I can’t really think of a reason for that as Reddit is hated somewhat equally by “both” sides of the spectrum. It’s just something I find interesting.

  • wall_panel_96@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I know, I got a 3 day ban for a silly reason from reddit. I figured it was a good time to make the move to Lemmy, it’s even more leftist activist over here. Like tenfold. It’s insane. I cang believe I’m saying this, but I’m looking forward to getting back to the standard low level leftist nutters.

    Why can’t we have nice things darnit.

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    Not really meaning for this to sound as arrogant as it’s going to, but… Lemmy is almost entirely populated by nerds so far.

    Nerds tend to be open to tech, maybe a little smarter overall. You know? You can tell by the grammar, the spelling. It’s a different group here.

    Reality is left leaning, and the stupider someone is, in general, the more likely they are to lean right politically. The rest of the right are the really rich, who tend to be up the psychological spectrum toward sociopathic, so of course they would have no time for caring for others’ needs.

    • Billiam@lemmy.world
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      Reality is left leaning

      I know this was a joke Colbert made, but the truth is the reverse: the left is reality-leaning. It’s truly terrifying to see how divorced from reality the right-wing is, and how gleefully they just keep storming in that direction.

    • magnetosphere@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      Reality is left leaning…

      It really is. So much of conservatism involves pissing into the wind, and trying to argue against objective truth.

    • _finger_@lemmy.world
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      The super rich are usually highly educated but they live in such a homogenous bubble that they’re opinions on the majority of society should be entirely discounted. They usually have a total lack of empathy for people and vote for politicians with the same attitude. I have met some super rich people who try very hard to go against the grain and not fall into that mindset, but something about the need for protecting your money and lifestyle usually promotes an untrustworthy and skeptical view of everyone in their lives including their own family.

    • PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee
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      The political vibe on Lemmy isn’t really a new thing. Reddit had it 15 years ago. Good forums and IRC channels had it before that. It’s been part of the “golden age” of every online social medium

      Eventually, teenage edgelords find start taking up too much space. Shortly after that, the far-right turn up to prey on them.

      The people who made the platform good in the first place leave and the cycle begins anew.

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      To an extent. But whenever there is a political discussion on Hacker News, the lib right response is very, very loud, and I try to remind myself I appreciate Hacker News for its tech news.

      I think the culture is just different. Lemmy was started and run by Tankies. Hacker News was started by Y Combinator, which incubates silicon valley startups. They’re going to attract different audiences, or at least different groups of people who will put up with different politics. I can’t claim to be particularly upset about the .ml domains being pulled and the center mass of Lemmy moving away from those instances.

        • ZephyrXero@lemmy.world
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          I had to look it up too. Apparently it’s an authoritarian leftist. Thinks state-socialism was a good thing. As while most leftists are more of the democratic, market, and anarchist varieties.

          • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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            State socialism is a good thing, what tankies promote is something else, they’re fascist that can’t accept that fact because it would mean having something in common with the fascists in the USA, a country that they hate so much that they’re ready to deny reality to have an anti USA opinion.

            • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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              They’re authoritarian. Not fascist. There is a difference. Even if both groups are more dedicated to authoritarianism than anything else. I would not be caught dead voluntarily anywhere with a fascist. While I disagree heavily with ML communist I might associate with them a little bit. But just never give them power.

            • Bibliotectress@lemmy.world
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              I’m confused, and you seem to be a lot more familiar with the term. I read the wiki link that explains tankies. I don’t personally know any left leaning people who support Russia/Stalin/China regimes. Maybe because of my America-centric viewpoint and where things are today, but typically people who are economically left are also socially and politically left (equal opportunity is more important than individual freedoms), which is very anti-fascist. I’ve heard people say how great a true communism could be if it were possible, but no one’s ever made it past a dictatorship to get there.

              Are tankies people who are economically left but socially and politically right, and think someone has achieved a communist utopia without knowing anything about the corrupt oligarchies in Russia or CCP China?

