I've noticed that lemmy as a whole is much more leftist than reddit (outside of political servers of course)
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.
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.
Reality is left leaning…
It really is. So much of conservatism involves pissing into the wind, and trying to argue against objective truth.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just cause I’m a nerd dusnt mean I can spell correctly
“tens”
“You can tell by the grammar, the spelling”
Lol! I am totally a nerd
Do you realise how dehumanising and ignorant you're being? You're just using stereotypes of your specific country to generalise everyone you disagree with.
Underestimating your "rivals" never goes well, as reality is often more complex than "we empathetic genuises they dumb psychos"
If anyone is basing their morals specifically just to go against their "rivals", I would seriously question that person's ethics, empathy, and reasoning skills. I'm absolutely serious about that. I would not trust that person in real life.
I would also have little sympathy for anyone who makes their own life worse just to get one in on their "rivals". You should always think how a new law might expand in 5-10 years, and not just focus on the current emotions.
If someone who you considered to be a truly terrible person got into power next, would you feel comfortable with those groundwork protections being seen as changeable? Would you be ok with that terrible person having that level of say over your life, knowing that they would get away with it?
If you hypothetically start messing with things like your country's ground-level human rights, it's likely to only be a matter of time until everyone is effected by it in unpleasant ways. Everyone thinks these changes will magically stop before it hits them, but I would strongly recommend for these people to brush up on history again. How has that gone in the past?
Politics shouldn't be some lame "gotcha" game because politics effect the real lives of many people. If anyone wants to do "gotcha" games, there are many places for those that won't possibly end with someone dead. That "someone" may be a stranger today, but it could be your child, spouse, or best friend next time.
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.
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.
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.
That's the important bit. The creators of Lemmy needed to be hard leftist to keep it from being taken over by right wingers before it could become popular. Now it's big enough that the community isn't as leftist as the creators, but will still reject turning into another voat.
Unfettered echo chamber of right wing ideals will always devolve into fascist authoritarian and nazism
Surprise surprise, echo chambers devolve into more extreme versions of the original views
That's literally just how echo works
The new Lemmy anthem?
I'm sorry but what is considered to be "Nazi" in this platform? I've seen even socialists being called Nazis
progression tends not to be conservative
I'm afraid future will be conservative nevertheless due to the simple fact that they're the only ones making kids. I'm liberal myself but I don't have kids and will never have so my traits don't pass to the next generations. The conservative neighbours with 7 kids on the other hand..
I don't know. I think it depends more on where they grow up and who/what they're exposed to (in person and online). At the high school I work at, we have a bunch of lgbtq+ teens whose conservative parents have no idea they're queer or go by a different name. But I also don't live somewhere like Wyoming with a much higher conservative population. I live in a college town in a (barely) blue county surrounded by red counties in an ultimately very blue state.
I hope we find a way to kill the online radical right pipeline and continue to expose more teens to other ideas, other cultures, and other ways of life, and maybe it won't matter so much who their parents are.
The thing about that is, if they're ignorant, their kids will be ignorant too. And what that adds up to is just the same thing we've got: a large group of people who are subject to whatever momentary persuasion happens to reach them on any given day, and a political/ruling class that can work with that just fine, so they are taking steps to hamper education sufficiently that this can endure for an indeterminate amount of time before we all burn.
What those large populations do react to, is missing a meal or three. And so far, these aristocrats seem to understand that whatever else they try to pull, they must always service the fundamentals: bread and circuses.
See you at the coliseum.
Well by definition right?
Progressive outlook means your open to new ideas, exploring new territory, open to concept that challenge what you think and know, and gives you the ability to push boundaries, make new discoveries and try new things.
Conservative outlook on the other hand means you are content and safe with the familiar, doing things the way they have always been done because its tried and true, however this means if they feel unconfortable or threatened by ideas which are going to change the way the live and how things work which makes them dig their heels in and get defensive.
The progressive/conservative axis has nothing to do with the economical left/right, it was only forcefully merged in the USA because they have only two parties.
I find it so ironic that the comment above you is literally saying that being progressive means challenging what you [think you] know, but you are being downvoted by (I assume) people who call themselves progressive, without any discussion.
Lemmy is much less US-centric than Reddit.
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.
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.
Is it? Just look at the comments here - the thought is about political left and right and yet almost everybody is talking about conservatives, that's a sure sign of Americans.
Plus I bet a good portion of the extreme left here are Americans disillusioned with their government, swinging hard into the other extreme.
Thank fuck for that.
Prove it, because I only see US-centric posts while browsing /all.
And no, America is not the US.
Your ALL is amplifying the highest engagement posts from the largest instances, particularly lemmy.world, which is definitely US-centric due to it being the largest open registration instance during the exodus... Go ahead and switch to your instances LOCAL and see what original content is being posted on sopuli.xyz. Quite a difference. https://sopuli.xyz/?dataType=Post&listingType=Local&page=1&sort=Active
Nice!
Really? I've only seen US related stuff here
How many of your subscribed communities lie outside of lemmy.world? Very possible you've pigeonholed yourself. World almost certainly has a heavy US bias as it was the largest instance with open registration during the exodus.
Lemmy is made up of a ton of instances, many of which have quite limited US-related content. Posts from smaller instances may not rise to the top of World but they do elsewhere. Whereas World posts are going to rise across most instances, due to sheer volume. Where the posts come from is not as indicative of diversity as where the comments and votes come from.
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.
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.
"communityism" was somewhat the goal of reddit by having subreddits but still site owners has all the control over you. Lemmy is a free software and many free software projects interact with the userbase with such a community. Before this reddit thing, Free software enthusiasts used lemmy. Same goes with mastodon users before twitter was bought by elon. Now i can see when whatsapp does something shit(maybe) and people porting over to federated and decentralised E2EE matrix for instant messaging.(or maybe they just switch to telegram)
Honestly I came here just a few days ago, right after Reddit admins removed that r/place guillotine. I wouldn't say that I am very far to the left, but I do enjoy living in something close to a social democracy. I wouldn't be happy in a place like the United States for example.
