Sure, there are always outliers and you can correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s just the overall impression I have.
(I wasn’t sure if [email protected] or this community would fit better for this kind of question, but I assume it fits here.)
I don’t see it as either. I don’t come to social media to engage in political discussions, so for me, the bigger issue is the lack of thriving communities around topics outside of national/world politics and technology. I’d love to see more places like startrek.online.
It’s certainly a weakness, especially since the Lemmy echo chamber is ever more extremist than the echo chambers you’d find on a place like Reddit or Truth Social. But I don’t think it makes it uniquely bad. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
I think it’s primarily, but not exclusively, a strength. “We need more right-wing posters” is not something I’ve ever thought of Lemmy.
I think it helps to place labels onto things… and then respect those labels.
Like porn: it can get someone literally fired if they chanced upon such at work - some corpos are just looking for any excuse to cut costs, especially a repeating salary one. But so long as it is labeled, and does not appear outside of bounds… then what is the harm? (more even, studies show that places that ban porn tend to have higher rates of sexualized crime i.e. rape, so the presence of porn literally seems to help society?)
And politics: so many of us here LOVE to discuss it! But what if someone had anxiety, and could not? Could they use something like hashtags, keywords, trigger warnings I dunno, and block out most of it, for the sake of their sanity? If not, then their only recourse would be to opt-out of the Fediverse entirely, thereby taking all of the content that they would have contributed with them…
Full disclosure of my own biases: this is why I am against places such as ChapoTrapHouse from being federated with most Lemmy instances (even as I support e.g. lemm.ee’s desire to keep it) - it’s not that I want it to “not exist” (I’ve enjoyed many of my own interactions there… though it is also simultaneously true that many users from hexbear [or their alts] act as toxic bullies, ignoring people’s consent outside of those spaces, despite being told explicitly not to by their admins), so much as that I want it to be properly labeled & constrained, so that someone does not walk into it unawares, not realize what it is, and then leave the Fediverse entirely having been turned away from us due to their interactions with them.
Likewise much of the content on lemmy.ml is very much not only anti-capitalist, but anti-Western - the former I sympathize with, though the vehemence with which it is delivered and especially the latter will turn people away, as it definitely has me (especially when it abuses blatantly false tropes).
And that is the identical reason why we cannot federate with conservative spaces either, if we want to survive: it is not that we want them to not exist so much as we cannot host their content here, without making THAT action a part of our own identity. And to be clear, I don’t mean content such as “God loves us, each & every one of us” (that’s kinda an awesome thought, is it not, regardless of what we each personally believe?), but rather “I know I speak for [my specific version of a god] when I say that he (she? it? them? other?) hates some people, especially YOUR type in particular!”
But even if we took it as a given, purely for the sake of a hypothetical argument mind you, that we actually did want some type of space to not exist, what are we going to do about it - sabotage their servers? And after they spin up new ones, with better protections - then what? No, the real recourse (imho) is to simply leave them be, yet not choose to federate their content here. We all were young & naive once too - they may grow given time, or not, but that’s their business, and all we can and should (and actually MUST) control is ours.
In all of the above cases - including the pornography example - it is not what the content is (or sometimes not just that), so much as the unfriendliness of it appearing outside of bounds, causing legitimate pain and harm when it is exposed to people.
I think the way to maximize utility is to increase diversity by increasing welcomingness. Sorta like how Linux does not push people into any one distro, or window manager, or anything at all - we each are free to pursue our own paths. That’s fucking awesome!:-P
Lest anything think that I’ve refused to answer the question: it is both. Our (future) political diversity can both be a wedge driven between us - if we allow that to happen naturally - or else a source of strength, e.g. to allow a centrist person to post content unrelated to their political beliefs (woodworking? a game community?), so long as they are respectful of other people’s beliefs in the process. We don’t all have to like one another, just get along. In diversity we find strength… or we could, if we did it right, i.e. if only the ones offered in good faith were allowed to stay while all others given the boot, and even then they need to remain within their allotted lanes.
