The time to find this equilibrium has passed. I'm already depressed and nihilistic
Aka the difference between pushing voter apathy suppression propaganda online or actually helping.
The voter apathy propaganda is so damn infuriating and comes up around this time every 4 years from folks who refuse to offer any alternatives besides telling people to organize and other nonsense without providing any resources on how to do so.
But Biden directly shoots Gazan children himself so you should throw your vote away on a green party candidate instead. Trust me.
Yeah, Trump will be worse and we should just ignore everything Democrats have accomplished or try to accomplish by lumping them in with the worst of their party while blaming them for everything a Republican has done like the sane non brainwashed person I am. I'm helping! I swear! People do more when they're hopeless!
https://www.whitehouse.gov/therecord/
Honestly the thing people need to do is just call it out for the ludicrousness it is every time. People think it's a popular opinion and it may be in some circles. But don't let it just slide. Make fun of it. Call it out for the propaganda it is. You don't have to be a paid Russian troll to push prop. People here can fall for it just as easily as the people wacthing Fox News.
Politicians love non-voters, one less idiot they need to convince.
I’ve always found clearing all the purity tests online leftists ask you to jump through to be the tricky part
all the purity tests
You mean basic human decency?
Like, can you give one example of what you're complaining about as an unrealistic standard?
I am pro basic human decency, I just wish more online leftists realize you get things done with a big tent. Perfect is the enemy of good.
Fred Hampton wasn’t killed by the FBI because he had the most stringent purity tests, he was killed cause he was able to convince a lot of people to come under his tent to fight for workers.
I mean... that's most of us. Don't confuse the loud obnoxious minority with reality.
I agree with that, but it pisses me off because the loud obnoxious folks repel new people.
So....
Does that mean you can't give a single example of what your complaining about?
Personally, I’ve had comments I’ve posted on lemmy.ml deleted for “bigotry” for saying Iran supports Hamas which is an objective fact. It wasn’t even a commentary on policy but I’m still a bigot somehow.
I mean, shit, you even implied I am an enemy of basic human decency for making a mild criticism in a meme sub.
Your first mistake was being active on the .ml instance which generally has been anti-anarchist
Realistically they're generally anti-anyone that disagrees with them. Not just of anarchists, or actual communists for that matter. They just tend to hate anarchists and real communists more. Because they know and can articulate where the bodies are buried better than most others so to speak.
Yeah I’ve started unfollowing .ml communities because I’ve found it’s just not worth contributing. I have an alt on dbzero’s instance that I’ve found much better.
I've seen older people be cancelled or called fascists over the use of outdated words like 'transgendered', without even an explanation. Obviously, that word is now deprecated and considered a pejorative, but it used to be commonly accepted word and was even used within the community.
I've had people call me sexist, because I was critical of Mattel's motives when making the Barbie movie. Mattel is a company run by a man, with an abysmal record on how they treat their (female) employees, and Barbie negatively damages girls' body image.
I've also had people reply to comments in which I paraphrased or literally quoted feminist thinkers like Dworkin, of mansplaining or not being able to understand sexism because I lacked 'lived experience'. It's not a coincidence that plenty of left-wing feminists, were easy prey for right wing ideology and are now virulent transphobes. Eg. JK Rowling.
Being balanced or even slightly nuanced on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is also likely to result in you getting piled on in some terminally online left wing spaces, where people have gone to the other extreme and now seemingly implicitly or explictly support Hamas/Iran. Same thing for Russia/Ukraine.
You also just accused someone of lacking basic human decency, for criticizing what they perceived as the excesses of online leftists.
You also just accused someone of lacking basic human decency, for criticizing what they perceived as the excesses of online leftists.
This was my first thought when reading that comment... smh
It's painfully un-self-aware.
I can understand what they're saying. You expect hateful shit from the right-wing assholes, and fighting against their bullshit is a worthy cause.
But the left is prickly, including to its allies. Hell, especially to its allies. And it is so much more exhausting when it is coming from your own side.
As an example, when Lil Nas X was accused of faking being gay for, I guess money, or pushing some agenda, he said "I just like dick" and that there's nothing deep to it. People started attacking him for "trans erasure" and such nonsense. The man didn't say he likes all dick, and I'm sure if it were attached to a woman, he wouldn't be about it (and if there was a man without one, he presumably also would not be interested). It was a toss away comment that is easily understood in the context, and people felt the need to attack him for it. It should not bear this level of analysis and scrutiny, but here we are.
