I want to draw attention to the elephant in the room.
Leading up to the election, and perhaps even more prominently now, we’ve been seeing droves of people on the internet displaying a series of traits in common.
- Claiming to be leftists
- Dedicating most of their posting to dismantling any power possessed by the left
- Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
- Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
- Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is “to the left of them”
- Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system
- Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism
When you look at an aerial view of these behaviors in conjunction with one another, what they’re accomplishing is pretty plain to see, in my opinion. It’s a way of utilizing the moral scrupulousness of the left to cut our teeth out politically. We get so caught up in giving these arguments the benefit of the doubt and of making sure people who claim to be leftists have a platform that we’re missing ideological parasites in our midst.
This is not a good-faith discourse. This is not friendly disagreement. This is, largely, not even internal disagreement. It is infiltration, and it’s extremely effective.
Before attacking this argument as lacking proof, just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn’t take advantage of it?
By refusing to ever question those who do nothing with their time in our spaces but try to drive a wedge between us, to take away our power and make us feel helpless and hopeless, we’re giving them exactly that vector. I am telling you, they are using it.
We need to stop letting them. We need to see it for what it is, get the word out, and remember, as the political left, how to use the tools that we have to change society. It starts with us between one another. It starts with what we do in the spaces that we inhabit. They know this, and it’s why they’re targeting us here.
Stop being an easy target. Stop feeding the cuckoo.
Let’s just get a few facts out of the way:
- Genocide is the worst crime humanity is capable of
- The US has a direct hand in multiple genocides
- Record levels of homelessness in the richest nation on earth is unacceptable
- Death from preventable illnesses in the richest nation on earth is unacceptable
- Highest infant mortality in the western world in the richest nation on earth is unacceptable
- Democrats are not interested in changing the status quo
- Republicans want a return to chattel slavery
- Neither party is willing to help us, nor will they ever allow us to vote third party by adding ranked choice or anything like that
- Therefore, our best bet to break the cycle is to collectively vote for, say, the green party
You think leftists are unrealistic for being disgusted with Democrats? The genocide was live streamed to the world. Did you not see any of it? Did it not move you?
By the way, the Democratic party is not left-wing. It is right-wing. Please educate yourself.
Also, are we hopeless? Fuck no. Boycotts have been making progress. Noncompliance has accomplished a lot. Unionizing, if you can swing it, can accomplish a lot. Meshtastic can offer resiliant communications if Trump declares a national emergency. Democrats want you to panic. Leftists want you to organize.
I was with you but then you said vote green?
If you’re going to vote, vote against the Republican party. If you want change from status quo, the ballot box isn’t where it will happen
In my case, I’m in a deep blue state. Otherwise I would grit my teeth and vote for the “lesser” evil. But we really do need a new party.
The current US voting system does not allow for a 3rd party to have a chance. If you want a new party, then you either need to replace one of the main two, or change the electoral rules.
From the outside, it doesn’t seem like either option is likely to happen peacefully, so things will likely need to get way much worse before they get any better.
Oh, I know. But imagine, if you will, if enough people collectively decided to vote 3rd party. It’s a minority of Americans who even vote at all. If a third party received the majority of votes, they would have to be put in office – hypothetically at least.
if enough people collectively decided to vote 3rd party.
Then it would either become the 1st/2nd party, or disappear into oblivion. If it could became part of Congress, where it could look for alliances, then maybe… but based on current sentiment, it seems unlikely.
deleted by creator
voting Green is voting against Republicans
This post is beyond delusional. It’s like the meme about everything I don’t like is woke. The liberal version basically being everything I don’t like is a Russian/MAGA bot. Is it really that hard to believe that left leaning people don’t agree with the Democratic Party platform? You’re deeper in your bubble than you realize my friend.
Oh look, someone who’s generalizing op then tries to discredit them! Way to prove their point
They didn’t make any type of platform or political argument to even debate against. Basically saying that everyone who dislikes democrats is secretly a republican. That’s all I’m calling them on. Total nonsense.
Misdirection, nice! That’s cuz this is not about platforms or any political argument, dr Troll
You’re goofy man. I don’t even know what your point is. OP said something. I said I disagreed with it. Epic troll by me I guess.
Go to a politics or platforms community if you’re looking for a politic argument or stuff about platforms
Thank you for the suggestion.
Watch out for the following five fallacies, and the cuckoo is easy to spot:
- oversimplification: false dichotomy, ignoring relevant factors
- genetic fallacy: instead of focusing on what is being said, the cuckoo always focuses on who says it
- straw man: cuckoos are really eager to put words into your mouth, and try to force you to defend claims you never did in first place
- ignore refutation: if you prove without a shadow of doubt that the cuckoo’s claim is wrong, they’ll ignore your refutation and still use it to back up even dumber claims
- ad nauseam: same claim over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
Then as you spot the cuckoo, the rest is easier - for example, IMO a sensible approach is to point out what the cuckoo is doing, to whoever might be reading your comment, while disengaging so you aren’t giving the cuckoo further time to sing.
straw man: cuckoos are really eager to put words into your mouth, and try to force you to defend claims you never did in first place
This one is a really key tell. The people who spend most of their message emphasizing what it is that their opponents believe, and only in passing deal with what they believe (which tends to be along the lines of “well they all want to kill Palestinian babies but I don’t want that, so clearly you can see the difference”), and immediately start telling anyone who talks with them what they believe also… that’s an important signal.
I think it is so popular because it is substantially lower-effort than engaging with anything the person is actually saying, and also it works on anything. You don’t have to be on the right side of the argument, you can just assign your opponent some awful crazy shit, and then get to work disagreeing with that.
Edit: Just for some examples. Here are things people have told me today:
your attitude that good people who would absolutely give you their last meal for days or literally stand in front of you to take a bullet that you may or not deserve are disposable lives
(Literally no idea what this is about)
I don’t think it’s unconscionable that the police are minimally held to that expectation
(I, also, think that the police should be held to the expectation they’re talking about, and said so repeatedly)
you were unnecessarily bringing race into this discussion
(I wasn’t, I did bring BLM into a discussion about the police)
Your saying things like “don’t refuse to give ID” or “Just talk with them. Tell them what you know, help them figure out the situation.” as a blanket suggestion
(I said the exact opposite of that)
I don’t mean to condescend to liberals – shouldn’t have used “libs” I guess – but I think of them, in the US, as primarily just trying to get the democrats back into power and then mostly disengage. The most outspoken of them tend to have much more energy to fight universal healthcare and other the social democratic reforms of a Bernie Sanders rather than actually take aim at the capitalist, state, and other hierarchies making our lives worse.
(I wasn’t explicitly included in this grouping, but this person was explicitly talking to and about me when they said this. Obviously none of this has anything to do with anything I think or want. This is a form of indirect strawman “You are group X and all group X people think Y and Z” that is particularly hopeless to ever have any kind of success in disagreeing with)
So kindly fuck off with your genocidal apology nonsense
(I pointed out with alarm that there is literally 0 food in Gaza currently and people are likely to start to starve on a mass scale this month)
And so on
That’s quickly becoming my approach. Point it out and then immediately block them and stop engaging. Once you block them, they can’t keep following you around spamming the same noise.
Actually… they can. I got one today, they created a new account just to reply to the same comment, with an insult about having blocked them. They earned a stalking report, but I doubt it will stick.
I think it’s a very common belief amongst somewhat-educated spheres of thought to look to logical fallacies to root out dishonest behavior, in the hopes that it’ll provide a nice and easy way to deduce when someone’s a grifter. That you can tell if someone’s a liar – or for that matter, real – by applying them sufficiently.
The problem is, humans are fallible. They fuck up. Innocently. Constantly. It’s normal to make fallacious arguments, and doing so should not cause you to be automatically marked off as a robot, troll or spy. Some examples for your given fallacies:
- Oversimplification can also occur if someone is tired and does not want to go into rigorous academic detail for their argument. Alternatively, they may simply not know the detail to begin with.
- Genetic fallacy can occur due to simple human anger; if someone feels that their interlocutor has made bad-faith arguments frequently before, they’re inclined to ignore what that individual has to say outright, likely without even reading it. (This one has happened in this thread, several times)
- Strawmen happen all the time and extremely easily, because people will inevitably end up making assumptions about the position of others based on previous discussions they’ve had. If you spend enough time arguing a point and getting response
X, you’re going to start assuming that the person you’re talking to about that is implyingX, even if they haven’t said it and never intended to. - Ignoring refutation happens plenty simply when people get defensive. Admitting you’re wrong is hard, and it’s much preferable to instead change the topic or find some other way of pretending you were never disproven of anything. This is inherently a logical leap, and that’s why it leads to often dumber positions.
