get banned enough times for saying something reasonable, or constantly get called a nazi or something ridiculous and you just stop using those places to talk.
The separation and division has already happened. For anyone hoping to have a discussion with anyone who has different opinions than you do, that train has left the station.
There are bots, lots of them (I’m sure from the left and the right) and that’s it’s own problem. But I doubt we will ever see a place where people can just disagree anymore.
No one seems to have the balls to let these conversations happen on either side.
Given rw bots are given free-reign over many political topics on mainstream sites, seems like there no issue with having conversations as long as the conversation is pro-corporate talking points on topics like climate change and the bots are overwhelmingly on the rw side of the issue.
The only area where people are likely to get banned is things like being overtly pro-genocide against groups other than all humans.
It’s just very hard to find a compromise or “agree to disagree” when the topic of debate is something like should LGBT people be allowed to exist. The days are long past where the right/left divide was all about economic policy – the divide lies along basic human values at this point. You’re going to be hard pressed to find people who can engage with you calmly when you’re defending a party whose primary concerns right now are stripping away civil rights from their least favorite human beings before all else.
Yup, pretty much. And most of the times I’ve seen right wing people just come comment the most batshit crazy thing imaginable. This doesn’t mean left wing lunatics don’t exist too.
This is something people on the right just find absolutely ridiculous. No one. NO ONE, think LGBT people shouldn’t be allowed to exist.
This is a big part of the problem, another response to my comment said people who think like I do support genocide.
Like this just sounds so hyperbolic and absolutely laughably ridiculous that no one has the patience to put up with it. It’s not a discussion.
You think I want an entire group of people to not exist. You have been taught this from somewhere and it’s not true. But you’ll never realize that.
So what’s the point?
No one. NO ONE, think LGBT people shouldn’t be allowed to exist.
What I’ve heard IRL and what I’ve read online in less moderated spaces speaks to the contrary.
Online isn’t a real place, you’ve got bots and trolls and people who just say things to get a reaction.
If you know people IRL that believe lgbt people shouldn’t exist, I guess I feel bad for you and who you associate with. I don’t know anyone at all like that, not even close to that.
Also, I don’t feel like I need to defend the ideas of the most crazy people/trolls you can find online. I’ll defend my own words and beliefs, but I don’t feel the need to defend the most extreme examples of dumb things you’ve read online that someone else posted.
You can relativise things all you want, it’s a fact that online insanity does leak back into the reality. For example see Qanon, or Brenton Tarrant, who used to frequent 4chan and 8chan. Not to mention the more trivial things such as people openly agreeing with Andrew Tate, or becoming fans and voters of Donald Trump due to his online presence, etc.
If you know people IRL that believe lgbt people shouldn’t exist, I guess I feel bad for you and who you associate with.
Did you just spin this into a covert ad hominem? Nice job, but I don’t “associate” with every person whose views I hear espoused IRL.
I don’t know anyone at all like that, not even close to that.
Ok? But why assume that every community and society is exactly like yours? From your other comments I notice you’re from Canada, I hope you’re aware your political culture isn’t typical for the rest of the world, not even for the entire “west”.
I don’t feel the need to defend the most extreme examples of dumb things you’ve read online that someone else posted.
Right, so you didn’t have to claim such people and such extreme positions literally don’t exist - with caps lock, no less. I probably wouldn’t think of replying to you if you didn’t formulate it so categorically.
Then explain to the class what you do believe in. Give us 3 bullet points you’d want a candidate to also support.
I’ll start as an example:
- I believe in complete and unequivocal abortion rights for women
- High speed rail should get more funding in the US, and car based transport (where rail could be a realistic replacement) should not be a cheap as it is
- Gerrymandering should be ended, and federal level elections should be taken over by a nonpartisan 50-50 committee to create new maps when local governments continue to submit unacceptable voting maps to intentionally stall so they can keep using the old gerrymandered map for the next elections
I’m not a politician, but I’m voting for the Conservative Party in Canada, I would suggest you look into their platform if you’re interested because I’m a supporter
But there are people recently that have said they should get stuck into asylums.