Preemptively to the people who will scroll to the bottom of this, see me saying that diversity is a strength, and comment or just downvote and move on without bothering to read the rest: fuck you. But to anyone willing to offer a good-faith critique: I am listening.
I said this on reddit a long time ago and I’ll say it here:
We need a political tag like the NSFW tagThat would be so great
Sit at a table with Nazis and you just make more nazis
That’s literally not true.
Even Daryl Davis says that there’s more Nazis every day
https://www.newsweek.com/daryl-davis-black-lives-matter-kkk-racism-white-genocide-police-1523315
There is a bunch of angry brigading here for any of a multitude of reasons, and that shear wall of vitriol thrown at people doesn’t help lemmy grow.
Huge strength.
The alternative is Reddit or 4Chan if you want centrist or right wing takes. I know which of the 3 platforms I want.
Seeing this place run by individuals with a commitment to creating a better social environment is also a huge plus. You wouldn’t get that under a non-leftist platform.
“Left” or “Right” grouping is Western centric tho.
From my perspective as Indonesian, it’s weird that Westerner lump politics into separate group instead working together for a solution that caters to everyone.
Maybe this will help: the left are the only ones that want to help everyone. The right wants to help themselves.
I still don’t get actual “left” and “right” definition by Westerner.
For example, people that support native people to be protected from encrouchment of their forest, as well as unmitigated immigration that will drive out them will considered both “left” and “right” side from Westerner.
Some Westerner also often assume their solution of problem is “the best” while all I can see is further division of society.
Please elaborate.
Indonesian here too. Same I am as confused too. It makes political discourse here looks good
I still don’t get actual “left” and “right” definition by Westerner.
The vast majority of Westerners don’t even really know what “left” or “right” mean. It’s going to be really confusing to rely on Westerners to self-identify their political beliefs, because every liberal seems to think they’re a leftist.
For example, people that support native people to be protected from encrouchment of their forest, as well as unmitigated immigration that will drive out them will considered both “left” and “right” side from Westerner.
It helps if we frame this in a context of imperialism and colonialism.
A refugee from Syria moving into Greece isn’t encroaching on anyone’s forests. That stands in stark contrast with a multinational corporation coming to DRC, clear cutting the forest, strip mining the mountains, poisoning the water, and paying pennies for labor.
Some Westerner also often assume their solution of problem is “the best” while all I can see is further division of society.
Absolutely. Any leftist in the West needs to spend their whole life unlearning their chauvinism.
The thing is, sometimes the immigrant are not corporate. They’re just groups of average people that cut all the protected forest to make a new home and uncontrolled killing of animals.
They don’t respect local rules at all.
This don’t really happen in the West, but it can happen in several parts of Asia or Africa.
That’s why ethnocentrism ended prevalent in these area.
The global South has a right to protect its sovereignty from rich Western assholes coming in to scoop up cheap land to build their summer villas. Tourism is a factor of imperialist exploitation too.
So you would say PDIP and Gerindra both represent the same thing?
And I know for a fact you’se spent most of the mid 20th century killing “communists” in your borders. So there certainly was a left in Indonesia.
Both are just corrupt parties that doesn’t want to help people.
Mixed opinion these days often reads more like outright polarization vs balanced discussions.
Weakness.
Limited range of political views breeds echo chamber. In my experience, you can’t really have meaningful discussion inside an echo chamber. Disagreement, compromise, nuance doesn’t exists inside an echo chamber. Just that same idea repeated over and over again.
Gonna be honest, you can’t have meaningful and nuanced discussion here. Everything is black and white. Capitalism? It’s the worst thing on earth. Religious people? Those people are idiots. Don’t YOU dare use Windows, use Linux instead.
This kind of things makes me actually scared of recommending people to Lemmy. I’m sure most people are casual people who doesn’t have extreme views on anything. Just some people who wants to shut their brain off and scroll. I feel like the echo chamber I mentioned will put most people off.