Perfectly understandable
Maybe Lemmy was like this at the very start and is what helped Lemmy kick off, but I think a lot of people are looking for an alternative to Reddit. I think you're going to see a lot more people coming here for the content, not the politics of it all.
Hey, I'm on TV!
This has been my running theory as well. Wonderful to read all of the input on this thread.
Well, I don't oppose capitalism and here I am, trying to evade echo chambers and reading everyone's points
To be sure, you don't have to be anti-capitalist to want to use Lemmy. I'm just saying that it's very appealing to anti-capitalists.
Broadly speaking, so-called conservative folk are not creative. They resist change, and trying new things is umm trying new things.
Weirdos like me LOVE CHANGE and novelty so you can probably guess which direction I lean.
Trans and queer and furry and weird folk are often programmers and creative folk. ActivityPub is written largely by and for queer and trans and furry folk. So no surprise it's so strongly supportive of individual expression and rights.
Is anyone surprised that everything the chump crowd touches fails?
It's in the name really.
And no, I witnessed this with the internet itself post 2000. Get off my lawn 😜
That's not really true. The right created Gab, and Ruqqus, and Voat. And they managed to hijack the U.S. legal system which the left can barely understand, let alone influence in any appreciable way.
A good chunk of the left (not the Dems, the actual left) understands the US legal system. It’s just that it’s hard to win in a pay-to-play system when everyone who can pay is against you.
Gab is forked mastodon. Dunno ruqqus but it's shutting down. Never heard of voat.
Try again?
I think you'll find a lot more leftists interested in platforms that are not powered solely by money and profit. Lemmy, much like Mastodon and other federated platforms, only need instances to run to be usable. It doesn't require millions of dollars to keep it afloat.
Generally speaking centrist and right wingers, especially in Western countries, tend to be very capitalist. They only understand the value in terms of money.
Maybe because on reddit you have an absolute fuck ton of right wing propaganda bots.
Thankk you. The Overton window has been forcibly molded to what would've been the mid- Right when I was a kid growing up (90s-00s). This is because of Fox News. And then social media propagandists have tried ripping it to the extreme right, aka alt-right.
I imagine a lot of what younger people think of as left/liberal was very much a moderate view point just a generation ago.
So when you move to a new medium not propagandized yet (or at least a new venue like Lemmy) you might find that organic discourse is a lot more sane, tempered, and moderate.
That is quite true as well. Lemmy gets Russian shills on Ukraine coverage worse than Reddit though. I don't know if that would be tankies or Russian trolls.
Probably because this migration may be related to the anti-corpo sentiment, which is more common in leftist circles
This is the first answer that is close to the truth.
I was on libertarian subreddits and the sentiment there is that corporations can do what they want. They mostly don’t have a problem with the changes Reddit made.
I would still call myself libertarian or libertarian leaning, but this part I don’t understand. For me, libertarianism is all about having to freedom to do what you want. And I wanted to leave Reddit.
Based. I really hope more people of different ideas come here as long as it's not exporting the echo chambers Reddit had
reddit had given into the "work the refs" strategy of the American right wing. That artificially elevated the voices of the right and suppressed the voices of the left. It's actually the case when you look at surveys and voting behaviors that right wing ideas are abysmally unpopular.
So when we're on an actually free platform that doesn't have an "engagement" based algorithm driving anger and division, with no one putting their thumb on the scale (or people who try getting defederated), "leftist" ideas come up.
The confusion reflected in the OP is the obvious outcome of the post Fairness Doctrine "both sides" media landscape. There really aren't as many right wing people as left wing. We are legion.
Reddit has banned most right wing subs and clearly has a pro left bias from the top. The userbase was more right wing before most right wing users were pushed off the platform.
That artificially elevated the voices of the right and suppressed the voices of the left.
How? Reddit is mostly left wing apart from a few remaining right wing subs
Conservatives also adopt new technology less willingly and more slowly. Which is to their credit, I think. I like having people who move slower and less willingly.
Nevertheless, political alignment and technological adoption are generally correlated. And it is a new platform. It's not like taking up smart phones, but it's a change, and those that are reticent to change do it more slowly.
That's just not true in the slightest, reddit mod and admin actions clearly support a left-wing slant and ban accordingly. Most subs removed over the past few years have overwhelmingly been on the far right side of things. Admins regularly ban people for transphobia. How are you seeing otherwise?
Lemmy is exactly as left leaning as Reddit was before the wave of propaganda and bots emboldened the right wing crazies to think they were the majority or welcome. I remember the falsely inflated upvotes that made those morons think they were the "silent majority".
Isn't it obvious? Most of the recent wave of users to federated sites was caused by the enshittification, which means:
when an online platform becomes more monetized and less user-oriented the longer it lasts.
This is a problem caused by capitalism. Therefore many of us will be anti-capitalists. Many of us will value creating things that put people over profits.
Left wingers: "The right is full of neo-fascists who want to exploit natural resources, subjugate minorities, project their own pedophilia habits onto us, roll back the clock on women's rights, and are willing to lie, cheat, beg, borrow, and steal to get it all done!"
Right wingers: "The left is ANNOYING!"
Federated sites overlap with leftist-adjacent interests. Software freedom, opposition to Facebook, weird illustrated porn, that sort of thing. Even if we're not leftists - we're the people who heard about Lemmy and went "oh, like Mastodon."
Many leftists were also familiar with Mastodon, because they saw Twitter as a harassment engine. Every system is perfectly designed to produce its observed results. Even before Elmo took over, Twitter was a continuous source of misery by design, if not on purpose. Now it's definitely on purpose. And it's been tilted against leftists, specifically, for a long damn while.