Does existing not include participating in society?
I don’t think gay or trans people shouldn’t participate in society. That doesn’t make any sense.
There are people that say a lot of crazy shit I don’t agree with, on the left as well.
Is there an argument that trans people need help? I think that’s pretty obvious. Is the help needed for the brain or the body? I think thats where a lot of disagreement comes from.
When I think about it, I can see why someone would think that surgery on a healthy body because the mind thinks it was born in the wrong body could be the wrong thing to do.
I don’t think that’s at all unreasonable. Most mental illnesses are treated by treating the mind.
And if your mind disagrees with the healthy body you were born in, I can see how the mind might be the place to start treatment, and not the body.
However, I also believe in adults being able to make their own decisions. Just as if someone wants to have cosmetic surgery to install horns in their head, or someone wants breast augmentation surgery, go fill your boots.
So if someone wants a surgeon to create a cosmetic neovagina forcthemselves and that would make them happy, go for it.
I also think adults should be able to hook themselves on heroin if they want. No one is there to hold your hand through life, most of all the government
If you’re an adult, make your own decisions and live with the consequences. I’m not here to babysit you.
Just wanted to add to this that the amount of downvotes I’m receiving just by speaking in this discussion just further proves my point.
I’m not welcome here, that’s clear, that’s why you don’t see more people like me online in places like this. But don’t let that fool you, we exist. Just not in the same places that you like to hang out.
And I think everyone likes that just fine
So there’s the rub. Are puberty blockers treatment for the mind or body? If it’s a “body” treatment and therefore the “wrong place to start” should children not have access to this treatment until they are 18? It does reduce morbidity of the condition.
You get shit on for your opinions because they are both uninformed and callous. You are also missing the point of the healthcare by focusing on elective cosmetic surgeries.
The way you talk about this subject is just awful.
I don’t consider cosmetic surgery ‘health care’. Gender reassignment surgery is cosmetic surgery. It’s not like a knee replacement or a quadruple bypass surgery.
Everything I’ve said has been to the adult population and that adults can make their own decisions.
Children cannot make those decisions for themselves. And in those cases, I think they need to be taken on a case by case basis and taken very seriously.
I don’t have much of an opinion on puberty blockers, other than to say that if the body is healthy and normal, I wouldn’t choose to medicate or mess with my child’s natural process of growing up into an adult.
Those are my personal beliefs and they apply to any ‘health care’ my kids would receive. If there is nothing wrong with the body’s process, I don’t see any reason to interfere.
Now if other parents don’t think that way, they can parent their kids however they see fit.
Being a parent is a difficult thing. All parents want what’s best for their kids, and no matter how hard we try to be the best parents we can be, I don’t think any child makes it out of childhood without some for of trauma, unfortunately.
I carry trauma from childhood, I’m sure my children will as well. I’m sure you do, as well as all of your friends.
You can assert that I’m ‘callous, uninformed and awful’ as much as you want, I’m used to much much worse. But I know myself (you don’t), and I know how empathetic I am to everyone’s unique situations.
My personal beliefs don’t really apply to anyone else. I just hope everyone ends up happier tomorrow than they were yesterday, and one size isn’t going to fit all.
That’s why I need to trust you to make the best life decisions for yourself. I’m not equipped to make those decisions for you.
I’m also not going to go out of my way to fix your mistakes though, either. Not because I’m callous, but because I think we are all on our own journey, and there is no safety net out there.
Life is very dangerous, you have the ability to really fuck it up. So take care of yourself, make good decisions, be strong, be independent, and have faith in yourself
The surgery is not only cosmetic, it has several health benefits.
It seems like you are selectively uninformed. You put breast argumentation in the same basket as extreme body mods.
Your choice to deprive your children of medication that would reduce their rate of suicidality is concerning. Would you let your son wear a dress?
Would you care to explain the policy changes right wing politicians are making then?
https://www.conservative.ca/pierre-poilievre/
This is who I’m voting for in the next Canadian election. I have a hard time disagreeing with anything Pierre Poilievre is campaigning on.