Going tangent a bit–In general fediverse is not diverse.
When you scroll, you realize most of the post comes from the same kind of political ideas, same country (USA), same beliefs, etc.
You can’t spell fediverse without spelling diverse, yet I feel like fediverse is anything but diverse.
This needs to change.
Religious people? Those people are idiots.
Okay for what it’s worth as a Muslim I’ve found Lemmings to be a lot more civil about the religion thing than redditors. At least I feel that people here are less likely to think being atheist makes them smart.
Oh hey, finally a fellow Muslim
Okay for what it’s worth as a Muslim I’ve found Lemmings to be a lot more civil about the religion thing than redditors
Unfortunately my experience here is different :(
This needs to change.
Half the people on here working to ensure that it never changes.
They want that echo chambers as if their life depends on maintaining a narrative.
that’s disappointing really
Honestly I’m kinda one of those on linux, but not in a “it’s morally imperative that you do” sort of way, in a “it’s a good idea to eat fruits and vegetables” or “you should leave your abusive partner” sort of way. It’s just better. I’m not going to call anyone a Nazi for using windows, but also if someone is complaining about windows doing windows things, often the solution is “linux doesn’t do that.”
“For example, in terms of attracting new users” - meaning that’s the whole point of the question, so I’ll address that.
Lemmy isn’t a corporation and doesn’t have to think like one. Market share means nothing. The goal is a high-quality app that does what its users want. If a majority of those users have a similar range of political views, that’s just how it works out. There’s nothing stopping ultra-conservatives from spinning up Lemmy instances if they want, blocking communities whose overall personality they don’t like, and banning users they don’t like. If this balkanizes the lemmy userverse, I don’t see that as an issue.
Conversely though: you are considered a right-winger by some (Lemmy.World = neoliberal bastion of not extreme enough Leftists). (And to be extra clear: me as well:-)
I agree that we must exclude trolling behaviors and those who refuse to not do them, but not bc of their beliefs and rather bc of their intolerance to anyone who disagrees. But by the same token, we must not become them in the process.
This would exclude both the Alt-Right, as well as the Alt-Left, leaving us centrists in the middle. And a week ago I would have added: “who don’t want to violently overthrow all of society”, although now I’m not so sure that a goodly fraction of Lemmy agrees with that anymore.
I’ve always voted liberal up and down the ticket, and in my daily interactions you would be hard-pressed to find me acting like anybody’s idea of a right-winger. But I don’t look at every detail of liberal doctrine as the sacred word of the gods. In many liberal forums you have to parrot all the correct doctrine and wear a pristine pure white hat, or people (apparently including yourself) will put a black hat on you. But really anyone who puts themself on a high pedestal of moral perfection is delusional.
Exactly what I’m saying. One mark of an extremist is often a kind of moral purity test of their ideology. I too was shocked to find out that I am considered “right-wing”, by the extremist left on places such as Lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, and lemmy.ml. The latter is federated with by almost everyone, and they will call you and me as “right-wing”.
Now whether that’s “true” or not… well actually, it is though - if you do not approve of actually irl really murdering your landlord, then you are “right-wing”, in comparison to them. Then again, they also say that they love North Korea - but how many of them have actually picked up and moved there, hrm? 🤣
So I think we are “centrists”, on the global scale. To the left of the Alt-Right, and to the right of the Alt-Left. My language may be odd though.
To people whose purview pertains to the set of “alternative facts”, whether left or right wing, I simply cannot converse - no matter how hard I’ve tried. However to centrists I seem to have little to no trouble making myself understood, with only the slightest efforts? i.e., anyone at all acting in good faith I can outright enjoy discourse with, while anyone acting in bad faith I cannot.
So that is my criteria: it has nothing whatsoever to do with “beliefs”, political or religious or cultural or otherwise, and everything to do with attitude, particularly the willingness to converse with compassion or at the very minimum tolerance to others’ POV.
