I’m a conservative. I don’t mind the liberal stuff here. It’s good to learn the other side, but I don’t want a liberal echo chamber. I’d like to be more politically balanced in the fediverse. Is there any way I can do that?
The fediverse is what people make of it.
I think a balance of liberal to conservative discussions can be good for the general consensus. However, it usually ends in a screaming match. Liberals want change. Conservatives don’t want change.
The best option for humanity is to have some change and not change things too quickly, but in order to reach that happy medium, we have to talk through it, apply critical thinking, and be able to listen and reflect when we receive new information.
It also doesn’t help that the view of what Americans have on what is conservative and what Europe views as conservative is very different. American politics lean right by default, so when people tend to refer to conservatism in the US it is almost always referring to the far-right. If Joe Biden was a politician nearly anywhere in Western Europe, he would likely be seen at the very least as an economic conservative.
then it must be specified if we already are aware that people will assume American conservative when they hear the word conservative. though, it’s unlikely OP meant anything other than American conservatism, see buzz-words like “liberal echo chamber”
Joe Biden would probably be one of the more right wing members in the liberal party here (which is a right wing party). The US definitions of liberal and conservative are totally out of touch with the actual philosophical/ideological underpinnings of those terms.
Conservatives also want to take away peoples rights, ban books, make it harder to vote, and hurt minorities.
Excuse me, but as a black person I’ve heard so many people in the star trek community saying racial slurs against me without a care in the world
It’s why I hate that stupid show now
The USA Republican Party is not representative of all conservatives in the whole world.
True. But it is what most of us are talking about here.
…yet.
Could you define “conservative” in terms of politics (presumably US)? For example, low taxes and small government? And/or anti abortion and pro religion? Anti gun safety legislation? Anti regulation?
Perhaps you’re looking for the more contemporary definition of “conservative” that’s come about since the Tea Party or MAGA movements started? Mostly focused on being against whatever liberals/progressive are for?
As others have mentioned I think there are a lot of spaces out there for the latter group. I’m not sure many exist for the former group.
None exist for the former group, you toe one of the other two lines completely or you can go fuck off, individual thought is sacrelige and nuance is dead.
I don’t think it’s controversial to say that “conservative” in the context of US politics has been bifurcated. On the one hand, there are definitely traditional conservatives out there. On the other hand, the really loud ones tend to be far right edge lords who purposefully speak loudly about topics that are socially unacceptable. It’s always based on a misunderstanding of free speech, too: people are generally free to say what they want, but they are not free from the consequences imposed by society based on what they say, especially when supporting harmful activities or straight violence. This is something Elon Musk really should learn about.
I’m all for open discourse with traditional conservatives, but I’m not about to sit idly by while Nazis return to the stage. There was a war and the outcome was pretty darned clear. So, I’d say it’s a good example of bad apples ruining the bunch (though from what I have seen, the
numberratio of Nazis vs traditional conservatives is sadly pretty high). I think it is an issue that will need to be fixed between conservatives, ultimately. Shutting down Nazis (again) seems quite acceptable to me, however.the number of Nazis vs traditional conservatives is sadly pretty high
I think you mean ratio, not number.
Yes, and just edited. Thanks.
Yes, here: exploding-heads.com
Enjoy learning about the secret illuminati jewish space laser and the deep state trying to establish a new world order!
holy shit, the jokes write themselves. it really is like 3 losers posting weird ass shit
“If A Leftist Guy Was With His Girlfriend And Called You A Toxic Male, What Would You Do?”
“I downvote every post that says 'climate change”aaaand another, i could go on
The f***? What the hell is that racist garbage?
Also a bunch of transphobic shit, because of course.
and another
Reality has a well known liberal bias. Stop trying to hide from reality.
No, the Internet as a whole has more liberals than conservatives, due to a variety of reason. In real life you are much more likely to met someone that is neutral or only slightly to either side. What exists here is literal echo chambers of liberal policy to the point the policy becomes unpalatable for most, that doesn’t exist outside the internet.
No. The Internet just seems more liberally slanted because people are more liberally slanted overall. Conservatives rely on outdated voting principles to make it seem like they are more widely supported than they actually are. Things like first past the post, electoral college and gerrymandering. This is why you see republicans fighting to either keep the voting process the way it is, or to restrict voting in various ways.
Also, conservatives feel like the Internet is more slanted to the left because they are usually stuck in their little rural community echo chamber. Then come to the internet where they actually have to interact with people outside their local area, like cities and other countries.
They also rely on the low voter turnout. If more people under 40 voted, it would likely be consistent liberal governance for the foreseeable future.
I know it’s scary to be in the real world outside of your conservative silo, but as you’re seeing the lies your News agencies have been feeding you simply aren’t true.