- With regard to ad nauseam: If someone finds a particular point very convincing and easy to understand for themselves, they may find it confusing as to why you don’t agree on it. This can lead to them repeatedly trying to explain it more thoroughly and in different words under the assumption that the way they said it was why you didn’t get it. I’ve done this a lot in my past.
With those examples out of the way, I just want to emphasize the fact that you should never pretend the presence of logical fallacies is a guarantee of bad faith, much less use it to dehumanize others. If we let ourselves do that, we’ll all tear each other apart under the mistaken assumption that we’re rooting out an evil that has no promise of even being present at all. To err is human.
cc @PhilipTheBucket and @millie because, to be bluntly honest, much as I understand your frustration, y’all need to remember the human.
Just to be clear:
I am not proposing to categorically label anyone using those five fallacies a cuckoo. I said that it’s easy to spot the cuckoo when you look for those fallacies. Because cuckoos rely on those fallacies to convey their “As A Leftist®, I say we should disempower ourselves!” discourse.
In that case, I contend that is is not easy to spot a cuckoo, and believing that is leaves one dangerously prone to overconfidence. So while I appreciate that you don’t see these fallacies as de facto proof of disingenuous behavior, I still feel that you’re running the risk of false positives.
Fallacies are useful for evaluating the validity of arguments and positions, not for evaluating people themselves. Solitary comments can never let you evaluate a whole person, because no whole person fits in a text box.
In that case, I contend […]
When answering your earlier comment, I wasn’t sure if you were
- Speaking on general grounds, without noticing that context made your comment imply that I said what I did not; OR
- Assuming=bullshitting that I said what I did not. e.g. that I’d not be taking into account that humans are fallible, or that I would be dehumanising others.
In doubt, I answered it with a simple clarification. However, that “in that case” confirms it’s #2, so I’ll readdress your earlier comment: cut off the crap.
Avoiding fallacies is not “academic rigour” dammit, it’s basic human decency. Decent human beings avoid bringing unnecessary harm to other human beings, and irrationalities (like fallacies) harm people. Doubly so in this context (politics), because that fallacy means people supporting people/entities/policies that should they not support. (Look at Gaza for a prime example of that. It’s literally people being killed because people give a thumbs up to an oversimplification, so a genocide looks like self-defence.)
“If someone is tired”, “simple human anger”, “when people get defensive” - people under those situations should not be discussing politics (mind the context!) on first place.
And no, it is neither logically nor morally acceptable to assume the others’ views, as you said under “strawmen”. It’s piece of shit behaviour of people who don’t mind blaming others for what they did not say or do not support.
Now, addressing this comment:
In that case, I contend that is is not easy to spot a cuckoo
In the context? Yes, it is. If someone is babbling “As A Leftist®, I say we should not fight back” and you smell those fallacies, the first thing you should look for is a brood parasite.
Fallacies are useful for evaluating the validity of arguments and positions, not for evaluating people themselves.
It’s useful for both.
While brainfarts happen, and people should be lenient towards small mistakes, someone who doesn’t even try to avoid fallacies is a harmful individual and should be treated as such.
I still feel that you’re running the risk of false positives.
Not a problem in the light of the proposed solution. (Point out and disengage)
Solitary comments can never let you evaluate a whole person, because no whole person fits in a text box.
In line with what you did in the earlier comment, now you’re implying that I would have claimed that solitary comments let you evaluate a whole person. I did not; please stop implying otherwise, this is at the very least disingenuous, if not worse.
The whole thing with the cuckoo is that it’s a useful label for people engaging into a certain political behaviour dammit. This is clear by context, if you actually bother to read the OP.
[In the line of what I proposed, I am disengaging. While the user above is not behaving like a cuckoo, I have little to no patience towards assumers putting words into the others’ mouths.]
Jesus Christ. I said what I said in the worry that you were suggesting fallacies were clear verdicts, and responded in order to defuse that possibility for both yourself (if it was indeed there) and, crucially, for anyone else reading. I wasn’t trying to annihilate your character.
But I don’t think anything I can do here anymore is worth doing, now. If this is what I get for trying to encourage sympathetic behavior, I’m just not going to participate at all.
This is incredibly hurtful. Goodbye.
I’m not an american (but anti-electoral nonetheless), and I do get the critique and think it is perfectly valid if one views things through liberal framework - vote for the lesser evil, minimize suffering, not voting is letting the bad candidate on getting the upper hand, etc.
However, this isn’t an objective position but an ideological one, as it operates within lesser-evilism, coalitionism within capitalist institutions and having a definition of “the left” that generalizes them to essentially having to be “pro-democracy somewhat progressive liberals”, and any deviation makes them into a troll or a right winger or something like that.
What is important to realize is that most leftists aren’t liberals - in fact, many leftists, particularly Marxists, view elections as:
-
A way to legitimize the class rule that leads into passivity among the working class who are being ruled over, essentially recognizing that this “tool that we are given” is just an illusion and leads to neutralization of worker power,
-
Enabling of ‘capitalist-tribalism’ in the form of “which capitalist manager do you support” which is seen in US through party loyalty and basically disarming the working class from realizing their own interests.
Essentially, their goal isn’t to just “vote for the lesser evil” or “achieve the maximum good through the means we’re given” but to abolish the system entirely, and electorialism/voting is counter-productive in that regard due to legitimizing effect that it has that I mentioned previously. This does go against the “liberal left” and their goals, and being on the same political wing does not automatically mean there’s an alliance or shared goals, nor does it mean that two positions aren’t going to have antagonistic goals.
Besides, why blame the left for the electoral failure who abstained from voting? Why not blame MAGA for voting in an enemy that goes against your interests (as in, people who have actually voted)?
EDIT: Reading some of the comments over here, and what the fuck. Automatically labeling people as bots or trolls for daring to commit the crime of ‘wrongthink’ is definitely dehumanizing and the most toxic I’ve seen beehaw be. It’s fine to disagree, it’s fine to choose not to engage, but making a post calling a certain somewhat niche political position out, having people such as myself try and explain that this position is more complicated, then going full on “nah I’m right, you’re wrong, everyone who disagrees is now blocked and also not human or Russian/Chinese agents” is genuinely loser behavior to put it bluntly, especially on a “Chat” community where discussion is expected.
There just isn’t that kind of leftist discourse in America. If there are communists here, I’ve never met one in real life, and I live in a very progressive region. Lemmy has been my first real exposure to anything further left of democratic socialism. I’m not sure why non-Americans are so continually surprised that we use “liberal” framework to discuss politics (that word means something completely different to us than it does to you). It would be great if the far right didn’t keep moving us to the right, but that’s the situation we live in. As capitalism fails, more people are waking up to the class struggle, but you can’t just change a whole country’s political paradigm overnight.
Honestly, this applies to EU too. There are still communists out there in real world (mostly found in university groups, labor unions or just some very niche book clubs), but way fewer than when compared to 20th century thanks to the efforts of red scare, the hellscape of “socialist” regimes, etc. There’s also the fact that if you want to be a communist, you need to go way out of your way to seek the theory and groups and actually study rather than having the ideology imposed onto you (but exceptions apply, like how Marxism-Leninism and Maoism can definitely be cultish).
Also, “liberal framework” in my comment was referring to viewing politics as choosing between good or bad, treating the system as being a fair, neutral arbiter, and it’s how majority view electorialism since that’s what is imposed onto us. Doesn’t really have to do anything with progressives being referred to as liberals in the US, but just taking liberal democracy at its face value.
I agree with the concept that electoral politics will not bring us the change we want but disagree with the notion that it isn’t beneficial to vote for lesser evil.
We exist in both paradigms. The worse evil does directly impact our lives, this isn’t debatable especially with Trump, so it makes sense to vote for lesser evil. Leftists are correct the lesser evil voting does not change the status quo (ratchet theory) but I view it as incorrect for leftists to moralize the act of voting to the point that if you vote you are not a leftist
It’s a tool and revolution is easier when you aren’t under threat of being sent to a concentration camp. These are issues of tactics not virtue
In addition to that:
A proletariat that keeps disempowering itself is a proletariat unable to fight in an eventual revolution. And fascism is all about disempowering the masses.