It's also a million times worse online, which was the OPs point. I'm a pinko commie by American standards, and I've been called a secret conservative online or downvoted to oblivion for daring to suggest that landlords should exist. The downvotes above just show how prickly and "no true leftist" some people are.
Why exactly do you think landlord should exist?
As an actual communist, I think that's a weird stance.
I'm not him, but the justification I've seen in the past is that some people move to different locations every few months to pursue work or they're in an area temporarily for studies and don't want to be permanently tied down. It was something along those lines. Even if that does justify the existence of *some* landlords, it doesn't justify such a huge supermajority of housing being owned by them.
This happens, there is a lot of liberal left that believes that representation and words can shape the reality. But there is a lot of bad will from OP to generalize it
The purity tests usually come from leftist adjacent groups that actually have nothing to do with left wing ideology. Read Tankies and some extremely small groups of vegans (Most are fine). They for some reason love telling you "Lefties who aren't [INSERT THING HERE] are hypocritical and not real leftists"
Really it's a huge nothing burger complaining about silly people on twitter and Reddit who ultimately do not matter.
They matter because they're loud and given attention.
Being loud and given attention, they can be the only example of “leftists” some people knowingly interact with.
They do matter. If they didn't countries like Russia wouldn't spend so much targetting them with propaganda and pushing them not to vote or vote against admittedly flawed left of centre parties.
I don't know why this didn't dawn on me until just now, but...
One thing the alt right's pervasive bad faith online bullshit accomplishes is wearing down the left making us far more likely to respond with reflexive hostility to any hint of similar behavior. (Edit: often mistakenly)
It isn't just about recruiting, trolling, power moves, "winning" arguments in others' perception, but also fomenting infighting among the left.
You’re right, I think concern trolling is absolutely a factor in the knee jerk hostility for some. I think there are some that probably think I’m concern trolling in this thread right now. Thankfully I think my post history is a decent indication I’m not.
The only thing you really need to be a leftist is emphathy and a disdain for ignorance, after you have that everything else will fall into place.
False. The only thing you need to be a leftist is empathy, a willingness to learn, and a willingness to teach what you've learned.
Leave your disdain at home. Disdain is what begets purity tests and misunderstandings. Everyone is born ignorant. Don't disdain the ignorant. But don't waste your time with those who refuse to learn.
As hard and frustrating as it can be for those in the west to escape the mental conditioning and brainwashing they all go through. It's still sad to see people do that. Only to be indoctrinated into Marxist Leninist mindsets. Failing to learn from their failures of the last century. Which are often similarly, as bad as the capitalists.
The downvotes are a funny proof. Guess you failed a test....
The will to fight? I'm treading the line for will to live most of the time.
I wish we could send the religious fanatics to another land and let them set whatever rules they want for themselves. Leave the rest of us alone.
That's how you got America in the first place. The Puritans left England to go to America because they weren't allowed to subjugate the people they wanted to. Colonialism fell out of fashion and now they have nowhere to run except Russia, China and Africa, but those places are filled with foreigners already.
I remember a long while back, maybe even in the W administration, there was an image going around with The United States of Canada as one big happy country to the north, and Jesusland which was basically the American south.
I can’t believe how much MORE sense it makes now.
Therapy helps
I shouldn't need therapy to decide on some BS that other people argue about.
Try to find a reason to act that isn't outrage, that isn't healthy
I don't know any other way about forced birth, racism, book burnings, christofascism, and genocide.
But you're right, I've felt too worn down to do as much as I would have liked.
Fuck me, that's so true
Right in the feels.
I’d say the trickiest part is knowing exactly what will happen (in the grand scheme of things, ofc. clairvoyance in the meme sense), then see it happen and having no power to stop it at all.
And seeing all the people around you post-justify every shitty thing that happened through the lens of a mystical ideology of either conservatism or liberalism.
While you’re like: but remember I said this was gonna happen because of x, y and z material conditions?
And you can see their selfs shutdown behind their eyes. And they go back to just repeating their same old talking points and sound bites and “memes”.
Breaking through the exhausted nihilism to find the secret second layer of righteous outrage
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