Some people are here because the mainstream options were a threat to their physical safety.
Meanwhile, right-wing assholes aren't leaving Twitter until they run out of victims. They just want an outgroup to yell at. They don't even like alternatives made for them specifically, because they can't stand each other, either. When they get tired of suffering their own company they'll migrate over to Threads. And then endlessly whine that Threads is "bias" against them, no matter how blatantly Zuck ignores their abuse and silences their victims.
Reddit was in a damningly similar situation, long before Spez decided to burn down every scrap of trust and goodwill. Some of us have been waiting on a better alternative for ten fucking years. There wasn't one. There still isn't. The bastards in control just made reddit itself worse, in ways that make even passive use feel like a failure and a betrayal. Spez could personally hunt me down and kick me in the groin, and it wouldn't leave me any less likely to waltz back in with a smile on my face. Dumb bastard made insane demands, killed the best interfaces, told us stupid lies, threw away our money, declared protest powerless, and threatened the people who do all of the fucking work on his empty box of a website... then says 'they'll come crawling back.' Nooo shit the first people out were principled self-organizing curmudgeons.
That aside:
People here reasoning from what they pretend "conservative" must mean are actively doing harm. Political conservatism obeys none of the other dictionary definitions. It's just a label. It's the label chosen by generations of influential public figures whose general philosophy is "Well someone has to be the king." That is their only constant, and it is a thought process baked into the human brain. It is our default. That's why dealing with it is such frustrating bullshit.
“Well someone has to be the king.” That is their only constant, and it is a thought process baked into the human brain. It is our default.
Fun fact: if you're raised in a chaotic environment of abuse, distrust, and neglect, you can go blissfully free of the need for leadership for the low, low price of CPTSD! I assume that this leaderless way of thinking can be imparted to children without truama, but I only know how I got there. For better or worse, I've never trusted or craved authority because my formative authorities were infinitely untrustworthy and unsafe.
It is possible. My childhood wasn't without trauma, but I've never had PTSD. My parents taught me to question rules and edicts from on-high. When I would do so with my parents, they were almost always able to articulate reasons why we did things one way and not another. When I did so with friends' parents, some teachers, and most other adults, I got abusive bullshit spewed at me till I submitted to their defacto authority.
My parents were safe, but authority figures in general could not and should not be trusted.
principled self-organizing curmudgeons
I've never been more proud to be categorized!
Every system is perfectly designed to produce its observed results.
I don't know if you strung that set of words together yourself or read it somewhere, but I had never quite heard it put that way before. Very succinct. Sorry, I'm very into language, sentences are like flowers to me and that's a particularly nice blossom.
Re "conservatives," it's an extremely frustrating word because of how it's been misused. I took Intro PoliSci once, my teacher was an open Marxist like me, and he taught us a non-loaded, non-controversial, non-toxic definition of political Conservatism - it was along the lines of, "Conservatives believe that societal change should be done slowly, with careful consideration, with as little disruption to the existing society as possible." - and in all honesty, I once knew a few people who fit that description pretty good. They are long dead now, and I considered them devils at the time we knew each other, but I wish they were around right now, because I know we would all pretty much agree about all this bullshit - we spent a lot of time debating in places like this, and we got into a lot of what ifs. I don't believe any of them would pinch their nose for the current leader of our (Canadian) Tories.
I'm not saying, if we were to apply your maxim about "observed results" to the matter, that that is what Conservatism is "perfectly designed" to do, but that's more or less what the word actually means, and what the traditional branding of Conservatism has been; neither a desire to anachronistically cosplay the worst parts of the past, nor a desire to pointlessly harm life (another word they have barbarized to the point of uselessness), is actually an ideological feature of the traditional Conservative political body. In the 1950s the SBC approved of abortion. Look it up if you don't believe me - there was once a time when they really did believe that life was precious. Jimmy Carter was one of em.
It's the most fundamental aspect of how the modern Right uses routine gaslighting to sell their baldfaced neo-aristrocrat sceheme, because whatever individual opinions modern Conservatism might share with the GOP Nixon admin that started the EPA - an institution with a foundational intent so thoroughly conservative that they should be running CPAC - they are the ones attempting to radically change society in as short a time as possible.
If we go back to my Marxist professor's definition, my Marxist ass is generally the most conservative one in most of the rooms I occupy.
I absolutely stole that from somewhere else. It had a similarly revelatory effect and has been wedged in my brain ever since. (Oh hey, I made a note of who to blame: r4b1d0tt3r, MD.)
Not to speak ill of the dead, but... there's every chance the reasonable bastards you knew would update their bullshit and be even worse. I think your professor did you a disservice in exactly the way I'm sore about. Fascists are conservative. Fascists are hyper-conservative. That never means they're extra-vigilant against change. They openly demand transformative destruction of existing society, so they can reinvent something that's always been around. If that sounds contradictory it's a side effect of how it's total fucking nonsense. They're just saying words. It's not a rational worldview. It's the innate tribalism of the human animal, cranked to eleven via modern rhetorical gimmicks.
"Branding" is the only place conservatism makes any goddamn sense, because it's a story they tell. They're lying. They're just saying words. When you were in college their reputation was bullshit they made up about times before you were born, and when you were born their reputation was bullshit they made up about when your parents were young. Right now they're surely selling bullshit about twenty-odd years ago. I'm sorry to say I haven't paid much attention on account of US politics being such a dumpster fire that your worst scandals seem quaintly desirable. We've got people wistfully apologizing for George W Bush's rainbow of doom and torture prisons, or the Gingrich-era witch hunts against against homosexuals and liberal activism, or the goddamn AIDS crisis under Reagan. Even here, you're hand-waving that absolute scumbag Richard Nixon did one good thing under intense duress because he expected it to flounder. This is a con job that has been pulled on you. And us. On the world, really, at scale and continuously, to this day.
