I work with a lib who at times I begin to think is finally listening, a week later and we’re back to square one. You can only talk to these people once a day at best, Reddit is for all of 24 hours a day every day. You’ll never beat the all day brainwashing.
Fair enough, I’m perhaps being too pessimistic; the lib I work with is very depressing in how he falls back into the stuff being spouted online very easily and I’m probably extrapolating far too much.
That just means you haven’t found the thing that speaks to their soul yet, just something that they agree with on a surface level and doesn’t incept them with a will to unpack anything personally. For me my de-libining came after 2016 when I read what the groypers were saying and thoroughly read intellectual dark web stuff and saw that the lib brand of alternating snark, hysteria and patting themselves on the back for being the “decent” side was completely toothless against and ignorant to these rising political currents.
All of the Democrat messaging I saw felt designed to make them look good only within the parameters of right wing framing, and depended on taking the right’s bad faith arguments at face value (“I thought you loved the troops but now you’re attacking Gold Star families? Busted!”). I saw how the dirtbag left didn’t mince words when talking about troops or back down when another self-righteous fake outrage campaign was started by the right, I saw Richard Spencer get punched once, lose the majority of his following and disprove the notion that the “marketplace of ideas” was the best antidote to hate, and I never looked back.
For me the Ukraine war, and specifically the whitewashing of Nazi symbols was the breaking point where I could no longer accept the contradictions. I branched out and eventually found this place.
I think a lot of people who are aware of the contradictions have no other place to go. They don’t know that communities like this one even exist, so their only choices are following the far right narrative or the neoliberal narrative.
This is very interesting to me because I always considered the Ukraine War to be the type of thing you can only see the truth behind if you already have a leftist mindset. I never thought of it as something that could be the trigger point.
This I guess is my own myopic personal experience thing though. Since I’ve found it to be the thing that liberals (and leftist ultras) are most unshakable on. I mean the amount of [palestine flag/ukraine flag] you see on social media alone lol.
Well the place I was on previously can probably be pretty well described as “What if Hexbear was rabidly pro West in geopolitics?”, so it was already pretty leftist.
It wasn’t just the Nazi symbols though, it was also stuff like allowing Russians to be called Orcs, having a neocon splinter group fester away in a specific thread pretty much unmoderated (who later on all got banned for predictable reasons), posting pure propaganda and completely forgetting about the “reputable sources” rule, while ignoring all negative news from said “reputable sources”, etc.
Some users also got really mad about the “tankies” in certain threads. It’s always funny to me to see how close they really are to being “tankies” themselves. All it would take is having some skepticism over the Western narrative, and before you know it…
“Maybe they’ll come to some realizations” #723
I work with a lib who at times I begin to think is finally listening, a week later and we’re back to square one. You can only talk to these people once a day at best, Reddit is for all of 24 hours a day every day. You’ll never beat the all day brainwashing.
Did we not all beat the all day brainwashing here though? I mean I personally am an ex-lib.
Fair enough, I’m perhaps being too pessimistic; the lib I work with is very depressing in how he falls back into the stuff being spouted online very easily and I’m probably extrapolating far too much.
if his material conditions deteriorate, he might think back on things you said
That just means you haven’t found the thing that speaks to their soul yet, just something that they agree with on a surface level and doesn’t incept them with a will to unpack anything personally. For me my de-libining came after 2016 when I read what the groypers were saying and thoroughly read intellectual dark web stuff and saw that the lib brand of alternating snark, hysteria and patting themselves on the back for being the “decent” side was completely toothless against and ignorant to these rising political currents.
All of the Democrat messaging I saw felt designed to make them look good only within the parameters of right wing framing, and depended on taking the right’s bad faith arguments at face value (“I thought you loved the troops but now you’re attacking Gold Star families? Busted!”). I saw how the dirtbag left didn’t mince words when talking about troops or back down when another self-righteous fake outrage campaign was started by the right, I saw Richard Spencer get punched once, lose the majority of his following and disprove the notion that the “marketplace of ideas” was the best antidote to hate, and I never looked back.
Same here. I even voted for Hillary over Bernie in the 2016 primaries. My thought process was very silly back then.
The person has to be so captured by an idea that they seek to learn more by themselves and replace one all day media diet with another
For me the Ukraine war, and specifically the whitewashing of Nazi symbols was the breaking point where I could no longer accept the contradictions. I branched out and eventually found this place.
I think a lot of people who are aware of the contradictions have no other place to go. They don’t know that communities like this one even exist, so their only choices are following the far right narrative or the neoliberal narrative.
This is very interesting to me because I always considered the Ukraine War to be the type of thing you can only see the truth behind if you already have a leftist mindset. I never thought of it as something that could be the trigger point.
This I guess is my own myopic personal experience thing though. Since I’ve found it to be the thing that liberals (and leftist ultras) are most unshakable on. I mean the amount of [palestine flag/ukraine flag] you see on social media alone lol.
Well the place I was on previously can probably be pretty well described as “What if Hexbear was rabidly pro West in geopolitics?”, so it was already pretty leftist.
It wasn’t just the Nazi symbols though, it was also stuff like allowing Russians to be called Orcs, having a neocon splinter group fester away in a specific thread pretty much unmoderated (who later on all got banned for predictable reasons), posting pure propaganda and completely forgetting about the “reputable sources” rule, while ignoring all negative news from said “reputable sources”, etc.
Some users also got really mad about the “tankies” in certain threads. It’s always funny to me to see how close they really are to being “tankies” themselves. All it would take is having some skepticism over the Western narrative, and before you know it…
Ah, cool to see that someone can break out of being a NATO leftist lol. Ive only seen people get stuck there.