Does that make sense?
Makes sense immensely, and tbh good to read such a thoughtful post. Superficial or “meme-level” thinking has become deeply ingrained out our culture. I attribute it largely to the firehose of content available, like an always-full inbox. It conflicts with our natural desire to finish something - you can’t finish the Internet. One way to deal with it is to process each item in the feed as quickly as possible - take in minimal information, make a quick value judgement, and scroll onward. It makes people more susceptible to misleading headlines and images that are well-crafted to squeak through their narrow attention spans. I think this superficiality plays a large part in leading people to plunk a black or white hat on everybody. Considering shades of gray takes too bandwidth. Drawing zero-tolerance lines in the sand is far simpler. But I’ve got to accept it as part of the environment, because complaining about it just gets me called a nazi lol.
This essay describes the transition as we can readily observe it happening not just in social media on the internet but also in movies & TV & every other aspect of modern life as well. We see sitting members of Congress use the same principles: if you can do something in 5 seconds, and then move on to the next, and the next, and the next, and the next, and so on, then spending 5 hours let alone 5 days, weeks, months, or years on a project becomes downright “bad”. The latter obviously not meaning in an objective sense but rather a return-on-investment (ROI) calculation, if maximizing profits (or upvote karma or whatever) is one’s goal - and for a Congressperson, that very much is their job, to maximize votes or at least pass the threshold to ensure safe re-elections, then switch to expending that political capital to enrich one’s own pockets (oh uh… and
help peopleno, enrich one’s own pockets exclusively, apparently, more’s the pity).Aside from that, the paradox of intolerance really is a fundamental principle of the universe: imagine that you had a pen full of a thousand sheep, and you let in one wolf - let’s even say to be kind, b/c he’ll die if you do not? The next day you somehow only have 999 sheep… and you let in 2 more wolves. The next day you have 996 sheep, and you let in 3 more wolves, and so on. It won’t be long before you have no sheep and only wolves left. B-b-but, they PROMISED me that they’d behave!? They PROMISED me that they wouldn’t eat MY
face offsheep!?!? We ignore this at our peril. You can do the experiment for yourself: go to Lemmy.ml without being logged into an account and just going through the first couple of pages, count the number of posts that make fun of the Western world - especially the EU and even more especially in particular the USA - or perhaps it’s easier to count those that don’t? (granted, there’s a bunch of purely-Linux ones that do not, and sometimes you’d need to visit the post to read the comments rather than see it instantly from the title) Like here’s an example that I saw just prior to the recent USA elections:
B-b-bUt BoTh SiDeS eQuAl ThO?! Except… they are not though? So many Muslim leaders in America told their followers to vote for Harris - b/c while what Biden did was not great, it will be as nothing compared to what Trump will do - although many waited until sth like 3 days before the election, hoping to wrangle every last ounce of possible concession out of the deal, though it may have been too late, b/c people simply don’t follow the news all that quickly (it would seem). In fairness, there were many issues irt that election, and this was only one of them. It does not change how the Alt-Left tries to put a “spin” that is hyperbolic, false, and most relevant: misleading to the point of being actually disinformation rather than merely misinformation. It is so easy to prop up such a strawman: “none such exist” as want to stop the chaos? Bitch, we ALL want to stop it though?! Well, liberals do, the conservatives want to fucking JOIN in making it happen FASTER! Also, it’s not like Russia actively doing genocide in Ukraine, or China to the Uyghurs, etc. (oh wait…), so I guess somehow it’s “better” to just put Trump in where he will do as he already said: write a blank check for Israel to do whatever they want from now on, including even more genocide. You know, b/c BoTh SiDeS eQuAl, and b/c if someone says it on the internet, then it MUST be true I guess?!
So yeah, according to these people, we are “right-wingers”. B/c people in the USA voting for Kamala Harris rather than voting for Donald Trump and then violently overthrowing all of society is… “right-wing”… somehow?