The traditional branding of conservatism is "we did everything good, but now we're angry."
That myth of eternal innocence as justification for outright violence is the only consistent story of this tribalist mode. It is pure ingroup-versus-outgroup storytelling. Good things in the past? Us us us, fuck them. Bad things now? Well they must have stolen the good things from us. (Nevermind who was in charge!)
When you find yourself saying 'by this definition of conservative, leftists are conservatives,' that is a shit definition. My apologies to your professor.
Political conservatism obeys none of the other dictionary definitions. It's just a label. It's the label chosen by generations of influential public figures whose general philosophy is "Well someone has to be the king."
Isn't this kinda true of most politically-associated labels? Communism, socialism, capitalism, egalitarianism, progressivism... they can all be thought of as general ideas, but when someone actually uses them, they could be referring to a more specific concept, or twisting the idea a bit, or referring to a specific person's definition of the idea and its kinda hard to know how to interpret it...
Nobody says shit like "communists want community" or "egalitarians love eagles." But that's constantly happening for conservatism. People will bend over backwards making up what reeeeal conservatives must surely want... in complete denial of what the visible super-duper-majority of self-identified conservatives actually say and do.
My only quibble with your post is your portrayal of Republicans' general philosophy, in the last paragraph. Political conservatism, in my opinion which has recently been heavily influenced by the above link, is instead 'conserving political power for yourself'. Because that's what Republicans are doing. They want the power, and they don't care what they do to get it. If they make a pandemic worse to get more power? That's fine. Spur global warming past feedback thresholds in the process of getting more power? Who cares, they got more power. In the pursuit of the 'right' people telling the 'wrong' people what to do, and in the pursuit of keeping the 'wrong' people from telling the 'right' people what to do, anything goes. Hypocrisy, lies, crime, election fraud, subverting courts, coups, false patriotism, false piety, terrorism, even outright murder... anything goes.
Know the enemy, spread the word to your friends and family (and maybe further).
You should stop with your holier than thou bs. The left is no better authoritarian than the right
Holier than thou? Hahaha. They're not actively harming humans, forcing their dipshit religion on anyone. Care about human rights, care about having women decide to have an abortion or not. Unlike your kind.
Just fuck off mate.
"Both sides," says one side.
It was because at the time of the exodus from Reddit somehow the conservatives (echoed on the sub by that name) felt that protests were ridiculous and they were on Reddit's side. So less likely to be jumping to an alternative.
Somehow the right has turned into not meeting any authoritarian boot they don't suddenly feel an urge to lick?
When discussing the whole space of possible political views, there is no "both sides". There are seven zillion different axes on seven zillion different issues, some of them concrete ("should we forbid chemical companies from manufacturing neonicotinoid pesticides?") and some abstract ("what is the best relationship between individual creativity, the marketplace, and the state?").
"Both sides" (polarized duality) is partly an artifact of specific electoral systems. It can lead to people shooting at each other over tiny differences in doctrine — or, even more often, over which leader to follow this year.
Also: for example both US parties would be considered as a (far) right party here in Germany
Nah, one center-right (formerly centrist) and one far-right (formerly center-right). See discussion here and here.
In gist:
The Democrats have become the party of international free-trade capitalism with appropriate regulation, and with international policies that represent loyalty to the nation's traditional alliances.
The Republicans have become the local representative of the international far-right: the Putin-Trump-Erdogan-Orban-Netanyahu-etc. axis, focused on granting strongman leaders the ability to loot their states, purge opposition even among the elite (see DeSantis-Disney), betray the nation's traditional alliances (e.g. NATO) in favor of the far-right axis itself, and excite their "base" through hate & oppression of various minorities (e.g. immigrants, LGBTQ+).
The Democrats are the party of "keep the system working, but when you get a chance, try to make it work better for everyone."
The Republicans are the party of "tear the system down, and replace it with loyalty to our authority figures; keep the masses stupid and busy trampling on queers & foreigners."
Folks on the left may think that "the system" is shit, or that it can't be made to work better for everyone. But "keep the system running, it can be made okay" is pretty different from "tear the system down, all you need is loyalty to a strongman" which is what the far-right has to offer.
Hot take: you shouldn't subscribe to an ism.
You know what my political affiliation is? I'm an engineer. You want to solve a problem, you break it apart and fix the broken parts.
Abortion? Sure.
What's the problem? Women are pregnant and they don't wanna be.
Well how'd they get pregnant? They had unprotected sex, or they got raped(including all kinds here). Teach people how to use birth control and make it easy to get. Teach men about consent. Fund sex crime policing.
That takes care of the input side of the equation. What's next? Oh yeah, they don't wanna be pregnant. Why not? Because it could kill them, or wreck thier bodies. OK, well let's fund research and support for maternal mortality issues (including post-partum). If a pregnancy is likely to kill a woman (like double the normal mortality rate) she should be allowed to abort, even if she's not in immediate danger. You can't force somebody to risk their life.
Any other reasons? Because the fetus is severely deformed and will die in pain if allowed to make it to full term? Abortion, no question. Honestly any other position on this one is fucked up. I'm sure of very little when it comes to God, but I'm sure it doesn't want preventable suffering.
What else? Families can't afford a kid? Free high quality childcare for everyone. Free healthcare for kids and post-partum mothers (probably for everyone but that's a different topic).
What about adoption? Well, as they say, adoption is the answer to a different question. Just to cover all cases though, let's fund high-quality adoption services, including counseling for the birth mother for as long as she needs.
How do we pay for it all? Taxes. Taxes are good for society. Shut the fuck up and pony up your fair share. If you use our stuff, eat our food, drink our clean water, taxes are what you owe.