So sometimes you need to bite into the sour apple and vote, even if this means voting in an absolute clown against someone who’s a clown and a fascist, and in the process playing along a system that is utterly corrupt and made to enforce the elites are kept in place.
-
I like to point out that Frederick Douglas worked for Lincoln even when Lincoln was not running on ending slavery.
It’s amazing how many people on the ‘Left’ think that Douglas was a traitor to his principles.
When the bring out the MLK letter from Birmingham Jail, I point out that King never explicitly supported LGBTQIA+ rights, even though one of his most important aides was gay. Suddenly, understanding the historic situation becomes important.
Douglas spent the majority of Lincoln’s presidency mercilessly and publicly attacking him - claiming he was ‘working for him’ is not only fairly disingenuous but an extremely odd way to characterize their relationship
Idk what your point is with LfB but that letter absolutely slaps.
He attacked Lincoln after helping him get elected. Almost as if a War breaking out changed things.
… You have that backwards. Edit: it’s possible that you’re referring to Lincoln’s campaign for reelection, but that was still 4 years after the start of the civil war.
If you’re actively curious and not just using this selectively to support your own stances on current events, here’s a pretty good resource that describes the bigger picture of their relationship
Douglass opposed Lincoln both when he was a candidate and through most of the beginning of his term as president. Lincoln was, at first, a supporter of the American Colonization plan - which was a belief of some white abolitionists that blacks and whites could not live peacefully with each other, so they sought to emigrate the freed slaves to colonies in Africa. Douglass was justified in detesting that plan and condemning Lincoln’s support of it. Douglass went as far as to say of Lincoln’s presidency that he “has resolved that no good shall come to the Negro from this war.”
I think there’s ample reason to think that Lincoln’s shift in perspective by the end of the civil war was a direct result of Douglass’s influence, but by no measure does anyone on ‘the left’ think of Douglass as a traitor to his morals. He was a patriot who fought tooth-and-nail for what was right, even in the face of compromise presented as ‘progress’.
Your own link shows that Douglas campaigned for Lincoln.
Check my edit. He campaigned for him after his first term (through which he actively opposed him), and only really saw him as an ally after the first 3 years through the civil war (and after Lincoln’s own perspective had shifted).
Edit: keep in mind that Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation January 1st of 63, before Douglass had any interest in campaigning for him. He had literally already abolished slavery before Douglass threw his hat in for him
Leading up to the 1860 election, Frederick Douglass was conflicted about who to support. David W. Blight argues in “Frederick Douglass” that the activist saw Republicans not as true opponents to slavery but rather as just opposed to the power that enslavers could wield politically. Still, he saw supporting the Republicans as his only real option because they at least “humbled the slave power” and fought against it as an institution. Douglass expressed a willingness to work with the Republicans even though he was disappointed by their overall platform. He wrote an article a few months before the election that was positive toward Lincoln.
In the months leading up to the election, Douglass continued to stump for Abraham Lincoln by giving many speeches, and he was involved in other campaigns, like trying to abolish the racist $250 property requirement for Black voters in New York (per Blight). He also worked as a recruiter, getting Black soldiers to join the war effort. A month after the election, Douglass wrote an article in his newspaper, “Douglass’ Monthly,” in which he stated the nomination of Lincoln "demonstrated the possibility of electing … an anti-slavery reputation to the Presidency of the
I had to go and pull out my copy of Blight’s book on Douglass, because it had been a while but I remembered that section of the book differently.
The whole passage is expressing a sentiment very different from the one that ‘Grunge’ article is representing - without transcribing that whole section i’ll just quote the last little bit that summarizes his summer leading up to the election:
spoiler
On July 2 [after his apparent June indication of support for the Republicans], he wrote in a confused tone to Gerrit Smith, who struggled with a mental breakdown in the wake of Harpers Ferry. “I cannot support Lincoln,” Douglass asserted, “but whether there is life enough in the Abolitionists [Radical Abolition Party] to name a candidate, I cannot say. I shall look to your letter for light on the pathway of duty.” Then in August Douglass wrote in the Monthly that the “vital element” of the Republican Party was its “antislavery sentiment.” “Nothing is plainer,” Douglass argued, “than that the Republican party has its source in the old Liberty party.” It would live or die, he contended, “as the abolition sentiment of the country flourishes or fades.” Vexed by his commitments to moral principle and political action, Douglass announced that he would vote for what historian Richard Sewell rightly called the remnant of Gerrit Smith’s “miniscule” radical party, while assiduously working for Lincoln’s election.
The comparison is not quite as clear as I think you’d like, since Douglass’s tentative ‘support’ of Lincoln was motivated by a desire to bring the north and south closer to outright conflict, not as a way of picking a lesser evil or mitigating harm. I’d say Douglass’s sentiment is more in-line with current-day pro-palestinian activists, who acknowledge the political calculus of a moderately-favorable party against an outright hostile one, but who publicly oppose voting for them themselves. He’d be in that same ‘protest-vote’ pool that most people here keep complaining about. I’m actually lightly amused by this apparent reversal, since today it’s more common to find people who say ‘i will vote for democrats’ but then actively campaign against them, but again I think the comparison is strained.
Either way, trying to argue that Douglass ‘worked for Lincoln’ is still incredibly misleading at best, and clearly a liberal self-centeredness that he (and most other black civil rights activists in our history) actively loathed and berated:
Americans, Douglass believed, instinctively and culturally watched history and preferred not to act in it. Douglass summed up his bitter complaint as “this terrible paradox of passing history” rooted in a distinctively American selfishness. “Whoever levies a tax upon our Bohea or Young Hyson [two forms of Chinese tea], will find the whole land blazing with patriotism and bristling with bayonets.” If some foreign power tried to “impress a few Yankee sailors,” Americans would go “fight like heroes.” Douglass fashioned a withering chastisement of American self-centeredness that would match any modern complaint about the culture’s hyperindividualism. “Millions of a foreign race may be stolen from their homes, and reduced to hopeless and inhuman bondage among us,” he complained, “and we either approve the deed, or protest as gently as ‘sucking doves.’ ” His “wickedly selfish” Americans loved to celebrate their “own heritage, and on this condition are content to see others crushed in our midst.” They lived by the “philosophy of Cain,” ready with their bluntly evil answer to the famous question “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Douglass’s use of the Cain and Abel parable is all the more telling if we remember that, unlike the more sentimental ways the “brother’s keeper” language is often employed today, Cain had just killed his brother, and to God’s query as to Abel’s fate, Cain replies in effect, why should I care? Douglass wanted the indifferent Americans, with blood on their hands as well, to read on further in Genesis and know Cain’s fate as “a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth.”
Doubtless he wouldn’t have seen as much in the way of redeeming qualities in Biden or Harris, since far from Lincoln’s willingness to engage the south (for the wrong reasons in Douglass’s mind), Biden repeatedly cowered away from confronting Israel’s antagonism and actively sheltered them from consequence. But then again I think neither of us can do more than speculate as to what he’d think of us more than 170 years later.
Misdirection is a good one too! You’re off topic m8
Stupid thing is that it’s the humanity and empathy of the left that is both the draw and the weakness of the movement.
Conservatives can come into leftist discourse spaces and either pose as the extreme leftists you describe, or even just the more reasonable end of the conservatives (non facist/maga types, rare as they are any more) an they’ll be engaged with in good faith. Since they’re ultimately not there for a proper discussion though it results in nothing more than creating chaos and arguments
Liberal/leftists who walk into conservative spaces are greeted with scorn and derision, treated as lunatics from the start not worth listening to. Since the left would generally be coming in with honest intent though at best they waste their time shouting into an established echo chamber, or worse get convinced that there’s a good middle ground to work towards.
Absolutely. Conservatives have, unfortunately, sailed straight past us on political effectiveness in recent years. We’re spending our time wringing our hands about doing the right thing and cajoling one another into doing the same. Unfortunately in a lot of cases modern leftism favors atomizing based on who a particular segment sees as having sufficient moral purity over solidarity. Meanwhile, conservatives don’t really care about much of anything other than maintaining a socially conservative status quo. They’ll even let people they hate pretend to be part of the club if they debase themselves enough to be politically useful. At the same time, they’ll viciously attack anyone who isn’t politically useful to them.