              • RossoErcole@kbin.social
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                The problem is not state socialism, it’s the authoritarian side of it. Tankies promote authoritarian views similar to fascists but with a different economics view (not even that different some times), hence they prefer the dictatorships like USSR (in these days even Putin, which is idiotic), North Korea, China; over what they perceive as imperialist, the USA (I agree on calling it imperialistic and disliking it, but not on considering it worse than dictatorships).

                I’m a communist which likes state socialism, but what is and was present in those dictatorship (ignoring the authoritarian side which I despise) is state capitalism.

                • escaped_cruzader@lemmy.world
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                  The problem is not state socialism, it’s the authoritarian side of it

                  The communist utopia needs authoritarianism to work

              • Riskable@programming.dev
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                The confusion comes from so much mass media that equates socialism with communism. They’re orthogonal concepts! Saying socialism is the same as communism is like saying beer-making is exactly the same as cheese-making. Anyone who understands what beer and cheese are would be like, “I’m sorry, what‽”

                The best way to think of socialism is that’s it’s a governance strategy that can be used wherever you want. Want everyone to pay taxes in order to fund and deliver government-run firefighting services? That’s socialism. Want to do the same with the military? Socialism. Whenever the government is delivering some good or service by way of taxpayer dollars that’s socialism.

                Capitalism and communism are economic systems. You can have socialist government constructs under either capitalism or communism. It’s just that communism doesn’t really have the flexibility to provide goods or services in any other way than via the government.

                Then there’s countries like China that claim to be communist (and the Right loves to call them that) but really, they’re more capitalist than communist. What they do have that most communists and fascist governments have is authoritarianism.

                That authoritarianism is what fascists and “tankies” have in common: Fascists support an authoritarian, pseudo-capitalist government while “tankies” support an authoritarian, pseudo-communist government.

              • Wollff@lemm.ee
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                people who support Russia/Stalin/China regimes.

                Congratulations: That, and only that, is a tankie. It is a good practical defintion for the term.

                Are tankies people who are economically left but socially and politically right

                As I see it, tankies are just the same as the Trumpers. You can’t really say where they stand socially and politically, because they do not have a coherent opinion or ideology. Everyone who opposes their favorite regime is WRONG, and everything their favorite regime does is RIGHT. Bonus points for every action and opinion that hurts “woke lefties”, because the favorite regimes of tankies are all inevitably incompatible with progressive ideas and ideologies.

                without knowing anything about the corrupt oligarchies in Russia or CCP China?

                Imagine the answer a Trumper would give when you ask them if they don’t know about Trump’s corruption and character. The tankies answer just the same in response to allegations in regard to corruption and character of their favorite regimes:

                First of all, none of that is true, because the woke lefties, the media, and everyone are all corrupt, and lying. And what is true, is all a well played move of brilliant 5D chess which will save us all, because the supposed “corruption” is actually all part of a very smart and deliberate system of ploys and strategems which the woke lefties just don’t understand.

                Now, do the tankies and Trumpers truly believe that? Who knows. Doesn’t really matter anyway. What is clear is that both of those “ideologies” are dumb idiots.

          • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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            I don’t think you understand how small of a global majority white European men are.

      • NuPNuA@lemm.ee
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        Are those groups right wing, or just centrists that don’t react well to people trying to push far left ideals in their spaces?

              • entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org
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                I’m not saying there are no right-wing tech nerds, I’m saying that your argument that tech nerds are right wing is overly reductive.

                You concede my point about FOSS but then try to muddy the waters from there by citing “their platforms started getting cracked down on and [their having] adopted cryptocurrency” to try to make your prior pidgeon-holing still work. Mind citing me a source for either of those claims? Neither of those seem to me to be issues plaguing the wider FOSS community, and as a participant I’m interested to hear about this news I’ve apparently missed.