These are just off the top of my head. The real answers are probably way more complicated, but it's going to take work to figure it all out. This is how you fix a problem though. Lots of hard work to understand the whole thing, soup to nuts, and then you fix it all.
Does that make me a leftist?
You just described steps that would actually reduce abortion by quite a lot, without making it illegal at all. The sex ed and contraception stuff is basically exactly how it's done in other western countries that don't have nearly the issue with teen pregnancies we do. What you're proposing is practical and effective.
And in the eyes of the MAGA crowd, you're not just a leftist, you're a baby-murdering, Satan-worshipping communist America-hater.
You are detailing exactly what would reduce abortion. Republicans/conservatives would probably call you a socialist (while meaning it negatively) and say that you are encouraging teens to have sex by offering contraceptives and encouraging people to be lazy by offering free child care. These are the things that would really help. It feels to me like they don't care about actually helping, just punishing people and creating wedge issues.
There's nothing wrong with what you're saying on a vacuum. The problem is deciding what is actually a problem, and once it's been decided, which one solution out of many possible ones we're actually going to pick.
Is unequality a problem? If it is, up to which degree? Is it a problem that the richest person has four times as much wealth as the poorest person? Is it a problem that the richest person has x100000 times as much wealth as the poorest person? Are we going to solve that through redistribution? Through better public, accessible education? By empowering worker unions? By socializing the means of production in order to prevent capital accumulation?
Once you're perfectly aware of what values you're defending, you can find the most efficient way to let society advance forward according to them. But since not everyone shares the same values, even if everyone was perfectly rational and had access to all information, different people would still defend different solutions. Of course, people's values evolve all the time and everyone is irrational up to some degree, even if we put effort into perfecting our epistemology and use the scientific method to approach as many issues as possibles (which we should nonetheless do), so even that ideal state of things is very, very far away.
Apply the scientifc method. Look at places and times with wide economic disparity. Were/are those good stable places with happy healthy populations, or was it bad. If you decide it's a problem based on evidence, then look at solutions. If you don't have examples, try things out and record the data. What worked and what didn't. Don't let your values bias you. I think that welath inequality is a problem, but I'm willing to listen to thoroughly researched, peer reviewed, data backed conclusions.
The problem is deciding what is actually a problem, and once it’s been decided, which one solution out of many possible ones we’re actually going to pick.
I find that often once both sides have decided that there is a problem and it should be solved but start arguing about mutually exclusive solutions to that issue, one of the sides (and it does switch) is focusing on addressing the output of the problem and the other is focusing on addressing the cause of the problem!
"Ow, my foot hurts!"
Side A: "let's give you some painkillers to stop the pain" Side B: "forget about the painkillers, stop standing on their feet!" Side A: "I've already stood on their foot, there's nothing I can do to undo it. Do you want me to rewind time or something? Why don't you care about treating their pain‽" Side B: "If you keep standing on their feet they're going to stay in pain no matter what!" Side A: "how can I get this person painkillers for their pain without standing here? Why are you so blind to this person's suffering‽"
Etc etc forever while we achieve nothing and let everything turn to rust and ashes to the backdrop of everyone silently screaming inside of their heads.
Not sure I agree that an engineering mindset wouldn't be an improvement on that tbh. There really aren't normally multiple equally valid solutions to big problems. Just people with a more or less complete understanding of the issue arguing that their understanding and subsequent solution is the best rather that just fucking listening and thinking competently to arrive at the right answers together.
Problem solving should be every politician's goal. The only difference is what "problems" they are trying to solve. That's what separates left and right, the problems. And frankly, they are radically different problems to the same situations.
Would you mind clarifying your standpoint on what should be done in case a woman is raped and becomes pregnant? You kind of glossed over that part of it. I understand that you want to prevent the number of pregnancies due to rape, but what exactly do you propose when that happens? Same for pregnancies due to incest.
It seems you already know most of what will actually help this issue, and it does include social programs. Does this make you a leftist? No, it makes you a realist. That is, unless you ask this question to most conservatives who will instantly label you as one. How dare you actually suggest something progressive!
A person's body is their own. From the skin in, it's yours to do with as you please. You can't make somebody wreck their body or risk their lives to satisfy your morality. I'm willing to debate this issue with someone who has done everything I'm their power to mitigate the risk of unwanted pregnancy. If not, I assume they're just trying to control women's bodies in order to secure their place in heaven, because the rest of christianity is hard.
Does this make you a leftist? No, it makes you a realist. That is, unless you ask this question to most conservatives who will instantly label you as one.
Reality has a left-wing bias.
In that case, as well as the medical one, abortion counts as self-defence.
Now you might be saying "but the baby isn't at fault, self-defence is only valid against the assailant" but, well:
Assume you and some other guy are kidnapped by a psychopath, who puts you two into a contraption that forces the both of you to either kill the other to survive, or both die after say half a day. Is morally and legally justified to kill that random stranger who did you no wrong to save your own life?
See it's much easier in that case where the stakes are higher and, yes, in any (sane) legal system self-defence is valid also against people who did you no wrong: You do not have to tolerate suffering an (any) injustice just because the assailant is being creative. If you want to convict someone of homicide in that case how about the rapist.
What is your answer to a scenario in which a woman using birth control properly in a loving monogamous relationship becomes pregnant when neither party wants a child? The most common form of birth control (the pill), when taken properly only has a 97% effective rate. Pair that with a second form of birth control (i.e. the pullout method) and it will go up but it will never be 100% effective.
And she doesn't want to put the child up for adoption? That's valid. Pregnancy has long term negative health impacts. Morally, I'm not opposed to abortion. I know some people are. I feel like I'm unwilling to debate the morality while all the practical steps to mitigate the risk haven't been taken.
I would add, free, easily accessible sterilization should be the norm. I don't want more kids, so I got sterilized.