I’m not saying we ought to abandon our principles or start viciously attacking anyone who doesn’t toe the line of being politically useful, but we need to remember how to build coalitions and think strategically.
Since the left would generally be coming in with honest intent though at best they waste their time shouting into an established echo chamber, or worse get convinced that there’s a good middle ground to work towards.
I tried going to conservative spaces on Lemmy. The liberals wouldn’t allow any dialogue. Not the conservatives, the liberals.
liberals are conservatives. What we call conservatives are regressives.
I’d need some examples to get what you mean here. My experiences, both personal and simply observed, is that you can you can roughly split both conservatives and liberals into two sub-groups, although the distinction on the liberal side is a lot more fuzzy.
There’s the emotive/moralizing side that fight based on what they feel rather than any concrete justification. What’s right is decided simply by an assumption of how the world should work, either collaboratively or selfishly looking out for yourself only.
Then there are the logical logical arguments. On the conservative side these end up being a lot more in the form of ‘I am right, you need to prove otherwise’ while liberals (myself guilty of it as well) will go through these elaborate deliberations backing one point with another and somehow hoping to convince these people who have already decided they’re right of their error.
If you’ve ever tried beating your head into a brick wall you might recognize the feeling that last one, but it’s hardly an obstruction to dialogue, just a frustration of trying to engage rationally with largely irrational beings.
I’ve deleted my comment because I’m not willing to search “third party” and “Democrats” and post threads. I drove the friend in bad health to do some errands in their car, and after arguing with them about it until mid-afternoon, drove them to the ER, and they are now in ICU so I’m pretty much ignoring things I could and/or should be doing while sort-of processing this in the bg, and awaiting further information. Believe what you want.
deleted by creator
- Claiming to be leftists
- Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
- Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
- Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is “to the left of them”
- Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system
- Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism
Except for the one example you listed that I omitted here, you’ve just described, like, at least 1/3 of Lemmy, maybe more.
The obvious ones I blocked long ago. There were some I didn’t block, but a good chunk of those up and disappeared right after the election in November, so that was not suspicious at all.
Frankly, I’m just about done with anything “political” on social media and am just going to start employing keyword filters. I’ll just have to find some other void to shout into when I need an outlet lol.
Yep. It’s a damn mess.
I don’t claim to know how to make them be honest about their motivations or, in the case of those few who are genuinely being taken in by this garbage, wake the hell up and realize what they’re throwing away. But I know that having the idea out there in the open in a digestible way can at least help some people get a better view of what’s going on. Maybe they’ll follow suit and block some of the worst ones. Maybe they’ll rely less on social media for their perspectives on the world and realize that Lemmy isn’t the exception to its toxicity just because it’s open source.
We need to be more aware of them than we have been, though, because it’s getting worse.
I just don’t know a good way to deal with that, TBH. I wish I did.
how to make them be honest about their motivations
It’s tough. If I get a funny feeling about an account and think they might be a concern troll (I think that’s the term that applies here; if not, someone please correct me. I think “false ally” is a sub-class of that, but I’m shooting from the hip here),
I’ll typically look back through their history, try to put things in context, and get a feel from there. The ones I blocked were pretty much all one-trick ponies, so that was easy (though tedious as it took a while “vetting” each one).
The problem there is, yes, you’ve identified that person. But everyone else needs to do the same legwork and come to the same conclusion. You can’t just put up a sign that says “Troll” lol. Depending on the community/instance, you could report them, but that often puts mods in a sticky situation because they usually don’t want to suppress anyone’s viewpoint as long as it’s not violating any rules.
or, in the case of those few who are genuinely being taken in by this garbage
That’s even tougher. First, you have to figure out if they’re the troll or the one who was trolled (troll-ee lol?) . And one, very rightfully, can’t /shouldn’t just start calling people trolls or shills. For one, they might be the troll-ee; going out of the gate with name-calling and accusations is definitely not the way to convince them to re-evaluate their views. For another, it just sets a bad tone and gives the impression that “everyone who disagrees with me is a troll”.
But sometimes they are. What do you do then?
Wish I had an answer that didn’t involve writing multiple theses on a number of topics as they try to sealion me into submission lol.
So, everyone actually doesn’t have to do the same legwork. If most of the posters in a community block someone, that person won’t be able to post in most of the threads in that community and won’t get the engagement they’re looking for.
Whether they’re trolls or whether they’re useful idiots, I say block them. Not only that, actively encourage others to do the same. If we take to blocking these people on sight the moment they start spouting this bullshit, they very quickly will see threads full of “# additional responses” that they can’t actually see or respond to.
In some cases it might actually be worth reporting them, too. A lot of them go well beyond the rules of the communities they’re engaging with, but I’ve also seen at least one instance where a very prominent cuckoo-poster got chased off the instance by the staff. He was basically told to knock it off or leave and he chose the latter. Good riddance.
Don’t the people you block still see your posts?
I’m under the impression that they can’t reply to them directly.
They can still reply, you just won’t see them or get a notification.
So there is a bit of FOMO to get over when blocking, but it’s not too bad. Kind of like realizing you have no control over what people say behind your back. I’m just like, “If I cared what they had to say, I wouldn’t have blocked them in the first place”
Oh. Welp. At least it reduces their engagement.
Ah, yet another long post by a white democrat who thinks they’re a leftist and shouldn’t be questioned.
EDIT: come join us while we make fun of you: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/43337677
Ah, yet another comment by a doomer wannabe Marxist that thinks giving up and letting the fascists kill everybody is preferable to working with people who only share 90% of your ideals
First of all, Marxist is only an insult if you’re MAGA or right-wing, so way to tell on yourself. Second, I’m an anarchist, notice the instance. Third, democrats are a right-of-center party, you share at best maybe a third of my ideals. And forth, I don’t vote for people who sit at the table with literal nazis. That’s what your party is doing right now. So save the self-righteousness for when you lot aren’t actively working with fascists to end democracy.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
There are an awful lot of unsubstantiated claims being made in this thread, especially wrt what these supposed maga-bot/trolls all claim or do.
If the post contained any actual examples of comments that OP believes are either bots or trolls, it might be possible to actually analyze whether their assumptions and claims have validity.
As it stands, however, making broad insinuations about the ill intentions of anyone who disagrees with you is not very Nice, and is certainly not Assuming Good Faith.
The mods here are very active, and very capable. We don’t need people starting witch hunts here to “root out the fake Leftists”, and based on OP and some others’ reactions in this thread, that’s clearly what’s happening here.
I’m specifically talking about an exploitable vector that can be taken advantage by any number of people or organizations, so it’s not really about particular users. There are examples, to be sure, but pointing them out or accusing them of working for anyone in particular would be counter-productive. Not only would it distract from the subject at hand, but they can literally make an infinite number of sock-puppets so it doesn’t really matter unless you feel like playing an absolutely exhausting and fruitless game of whack-a-mole.
I’m seeking to illustrate the behavioral pattern, the weakness that it exploits, and the damage it can do, which I expect to have much more efficacious results.
This is not talking about an attack vector in the abstract. You and Philip directly asserted that users in this post are part of this group, and even went on a little self-congratulatory rabbit-hole trek deciding that they’re probably AI as well.
There are examples, to be sure, but pointing them out or accusing them of working for anyone in particular would be counter-productive.
You already did that, the second you asserted that some people here in this thread are part of this group. Hiding behind, “oh, I’ll say they’re here in this thread, which means their usernames are here to see and speculate upon, but I won’t explicitly name them in my comment, so I can pretend that this is only abstract discussion” is just being evasive.
I’m seeking to illustrate the behavioral pattern, the weakness that it exploits, and the damage it can do, which I expect to have much more efficacious results.
You’re using terms like “behavioral pattern” to lend your post an air of scientific truth, but this is literally nothing more than rank aspersion. The list of behavior you laid out is rife with strawman positions and imprecise, improvable propositions.
How precisely do you define “Dedicating most of their posting to dismantling any power possessed by the left”. “Most” is a vague, moving target. What qualifies as “dismantling… power possessed by the left”? That’s an assertion of outcome, so are you asserting that you have some evidence tying posts here to a reduction in Leftist political power? Obviously not, but it’s a useful claim to use for attacks since you’re now working off a much worse impact than just political disagreement.