                Silicon Valley is not representative of tech nerds in general. It is, like Hollywood, a small area filled with desperate people trying to turn their talents into fame and fortune. Insinuating that tech nerds in general have the same culture as Silicon Valley is like insinuating that actors in general dress, act, and think like Hollywood actors do. It’s ridiculous on its face.

                All this to say it really sounds like you’ve built up a stereotype based on what you read in the news rather than by engaging with the actual community in question.

          • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            I wouldn’t call them nerds because they’re venture capitalists not nerds. Nerds implies some sort of technological or engineering skill or ability. Steve Jobs would qualify; not these two.

    • stappern@lemmy.one
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      Lemmy is almost entirely populated by nerds so far.

      did you want to say “smart people” ? because thats an interesting way to express that

      • Blamemeta@lemmy.world
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        Theres a difference. While nerds are often book smart, we often have social difficulties.

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    There’s been tons of right-leaning Reddit alternatives before, but they always quickly devolved into Nazi spaces.

    Lemmy was the first one that I’m aware of, which told Nazis to fuck off right from the beginning.

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      They just have their own instance and are defederated by some but not all, which is the best solution as it means they stick to their part of the fediverse instead of hijacking subs that weren’t right leaning in the first place.

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        Yeah, right-wingers flock to “safe-spaces” as much as the far-left does. Lemmy doesn’t have the tools to make a single community isolated like they could on Reddit, so they have to go to their own instances and end up defederated.

        The main differences between left-wing and right-wing communities is that the right-wing ones quickly deteriorate towards a lot of hate related things. This leads them to being isolated from the rest. The left wingers are mostly tolerable and are just over zealous in preaching things like forcing everyone to use pronouns, lmao.

      • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        I’ve never had a productive conversation that started with “please define what counts as a Nazi for me”.

      • Knusper@feddit.de
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        I do not speak for this platform, but what I mean with Nazis here, are people who support the exclusion, inhumane treatment or exploitation of arbitrary groups of people, generally for the Nazi’s (perceived) benefit and in spite of basic morals.

        • diprount_tomato@lemmy.world
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          And what would exclusion, inhumane treatment and exploitation mean? It’s key to clearly define the concepts before applying the label to someone, as if they stay undefined everyone can have the label applied

          • Knusper@feddit.de
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            Right, so another policy from the early days of Lemmy that I thought was quite vital: No endless discussions on what precisely constitutes Nazi behaviour.

            It’s truly not hard to not be a Nazi. And if someone is even roughly in the ballpark of being a Nazi, the community as a whole just doesn’t care to have that person’s input here.

            Which is a roundabout way of saying that I do not think, it’s relevant to clearly define these terms.

    • blanketswithsmallpox@kbin.social
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      I wonder if there are demographics by IP already? TBH most of the threads I’ve been in have felt very US Centric. I also came with the great reddit migration too though.

      • HotDogFingies@kbin.social
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        On my feed, at least, I have my frontpage set to whatever the kbin equivalent to “all” is. I see lots of other languages beyond English populating - particularly German. The Lemmy instance I chose when I initially made my way to the fediverse operates out of China. They’re chill over there.

        I dunno. I think if you’re only finding people discussing the US here, then you’ve probably accidentally pigeonholed yourself based on your own interests. The fediverse is diverse.

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          I mean yeah. Being only English speaking with gringo Spanish doesn’t let me understand memes in German or any of the other various non-english speaking magazines lol.

          English is the defacto lingua franca though. Particularly on the web. The diversity I’ve seen still heavily leans English, and western, which makes plenty of sense.

    • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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      Lemmy was initially created by communists.

      It’s still in the process of being created, and the communism is a bit less in your face now alongside there being other contributors to the code, but that’s how it started.

        • Silviecat44@aussie.zone
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          Most of comments on popular communities boil down to “capitalism bad communism only solution”. Very in your face and everywhere

          • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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            Yes, and I would say that’s because of lemmy’s communist/tankie roots. Which is a philosophy based in left wing ideology, however in practice it is more authoritarian fascism, which is right wing.

        • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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          Are you arguing that Twitter is right wing because it is US-centric, and not because of Musk’s leveraged buyout?

          I would argue that US social media platforms are (now) right wing because of aggressive financial attacks meant to break up open social engagement, as this is bad for business and sociopaths looking to exploit people for profit. Reddit was left wing, until it was bought and sold. Same with Twitter.

          However my comment was merely rejecting the idea that Lemmy is left wing because it is not US-centric. Lemmy was started by tankies, who say they’re left wing and have some left wing ideologies, but really they’re more authoritarian fascists, and fascism is in fact right wing. However as Lemmy grew it became apparent that this stance would impede its growth - particularly in western markets - so the main devs have tried to minimise their political views and keep the program neutral; now those views are primarily concentrated at lemmygrad.

          Lemmy is not US-centric, but that’s not why it’s left wing. Lemmy is left wing because rational empathetic thought is naturally left wing. Lemmy is full of communism because it was started by communists/tankies.

          • Cruxifux@lemmy.world
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            If you think Marxist-leninists are fascists, or like fascists, then you don’t really understand what either of those words mean man.

            • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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              The US is not inherently nor totally right wing, and Twitter was predominantly left wing until fairly recently. It might not have been full left wing socialist, but it was certainly left of centre.

                • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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                  Both parties in the US government are indeed right wing, but not everyone and everything in the US is right wing.

                  Communism is unfortunately a dirty word in the US, and socialism isn’t far behind it. It doesn’t help that there have been numerous foreign governments that call themselves communist that the US has labeled as enemies and fought against. As a result, an American labeling themselves communist is often ostracised. However, many people do in fact hold those ideals, albeit quietly and/or without naming it such.

                  An American politics forum is of course going to mirror American politics.

                  However Twitter and reddit as a whole were left wing. Not as in reading Marx, but in being for the good of everyone, with the core principle of serving the needs of the many rather than the desires of the few. They were also incredibly liberal. They’ve since been taken over by pseudo right wing authoritarian interests, gradually since around 2016.

  • miridius@lemmy.world
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    I think there’s a wide range of people on Lemmy too but the extreme right and extreme left have ended up on instances that have been defederated from the main group. So what you’re seeing are the sensible, rational people, and in America such people are considered left wing I guess 😉

  • sol@thelemmy.club
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    Left and right are two stupid categories built up by propaganda, get them out of your head and start to think on your own terms

    • bric@lemm.ee
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      This. There an infinite number of ideologies that you could have, but our first past the post voting system (in the US) only allows for two candidates, so an infinite spectrum gets funneled into two camps.

      • yata@sh.itjust.works
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        Left/right isn’t an exclusively American concept, it is used all over the world regardless of the political system of the country.

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      The main thing I don’t like about these categories is how they try to lump both moral and political issues into one group as either right or left. They’re two different things. Societies do legislate morality, but as far as defining a person’s overall views I think it’s a poor metric. Personally I have some left views politically, but some right views morally.

      I think it can be expected people participating in the Fediverse are somewhat anti-capitalist. We come here to get away from corporate driven media. That being the case I think it’s not erroneous to say Lemmy is more left politically and I appreciate that. However that does not mean I agree with all left views. There are some moral issues I may not agree with, but I don’t engage since I’m not interested in debating morality in these forums.

    • OCATMBBL@lemmynsfw.com
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      It’s pretty meaningfully different when one side wants to fix the climate and create social and economic policy that benefits the majority, while the other wants to concentrate wealth into the hands of the few at the expense of everyone else, and the climate, and is creating propaganda aimed at the dehumanization of LGBTQ+ and perceived-non-Americans (even when they’re citizens).

      • sol@thelemmy.club
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        Any party that label themself as left or right is applying the same politics that benefits those in power and lie about it to the public.