The Red states flipping blue, Texas going purple and the vast majority of Americans being in favor of roe v wade show that your world view of conservatism is not the majority belief in America.
It’s not even the internet. Conservatives are more likely to stick to existing stuff and not experiment much. Liberals do that.
This is why places like YouTube have a big conservative audience. Places like Lemmy will have a huge liberal audience
the Internet as a whole has more liberals than conservatives
Because Conservatives don’t know how to use the internet or change the channel away from fox
I don’t like fox or cnn. They’re both corrupt. I prefer to get my news through youtube. I search for experts on a certain topic explaining the issue. During covid I watched a lot of doctors explaining covid on YouTube.
Saying “I get news from YouTube” is like saying “I get news from the television”. It matters what channel you’re on.
What direction do you think fox is biased towards? What direction do you think cnn is biased towards?
It’s worse than getting news from TV. TV doesn’t have an algorithm feeding you Right wing propaganda like YouTube pushes.
YouTube is not a news source my friend. A lot of the “experts” you’ll find on there have zero credibility.
that doesn’t exist outside the internet.
It sure exists in the podcasts I listen to (real people talking, even if it gets delivered via internet) and books that I read. It exists in the conversations that I have with my social group irl. It existed like crazy at the Bernie campaign speech that I attended in Feb 2020. If you think Leftist / Social Democrats don’t have real numbers, it’s because you don’t look for those groups to surround you.
that doesn’t exist outside the internet.
Never been to any type of city, I see.
As a rural person, I’ve come to realize that we usually have no real concept of just how overwhelmingly large the population is that lives in huge cities.
It’s easy to perceive New York as just “a lot bigger than any town I’ve lived in” rather than “large enough that my entire town could visit on the same day and literally no one would notice”.
Another one that helps me put it in perspective - “If every resident of New York took a day trip to casually slap one member of my town one time, everyone in my town would probably die of our injuries.” It helps me when meditating on “Why should they wield so much political power?” They already do. This shared voting system just let’s us argue in a much chiller way.
A lot of history makes more sense through the context of realizing both how different city and town life is, while also accepting that an almost inconceivable number of people live in cities.
Define “conservative”
Conserving every status-quo, except for conserving the environment, because fuck the environment.
And social freedoms. Because fuck other’s freedoms.
Also no human or personal rights. Everyone should be a slave except for the rich. And fuck your vacations.
Oh, and don’t forget about social safety nets that are part of the status quo but which they also don’t care about.
And not really conserving status quo either but actively trying to make it shittier.
What I’d like it to mean - the belief that government intervention often hurts the people that it’s meant to help, so should only be used in limited circumstances and be carefully designed.
It seems to mean white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia and xenophobia instead.
That is because denying welfare to people who need it happens to line up perfectly with the beliefs of those groups you named. Neoliberalism didn’t work out for the people, only people still voting for this shit are bigots and gullible morons.
Even the first part of your comment is some fairy tale rich people tell you so they can make more profit.
I think they’re often wrong, but I’ve known a lot of people who aren’t rich and believe it in good faith.
Of course they believe it. Rich people get idolized like crazy and rich people are constantly saying that programs that benefit the average citizen are bad and are too expensive for the tax payers.
The idea that government intervention is bad puzzles me every time I encounter it. Government in a democracy should be “the people” and intervention could protect you in so many cases. Assuming you’re from the US, from an outside perspective your job ‘market’ is utterly fucked. Because of cuts to the welfare system (which have been marketed with somewhat racist propaganda, see welfare queens), most people are forced to take highly unregulated, low-paying jobs (yes, plural) while rich people and big companies earn more and more. The government could intervene and make it harder for companies to exploit workers the way they’re doing it right now.
Look at how it was 60 years ago. Single income, blue collar households could afford houses. Now double income academic households can’t. And all that despite the huge technological progress we made. We need so much less manual labor than in the 1960s. Everything should be easier. For everyone.
That definition doesn’t seem to fit the verb conserve or adjective conserving. If it’s specifically about government, wouldn’t it be better to use a term for that instead of the very broad conservative? Slim Government?
In terms of economics, liberal and conservative used to mean regarding the role of government. They’ve taken the opposite meanings in American political discourse.
Conservatives spent two generations actively trying to make the government worse and less effective just so they can turn around and say “look how shitty this is!”
I think it’ll be tough to find that corner of it… I think I saw a conservative community on lemmy.world but the platforms original purpose was to get away from the big, controlling, capitalist social media platforms the likes of Twitter, Instagram, reddit, etc. Like mastodon, the largest part of the fediverse (I’m pretty sure), grew alot when twitter was brought by Elon, and more moved after he messed up the platform enough, saying they’ll create their own platform where hate won’t be allowed. It’s kinda against it’s nature to have much conservative-ness.