Lol you just glaringly leave off the option of having an abortion for a woman who just plain old doesn't want to have a kid. If she just doesn't want to have a kid (no medical issue going on for either the mother or fetus), and it's been say, 3 months since inception, can she have an abortion? You seem to really only be mentioning abortion when it comes to threatening the life of the mother or if the fetus is deformed. What about just a purely elective abortion, less than 12 weeks let's say? Would you want to see that illegal?
Edit: Nevermind, read your response below to a similar question.
She doesn't want to be pregnant or she doesn't want to have a kid? Two different problems with two different solutions.
I think we should prevent as many abortions as we can, while preserving everyone's right to body autonomy.
How did your hypothetical woman get pregnant? In my hypothetical, ideal world that scenario should be exceedingly rare.
We shall call in Huckleberryism. Subscribed!
You missed one thing: Some women just want to abort regardless, and also have all through history, including prehistory. All those policies you listed there are in place in Germany as the constitutional court ruled that the state has a duty to protect life (also the unborn) and thus has to take steps to minimise the number of abortions, and social means are to be preferred over prison sentences because a) more effective and b) proportionality, but: You don't catch every case with those social means.
Now, if you penalise abortions that fall through those cracks you get backstreet abortions -- which you have no control over. You can't convince people at the last moment, you can't drown them in flyers explaining all the social services they're going to receive and smother them with support. That's why at-will abortion in Germany is decriminalised if you're willing to sit through what's called pregnancy conflict counselling, there's no notes taken or result given in those you get a piece of paper that says that you were there, then there's a three-day cooldown and you can bring the notice to a doctor who now can perform the abortion legally. If you're poor, the state is going to cover the costs (not your health insurance because pregnancy is not an illness).
In a nutshell: For the state to be maximally effective at minimising the number of abortions it has to tolerate abortions being carried out legally, and even pay for them to be performed.
And this, btw, to many an American's surprise, comes from a rather firm "human dignity starts with insemination, the right to live starts with nidation as that's when nature decides to bring a particular life to fruit" type of doctrine. (The human dignity stuff comes into play e.g. during preimplantation diagnostics: You can be tossed out of the pool for carrying a genetic disease, but not for your sex, hair colour, or whatnot).
They don't care if you're a leftist or not, they care that you're telling them what to do, precisely because they don't want to be told what to do, even if it's good for them, because if they're being told what to do, it means they aren't in power, and they want power at any cost. In the pursuit of the 'right' people telling the 'wrong' people what to do, and in the pursuit of keeping the 'wrong' people from telling the 'right' people what to do, anything goes. Hypocrisy, lies, crime, election fraud, subverting courts, coups, false patriotism, false piety, terrorism, even outright murder... anything goes.
Know the enemy, spread the word to your friends and family (and maybe further).
I like your thinking.
I think unwanted children are the worst. lets put aside that the family won't be happy. It's these children that will cause trouble, populate prisons. They'll be an absolute drag on society. It's not even they're fault. Growing up without love is tough
Does that make me a leftist?
Though I assume this is but one part of your political convictions, I would say yes. That being said I think your hot take is wrong and suggest thinking about it this way: Theory and applications are two incredibly important components of any discipline, ranging from mathematics to politics. In this case the theoretical part means more or less ideology (or the isms you refer to) while applications are the more pragmatic approach of thinking implementations and effects. Both are important to navigate and propose solutions to ever evolving problems in our societies.
Now, as to why this makes you more left is that the leftist parties are usually (but not always) more culturally progressive as opposed to being conservative/reactionary when faced with questions like gay marriage, abortion etc.. I think the most coherent political view is that of being both culturally and economically leftist, though that is of course subject to debate. If you are both I think you should say you are leftist as well.
Culturally and economically leftist.
This is a big part of the problem tbh, left-right is the economic distinction, authoritarian or libertarian is the top to bottom axis which is more apt to apply to "culture."
If you want to control people through force of government you're on the authoritarian side, if you want people to be free to live their lives so long as they don't actively harm others you're on the libertarian side. If you prefer collectivist economics you're on the left side, and if you prefer capitalism in some form you're on the right side. Put those together to get a slightly more accurate picture of a person you're interacting with.
So a guy who prefers individualist free market economy and is socially apathetic or progressive would be bottom right, a guy who prefers more market control but still capitalism and is socially conservative would be center right, a guy who prefers monarchy with much market control and very conservative socially is top right, stalinists would be top left as they're authoritarian and not necessarily progressive and collectivist as all hell, liberals would be center left more progressive but still authoritarian and still collectivists, and left libertarians would be bottom left, collectivist and progressive but as long as you aren't hurting people live and let live, like bottom right. Of course most people fall somewhere on the middle of the graph or their quadrant rather than in a corner of it, but it is still more helpful than only having one axis to base things on.
Even Donald Duck doesnt subscribe to the abortion ban
You also just listed all the reasons that rape is allowed in most countries (rape, death risk, severe deformation, etc). You didn't touch on the "abort for any reason at any time" issue which is the flagship of leftist movement
You are not a leftist, just a centrist living in the US
stAhp tUrLIng mE wAt tUr dOO!
Reforms are great, but ultimately a doomed bandaid over real problems. Quoth Lenin:
"Reformism is bourgeois deception of the workers, who, despite individual improvements, will always remain wage-slaves, as long as there is the domination of capital.
The liberal bourgeoisie grant reforms with one hand, and with the other always take them back, reduce them to nought, use them to enslave the workers, to divide them into separate groups and perpetuate wage-slavery. For that reason reformism, even when quite sincere, in practice becomes a weapon by means of which the bourgeoisie corrupt and weaken the workers. The experience of all countries shows that the workers who put their trust in the reformists are always fooled.