I will take every last ounce of diversity, from someone arguing in good faith. But I will take none from someone arguing in bad faith. Even if they call me a Nazi, or a coward, or whatever they want to call me - those manipulation tactics don’t matter, what matters is what I choose to do in response.
You’re right, everything is black-and-white absolutes. I don’t know how I could have thought “westerners” are actually millions of individuals with distinct morals, ideals and behaviors. My bad!
NOW you understand! 😜
Those kinds of messages seem to have worked - if not here bc we’re so tiny then at least overall. After all, we collectively decided together that BoTh SiDeS sAmE tHo and therefore elected Trump who ofc “is the same as Harris would have been irt the Gaza situation” (except not, if facts mattered, but since they don’t… then sure).
For attracting new users, the extreme views of the majority of users on this platform are detrimental. I personally very much dislike how one-sided all platforms are now. They lean heavily to one side or the other, which isn’t an accurate representation of the world. Most people are somewhere in the middle, yet online they’re expected to behave according to the platform’s presiding mindset or be shouted down.
Not everywhere though - e.g. lemm.ee tries to keep things open, at least on the instance level, and the anarchist servers (chiefly lemmy.dbzer0.com but iirc slrpnk.net as well) very much do not remove things that many people would expect them to if they had been more driven by a more authoritarian mindset.
In our new community [email protected] for instance, I very much hope that we can remove comments that attempt such a shouting-down as would make people feel unwelcomed to be there - regardless of their political affiliation (so long as the people being shouted down do not DESERVE it for trolling, e.g. “my reason for helping the less fortunate than myself is my belief in the Christian God who guides all my ways” is absolutely fine but “your gawd is shit and u r too, l0s3r” is not).
I think its one of the reasons reddit will never reach the mainstream like reddit. For one people find it confusing to find a community which I disagree with, you just need to take a slight effort to understand that you have a choice of community and in return you get great freedom. Since its mostly for more techies I and its overwhelmingly like left, people with moderate right views will feel like they’re completely out of place.
Im also sad that many of the bigger communities like ml have unhinged mods that ban for anyone disagreeing with them. For example some calls for violence being overwhelmingly onesided on here made me feel sick at times. But I don’t feel like sparking that debate over here.
Pro-Tip: do NOT tell people irl that you use Lemmy. 100% of the times I’ve done this, I get the most horrible looks from them. It took me a long time to figure out why, but the short explanation is that the Alt-Left is here, so it’s equivalent to saying that you use Truth Social, just on the other side.
I’ve told people I use Lemmy several times, I only got neutral or positive reactions.
Lemmy is quite obscure, so most of the people have no idea what it is.
The top Google hit to an instance isn’t “here” but rather Lemmy.ml (DuckDuckGo chooses Lemmy.World, but as long as we are talking normies here…). Lemmy.ml’s default method of showing posts is Local, rather than All. Combined, this means that a mainstream normal person will see first primarily the Alt-Left propaganda machine pushing for the violent overthrow of capitalism and Western society, and then will NOT see so much of all the cute cartoons and Star Trek memes and such. Especially prior to the USA election, there was very much an obvious bias promoting the idea that BoTh SiDeS sAmE.
Your approach used on Reddit of pointing to a highly specific instance recommendation, especially one that has defederated from Lemmy.ml, is carefully crafted to avoid the scenario I outlined above from happening. And irl it’s helpful to do the same: don’t say that you use “Lemmy”, bc that has a very pronounced reputation.
don’t say that you use “Lemmy”, bc that has a very pronounced reputation.
People really don’t know about it. Maybe it’s my environment, but at this point I would almost be happy if people could talk to me negatively about Lemmy rather than just no know what it is
Not me, I’m salty about it:-) 😔 😭
Im also sad that many of the bigger communities like ml have unhinged mods that ban for anyone disagreeing with them. For example some calls for violence being overwhelmingly onesided on here made me feel sick at times. But I don’t feel like sparking that debate over here.