You haven’t shown any damage, but you certainly seem happy to use the mere claim of damage and “abstract discussion”, to call for direct exclusion or expulsion of people from Left spaces.
That’s why this is a witch hunt, and not an appeal for moderation rule changes.
What this thread demonstrates to me,
notmore and more clearly, is:https://www.theroot.com/in-his-own-words-martin-luther-king-jr-on-white-privi-1831933703
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.”
It applies to third party voters and our valid criticisms of the Democratic party, as well.
If the post contained any actual examples of comments that OP believes are either bots or trolls, it might be possible to actually analyze whether their assumptions and claims have validity.
We don’t need people starting witch hunts here to “root out the fake Leftists”
These are contradictory statements.
I won’t identify anyone who is claimed to be an example, specifically because of the valid concern raised in the second quote. I will say that the two examples that come most clearly to mind for the proof requested in the first quote are two people who are in that category of “talks CONSTANTLY about how voting for Democrats would be a terrible thing that no self-respecting leftist would EVER do for any reason”, who also claimed to be American, who also made mistakes that no American would make. One of them used non-American characters to punctuate a number, and then when it was pointed out they got confused and didn’t understand what people were pointing out that was weird about their number. Another claimed that they employed a bunch of people and paid them all $250k per year (and, again, seemed not to understand that this was a wild thing to claim when people pointed it out ).
Is that proof positive that those people are working for the Russians? No, not really. Is it “beyond a reasonable doubt” that they are working for someone? Yes, to me. Certainly in conjunction with all the other circumstantial evidence about the way they behave. You use the standard straw man of “anyone who disagrees with you” being put in this category, but that is not at all what’s happening here. I disagree with people on Lemmy constantly and I very rarely think that this is what’s going on. However when I run into a very particular confluence of factors and ways of behaving, I start to think that the person might be a paid propaganda account.
But regardless of that, talking about the problem in general is surely okay. Your implicit threat to have the mods shut us all down is a waste of time. Talk to the mods (I am sure that some people have), tell them about the post, let them do what they’re doing to do. This is 100% an active and important problem on the Fediverse and talking about it is no kind of bad faith. I do actually, halfway, agree that singling out any particular user to accuse, could be a problem even if you’re extremely sure. But that’s not what this is.
But regardless of that, talking about the problem in general is surely okay.
This is you directly asserting that people in this post are part of OP’s supposed group. This is and clearly never was just talking about the problem in the abstract.
These are contradictory statements.
I was not calling for OP to call people out, I was pointing out that their choosing not to do so meant that there was no way to repudiate the assertions. If someone who fits your supposed ‘pattern’ proves they’re not in fact a bot/ troll/ AI/ etc, you can just claim they clearly weren’t who you were talking about. It’s a set up for a No True Scotsman argument.
You use the standard straw man of “anyone who disagrees with you” being put in this category, but that is not at all what’s happening here. I disagree with people on Lemmy constantly and I very rarely think that this is what’s going on. However when I run into a very particular confluence of factors and ways of behaving, I start to think that the person might be a paid propaganda account.
Which is all well and good to claim, except that both OP and you clearly think some of those people are in this thread, based on your own comments, and many of the people disagreeing with OP here, I haven’t seen around much on BH, and none of their comments in here are doing the behaviors OP describes. That doesn’t look to me like “a very particular confluence of factors and ways of behaving”, it looks like you’re absolutely just using this as a broad net to attack people who disagree with you.
This is and clearly never was just talking about the problem in the abstract.
Sure it is. “There are people in these comments who are in the grouping I’m talking about” is quite similar to “there are people on Lemmy who are in the grouping I’m talking about.” In both cases, we’re talking about the problem without starting an unproductive and maybe-totally-wrong accusation against any single specific person.
none of their comments in here are doing the behaviors OP describes
Again, I don’t really want to single out any specific person, since there’s no way to be completely sure and there’s so much overlap between someone who is doing propaganda and simply someone who is arguing in bad faith. And what’s the point of starting the big argument that will surely ensue. I will say, though, that there is someone in these comments who I replied to who is exhibiting some of the behaviors OP described pretty much to a T.
That doesn’t look to me like “a very particular confluence of factors and ways of behaving”, it looks like you’re absolutely just using this as a broad net to attack people who disagree with you.
Look through my history. How many times (for whatever timeframe you have time and inclination for) have I disagreed with someone, and how many of those times have I chosen to “attack” them in this way?
I actually agree with some of the people who I believe are these accounts, on some things. They tend to be stridently pro-Palestinian for example, which I think is a way to give themselves cover. Actually one of the tells of those accounts is that they will sometimes accuse others of not being pro-Palestinian, and being rabidly pro-Israel, which as far as I can tell no one on Lemmy is. There are specific useful reasons why I think they are making that accusation, but if I were just doing this as a way of disagreeing with people, why would I take some person who is making a pro-Palestinian point which I completely agree with, and decide that they are a propaganda account just so I can “attack” the viewpoint I agree with? That doesn’t make any sense. That’s an example of what I’m talking about with “ways of behaving” that are separate from the viewpoint, without needing to accuse any specific person to explain myself.
I can’t make you agree with OP, and of course you are not required to. But you seem to be extremely persistent, here, in interpreting something OP is saying which has some widespread agreement as obviously that they are saying some other, different thing.
So now you’ve shifted from “you got them riled up”, to “there’s one specific person in these comments”. Thank you for proving my point about moving targets.
And before you try to claim you were using ‘them’ in the singular, your next comment was “They all speak sort of similarly to each other, too.”.
“There are people in these comments who are in the grouping I’m talking about” is quite similar to “there are people on Lemmy…"
“There are people in this room who are bad” is quite similar to “there are people in this country…”
Look through my history. How many times (for whatever timeframe you have time and inclination for) have I disagreed with someone, and how many of those times have I chosen to “attack” them in this way?
This is a red herring. OP is calling for people to exclude and block in order to box out political disagreements from being visible, not respond with attacking comments. I can’t see your blocklist, so I can’t see who you are ‘attacking’ in this way.
But you seem to be extremely persistent, here, in interpreting something OP is saying which has some widespread agreement as obviously that they are saying some other, different thing.
You’ve run this line with me before, and against others (including in this thread). What exactly that OP said did I misrepresent?
So now you’ve shifted from “you got them riled up”, to “there’s one specific person in these comments”.
…
Surely you can see there is not a contradiction between “there are elephants in this room” and “let’s talk about one specific elephant in this room”?
“There are people in this room who are bad”
Dude, that’s how I see it. Sorry if that upsets you. Not sure what else I can say about it.
OP is calling for people to exclude and block in order to box out political disagreements from being visible, not respond with attacking comments.
I’m not OP. I actually don’t think blocking them is a good idea. I think disagreeing with them in a particular way, and talking about the problem in general to spread awareness, is the right answer.
As I keep repeating, the politics or the substance of the disagreement has nothing to do with it. It’s to do with a particular argumentation style.
I actually think you could make certain rules for communities that had nothing to do with calling out propaganda accounts, that would do quite a lot to address this problem, simply because the accounts I’m thinking of depend so heavily on certain types of bad-faith behaviors that are problems regardless of who’s doing them or why.
Would it make you more comfortable if I made a separate post calling out particular types of behavior that I think are a real problem, and then we could talk about that without needing to accuse anyone of doing it because they are propaganda? I can do that. That actually might be a better way to go, because there are surely non-propaganda accounts which would be in that category which we should be addressing, and then there is no risk of someone being “caught up in the net” so to speak when they are genuinely not doing propaganda.
What exactly that OP said did I misrepresent?
You said, more or less, that the issue is boxing out particular viewpoints. OP is clearly talking about behaviors and motivations (murky as that second one is to intuit), which is different. That’s the core of the misrepresentation.
Surely you can see there is not a contradiction between “there are elephants in this room” and “let’s talk about one specific elephant in this room”?
Dude, that’s how I see it. Sorry if that upsets you. Not sure what else I can say about it.
I’m not OP. I actually don’t think blocking them is a good idea. I think disagreeing with them in a particular way, and talking about the problem in general to spread awareness, is the right answer.