    • soviettaters@lemmy.worldOP
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      I’m not gonna start using niche political terms on a daily basis. Yes, I know that Democrats and Republicans are basically the same but nobody outside a small group of people cares. See that I put both in quotation marks as well.

      • orrk@lemmy.world
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        to be fair, you wouldn’t say that Democrats or republicans are the same if you happen to be part of the groups the Republicans are currently advocating death for. There is a difference between NeoLiberal shill and “America should be a white ethnostate”

        • sab@lemmy.world
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          Wait, is “advocating death for” the evolution of “right to exist”? That sure escalated quickly.

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            I mean, sure one could argue that the Rights attacks on trans and LGBTQ people, calling them all pedophiles that need to be exterminated can be seen as a “right to exist” argument, in the same way that “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” can be seen as a “right to exist” statement…

  • miridius@lemmy.world
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    I wonder how much of that on Reddit is just bots and shills, ie corporations paying to create and upvote posts and comments that support their agenda

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    I once got dogpiled in r/lsd of all places for saying employers shouldn’t be allowed to drug test for thc. I got swarmed for “being a druggie” in a sub about lsd.

    I quit reddit for good not too long after that. What a fucking shithole.

  • OptimusPhillip@lemmy.world
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    This actually makes a lot of sense. A lot of people are using Lemmy either because they prefer federated web platforms to centralized, which makes it antithetical to corporate interests, or because they’re opposed to Reddit’s API policy, which was a blatant move to squeeze more money out of their users. Either way, Lemmy’s appeal is very anti-capitalist, and since opposition to capitalism is a generally left-wing philosophy, I can totally see why most Lemmy users would be left-wing.

    • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
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      This is my thought as well. Lemmy isn’t what everyone is looking for. It’s a free open source software project for creating a decentralized federated network of content aggregators. For most people that sentence doesn’t make any sense nor do they really care. They just want a site they can doom scroll for hours.

      The people who choose to use Lemmy are people who care about open source projects, care about decentralization of online platforms, or both. These types of people by their very nature support groups of people coming together collectively to do something big.

      A collection of people working together towards a common goal without a strict hierarchy. You could say these people are community focused. Maybe we could call that communityism or something. Where people make rules as a group, or a union you could say. So yeah, no idea where the left lean is coming from.

  • marciealana@lemmy.world
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    Reality has a well known left leaning bias.

    Conservatives and their politics do not have equal status. In this climate, “both sides” is toxic and suggest each is equally supported and viable. They are not. The right is an incredibly hateful minority end should be treated as such.

    • Historical_General@lemmy.world
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      I’d say it’s mainstream media-type liberal bias. Inclusive aesthetically, and occasionally sincerely too, but mostly shit.

      • Space_Jamke@lemm.ee
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        Now you’ve convinced me! I really ought to have been the bigger man when my mom called me in the middle of the night to tell me that Trump’s a martyr like Jesus and that the Democrats are performing demonic baby-eating rituals inside underground tunnels, and just let her keep screaming about me being a brainwashed woke communist because we just have little differences and we all need to get along.

        Haha, nope. I want scorched earth on every one of those conspiracy nut fuckers holding right-wing parties around the balls, since they went after my family with their brainrot. I don’t give a shit that a handful of people exist who don’t explicitly support Jewish Space Laser Marge or Venmo Bribes Clarence, because y’all still vote lock step to keep these crazy loons around because Roe v. Wade is worth killing for $300 extra on next year’s tax return.

        • SmurfDotSee@lemmy.world
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          Is it miserable?

          Having your entire identity based on a political team?

          Constantly being angry and thinking the worst about your peers?

          Because it SOUNDS miserable.

          • tiredOfFascists@reddthat.com
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            Probably not as miserable as it is to have to spend all your energy pretending to not see how your political ideas have fully doomed humanity to drive itself extinct

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          my mom called me in the middle of the night to tell me that Trump’s a martyr

          Gonna have to take any political and moral position you have with a grain of salt, since crazy runs in the family

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    2 years ago

    Yup it is. There are a lot of communist techie people I guess. I still generally state my political opinions here though. Let them be downvoted.

  • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Well, there’s a self-proclaimed Left which, though probably having started out with good intentions, is all about “lets classify people on visible things they were born with and then presume things about them purelly on their “classification” and treat them differently”.

    If this sounds strangelly like the far-right thinking that’s because it is kinda derivative: the same architecture of deeming individuals as worthy/unworthy likely-good/likely-bad because they were born with certain characteristics as the far-right is used, and then the categories are swapped and the whole thing is called “being progressive” as if it was only unfair to judge and treat people because of their genetic makeup if done in one direction but not in a different one.

    Then there is the tankie Left, which also started with good intentions but seem to have confuse the recipe-book of slogans and the Party über alles discipline invented in the late 19th century and early 20th century by middle class intellectuals to inspired the near-illiterate masses of the time to create an utopian leftwing world (which didn’t work) with the actual thinking Principles and Intentions from which the rules were made. Because these people follow the recipes without examining the against the principles and ideals and in contexts which are very different of the ones for which those rules were created, you went up with ridiculous ideas directly opposed to “the greatest good for the greatest number” principle like supporting Putin’s invasion.

    The followers of such “Lefts” hate it when their faith-like beliefs are examined against the actual Principles of Equality and “the greatest good for the greatest numbers” and found often to be directly opposing them, just like when you grab some religious book or other and point out the inconsistencies in it: there is no greater hate than that of the faithfull who sees the basis of their Identity be examined under the cruel light of logic and found to be mainly bollocks.

    Or in other words, I think the Left here is a lot more the product of thinking things through and concluding that it would be a lot better to live in a World with less poverty, more equality and were a few did not amass more power than whole countries thanks to their wealth, and continuing to actually continue to think things through when face with slogans from the tribalist flag waving slogan parroting and social-circle-jerk groups which call themselves “Left” and which are the leftovers from Marxism in the XXI Century and the Neoliberal-inspired “in the greed is good context, lets pursue personal-upside maximization as an ‘Identity’ group instead of individually so that we can claim we’re lefties”.

    PS: If it sounds I’m raging against the Left here, that just because I find the pettyness and self-serving sociopathy of the modern Right to be self-evident. I actually don’t think you can be a true leftwinger genuinelly fighting for the greater good if you just blindly follow slogans and tribes. Funilly enough it also means I can actually respect a genuine old-style conservative, even whilst wholly disagreeing with him or her.

    • Pulptastic@midwest.social
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      2 years ago

      This sounds like a straw man argument. The lefties I know are analytical and critical to a fault; unlike the righties they don’t blindly wave the party flag, and that criticism reduces their support of party policies and presents itself as a lack of unity.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Being a member of a leftwing party in my own country, I can tell you that most members aren’t analytical and critical when it comes to words uttered by celebrities “from their side”.

        In fact that was exactly my great dissapointment with that party as I became more and more familiar with it and the way it works: having come in thinking as you seem to do and expecting to find a Thinking Left, I ended up finding yet another bunch of mindless parrots who even lack self-awareness (I was pretty shocked in a National Party Conference when maybe 9 in 10 of party member interventions were of the “we the <insert groups that person belongs to> need/want/should-have …”, or in other words Personal Greed disguised as “for the group”, the kind of shit that is rotting from the inside the genuine fight for Equality).

        There are many “lefts” in the Left and a lot of them either interiorized greed as ok and practice an “as long as it helps me and doesn’t affect my priviledges” type of being “left” (lots of high middle class Feminist around who strangelly focus entirelly or almost so on the “oppression” of high middle class women whose income is above 90% of people, rather than on that of, say, working class cleaning ladies who get up at 5 AM every day to go clean toilets for minimum wage), people so beholden to an old script that they lost sight of the principles why and from were that script was born, and people whose relation to the leftwing is akin to their relation with a sports club: of the heart, unthinking, unchallenging and always applauding whatever the club’s stars say - perfect useful idiots being fed pap by people in leadership positions who either are manipulators rather than leftwing or are profoundly incompetent, with no vision and no strategy, hence are totally unable to advance leftwing principles (quite the contrary, judging by the way politics is going towards the far-right nowadays).