For people interested on that topic, [email protected] is a dedicated community
I don’t care so much about the range of political views, just the quantity of them.
Too many people on Lemmy make their political ideology their entire identity, and it’s just freaking exhausting.
Can we not just be people talking to other people about cool stuff? I just get sick of political ideologies masquerading as people.
Then please stop by [email protected]
Subbed
Not sure if you’re there, but there’s [email protected] too
Yep, I subbed to that one when it moved from .world
There needs to be a lemmy.norm or some shit.
Just photoshop requests, memes, hobbies and dumb “askreddit” shit.
People that shy away from this stuff are almost always rich people that are intentionally unsympathetic to the plight of poor people. They’re the same people who downplay and mock trans people and other minorities because they have never known even a moment of misfortune or injustice in their entire lives.
If you lose your shit when you hear about politics, you simply don’t care about helping others. Period.
Personally, I don’t give a flying fuck about making Lemmy a safe space for the apolitical. Simply existing in the WORLD is political.
Until supposedly civilized countries stop grinding the poor into hamburger to feed their rich, the poor should be able to make their plight known and no space should be safe from that. In fact, I will actively avoid, boycott, and mock any social media platform that censors the poor from expressing their REAL opinions while pretending to care about free speech.
People that shy away from this stuff are almost always rich people that are intentionally unsympathetic to the plight of poor people.
[citation needed]
If you lose your shit when you hear about politics, you simply don’t care about helping others. Period.
Now listen here whippersnapper I’ve been around too long to not know that it is, in fact, helpful for your praxis to touch grass. Declare it political if you want, but don’t bloody talk about politics while doing it.
Read Clausewitz: Absolute war is impossible because for a people to turn all its efforts to war, it would have to give up the things that it is fighting to defend. War being nothing but the continuation of politics by other means, this also applies to politics.
It is you, here, who is trying to make politics an absolute war, you’re the one barging into a bar where people are singing the people’s songs and dancing the people’s dances and say “up, to arms! what are you dancing, what are you singing, you need to fight for your right to sing and dance!”.
In short: Your praxis boils down to party pooping. Don’t be a party pooper. Party with the people, then go back to your politics as others go back to their looms and mills.
People that shy away from this stuff are almost always rich people that are intentionally unsympathetic to the plight of poor people.
[citation needed]
Lol, say you are a westerner liberal without saying you are a westerner liberal
Congratulations, you found a very novel thought-terminating cliche. I’m impressed by your creativity.
you know absolutely nothing about us in global south.
Brazilian, eh? You mean the country with higher GDP/capita than no less than nine European countries?
Stop pretending to know, in any shape or form, what it is like to be born in Burundi. And don’t pretend you’re not a colonial state, you’re barely better than the US when it comes to fucking over the indigenous population and that’s not a high standard.
Stop pretending that 7:1 is an everyday occurrence and count those stars on your jersey.
It is you, here, who is trying to make politics an absolute war, you’re the one barging into a bar where people are singing the people’s songs and dancing the people’s dances and say “up, to arms! what are you dancing, what are you singing, you need to fight for your right to sing and dance!”.
I’m doing nothing of the sort. If anything, I’m barging into a bar where they’re in the process of discussing permanently banning anyone that even mentions politics at any non-pre-approved moment and shaming them for it.
Tsk, tsk. Upvoting yourself from alt accounts is generally a bannable offense. I’ve reported you.
Note: You’re not being silenced for your opinion, here. You’re being silenced, if you do get silenced, for your abuse of Lemmy systems. I realize you’re probably going to conflate the two dishonestly, but that’s what happened.
Tsk, tsk. Upvoting yourself from alt accounts is generally a bannable offense. I’ve reported you.
Do you have any evidence?
https://kbin.earth/m/[email protected]/t/740517/Do-you-think-the-mostly-limited-range-of-political-views/comment/4095945/favourites
Note the upvote from his alt on programming.dev, along with two suspect upvotes from other @infosec.pub accounts at exactly the same time. The one from @lemmy.eco.br seems like it could be real.