You can find a lot of him speaking in parliament on YouTube if you’re interested
Ah yes, the right wings reasonable arguments. Things such as “kids don’t deserve food” “Trans people shouldn’t exist” “LGBT doesn’t deserve the same things” “Slavery was good for the slaves”
If only we had the balls to really discuss this stuff instead of just calling it evil.
Your user note is now ‘right wing shit head’
Except …. None of those things are true
But thanks for proving my point. This is why I (and no one else) should even bother with online public discussions
All of those things happened quite recently, you should keep up with the news if you’re gonna comment about this stuff
I don’t think you understand. We’ve checked out.
You guys are kinda on your own. I think we all prefer it that way right now.
Also, not being American is another weird wrinkle in all of this. American politics is seeping into Canadian politics, but we don’t have as many of the same problems around race and inclusion as you do.
But there are still conservatives north of the border who aren’t really caught up in what’s happening in Florida or California.
There is a difference between conservative, or right wing and Republican. You seem to think they are the same thing. Well I’m not a Republican
Dude there is plenty of racism in Canada.
Have you heard people talk about drunk homeless natives? Call your black coworker “intimidating”? Complain about drivers of any ethnicity? Talk about immigrants and refugees?
Do you interact with humans at all?
There is a lot of native racism, absolutely.
We don’t have the same history as the US does with racism though. If you think the US and Canada’s history of race relations is at all similar, you’re just ignorant about the subject.
Racism exists everywhere, yes. Not that it’s right, but it’s also not the same country to country.
Is japan racist? Yup, same with Sweden and Africa and the Caribbean and the UK and Egypt.
I’ve been to all of these places and interacted with the humans who live there.
But it’s not all the same.
You’re the one on your own buddy. You can plug your ears down to the third knuckle, doesn’t change your delusions. You cant defend your position beyond a simple “Nu uhhh!” and now you’re running with your tail between your legs, screaming “big meanies!”
That’s fine
They won’t even say what their positions are nevermind defend them
The only point getting proven is you don’t even know the party you’re supporting. You said nothing I mentioned was the truth but that was just shit from the last few months. You’re wildly off the mark here and it showing big time.
So when Michael Knowles said “Transgenderism must be eradicated” That was not “Trans people shouldn’t exist”? Or when Italy decided to remove lesbian mothers from birth certificates, that is in fact not “LGBT people don’t deserve the same things”?
Or Florida updating history books to illustrate how slaves benefited from their position because they now know the skill of blacksmithing?
dude, the latest batch straight up denies slaver was a thing
Don’t forget Florida changing the curriculum to show the “benefits of slavery”
for saying something reasonable
“Something reasonable” tends to be sexist, racist, bigoted, homophobic, transphobic, etc. in my observation.
Funny how they offered no examples of these “reasonable” arguments.
Tbf, they’re a self-acclaimed smart person who doesn’t want to get banned. At least they haven’t gotten themselves banned yet, so can’t find fault with that statement yet.
One of the last reddit posts I saw on unpopularopinion was someone self identified as being on the right, and how they were persecuted for their beliefs.
Literally her entire profile was them talking about the pros of meth, and saying some of the most bigoted shit I had heard in a bit, and attacking anyone slightly left of them in comments.
Honestly, I have started to block political keywords on Mastodon (can’t do this on Lemmy unfortunately), because I am tired of the lack of nuance in online discussions and I am really not that interested in reading the same things over and over again.
People just group each other into two drawers marked “left-wing” and “right-wing” and that’s it. Some go even further and block instances with people they don’t completely agree with. In my opinion this stigmatisation just further and further divides people and will eventually result in less and less respect for each other (or should I say “hate towards each other”). If people would discuss more (without instantly putting words into the other side’s mouth), they might see that they share common ground on some topics, even though they disagree on others.
I am pretty confident that the political believes of most of the general public can’t be categorised into just two drawers. Most people probably have political views that are a mixture of different ideologies and they might not even know if those views are considered “left-wing” or “right-wing”.