The problem is that all of these work together. You’re in OP’s post, agreeing with OP, making assertions that you see these ‘behaviors’, while never once previously disagreeing with OP’s remedy. Severing out of a key aspect of their post, in one comment, at the bottom of a long comment chain, while only expressing agreement elsewhere? I think it’s fair for me to say you are boosting OP’s position.
…calling out particular types of behavior that I think are a real problem, and then we could talk about that without needing to accuse anyone of doing it because they are propaganda?.. That actually might be a better way to go, because there are surely non-propaganda accounts which would be in that category which we should be addressing, and then there is no risk of someone being “caught up in the net” so to speak when they are genuinely not doing propaganda.
Yes, that would have been a good route, rather than just agreeing with OP and talking evasively about fellow commenters being bad.
You said, more or less, that the issue is boxing out particular viewpoints. OP is clearly talking about behaviors and motivations (murky as that second one is to intuit), which is different. That’s the core of the misrepresentation.
No, OP is most definitely attacking specific positions, not just behaviors. Here’s a position-agnostic version of their list:
- Claiming to be part of the target group
- Dedicating most of their posting to dismantling any power possessed by the target group
- Encouraging others not to vote or to vote for alternative candidates
- Highlighting issues with the target group as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the opposing group
- Attacking anyone who promotes defending their political power by claiming they are not true group members and that the attacker is “an actual member” of the group
- Using the group’s worst policies as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the parent political system
- Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism
These are generic behaviors that would make the post not specifically about a particular group of people that OP has an issue with.
The dead giveaway is the one I bolded, because OP’s version is specifying the Party itself, not simply the Left end of the political spectrum.
“Highlighting issues with Socialism as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Democratic party”, for example, would run afoul of my “behavior-only”, version, but not OP’s position-specific version, so the only logical conclusion (which the rest of their comments definitely support) is that OP would in fact not have an issue with the behavior in that instance.
I think @Thevenin has the right of this issue in both of their comments: https://beehaw.org/comment/4660421
I don’t believe doomer trolls are right-wing plants (though I acknowledge it’s a potential avenue of attack in the future). I don’t think they usually have ulterior accelerationist motives (though I have spoken with a few). I think for the most part, they’re just people who’ve given up, or otherwise mistaken cynicism for maturity, and seeing anyone else expressing optimism or trying to organize real-world resistance just pisses them off.
Side note: after our “discussion” a few weeks back, I went and read some of the interviews David Hogg has given since his Vice Chair win, and I’m pretty excited for how he’s talking about changing the DNC!
I’m glad I went back through this post and found this, because this part:
Severing out of a key aspect of their post, in one comment, at the bottom of a long comment chain, while only expressing agreement elsewhere?
Is exactly what happened to me with this user, right up until yesterday. He kept asserting something I disagreed with, to which I responded in detail, and then they’d explicitly say “i agree 100% why are you so upset?”, while reiterating nearly the same point but with some pretty important distinctions. It went back and forth for far longer than I care to admit, and then when I finally put a fine-enough point on it they disengaged with ‘aren’t I allowed to disagree?’ as if he hadn’t been repeatedly expressing nothing but agreement.
It’s been a while since I got baited like that, but if there were a agnostic behavior online I thought needed to be banned, it’d be this one exactly.
Unbelievably enraging, but also a bit insidious because to the outside observer it looks like they actually are in agreement, and then they go on to completely rewrite the perspective to match theirs as if it’s the no-brainer position (see? look, we’re agreeing). It is some absurd postmodern contemporary version of MLK’s white moderate.
What’s your reaction to these parts?:
I will say that the two examples that come most clearly to mind for the proof requested in the first quote are two people who are in that category of “talks CONSTANTLY about how voting for Democrats would be a terrible thing that no self-respecting leftist would EVER do for any reason”, who also claimed to be American, who also made mistakes that no American would make. One of them used non-American characters to punctuate a number, and then when it was pointed out they got confused and didn’t understand what people were pointing out that was weird about their number. Another claimed that they employed a bunch of people and paid them all $250k per year (and, again, seemed not to understand that this was a wild thing to claim when people pointed it out).
Actually one of the tells of those accounts is that they will sometimes accuse others of not being pro-Palestinian, and being rabidly pro-Israel, which as far as I can tell no one on Lemmy is. There are specific useful reasons why I think they are making that accusation, but if I were just doing this as a way of disagreeing with people, why would I take some person who is making a pro-Palestinian point which I completely agree with, and decide that they are a propaganda account just so I can “attack” the viewpoint I agree with?
Voluntarily disenfranchising yourself is complying in advance.
A broken tool still has its uses. A bent screwdriver can still be a prybar. A rusty sword can still kill, so don’t ask people to drop it before have something better. It is possible to explore and acknowledge the failures and limitations of a system – and to reduce overreliance on it – without abdicating all influence over it.
The Democratic Party is a disappointment. They follow popular (polled) opinion rather than sticking to principles, and that makes them vulnerable to Overton shifts. As public opinion towards trans people has been poisoned by the Jugendverderber libel, Democrats have largely thrown trans people under the bus instead of fighting back. Likewise, Democrats stick closely to corporate interests because money is power. These issues may never be fixable.
The solution to this is not to capitulate and discard what political influence we still hold.
The first half of the solution is to primary the hell out of Democrats. A left-wing caucus within the party could easily tilt things in our favor, just like the Freedom Caucus tilted the RNC in the opposite direction once before. Bernie Sanders (link) and David Hogg (link) are now spearheading multiple campaigns to do exactly that. Even if you have no faith in your ability to change the norms of the party, just think how much impact your resistance could have if you held an office, even a low one, even for just a week. Do you have any idea how much trouble a county clerk can make?
The second half of the solution is to build solidarity-based power structures outside government to reduce overreliance on a broken system. Economic desperation, social isolation, and cultural “other”-ing make people easy to exploit and oppress regardless of the type of government, so attack those problems directly. Unions, mutual aid networks, churches, you know the drill. Put in the legwork to find them in your area or your profession.
Embrace nuance. Embrace diversity – even political diversity. Political beliefs are not sacred, but the lives under those political systems are. Don’t try to reduce the vast complexity of politics to 120 characters. Don’t treat the ongoing wellbeing of human beings flippantly. If you think the problem is the existence of a state, then say so, but make your case for why making the state worse makes conditions for its subjects better. If you think voting third-party will teach the Democrats a lesson and drag them leftwards, then make your case and acknowledge the risks of what happens if you’re wrong.
Don’t just ridicule every positive effort you see. Doomer trolls (or cuckoos, if we’re going with that) are pithy, but reductive, and their criticism is never constructive.
This all day.
I think one if the big things that people miss is that while it may be the most prominent fights in the headlines, there are countless little fights going on all the time and they have a huge impact. They don’t make national news or sometimes even local news, but they still matter. It’s easy to dismiss them, but they still move the overton window and they still have a substantial impact on the day to day lives of people across the country. Every union steward in some small retail chain standing up to management makes an impact. Every judge who stands up for the rights of marginalized people makes an impact. Every city councilor who votes to fund programs for people in need. Every volunteer who shows up day after day to soup kitchens and food banks. Everybody who stops to give a few bucks to a person on the street. Everyone who sees someone struggling and takes the time to try to lift them up. Every advocate who spends their time helping people who are trying to find a way out of horrible situations.
The less visible stuff is much more wide-spread and makes a huge difference, maybe even more of a difference in many cases, than the big visible stuff.
It honestly drives me up a wall when people who seem like they never go out and connect with the real world around them spend so much time ranting about how everyone’s screwed and nobody’s doing anything about it. All they have to do is look outside or step outside themselves and lend someone, anyone a hand.
All they have to do is look outside or step outside themselves and lend someone, anyone a hand.
Touch grass, if you will.
I remember years ago watching a video – I desperately wish I could remember the channel – where the author shared his experience with depression and the early days of 4chan anime forums. He found it easier to browse forums about anime than to go out and actually watch them. Then the negativity piled in. That anime you like? “It’s shit.” Any hint of optimism or passion was an opportunity to get a rise out of someone or smugly ridicule them. The only unassailable belief was to doubt everything. The only winning move was not to care.
I’ve been thinking about that video a lot recently.
Online activism has led to a handful of noteworthy victories. But the ease of online activism has also made people (myself included) rely too much on it, and get disillusioned by it, as if we’ve forgotten that online activism is pointless unless it leads to real-world resistance.