So… you’re banned here? Why then do I see your posts?
Cut that victim complex and actually engage with what I said instead of complaining that noone’s listening when you say shit 99.99% of people here already know, providing not solutions but analysis that is so undercomplex it barely qualifies as soundbites.
You’re not being a revolutionary, here. You’re an angry kid taking their first breath, loudly screaming as to the sudden incursion of the real-world into your sheltered life. Plenty others have been taking breaths for long enough to not be screaming, but scheming. Get to that level instead of having the gall to say “when people ignore me then that must be because they’re billionaires”. Too easy. Suspiciously easy, don’t you think? How many people ignore you, downvote you, how many billionaires are actually on lemmy?
Allergic to analogies should be your username. I’m not reading that insipid wall of text when the first sentence misunderstands my very clear analogy. Of course no one mentioned banning me. Try to follow along.
You may want to have a look at the definition of “sarcasm” and “rhetoric”.
I explained, in detail, why you’re getting ignored. You still refuse to engage with the topic. Try to not ignore me, ignore others, maybe then you’ll understand why what you say you simply doesn’t resonate. It takes more than one person to vibe.
Did that non sequitur rebuttal make sense to you in your head? 🤡
It is interesting to me that the people who are PASSIONATELY concerned about the plight of poor people in the third world, spend so much time pushing the solution of not voting for Kamala Harris, and so little time pushing support for charity work, NGOs in the United States, supporting the rare tiny handful of politicians who actually do care about human rights, or similar things. I think the amount of content I saw from them before the election that was dealing exclusively with the importance of not supporting Democrats probably outnumbered the other stuff by about 10:1. I guess as long as we make enough Kamala Harris memes, the Palestinians will be saved. Who knew?
Well, it worked out in the last election, I can’t wait for everything to get better for everyone in Gaza. That’s definitely what’s going to happen now, right?
Did you even look at the votes in the election? Not enough people voted third party to make a difference in the results of the election. But sure, try to blame people that oppose the genocide in gaza. Sure…
That’s true. However, I think there was a massive propaganda effort, quite successful, to get people to follow certain antipatterns of logic to help get Trump elected:
- “I care deeply about the genocide in Gaza, so I won’t vote for Democrats, even though Trump will make the genocide much worse and also create new ones.”
- “I care deeply about inflation and working people, so I’ll vote for Trump, even though Trump will make inflation much worse.”
- “I care deeply about crime and illegal immigration, so I’ll vote for Trump, even though his insane policies will mostly punish the innocent and create much more of the underlying conditions that lead to violent crime.”
And so on. It happens that foolish people on the left who thought that refusing to vote for Democrats was a way to help the Palestinians were one of the target audiences. But in the aggregate, I think the combination of those diverse populations getting suckered in their individual ways absolutely had a big impact on the election.
And please don’t say I am blaming the people that oppose the genocide in Gaza. I oppose the genocide in Gaza. Everyone on Lemmy opposes the genocide in Gaza. Because I oppose the genocide in Gaza, I didn’t want Trump to get elected, because he is about to make things much, much worse. If you have some tactical disagreement with how I want to oppose genocide, because you also oppose it but in some different way, then fine. But pretending that I have an issue with people who oppose genocide is just a dishonest strawman engineered in some think-tank somewhere, to help get Trump elected.
Yeah, there was certainly a lot of propaganda and lies to help elect Donald, but let’s be very real here - leftists not voting or voting third party over Gaza wasn’t a major part of his victory. Kamala Harris had a very weak campaign that didn’t address the concerns of young, white male voters. Personalities like Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, and others really do appeal to those people, telling them that they’re just fine and pointing their fingers at an endless list of targets to keep these people angry and afraid - and ultimately to vote for people like Donald who claim they’ll fix everything. I wasn’t trying to strawman but I have seen a lot of online comments purely blaming leftists for this election, and it’s frustrating.
