Im bombed by leftist propaganda
They are correct, but not how they think. A big part of conservatism, even among the less fanatical, is to bury your head in the sand. I can see how peeking out for some air will seem like a flood of propaganda. Like that “final experiment” that just went down to dunk on flat earth, but for even the most mundane thing about how society works.
That’s not really true. Going to specific places for specific things is very different to putting one’s head in the sand. If you make such assumptions about your opposing tribes you’ll continue to increase social division, and that’s the core of this mess.
Edit: Calm the fuck down. This is not where the war you want will be fought, and if it happens, you won’t be depended on to make a difference until the attrition gets really, really dire.
Edit edit: Ooooooooh. I’m in Reddit. A’doi!
The issue isn’t fucking “social division”.
It’s that one of the established American political parties went bat shit crazy and abandoned every principle they ever had in the naked pursuit of bigotry and power.
Any time you spread “both sides” bullshit, *you’re aiding a hard-right propaganda machine *
It’s that one of the established American political parties went bat shit crazy
People have been saying this about the GOP since Goldwater. The Republicans aren’t going batshit crazy. This has always been their platform. This has always been their policy. For 60 years running. The party of the Southern Strategy and the Red Scare hasn’t materially changed. It’s the Democrats (or, at least, the rank and file of the party) that has shifted from edgy white middle class GenX shitlibs to gender fluid, racially mixed, multicultural dirt poor Zoomers.
This much the Crowderverse absolutely has right. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is breaking away from the traditional small-c conservative evangelical white nationalist roots. Biden/Harris campaigned like Bill Clinton and lost because their base no longer has a stomach for Clintonian liberalism.
Meanwhile, the Republican base isn’t changing. They’re being Based and Trad and trying to replicate all the moods of the 1950s, absent an economy powered by trillions in new post-war cheap public capital. So they’re just grasping scams, losing a bunch of money, growing increasingly economically anxious, blaming migrants/transgender tweens/Chinese TikTok dances, and doubling down on old school American fascism.
Any time you spread “both sides” bullshit, *you’re aiding a hard-right propaganda machine *
There’s no shame in recognizing a social divide that’s expanding over time. But there’s a fundamental difference between buying into right-wing hysteria about shoplifting gangs or transgender Mexican ISIS and acknowledging that your Boomer parents/grandparents are drowning in their own nostalgia while you’re moving on to greener ideological pastures.
Your perspective confuses and intrigues me
Edit: I sort of missed the first part talking shit about gen x liberals and dirt poor zoomers while also affirming that the republicans aren’t changing ^(Citation needed) and “based”. The nuance there is just a thin veil for hate speech.
It requires a second or third reading to catch on this, but it is surely a bad take
the post of the previous commenter was nuanced.
usually it is a good thing, but since the far-right is blatantly nazi, there are some risk with “nuance”
overall, the previous comment seems to be analyzing how this divide is happening.
my only complaint is that the comment doesn’t make clear who are the fuckers who are driving the social divide (spoilers: the right who is nostalgic about the post-war period and want to create a “new” post war period by, well, going full nazi)
Weevil has some hot takes but I don’t really disagree with this one. You could rephrase it as “times are changing and conservatives don’t want to change” and no one would deny it.
Agreed about who’s creating those wedge issues as well but I’ll even get conspiratorial and blame shadowy right-wing think tanks.
Visiting my family members that are conservative and their friends tell me their head is in the sand. After so long under, any dose of reality is too high for them.
Unfortunately for them, saber rattling quasi dictators pushing Nazi ideologies, consorting with admitted neo Nazis, frequently spewing Nazi quotes, and doing the actual fucking Nazi salute… Kinda invades and consumes everyone’s life.
And they sure don’t want you to bring it up. I can only guess because either they themselves are Nazis, or because they don’t want to feel or admit responsibility for the human scum they vote for.
Going to specific places for specific things is very different to putting one’s head in the sand.
Going to /r/politics and panicking because its not politics I like is putting one’s head in the sand.
I don’t understand how what you said isn’t burying one’s head in the sand
I’d love to see a flame war between MAGA conservatives and Hexbear tankies. Horseshoe theory manifest.
As someone said on reddit they don’t want a safe space for them.
what they want is to be enabled to shit on everyone else’s food and smirk at us while we try to separate their shit from our beans.
It is a power dynamic where they want to force their shit upon us.
they already have their safe space on r/conservative where they go to circle jerk around “the left is bad”.
They do get tired from that and there is no new “left is bad” if the entire political spectrum was composed of them.
Far right and conservative hate is a self cannibalizing movement.
Even if they killed all gay, black, hispanic, asian, autistic, disabled and any sort of “the other”, then, they would need to find new “others” to start to hate and kill. Their fight is always inward, against the enemy within.