Not trying to be rude as based on how this sounds, you seem nice enough and not crazy, but places like mastodon are basically the left’s version of “Truth social” where people are pretty ok with saying “I don’t want those thoughts spread here” those thoughts they don’t want are usually things like homophobia or transphobia, but those are fairly common on the right even if you don’t share them.
It’s an interesting thought and would probably be alittle healthier, but hey you’re still here being able to provide that counter point of view
You can be someone that’s not inherently against capitalism and for free communications platforms. I think stuff like this is a good start for polycentric regulation, which I see as important for any type of a voluntary or anarchist future.
Anyone who votes for a party that supports racism, banning books, and trying to make it harder for people to vote is not “nice enough”.
They are an evil piece of shit who is making the country a miserable place to live.
I only vote republican when they have good views. I’d rather get rid of political parties and make people run on merit alone.
What was the last decade where that happened?
If you have only two choices and both are bad, you have to choose the lesser evil. The OP probably doesn’t like the racism and stuff, but they dislike certain policies of the other party even more.
Also, “trying to make it harder for people to vote” is an interesting way to say “requiring people to bring their citizen ID when voting, like in any civilized country”.
I’m thinking specifically of gerrymandering but this article covers the many voter disenfranchisement methods used by Republicans in the US in the past decades:
There’s far more to making voting more difficult than just requiring an ID. For example, I believe it was Texas that relatively recently lowered its number of voting stations in left-leaning areas and made it illegal to give people water that were waiting in line to vote.
I would say that the dismantling of human rights would be a greater evil than the things the democrats could cook up, but if you are not affected and have no empathy for others it could be better to vote for the republicans.
And werent the conditions to be able to vote pretty restrictive to a lot of people?
I live in a country where identification is required for voting and it doesn’t feel restrictive. On the contrary, I’m glad someone can’t just vote in my name.
In the US the largest group of people without id’s are Democrats and black.
It’s literally making the system more racist.
So the question is, why doesn’t everyone have IDs? How does the country identify its citizens?
IDs cost money, require visits to DMVs (which conservatives work hard to shut down in poor areas, or other fuckery with their hours or such), and if you want the federal level one cost more and require more paperwork
We use the garbage and not-designed-for-this social security number for major IDing
Because the republicans work very hard to make it difficult for people who would likely vote democrat.
If you got an ID sent to you when you turned $AGE I’d support requiring it to vote. But any proposal of free/automatic IDs gets shouted down by fanatics who think it’s the mark of the beast from Revelations. It’s a non-starter.
Every black person has an ID, you have to otherwise you can’t do anything anyways. I have never met anyone in my community who doesn’t have some form of ID that’s valid in elections.
In my country:
- We have a mandatory national ID
- Having it automatically registers you as a voter after 16 y.o.
- Voting is mandatory between 18 and 70.
- We vote on Sundays to ensure everyone can go.
- Voting in always in person. We usually use schools to that end, windows are obscured to ensure secrecy.
- We record who voted following the electoral registry. Only the last issued national ID is valid to vote.
deleted by creator
Where is this Shangri-la?
Not such: we’re in Latin America and we have a multitude of other problems.
I agree with this but we aren’t talking about castings votes here and I’m assuming OP is voting as if he is a sane person, but what are they supposed to do with the values they hold that don’t align with liberalism?
I would decide which is worse: the things I listed, or the things the voter may dislike about liberal policies like free healthcare for all.
but what are they supposed to do with the values they hold that don’t align with liberalism?
Grow as a person. Something we should all strive to do. There are plenty of places I diverged from all the hard right liberals. Mostly around the capitalism fetish. But I can support them at least because of their more pro social democracy stance. But I can articulate and explain the logic why when asked. As a socialist I also diverge heavily from anti social democracy socialists. And again, can general explain and point out the reasons why. Things most of my fellow Americans have little understanding of or desire too. But none of us are perfect, nor will we ever be. But that isn’t a reason to stop growing.
Well, I reckon people invested in the status quo are less likely to be early adopters of new platforms, so other that you and me, there’s not a lot of us here. And I’ve sworn off political-discussion communities, so you may have to be the one to start that community if it’s something you want to see here on lemmy.
exploding-heads :)
I think kbin is less leftist then Lemmy and you get the same content. I moderate https://kbin.social/m/Catholic and although it is relatively quiet, we do not get a lot of harassment from the left.
Thank you for asking this question. I’ve wanted to do the same, but didn’t want to get dogpiled.
I don’t even need something strictly conservative, just something not sooooo extremely aligned with Marx and nihilism.
nihilism
Wow.