What did I say, in my comment, to address exactly what you just repeated?
Specifically I’m interested in this part:
Yeah, there was certainly a lot of propaganda and lies to help elect Donald, but let’s be very real here - leftists not voting or voting third party over Gaza wasn’t a major part of his victory.
That had a very specific answer in the comment you’re replying to.
I’ve run into you a few times. Let me save us both some time with the bullshit lesser of two evils finger wagging, neolib.
I find it highly interesting how in the replies to your message people are proving you right:-).
But fwiw, I do want to push back a little on my own irt your phrasing: perhaps it is not so much the intensity of someone’s views as the degree of welcomingness extended to people of all walks. Non-intuitively to some: this REQUIRES that we kick out people engaging in bad faith. However, once that’s done, shouldn’t we extend a welcoming hand to all who come in good faith?
Tbh I may not be expressing myself well there… so I’ll try with more extreme language: Nazis are bad, and thereby the Alt-Right that extends a welcoming hand to neo-nazis are bad, but centrists and liberals (both of whom would be called right-wing by many people internationally) should be made to feel welcomed? So breadth of political views - so long as delivered in good faith - not that the breadth is the thing desired, but rather the allowance for PEOPLE to come in and talk, if they want, regardless of their political views. The focus here is on the people - the tolerance is just the means to that good end (and this only works if we are intolerant to specifically those who are themselves intolerant).
I find it highly interesting how in the replies to your message people are proving you right:-).
What replies? lol. I guess I’ve already blocked most all the people I was referring to (or they’re on
.mlwhich I don’t federate with for pretty much this exact reason)[The rest of it]
When, out of nowhere, people put other people into boxes, ascribe a political label to them, and put words in their mouths without knowing anything about them, is a HUGE turn off to me as far as interactions go.
e.g. A comment reply that’s taken out of context and is basically, “Hurr, durr, that’s such an enlightened centrist thing to say. Guess you’re okay with a little fascism, huh, lib?” is pretty fucking cringe and going to make me immediately block the person saying it (and I have and will continue to do so). Like, if that’s how their mind works, taking things out of context, jumping to conclusions, and projecting labels out of nowhere: I got nothing for them.
I’m not here with an agenda, I’m not trying to spread my beliefs, I’m not trying to convert anyone to anything (except maybe Linux lol), etc. I just wanna share and talk about cool shit.
And you know there’s someone reading this thinking (and possibly commenting) that the fact I haven’t announced myself to the room as a raging leftie means I must be a nazi in disguise. (Nope. Just someone who’s not here for political shit). My political beliefs and leanings are my own, and if they’re not apparent from my post/comment history, then whoever’s judging me just hasn’t paid attention.
As for how I treat people, as long as they’re clearly operating in good faith and with a good attitude, I welcome them until such time they’ve veered outside of civility or proven to be a troll, actual Nazi, or otherwise.
Exactly. Judgement is such hard work - best to avoid it when possible, but if necessary, not shy away from it either. Although in the latter case some WORK needs to be put in, if the desire is to do it correctly.
So many people claiming “bUt i WaS BaNNeD foR beInG ToO FrIenDlY, i’M ReaLlY sUcH a nIcE gUy”, when it is patently obvious to anyone who looks that that is not the case.
Lemmy is always going to lean more radical than other platforms. Not only is the lead dev a Communist, but to pick Lemmy over Reddit is an ideological choice to begin with. There is an ideological barrier to entry, and this won’t change until Reddit goes under.
For me picking lemmy over reddit is a matter of liking the software a lot better. As a dev myself I think lemmy is much more elegant and usable, and IDGAF about the lead dev’s ideologies, as a dev they kick ass.
For me, it’s neither strength nor weakness. I’m a boring old fart, I’m not here for politics.
I mostly here not for politics too… yet everywhere I look in Lemmy, it’s all politics, kinda annoying