And conversely, workers who have assimilated Marx’s theory, i.e., realised the inevitability of wage-slavery so long as capitalist rule remains, will not be fooled by any bourgeois reforms. Understanding that where capitalism continued to exist reforms cannot be either enduring or far-reaching, the workers fight for better conditions and use them to intensify the fight against wage-slavery. The reformists try to divide and deceive the workers, to divert them from the class struggle by petty concessions. But the workers, having seen through the falsity of reformism, utilise reforms to develop and broaden their class struggle."
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/sep/12b.htm
Karl Marx was an idiot. Let me explain...no there's too much. Let me sum up. Replacing a whole system just because some parts of it don't work is stupid. How do you know the system you put in as a replacement won't also be broken.
Some people tried to replace capitalism with a totally different system and it went real bad real fast. This wasn't an isolated incident. They tried it in a bunch of places and in none of them did it work. Marxism has been debunked in the field.
Marxism is the idea that you can fix problems with an ism. Got poor people? Try communism or socialism or half-cocked-ism. If your solution to a problem can fit on a bumper sticker it's wrong.
I'll quote Drew Curtis of fark.com fame:
"Reality has a liberal bias."
Didn't Stephen Colbert coin that phrase? I thought he said it at the White House Correspondence Dinner or something.
Could be. Drew has also said it, that's where I first heard it so that's where I've attributed it.
I say this as a fan of Colbert.
good
Conservative trolls are by and large generally stupider than Liberals, and can't figure out how to onboard the Fediverse yet, which is great
It's funny how people think both this and states 4chan has always been rightwing since 2000s. The truth is your political bias says nothing about your intelligence. Stating otherwise just looks like boosting one's ego to me.
Also the reason you don't see right wing opinions on Lemmy is probably by and large because the right wing instances are being defederated by larger left-leaning Lemmy instances. Not saying if thats wrong, but that's just how it is.
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.
I see just as much if not more complaining about “tankies” as on subs like subredditdrama, it’s not that leftist
I literally saw a guy earlier today in that one large memes thread trying to convince people that Eastern European countries yearn for the USSR days.
Only tankies try to do that lol.
Tankies are a tiny subset of extreme far leftists which even far leftists have a right to despise, though.
Tankies are a tiny subset of extreme far leftists which even far leftists have a right to despise, though.
Things that are mainstream in British politics would get you called a tankie by american liberals though, because they have no left and have no idea what level of radicalism is required to get welfare and healthcare in europe and then maintain it.
Jeremy Corbyn defends the USSR.
Diane Abbot defended Mao on national tv.
John McDonnell's job is "to overthrow capitalism". Or the time John threw Mao's little red book at Osborne. Etc etc.
Mainstream elected British MPs in Britain's soft left, saying and doing things that have absolutely zero negative effect on anyone's opinion of them in Britain. But anything they believe or say would get them called a tankie by americans. Corbyn's christmas message a couple years ago extolling the virtues of the Black Panthers (an ML party) would send some people here into a fit, especially if they noticed the CCCP figure in the bottom right of the video at 2:10.
We have people like Frankie Boyle on national television funded by the taxpayer saying we should kill all the rich. and making pretty clear tweets about his own political position(before he quit managing the account himself). It's just a completely different environment.
By definition, people with a conservative mindset are less open to change and new experience.
Federated social media is still in the new and formative stage. So it is not shocking it is still dominated by those more open to new experiences. But don't be surprised if that shifts if/when Lemmy/kbin reach critical mass.
The internet itself has followed a similar path.
Came here to say this. The most literal definition of the word conservative in the context of the party is "to conserve old ways". They are resistant to change by definition.
Leftists use change as a tool to try to make things better. They're naturally more likely to embrace something new.
Although I find it odd that conservatives today tend to have the most radicalized agenda out of all - yeah I mean there are some outright communists, but their numbers are like at most single-digit population percentages, whereas in the USA and UK and Russia and such they pretty much are the majority of people (hehe, in Russia the votes somehow outnumber the population even...:-P).
i.e. at one point they were conservative, and they still claim to be, even while wanting to change e.g. from a voting democracy to a totalitarian regime. But it changes every couple of years so it's really hard to keep up - e.g. in the USA GW Bush was an actual progressive (like, feed poor people), but then came the Tea Partiers, ousted by the Alt Right, which is no longer considered extreme enough and on and on it goes... (as the song continues: where it will stop, nobody knows:-).
It's not corporate based social with a mostly US based audience.
It was literally started because of political censorship of leftists on reddit.
Everyone gets censored on Reddit, literally everyone. There's no ideology that stays intact apart from sucking spez's balls
I think it's because it's still smaller than Reddit.
This is just my opinion, but since modern right wing is reactionary they (by definition) require people to react to and rally against. In turn they need people to react to them for validation. Just look at any of the many right wing social media clones, without a "leftist" audience to perform for they inevitably get bored and leave, causing the site to slowly wither and die.
I think its more anarchist which skews moderately left for obvious reasons.
Edit: No mods, no masters ;)
If it were just that dimension, where's all the (right-)libertarians?
hello 👋
smash the state!
I'm here, hanging out mostly, shitting on commies in my feed the rest of the time and watching them scramble to try and fix lemmy.ml has been fun.
What if I told you reddits antiwork was basically a glimpse of everything we're seeing on far left Lemmy. Lemmy just doesn't have a honeymoon stage for it.
antiwork was one of the last leftist places to ban me. They held out for a long time … until I thanked them for it one day at which point they immediately banned me.
I literally wrote a comment like “You guys are always willing to talk despite our disagreements and I’m thankful for that” and I got banned within hours.
I should write a survival guide to Linux. Its okay to have a differing opinion man. My advice is just don't go seeking out the hornets nest and know when to read the room. I saw some garbage earlier today that was borderline racist ironically from a left POV and I just left it alone.
Gotta know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em. The beauty of the fediverse is that everyone gets a total democracy in bans, where they'll sign up, etc and its a two way street.