        We do need more Genuinelly Thinking Left, not people consciously or unconsciously accepting accepting the “greed is good” of neolibs, or flag waving parrots with not even the awareness of how lost their party is without an actual vision or strategy and always reacting moment by moment to political events (making them oh-so-easy to manipulate by the mainstream political parties).

        • Pulptastic@midwest.social
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          2 years ago

          I am pretty fortunate to live in a quite progressive city in a fairly progressive state. I’m sure some of that goes on here as well, but the people I surround myself with seem to be genuinely interested in the greater good.

          • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            Well, I was born in Portugal and lived there until my 20s, at a time when the country was profoundly backwards in social issues, and then became an immigrant in The Netherlands, which I was for almost a decade during my young adult years, so I ended up wholehearthedly adopting the dutch version of Tolerance.

            Now, remember that The Netherlands was maybe the first country to, for example, legalized gay marriage (in fact some of my colleagues there were British “refugees” who had move there so that they could get married with their partners) and even for a while had as leader of their far-right party (I kid you not!) an openly gay guy, and this kind of thing applies to a lot of other areas: for example, 20 years ago they already had 18% of “housemen” - stay at home fathers - and their tolerance on drug consumption is well known.

            And their whole Tolerance practice is based on “it’s all normal”, “we’re really all the same in what matters” and “it’s not up to me to pass judgment on others”, a view were for example discrimination on sexual orientation or religion is as ridiculous as descrimination on eye color or hair color: only a nutter would treat people differently because of any such things.

            So for me the present day Anglo-Saxon format of Identity Politics were people are still classified on who they love or the genes they were born with and then measures are proposed and judgments made based on those group-membership classifications, is actually not progressive at all but rather regressive, and not just by years but by decades - it’s like going back into some half-way between that Portugal of 3 decades ago (fortunatelly a lot better now) and The Netherlands.

            I absolutelly can understand how in an environment where there is massive descrimination people of those groups discriminated against have to get together in order to fight against it (after all, “there is strength in numbers”), correct the injustices that have been done and change the system were such injustices are repeatedly done impunity (sometimes by the very State which should protect all citizens).

            However the objective should be to, as such systemic injustices are eliminated, eventually end up with the dutch mindset (we’re all the same, this is all normal, who am I to judge others) in the minds of everybody, and that’s not at all possible if you keep on classifying people and effectivelly saying “these people are different”, “this characteristic people have been discriminated by is extra important” (rather than normal), and practice “we should judge others”, because you really can’t have a natural fair and equal treatment on something if keep on dividing people on those things and keep emphasising those human characteristics as huge differences, and without fair and equal treatment becoming natural in the minds of most people, the fight will never be over and you’ll constanty have pushback.

            As I said, the intentions are good, but the methods are not and they are way too easy to subvert by those who care only about their personal upsides, even those on completelly opposite sides of the political spectrum who want to manipulate the masses via induced rage.

    • Preston Maness ☭@lemmygrad.ml
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      2 years ago

      Then there is the tankie Left, which also started with good intentions but seem to have confuse the recipe-book of slogans and the Party über alles discipline invented in the late 19th century and early 20th century by middle class intellectuals to inspired the near-illiterate masses of the time to create an utopian leftwing world (which didn’t work) with the actual thinking Principles and Intentions from which the rules were made.

      The “tankies” are absolutely not utopian. There was a great big schism about this very question more than a century ago, with Marxists roundly rejecting the utopianism of the libertarian socialists (Anarchists). Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels is a good starting point.