They will proceed to kill white people because either they are not white enough or that they are too white (“ginger” people which should’ve be considered the “correct type of white” if racism ever made any sense since they are paler than almost any other ethnicity).
So, they need an existing enemy and a platform that enables them to shit on us.
If they ever come to lemmy, the correct path is to ban as soon as they shou their true colors and start to throw shit around.
It only requires a few probing question to know if someone is in good or bad faith.
When the comment goes into 5 or more replies, it is almost always for sure that the conservative answering is in bad faith (only exception is if they clearly show that they are learning something with the discussion and adapting their viewpoints with each new comment)
Yep. Just a reminder that Irish and Italian people were not considered “white” in the US until relatively recently.
We used to have distinct legal terms for each degree of “blackness” in someone’s background. If you had one black grandfather, the government had a term for you. None of this is new to the US.
The Hexbears think the conservatives are already here…
Removed by mod
If you block Amoxtli then about 90% of conservative posts go away.
I prefer to tag rather than block so I can still call out/down out their BS
Also don’t forget that Kaboom guy too!
Kaboom’s account is from reddthat where they disabled down votes. I don’t think they have any clue how rejected their opinions are. Talk about snowflake.
If I picked an instance without downvotes for my agenda-posting account, I think on some level I’d know there were grumpy clicks headed my way
Thanks for the tip! Checked their post history and promptly blocked them.
.ml complaining about being an echo chamber. I didn’t realize today was comedy day all around the political spectrum.
Lol, the sub seems to be completely blocked on my instance. Hell yeah
Yeah, but the feed is full of actual articles like “Climate change is real and there’s so much proof” and “Clarence Thomas wants to end freedom of the press”
Welcome to Lemmy, shitheads, have some facts.
My instance doesn’t block very much, so I made sure to block that one myself.
“Thing That Obviously Exists and Has Existed Historically Isn’t Real”
No need to brigade other people for disagreeing with you. If their views are harmful, their community will get banned by lemmy.world so it’s not your problem.
My screenshot is literally of harmful misinformation
community will get banned by lemmy.world so it’s not your problem.
LMAO I’ve been waiting for that to happen for months
It’s hateful bs, but it isn’t harmful. It’s a stupid take on a current talking point from the orange admin. It’s not picking on anyone. Wait for the actually harmful stuff, like misgendering people and racism and simply downvote this particular dumbass comment. (I’m going by the headline / subj, as I’m already exhausted from this week’s bullshit.)
The kind of misinformation I posted a screenshot of (which btw is an actual “article” they’re spreading around) is how the groundwork gets laid for the “actually” harmful stuff, so in essence it is harmful because it will enable them to do far more harmful crap later. Or rather allow them to get away with it.
Ok, but it’s also easily debunkable, and you can’t moderate away stupid. What they posted isn’t illegal misinformation according to EU law. I’d rather they do their misinformation in a community here than on Twitter or Truth Social.
I’d imagine they don’t, because we’re likely lumped in with Bluesky. And if some do make it here, they normally get reported on main instances, and their instances would unlikely remain federated for long.
I guess they’re getting mad about arguing with themselves and are looking for the traditional captive audience they thought they had.
PSA: IF THE TROLLS DO MIGRATE HERE, DO NOT FEED THEM. BLOCK AND REPORT IF THEY ARE NOT INTERESTED IN HAVING A PRODUCTIVE, CIVIL CONVERSATION.
I’m not interested in having a civil conversation with fascists either
Unless they come out the gate swinging, please be careful. I don’t know about you, but I want to get as many people as possible on board with combating the far right.
Attacking somebody who is legitimately trying to learn will only entrench them deeper in their prior beliefs. It might take a few sentences to find out if they are being genuine, but if you can change their perspective, it is worth it.
You basically can’t teach conservatives. If they were capable of learning and changing they wouldn’t be conservatives in the first place. Consider that the majority of self avowed conservatives in the US literally believe the world is less than 10,000 years old created as is and jeebus is coming back real soon now. Literally 30% of the US population believes this!
White supremacy and the flat earth are actually gaining ground in this group.
People do wake up from cults. It takes a lot of work on themselves to reach that point, however, and the most transformative moments (i.e. any epiphanies about their behavior or beliefs) will likely happen when they’re alone, outside of the public sphere.
That is to say, you’re unlikely to personally witness somebody break out of a cult. Yet, it still happens.
Does that make it worth helping them “see the light”? I can’t say. What I can say is that there are people who’ve been there, and there are resources available to help those in cult recovery. (Make no mistake, this is absolutely a cult.)
The best hope we’ve got right now is that as more things turn to shit, more people will begin to question things. Instead of reflexively downvoting or attacking someone who admits to having once voted for Trump, we’ve got to listen to what they say happened afterward. I want to hear people share their stories of disenchantment. I want those stories to be spread far and wide, to people who might be questioning Trumpism but who’re surrounded by his supporters and scared to make a move. They’re the people who need to know that it’s okay to change their minds. They’re going to need to know that they’ll be accepted by someone if they “deflect,” and we need to be prepared to welcome them to sanity.