Exactly, this is what all of my conservative friends think too.
They are just tired of it all.
I have some left wing view points on things, I voted for Trudeau the first time he ran (I consider this a mistake now), I also have right wing view points on some things.
I’m not at all an activist, but it feels like online everyone is expected to be.
I use common sense, that’s all. I don’t see any of these kind of conversations happening out in the real world, we don’t sit around and argue about this stuff face to face. It only really exists online.
Sorry, but I agree with Chapelle “Twitter is not a real place”
As someone who skews quite far left ideologically but believes that people on both sides have been painted into polarised caricatures in each others’ minds by social media, I wholeheartedly agree.
Fuck your enlightened centrism
The concept of enlightened centrism is nothing but a tool to drive people into extremism. How can you not see that?
Are you sure you replied to the right person? I was condemning the “enlightened” centrism and the idiot I responded to. I think anyone who goes “but both sides” is almost always a blithering idiot.
Algorithms and AI. Rage gets views, so it’s what gets pushed to the top, so it gets even more views, so it gets pushed to the top.
Yeah, Lemmy has address to this by just having an incredibly glitchy algorithm (look at this post with five up votes from four months ago, it deserves to be on the front page). No one can game it because no one understands it.
Nah, it’s probably because most of us left Reddit at some point, either due to banning left-wing subs or due to corporate dickery.
The right-wingers went their way, to places like Voat, Saidit, Gab and Truth Social.
That’s reaching a quite a bit. Reddit itself is very left leaning. Pair that with the fact that the (probably few) ring wing people leaving Twitter recently might not be interested in a forum style platform such as Lemmy.
My guess is that the number of right leaning people joined Lemmy in this last wave of new accounts was small in comparison to the left leaning ones.
Reddit used to be very left-leaning, but I don’t think that’s true anymore. Even if you look at a community with a conventionally “leftist” moderation like /r/europe you will see a huge amount of authoritarian and outright fascist comments.
I don’t think i ever viewed Europe as leftist. Now, WPT… That’s a great example of authoritarian leftism.
I mean, the political situation in Europe has changed a lot in the last fifteen years. Lot’s of those may be the same users/mods who’s opinions have shifted along with that.
I was going to say this, I’m glad you did instead.
People’s opinions have changed a lot in the last 25 years. In the late 90s we got to see the last gasps of the real power of the religious right, in the early 2000s we got to see the dominance of the neoconservative right, in the late 2000s we got to see a massive shift leftward as a backlash against the religious right and the neoconservative right, then from the more chill hippie left wing we got to see the rise of the authoritarian woke left, and right now we’re starting to see a backlash against that. It isn’t always from different people, it’s often from the same people changing their minds.
For quite some time I’ve thought of it like steering a car. If you steer hard to the left you’re going to hit the ditch, if you steer hard to the right you’re going to hit the ditch. Really what you need is to course correct at times just stay on the road. Sometimes you need to turn the wheel pretty hard in one direction or the other, other times you want to just nudge the wheel, and get other times you don’t really want to move it at all.
Some regions voted hard for Clinton, then voted for bush, then voted for obama, then voted for trump, then voted for Biden. Such a thing might look completely inconsistent, but politics is a dynamic system where circumstances change, certain movements win and then we get to see the consequences of those movements, new movements form, and maybe old movements collapse.
This isn’t a new idea. Hegelian dielectic proposes that in politics, a dominant idea (thesis) eventually leads to its opposite or challenge (antithesis), resulting in a resolution or synthesis of the conflicting ideas. Such an idea predates Marx, so it’s been around for quite some time.
There are quite a number of examples historically of people completely changing their mind on a topic. The father of Canadian universal healthcare, Tommy Douglas, was a powerful advocate of eugenics when he was younger, and as he got older he realized that he made a terrible mistake and changed his mind. Solzhenitsyn apparently early on in his life believed in the Soviet project but once he learned of the gulags had his views fundamentally change. A lot of people like to pretend that national socialism died with Adolf Hitler in that bunker, but a lot of people believed in and supported national socialism in Germany, and those people continue to exist after world war 2, but I think it’s safe to say that for the most part they learned the error of their ways. I’m sure there are lots of people who supported Putin internationally in the 90s who wish they could go back and change that decision now.