Since I didn’t subscribe to any communities that are clearly all about politics, I haven’t really noticed many political views in my feed. Just like with Reddit, I’m here mostly for the science and technology.
I'm still new here and still trying to figure out what the community is like.
I consider myself left of center on most (but not all) topics. I have a deep hatred for the GOP and everything they stand for, but I also am willing to nitpick the endless things that the Democrats do wrong. Ultimately I consider myself a pragmatist - in other words, you will never get your left-of-center policies enacted if the country as a whole is still leaning to the far right. Try to shift the country to your side first and THEN go for more progressive stuff. It absolutely doesn't work any other way. Trying to push for change too fast and too much will only get you a ton of blowback which will ultimately hurt your cause.
So having very briefly explained my overall stance even I was surprised by some of the comments I've seen - like far left stuff. But it's weird here because there are just simply not that many people, so even one or two comments in a lightly trafficked thread might make you think a site is heavily biased one way or another.
Also, please note that we have already entered US campaign season. Like the FBI has been warning us for literally years now (but few take seriously), there are indeed "bad actors" out there on various social media platforms (Reddit was notorious for this) trying to sway the US election toward Trump. They will do and say anything for it to happen, and that has been proven time and again. Like they fooled some gay groups a few years back and convinced them that Trump would support them, or back on Reddit reading Bernie-focused subs trying to convince progressives that, once again, Trump was the candidate who Sanders would prefer to win. Wild, and crazy stuff, but all it takes is a few percentage of people to buy into this mess to swing an election. Lemmy is not immune to these propaganda campaigns either.
The developers of Lemmy are the type who have jumped the shark when it comes to leftism.
https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/socialism_faq.md#whats-going-on-with-the-uyghurs
I spent 15 minutes looking at all the links and clicking on a few.
North Korea is apparently a functioning democracy that gives its civilians everything they need. They're all extraordinary happy and love their fairly elected leader. The ones who defect only do it because they're filthy, selfish capitalists.
Tiananmen Square was apparently not a massacre of thousands of unarmed civilian student protestors, but the site of a skirmish between capitalist pig armed provocateurs who assaulted and killed soldiers in cold blood and acted surprised when the soldiers (with extraordinary restraint) defended themselves against their attacks, leading to just 200 deaths (including those poor innocent soldiers).
The Uighurs are apparently all happy. The Chinese government forcibly took thousands, no, hundreds of thousands of people from their homes and placed them in camps, all out of a selfless desire to help those poor, misguided souls. There's definitely no cultural oppression, no forced labor, and no human rights abuses. They're just all-inclusive resorts with free "cultural lessons" to help them understand both Uighur and Chinese culture. The CCP loves their Muslim citizens and definitely doesn't consider them terrorists in need of forced reeducation. All the horror stories we've heard from people whose family members were captured, or about forced organ harvesting, or rape and torture, they're all just unproven lies. The Chinese government even offers tours of their Uighur "resorts" to prove to the world that it's a diligent effort to support their Uighur brothers!
Every time I see something that looks like Chinese/Russian/anti-Western propaganda I check the profile and it's usually a user that's been here for years. I'm starting to think the Fediverse was born as a misinformation shithole, here's hoping the new users can get that content to fuck off into it's own little defederated corner of trolls, bots, and edgelords.
Tiananmen Square was apparently not a massacre of thousands of unarmed civilian student protestors,
Actually, that one is true, you can look it up on wikipedia (including plenty of reliable sources): The massacring was in side streets while the main protest on the square was dissolved "peacefully" by telling students "well, you can go, or we also have rifles here".
The whole thing was flanked by a power struggle within the CCP between reformers wanting to work with the students and hardliners, who ultimately won out but didn't go so far as massacring the students without giving them a chance to cave in and leave on their own. They wanted obedience, after all, not blood. And, culturally speaking, obedience is what they got out of it there has been no popular questioning of the overarching party line since then. Localised protests for or against local issues, sure, and even plenty of them and that's tolerated but nothing that could shake the system, and most of all it's not movements. The CCP is very keen on there being no movements but their own.
Ugh, is this on the Jerboa creator's github? FFFS.
I think he's the main dev for Lemmy itself (and admin for lemmy.ml)
Funny, just a few hours ago I was telling a friend that I noticed the opposite. This conversation started because while r/antiwork and r/work_reform had mostly incompatible ideologies, with antiwork being more radical, Lemmy suggested to me a community titled "Antiwork/Work reform" which is noticeably more status quo compacent. Additionally, the rate of posts going "capitalism isn't that bad, actually" and "fuck tankies" in my TL is higher than in Reddit.
I think this has to do with the amount of active users. If, say, 2% of active users are very vocal about abolishing wage slavery, if there are like 1000 users, that 2% is just 20 people, which wouldn't make a very active community, whereas if it's 100 000 users, then that makes 2000 people who can already make a sort of "echo chamber" where they can openly and actively discuss their ideas.
Also, not to forget that Reddit, like all mass social media, has algorithms meant to maximize your session lengths and that usually involves exposing you to more extremist ideas, both left and right.
Post 2016, the worldnews/geopolitics subs that I follow on reddit have become nonstop sinophobic and anti-China hate subs. Prior to 2016, there were a lot of complaining about Chinese tourists and kids that shit on the streets, but after Trump got elected the cold war rhetoric went into full effect.
This got worse during and after Covid19, especially in America, Canada, and parts of Europe.
The cold war propagandizing is just so incredibly prevalent on reddit. It's like people forgot what the cultural/business relationship between the US and China looked like prior to 2016.
Mastodon managed to fight off bigots and nazis very successfully, maybe they do have enough brain cells to remember something I guess.
I don't mind. Fewer conservatives means higher quality and higher general IQ.
I am not that leftist.
ITT: left = progressive and right = conservative