We shouldn’t respond with comments like, “iT’s aBouT tiMe” or “Where have you BEEN the last 8 years?” (Both are paraphrased from comments I read elsewhere on here this morning.) I know it’s tempting to give out some sort of I told you so, but it’s not constructive and can push an ex-cult member away. We want people to turn a new leaf, and that means supporting those who admit to having been wrong.
(I know this took a turn from the original comment. I don’t intend this personally for you, OP. But after seeing how people react so aggressively to everything lately, I felt something like this needed to be said to Lemmy.)
We couldn’t defeat the Nazis or the Confederates with dialogue. They are not going to even let us vote them out no matter how badly they do.
Yes, I agree. At no point did I ever propose such a dialogue. I’m talking about supporting those that already chose to leave.
With the coming govt. actions starting to more directly and visibly affect people’s lives, it will probably wake up (lol) at least a few people. Assuming they are all evil will harm us more than help us. At the end of the day, we are all human. We need all the help we can get and if they are offering, it would be rude to dismiss them.
And that’s not even getting to climate change denial.
These people are incapable of critical thought.
legitimately trying to learn
Legitimately trying to learn is the vaccine against fascism. I’m not sure there’s a cure.
There is only the one cure that we’ve found so far…
I ask you to also be careful!
you don’t need to feed the trolls to help them see the light.
Treat it like an authoritative (but not authoritarian) parent:
You don’t let the kid do whatever inappropriate shit (that is a neglecting parent style), but you do state firmly the rules and give the consequence (authoritative) without making them fear you through spanking or other kinds of abuse (authoritarian).
I agree we should not be authoritarian.
But we should also not be neglectful!
Specific example:
If someone comes saying that trump did a roman salute, the authoritative answer is: “The nazi salute is a roman salute and both are used to promote fascism (link to wikipedia)”.
Simply and blunt, yet “non-judgemental” answer
Now if they reply saying shit like how they are actually different, then just call their bullshit off by saying things like: “I see no reason for someone to defend a roman or nazi salute unless that someone is a nazi. I really hope you aren’t a nazi, but if you are, know that you’re in the wrong. Period.”
Then stop any sort of further replies and start reporting if they keep harping on this (it would be similar to the time out that parents do to younger child).
I read some of their garbage. They are in total denial as usual. They think it’s all bots, apparently can’t comprehend that so many people would be revolted by nazis.
Of course. They can’t accept that they’re the weirdos.
Honestly, I kind of hope they do.
Every time they experience the slightest indication that their views aren’t normal or reasonable, they lose a little bit of confidence and a little bit of power.
Think about the “weird” moment last summer. Walz had Republicans sputtering and whining about how they totally aren’t weird at all. The best Trump could come up with was “no u!” I think, if Harris had maintained that energy, she’d have been inaugurated this week. And speaking of this week, Trump is all offended and in a tizzy because an Episcopal priest read him the words of Jesus on Tuesday.
The slightest speedbump or disfavor spins them out.
Now. What community on the internet is more disfavorable toward conservatives than Lemmy? It’s nothing but speedbumps for them over here. They’d last approximately an hour and a half, and they’d see a more united resistance than they’ve ever imagined from corporate-owned media. Some of them might even realize that the mainstream socials are actually preferential toward them, and maybe reevaluate some opinions. For a moment, they’d see how weird they are.
Filter bubbles aren’t inherently bad. But when they’re holding together an odious group in a terrible shared delusion, they need to be popped. Lemmy might pop their bubble, at least a little bit.
Let them come. I pity their bar tabs.
The moderation practices on that subreddit have created an environment where dissenting opinions are swiftly and permanently banned. This approach has fostered an echo chamber where only one perspective is allowed to thrive, reinforcing a cycle of confirmation bias and groupthink. As a result, most conservative posts lack depth and often resemble oversimplified memes rather than meaningful discourse.
Even when an opposing viewpoint manages to slip through, it’s often dismissed as artificial or the work of bots. This mindset reveals how deeply entrenched their worldview has become—so much so that they struggle to believe that differing opinions could be genuine. It’s a surreal and unfortunate dynamic that stifles any chance of productive discussion.
A sure sign of their self delusion is that this sub admits “satire” posts, in what is supposed to be for discussing conservative topics.
Because leftists are not as inconsiderate as them, they have to make up imaginary stories to expel their rancor.
Indeed! Which is why they need to be shown the real world. Lemmy isn’t that, but it could shock their systems into believing that /r/conservative isn’t, either.