I don’t believe doomer trolls are right-wing plants (though I acknowledge it’s a potential avenue of attack in the future). I don’t think they usually have ulterior accelerationist motives (though I have spoken with a few). I think for the most part, they’re just people who’ve given up, or otherwise mistaken cynicism for maturity, and seeing anyone else expressing optimism or trying to organize real-world resistance just pisses them off.
I don’t believe doomer trolls are right-wing plants (though I acknowledge it’s a potential avenue of attack in the future). I don’t think they usually have ulterior accelerationist motives (though I have spoken with a few). I think for the most part, they’re just people who’ve given up, or otherwise mistaken cynicism for maturity, and seeing anyone else expressing optimism or trying to organize real-world resistance just pisses them off.
This is the attitude I want to see. Believing people are psy-ops, or bots, or being evil on purpose — none of that is necessary and almost all of it is conspiratorial thinking. It’s the kind of thing the right thrives on, and it’s gross.
But this? Saying there are people who have real issues and real grief, and that it’s driving them to bad but genuinely held beliefs? That’s sympathetic, it’s understanding, and above all else it does not divide us. This is what we need more of.
I think that leftists generally have a hard time calling out people who argue in bad faith
We should genuinely be banning all tankies and accelerationists on sight. Allowing them to poison the debate to the extent they do really is our greatest flaw and the only real “leftist infighting” I’ve ever really come across.
Pretty sure leftist infighting is just a tankie dogwhistle at this point.
the only real “leftist infighting” I’ve ever really come across.
gestures wildly at the thread we’re in
I don’t think it’s just tankies doing it!
No. They’re all tankies or okay with tankies, which is more or less being a tankie. I recognize some of these users and many of them literally don’t believe in democracy and do stuff like defend the USSR etc. No leftist infighting here as usual, just people trying to push us to support their shitty little military regimes.
that has been my thought for years now, i feel like basically all the annoying and divisive things you see are just outright astroturfing
This is just Lemmy and the whole “leftist” influencer sphere (read: people who watch Hasan Piker and take him seriously).
I completely agree with everything you mention here but you’re going to make a lot of Lemmies very mad.
They aren’t open to real discourse and will literally ally with Republicans if it means they can take down Democrats.
I’m not sure about that. But we will absolutely vote third, if they offer a platform that doesn’t vote status quo or having no view record, advance a platform that offers us something tangible. If they betray us, we remember.
David Pacman?
I had more I wanted to say on this topic when I first read it, but at the time I also had more energy. Had I not had other obligations, I would’ve written out my more detailed thoughts then. As it is, however, I’ll have to settle for the (relative) shortform, as I find this thread exhausting from the outset and the sheer quantity of incredibly angry back-and-forth here has only made it worse.
To suffice the ideas of mine that I still remember, then:
- I have a feeling that while you may not consider me specifically to be a “cuckoo,” that this post was still partially aimed at people like myself, since I’ve spent a fair chunk of time arguing to the immense faults of the Democrat Party, some of which was in discussion with you.
- If the above is true, I feel dehumanized and find this topic incredibly depressing.
- Regardless of the above, I find jumping to assumptions of bad faith on the part of those with whom you disagree on this topic understandable, but needlessly conspiratorial.
But to end my comment, I’d like to point out an area on which you and I can find common ground: Your point of “Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism” suggests you feel that the people arguing against voting / the Democrat Party are doing a poor job of offering alternative solutions. On this, I agree. Solutions for that scenario are hard to come by and often complicated, and where people do have things to suggest a portion of them are very flawed; voting Green, not voting, and the occasional implicit suggestion for violence, etc. All of those have huge problems that I know I don’t need to explain to you.
For that, all I can say is that I agree that leftists can do better and should. I’ve seen the good suggestions before. Things like mutual aid, education, organizing, joining events — all of these are very useful things that are significantly more important than one vote in a broken electoral system. Unfortunately, as you’ve noticed, frustrated and angry people tend to be bad at mentioning these things.
I only ask that you consider that these people are frustrated, angry, and restless, rather than actively fake.
If you read down to my comments down below, you’ll find some examples of people doing specific fuck-ups that strongly indicate that they are non-American fake accounts, and not someone who is frustrated, angry, or restless.
I do think that a lot of people on far-left-Lemmy are in fact genuine accounts who also do the things OP is saying, and that maybe calling them fake accounts isn’t productive. I actually think fake accounts on Lemmy is also a huge problem, but the tells that I consider are a little different than the ones OP talks about.
For that, all I can say is that I agree that leftists can do better and should. I’ve seen the good suggestions before. Things like mutual aid, education, organizing, joining events — all of these are very useful things that are significantly more important than one vote in a broken electoral system.
Yes. Whether or not someone is fake, talking about those things constantly would be a much better (and also less suspicious) thing to talk about, as opposed to incessantly talking specifically about how important it is not to vote and not so much about those other things.
A lot of the accounts I’m talking about are still talking about how important it is not to vote for Democrats, and haven’t bothered to say more or less anything about joining the protests that are going on right now. Actually, I’ve seen a little scattering of the current generation of fake commenters who are talking about how dangerous the protests are, how some might be “false flags,” how we need to be careful or they’re going to sit this upcoming one out. Things like that.
just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn’t take advantage of it?
This is the same kind of argument that the tankies use to dismiss anyone who disagrees with them as a CIA plant. At least they name the CIA, you seem to be pointing to an even more ambiguous “they” that are out to get us. This is a conspiracy theory, dress it up all you want but your pointing to some ambiguous “they” and blaming them for your problems with no proof.
Occams razor is that they are leftists who hate the democratic party. They critique them more then the Republicans because the liberal side of lemmy covers that pretty well already, half the front page is shitting on trump right now. That’s good but at a certain point your beating a dead horse, everyone here already hates trump and thinks he’s bad, no point in reinforcing that past a point. A lot of people on here still have loyalty to the democratic party though that far exceeds the democrats loyalty to the left, so pointing that out can be effective and help change people’s minds instead of posting/commenting trump is hitler for the millionth time.
Your interpretation of Occam’s razor is that no one ever lies? Do you really think all human beings being honest about everything they say requires the least number of assumptions?
In a sense yes, people generally tell the truth more than they lie so the default assumption should be that someone is telling the truth, otherwise you enter into paranoia. That assumption can be broken when there is a clear gain from lying. Eg. You catch a thief outside the store they robbed they have a very clear reason to lie and say they were just walking by.
You’re explanation on why they’re lying isn’t very clear. First off, you fail to name who these people are and leave it ambiguous to let the person reading fill it in with their enemy (maga, nazis, russians etc.) just like every other conspiracy theory. Since the subject isn’t clear neither is the motive, you just sort of fill that in with "they hate the left, why do they hate the left? What are they gaining from convincing maybe a couple dozen liberals that the democrats suck on a very marginal social media? This isn’t the politburo for the comintern, there is barely any power on here to diffuse, so why put effort into doing so when there are far larger platforms to influence.
I’d like to draw a parallel to data security. Why make a strong password if nobody’s out there trying to break into accounts? Why secure your server’s ports if nobody’s going to attack them? Why take precautions against malicious collection of data to sell to third parties if we’re not sure who or how that data would be used?
These are behaviors that we don’t know the specific motivations for, we don’t know the individual bad actors in question or who they’re working for or what their specific plans are. But we know that if someone calls you claiming to be Geeksquad and tells you to go buy a bunch of gift cards to read to them over the phone, you’re being scammed. We know that if someone pretends to be a representative of a company and comes asking for your password, you shouldn’t trust them. We know that if certain kinds of traffic are spamming your ports looking for vulnerabilities, they don’t mean well.
Why? Because we are aware of the threat vector and can move to protect it before knowing the details of who in particular is planning on exploiting it. I don’t need to know specifically which hacker wants to break into my server to limit open ports. I don’t need to know who wants to steal my Steam account to know setting up 2fA is worthwhile.
Assuming good faith in bad actors is a vulnerability. The exploit vector is an attack on the political power of the left. I don’t need to know specifically who is behind it. I could speculate. Maybe it’s MAGA, maybe it’s Russia, maybe it’s some foreign bot-farm being hired by some other authoritarian regime, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that allowing the threat vector to remain open disempowers the left.
Why Lemmy? Why a small niche leftist platform rather than a larger platform?