To me it’s one of the deepest dangers of the purity spiraling we are seeing from the left right now. The fact of the matter is, as you kick more people out of the left, it becomes a less and less viable movement. As the left acts as if people become irredeemable the moment that their opinions are wrong, it becomes something that will inevitably fail.
I feel like the modern left would take a look at post war germany, and post to japan, and would just immediately start implementing genocide. “Nope, they were Nazis they are irredeemable they need to be pushed into the sea”. The most amazing thing about the end of world war II is the incredible wisdom with which the world powers helped to rehabilitate Germany and Japan into some of the most powerful nations in the world today, but for the most part lacking in the qualities that set them off to war and atrocity way back when.
I don’t disagree with a lot of what you say here. But I was refering just to events in Europe in the last 18 years since Reddit started.
Back in 2005 it was a pretty good time for most people. Since then we had the 2008 crash, austerity, major terrorist attacks, the refugee crisis, Brexit, Covid, huge inflation, a war on our borders, unrest, etc. France has had two sets of riots this year alone. It’s not surprising people’s views change when presented with all that.
Also, people grow and their life and priorities change. A mod who was a twenty year old student when the site formed, is now a thirty-eoght year old who’s spent plenty of time in the real world, may be married, have kids, etc. They will view the world differently to the kid that set up the sub back then.
Agree with everything you’re talking about.
The world changes, your personal life changes, and people’s views change with it.
When I first started on reddit, I was a virgin who had just started his first professional job making 20 bucks an hour after college. Today I’m married with kids, and I’ve advanced substantially in my career. Many of those things are things I thought would never happen or that I thought I’d never want to happen. Movements I supported won total victory and I got to see what that looked like, other movements I opposed grew and I realized they weren’t totally wrong, lots happened.
Just in 18 years, that’s an entire lifetime.
/r/europe will ban you for insinuating that rich people are making the world worse for everyone because “it’s communism”
My local subreddit, a liberal city, has been banning a bunch of people after it got taken over by anti-choice conservatives who don’t even live there.
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The definition of right wing politics is being pro-hierarchy. Or believing hierarchy and inequality to be normal. This fits well with authoritarianism.
The left, by definition, wants to end inequality, or make things as equatible as possible. This is the antithesis to authoritarianism.
So, no. I’m not aware of this and don’t believe it. If someone told me they’re both left and authoritarian I would tell them sticking feathers up your ass does not make you a chicken.
You need to enforce equity though, it’s not something that humans do naturally.
Through that enforcement of equity you are choosing authoritarianism.
There is no equity equilibrium to reach unless it’s from the threat of violence, to keep everyone down to the lowest rung. While hiding all the inequity that the ones at the top enjoy, or making excuses for it.
Sort of how bill gates believe he should be able to fly in private jets because what he is doing is more important than what you would need to fly for is. So you’ll accept it.
The libertarian left is anti-authoritarian. But unless you are going to exclude all marxist-leninist from the left, regardless of their advocacy for equality and opposition to the capitalist system, left authoritarianism obviously exists. I think perhaps you are engaged in a no true Scotsman fallacy?
The libertarian right is also anti authoritarian
The libertarian right is also anti authoritarian
Eh, only because their ideological blinders block their understanding that what they are advocating ends up in corporate feudalism. Their hierarchy is property based.
I mean, it only makes sense.
If I want to stand where you’re standing, there is going to be some way to settle who gets to stand there
Would you consider Mao and Stalin to be left, or right? Would you agree, regardless, that they are authoritarian?
They’re authoritarian. Left and Right get conflated with communism/capitalism but all four exist separately from each other.
Leftism is about equity of power and the right is about protecting power structures that exist even if unbalanced (the status quo).
Capitalism and communism are economic systems, not political positions.