I’ve been aware of the fediverse since the api-lypse but have just been lurking for a good while. I really hope we manage to find a social media system that doesn’t bow to censorship. We need to find a way that lets us decentralize servers to not rely on AWS.
That costs a lot of money. “Finding” that sort of thing is basically just going to involve donating a bunch of cash, on an ongoing basis.
Finding could also mean letting users share hosting responsibilities. Like making fediverse similar to torrenting.
Interesting idea. I don’t know if we have a robust enough infrastructure for that right now, but it’s conceptually interesting.
Yeah i’m no programmer but being forced to rely on AWS or any other company for hosting sucks.
At first I thought you meant pitching in for the cost, but you mean more like lending cpu cycles or memory.
Why would they come to lemmy if they’re sick of the left? Lemmy is the most left place on the internet
“So nice to be out of that frying pan!”
“Hey Lemmy, do you guys accept conserv–”
“RICH PEOPLE TASTE BEST WHEN YOU FRY THEM IN ORGANIC OIL”
you know how nazis ruin everything?
Yeah. Germany for example. If it weren’t for the mercy of the victors, and the massive development aid Germany received under the Marshal plan, then Germany would be much poorer today. You just need to compare the territory for the former DDR to the rest of Germany to get an idea.
Exactly, one look at All would probably be enough to make them faint lmao
They’re already here, so much Nazi apologia has appeared all of a sudden.
Yeah, I have seen a few “Roman salute… throwing his heart… autistic… etc” people in the threads about Edolf Muskler’s salute.
Also seen plenty centrist democrats blame protest voters as if that had more of an effect than the democrats bending over for republicans.
Glad I am not the only one to have noticed.
A hilarious part of this thread was that they convinced themselves that X couldn’t possibly be that unpopular and it had to be a bunch of bots posting and upvoting these threads to ban X.
In support of this they said “This post about banning X is the [n]th most popular post ever on /r/LiverpoolFC, even higher than when they won the champions league! It can’t be real”. They didn’t even consider that the post about banning X made it to the top of /r/all where a lot of people who couldn’t care less about football/futbol/soccer upvoted it. They couldn’t care less about that team, but they also supported banning X, so they upvoted.
context? did i miss reddit drama?
I dunno, the story seems pretty self-contained lol…
Crazy
Cries about propaganda inside of a propaganda sub. r/Conservative users are an incredible bunch.
They need their safe space away from all those bullies 😭
Who else is fully expecting Reddit admins to come out in a few days banning twitter bans, and banning anyone that tries to enforce them?
getting spammed with Bluesky
This is such a weird sentiment. As though links to any information outside the walled garden is inherently worthless.
every subreddit has been astroturfed to the extreme
Hi, hello, yes. Welcome to the year 2016.
Generally (reddit) cons don’t even want stuff from outside their own sub, so it makes sense why they’d hate any bluesky links
They equate bluesky with leftists because its where most peopme went when twitter got too racist, and because now a lot of subreddits have banned links to twitter altogether.
They should just make their own Lemmy instance and stop bitching.
But then they would get defederated and have to face the fact that everybody hates them, and that wouldn’t be as fun as doing their hate speech with a big daddy corporation to shield them from the consequences.
Iirc truth social is just a mastadon instance or something.
That’s basically correct, it’s based on mastodon code and not federated.
They are far too stupid and disorganized to create.
A whole lot of their worldview seems centered on their inability to create or improve things.
It’s kind of funny; I remember conservative messaging about personal responsibility. But when they’re on the receiving end of that same messaging it’s just a personal insult, apparently.
Every once in a great while the people of Reddit do the right thing and I’m proud of every one of them that took a stand. Even the BBC is calling it an awkward gesture and they aren’t owned by right wing billionaires in the US. Not ONE media news org here has called the obvious. Sanewashing. Wish I’d never heard the term.
I will play devil’s advocate. Media outlets are scared of being sued for defamation or scrutinised for what may turn out to be misleading news. That’s why there are always referring to “sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity” or adopt a mild language to refer to something. But if I am a news publisher, I would describe Musk’s gesture as “appears to be Nazi salute” or to that effect. It is still calling it out as it is, but I would still have plausible deniability.
I see your point … Fear of retribution through the FCC is now a real thing. This is how it begins though - first they ban free speech and any dissent and then the ones that still stand up will be disappeared.
Plus it’s likely that if you post any criticism of Musk whatsoever you get a lawsuit automatically. That’s what rich people do. They can afford it. Its like having a VPN or an alarm system on your house. They send their lawyers.
The biggest issue is that the media is focusing on just this one incident in specific. They’re acting as if whether or not musk is a nazi hinges exclusively on if it was meant as a seig heil or not.
Ultimately his nazi salute is just the latest in a very very long line of racist and intolerant shit he’s said, done, and perpetuated. Regardless or whether he seig heiled or not, he’s still a nazi.