Way to engage with the people around you.
Asshole.
It depends on what you mean by conservative. If you’re going by the American definition, then good luck as all of those have been mass defederated due to them nearly always turning into far right toxic harassment zones. If you are European though and go by their definition, you’ll probably be fine. America leans very right by default. Democrats to a degree are skewed right wing at the very least economically.
This. Conservative in the US is basically extreme-right/fascism in the rest of the world. Even democrats would be considered right learning in say, Canada.
If you are the MAGA kind, you WILL need an echo chamber because nobody wants to interact with these anymore.
Isn’t that just a fancy way of saying “I want more lies, ignorance and hate sprinkled in”?
“More politically balanced” lol
As progressive as I may consider myself, Lemmy has a tendency to go full Reddit communist. All bosses are greedy ass holes, all landlords should be ritually sacrificed, that kind of stuff.
Antiwork subreddits have collected a bunch of communities that want to be well paid for minimum effort work, no matter the profitability of the business, and be thanked for their service. Some people, especially those working for absolutely minimum wage in demanding environments, are exploited, but a lot of them just don’t like their job and have no interest in making something out of themselves that grants them better job opportunities. It’s exhausting, and it’s spreading across the internet.
Liberal use of block buttons and unfollowing certain communities helps, but there’s still a significant amount of over-the-top leftism that I have to ignore to enjoy the platform.
Some popular subreddits are very much the same, if not worse. On the other hand, the idealist (what I assume) kids are just annoying, where a lot of places that consider themselves “conservative” are outright dangerous.
Just look at this thread. “I consider myself to be conservative” can mean lots of things, but people jump at the opportunity to call OP a racist, sexist, nazi klansman who likes to kick puppies in their free time. No wonder people get sucked into the extremist hellholes if this is how they’re greeted elsewhere.
It’s sad that you’re getting down voted for this, because you’re absolutely right. These lemmy communities are already turning out to be a left-leaning echo chamber, this thread is a perfect example. Any opinion that differs from the left is blocked or downvoted or argued against endlessly.
OP asks a completely reasonable question in good faith, and hundreds of people come to attack him for thinking differently than they do.
People straight up mock him for no reason. The left loves to paint the right as being hateful, but I’m only seeing the left being hateful on here.
So anyone who doesn’t subscribe to everything you believe in or agree with are liars, ignorant, and hateful? Discussions and debate can be healthy.
I mean there’s no reason in debating a liar, it’s lose lose.
Ever been on a conservative subreddit? No matter how open minded you are, you can’t overlook how they don’t even care to spread misinformation.
The exact same thing can be said for liberal communities. It becomes a hivemind where dissenting opinions are not allowed.
Take the Hunter Biden laptop story for instance. So many websites and communities outright banned it from being discussed or posted because they didn’t like the optics of it. Facebook banned it, the top subs on reddit banned it.
Only very recently has CNN decided to treat it as news, after lying about it constantly on air for months saying it was fake. That’s censorship of information. The left regularly spread misinformation like “the laptop story is a Russian hoax”.
Both sides do this.
Yes, and I find them indistinguishable from liberal subreddits. The echo chambers are pretty easy to find…
Yeah. I have. Echo chambers. Hated them.
But the OP seems to be open-minded based on this post. If he is (or at least tries to be), then I don’t see a reason why we should just criticize his politics without just cause. If he eventually proves to be a troll or breaks rules then maybe the admins can ban him.
It’s hard to generalize. There are assholes from all political spectrums, even though there may be more in others.
Edit: if I’m not mistaken, I think it was Voat I checked out last? I really can’t remember but this isn’t the first time I tried leaving reddit. This is the most successful attempt yet, though. I also inadvertently joined a Q group/channel on Telegram. Lmao.
Honestly? And I promise I’m not being sarcastic: Reddit and Twitter are still your home. But the same goes for centre-left liberals. It’s not that you’re conservative, it’s that you’re moderate.
Many of the recent arrivals to the fediverse (myself included) are here because we’re fleeing the corporate internet. We feel strongly enough about it that we’ve thrown all our toys out of the pram, abandoning huge platforms to try build this new space. This kind of behaviour isn’t exactly “centrist”.
So this nascent lemmyverse has a wiiiiide breadth of political views but not as much in the middle because those folks are all still on the old platforms. Over here we have Nazis, hexbear and shitposts. And porn. It’s still early days.
maybe exploding-heads.com? is that site still around?
I only know that on Lemmyverse, most of conservatives happily stays on reddit given most committed progressives migrated here. Or may be they go to squabblr, its owner says they are welcomed there.
There are many though, on mastodon-verse if you like twitter-esque experience. There are enough users and instances to hold meaningful conversations.