Let’s say you’re a time traveler who hates punk music. What would be more effective to stop it before it starts? Sabotaging the planning for the Warped Tour in the 90s, or burning down CBGB in 1973?
CBGB was a small club at the time, barely notable at all. The Warped Tour, on the other hand, was a massive endeavor involving dozens of bands and thousands upon thousands of punk and ska fans. But if you know your history, you know that CBGB was a small venue with a massive impact on the American punk scene. It was a place where a lot of the bands that we know today got their start and came up. The Warped Tour, on the other hand, while probably influential on 90s teenagers who got to go see 20 bands in person for 20 bucks, was mostly just riding the wave of punk’s popularity and capitalizing it.
Targeting leftist spaces, especially small leftist spaces, could potentially be much more effective than targeting more general spaces. Lemmy in particular selects not only for leftists, but for anti-corporate, anti-establishment people with enough of an interest in tech and enough social media presence to jump on the bandwagon of a relatively unknown protocol just so they don’t have to rely on corporate social media. It has a barrier for entry that most of the public find to be either too daunting to bother to surmount, or that involves enough obscurity that they’re not even aware of it to begin with.
Beehaw in particular has human-vetted signups and even has a history of defederating with instances that have open sign-ups in order to be able to deal with moderation. A lot of that moderation is literally just contending with social conservatives who show up spouting racism, queerphobia, sexism, and ablism.
In other words, we are a small space that caters to a particular crowd of people well outside the mainstream politically, socially, and technologically. Small, niche spaces have a tremendous potential for resulting in wider-spread influence.
It’s not about convincing us that democrats suck. Most of us aren’t particularly happy with the democratic establishment anyway. It’s about demotivating us and frustrating our internal communications. It’s about trying to sabotage a potential locus for resistance.
And it isn’t just Lemmy. It isn’t even just the left that’s being targeted. We know social media is being used to pollute discourse and manipulate politics. We know there’s an artificial rightward push going on, and we know that it isn’t just the United States that’s being targeted with it. But anyone who wants to advance this artificial rightward push has a strong motivation to exploit any vulnerabilities that can be found in the US because of our position globally. Now that that position is crumbling, they have a strong motivation to make sure it doesn’t recover.
We have a responsibility to address that threat vector no matter who those parties are.
This isn’t data security though. In a cyber security context, yes paranoia is a valuable attribute. It can let you catch threats before they happen which is good.
In a political context though, paranoia, especially directed within the organization, is a corrosive and reactionary attribute. It divides and causes factionalism in political organization and brings energy away from making positive change and fighting the actual oppressors and puts that energy toward testing and purging your “allies”.
If a group out of power gives into paranoia and conspiracies they just divide into smaller and smaller factions who don’t trust each other and can’t work together to gain power. If a group in power gives in to paranoia, the majority group tends to start purging whoever they can claim are “fakes” conveniently along with everyone else they disagree with.
I can’t think of a single time in history where paranoia directed at secret enemies within has ever helped a progressive cause. Meanwhile I can name tons of instances where it destroyed a progressive cause, or at least it’s credibility and popularity: the reign of terror, stalins purges, mao’s cultural revolution, even in modern day Maduro loves to claim the CIA is out to get him.
It never helps the cause, it is just used as a way for the leaders of the group to offload any anger directed at the people in charge of the organization towards some, often imagined, sabotoeurs. Collectivization failing and causing mass starvation? Is it stalins fault?, no it’s the kulaks and the trotskyists sabotaging the revolution.
The democrats have failed us, twice now. Instead of recognizing there failure and changing tack they’re trying to direct anger at the enemy within, progressives and Palestinian activists who they claim are sabotaging the democratic chances and are probably agents of russia. Pelosi literally told a group of pro-palestinian activists protesting on her lawn to “go back to russia”.
We need to stop focusing on finding the “Russian assets in our midst” and focus on reforming the democratic party and defeating trumpism with a positive plan for change.
One disagreement. Dems have been failing us since FDR left office.
You’ve successfully clustered a bunch of trolls, time to block a bunch?
Maybe we want politicians who will actively work for us, economically as well as socially.
Sounds great. Vote them in.
I would love to see a push to the left in US politics and in the Democratic party. I voted for Sanders, and I think the kind of arguments he’s been making consistently for decades would be a great perspective to see gain traction. The rallies he’s been putting together with AOC and the responses he’s gotten at town halls even in very red districts have been encouraging.
I fully support primarying Democrat politicians who fail to offer real solutions. 100% get them the hell out of office and replace them with people who will reconnect the party with the people and fight for affordable housing, medicare for all, and living wages. Let’s chuck Schumer out on his ass.
But our approach needs to be viable. It won’t happen by splitting the vote. That’s just math. I don’t like first past the post, and I’d love to get rid of it at the first available opportunity, but it’s the system we’re working with right now.
You can’t play chess using only your knights because you like the way the horsey looks. You have to know what the pieces do and use them to their fullest extent. By all means, make your pawns into queens, but to do that you have to think about which moves you’re actually capable of making on the board.
So here’s the thing, on my state ballot last November, I had TVs corporate Democrat who votes with the Republicans half the time (the time it matters), and a new Dem who could or would not articulate a platform for or against anything. Bet I voted third.
So run for office or find a candidate who might and help them get to that position.
Voting for a third party, unless it’s in a small local election where they might actually have a shot, will do literally nothing but get us a Republican.
If you’re still sitting here in April of 2025 and saying that the Democrats are the same as the Republicans, though? Get the hell out of our nest.
stop saying this stupid shit about third parties. you could argue the same point for Conservatives who didn’t vote Trump. also which is it—are leftists so numerous they are a problem and ruin everything or are we small and useless and unimportant?
Pretty ironic that Millie here is concerned about insincere trolls, yet they come off as the biggest troll here. I have blocked them and I suggest any leftists here do the same.
It’s pretty fn hateful couches in “polite, concerned” language. Phillipthebucket is the wolf showing the snarl, millie is the smiling fox.
https://kbin.earth/m/chat@beehaw.org/t/1270160/Brood-Parasitism-in-Leftist-Politics/comment/6448892#entry-comment-6448892
There’s your answer.
no thanks lol
The corporate Dem won and is still voting the Republican agenda. 🤷♀️
ETA: I would need funds to campaign and a means of travel. I also lack experience but am willing to learn. Suggestions?
So run for office or find a candidate who might and help them get to that position.
This is literally 100% the answer. It could be within the Democratic party, it could be outside it, the details are details.
The point is that someone who comes up to you saying “I’m not voting for a DEMOCRAT, how could that ever help?” and also “I’m not voting! That will help, that’s the answer, you should too.” is definitely either lying or badly confused.
Like, yes, our system is corrupt and a lot of Democrats are a huge part of the problem. That won’t go away if you refuse to engage with it. It will get worse.
Again, it takes money and transportation. If one is a city dweller, transportation may be easier. Rurally, not so much.
“I would have overthrown the bourgeoisie, but I couldn’t find a ride.”
That’s pretty much it. Most of my rides have died due to preventable causes, and they were lifelong D voters. There’s one left and they’re not in great shape. The others are busy working several jobs and caring for children or elderly family members. We worked hard, even up to death, when jobs were available.
You see this comment? https://lemmy.world/comment/16774478
That’s the attitude that drives away voters. Now, I do have a degree of higher education and thanks to the internet and not arrogant users who helped me continue informally learning, I’d say I’m decently literate, and well-informed. And that attitude in that comment pretty much guarantees I’m probably not voting D again in my lifetime, unless someone really in touch comes to be on my local ballot. The attitude in that comment is what many disenfranchised D voters have gotten from the last five national election cycles. I’m absolutely not voting R for the rest of my life either, but HRC, Biden, Harris and all the Democrat candidates when there were primaries did not inspire hope, let alone confidence. Sanders did, until the DNC routed him out and he rolled over for them that cycle and the next. The last time before that was Kucinich and he had reservation-causing concerns, but I would have voted for him and many of my friends would have, too. I voted Obama, not because I thought he was better, bit that he was less odious. Never. Again. If Democrats really want our votes, let them earn them. Cavorting with war criminals and their daughters while ignoring issues important to me ain’t it. And for the record, socially left and economically right isn’t left. We crave leftist candidates, socially, ecologically, and economically. It’s our money, give it to us.
