Lemmy has a strong tendency to criticize the US, and a lot of the critiques of certain issue with the US are valid. However, I started getting really tired of opening comment sections in innocuous and non-political posts only to see that someone somehow found a way to criticize the US in it. At first, I started thinking that maybe some Lemmy users are really unhappy and find criticizing a something stronger helped them feel better as if standing up to injustice was a passion of theirs. But, we don’t see them do that with other targets, just the US. The more I notice and think about it, I’m starting be suspicious that some of those users and comments aren’t authentic, but made to create divisiveness in the West and reject the US entirely. In other words, they may be Russian, Chinese, et al. agents working to feed a stream of propaganda in order to further cause chaos and lack of unity in the West as we have seen them do before.
Anyone else think about this?
This is what I’m thinking the game plan is:
- Criticize something obviously unjust that the US has done. Ignore that all other major powers have also committed atrocities.
- Link and liken it to other US matters & behaviors
- Paint the US entirely as evil so that nothing the US can do is just
- Attack anyone that supports anything out of the US (we are between here and #3 above)
- Create a black-and-white model of geopolitics: US vs everyone else. EU and Russia on the same team lol
- West fragments as US and EU relationship dwindle from pseudo-populist movements (e.g. MAGA)
- Pick specific countries in the EU to start alienating and repeat the cycle
- ???
- Profit in special economic zones
Doesn’t matter to me what their reasons are. The pattern is clear. The pervasive sentiment is unrealistic, delusional, harmful for everyone involved, and misrepresentative of every real world population.
Thank you!
I honestly think there are definitely, if not bots, agents/feds that come on here and really push to radicalize people.
As someone who is generally pro-America, pro- capitalism and pro-liberalism (as in, classical, not today’s fucked version), it’s really interesting to converse with people who are just as crazy as the “God is King” types, just flipped on the modern versions of conspiracies and bad takes.
True, we’ve already seen that right wingers are paid off by Russia to spout about inflation and other brain rot. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnJ6Ttaiu9M ) And a lot of people who are from the US compare their country to EU countries and find glaring holes in their society, like a lack of socialised healthcare, streamlined government services, ect and rant about it like Lemmy is twitter. Keep in mind that because Lemmy is majority English speaking the vast majority of post will be about the US, because its the defacto empire of the 21st century. For me I go out of my way to include communities from my own culture so I’m not out of the loop. The kinds of people who post politics to !Menes are the same people who take the definition of “meme” literally, and suck to talk to at every party they attend.
There’s no evidence this happens on Lemmy though. You don’t need a conspiracy to explain the fact that the site was founded by people with a certain viewpoint and it has and continues to attract more such people as it grows.
I would say that there’s cross-section of users from different instances whose community have different expectations regarding netiquette. .ml or .grad users posting about how they hate america or (insert country here) is fine in their instance, but is annoying/insulting for other instances users. (.ml and grad are just examples and not exclusive to them.) There is no evidence of governmental interference for many reasons ranging from: its not actually happening, to, no one is looking for it, to, its too hard to detect. Imho most people are influenced by the ziteguist of opinion. And a little embellishment here and there on Twitter, is enough to spread the “general knowledge” that the world is so bad and there’s nothing we can do. Even better, platforms promote this content to drive more engagement making the general opinion even worse.
I would add that a lot of what Americans read as “criticism” can be explained by a heady combination of incredibly poor reading comprehension and a lifetime of being spoon-fed humour with a laugh-track.
The amount of angry, abusive reactions to posts that are clearly a joke is hilarious in itself and just makes us wind them up even more
There is plenty to criticize the US about, and I say that as an American. We sure as shit are very, very far from perfect. The same is true for every country to varying degrees.
That said, yeah, I’m still suspicious of it and you should be too. People are always being manipulated to act against their own self interest and it would be wise to stop and consider the message and where it’s coming from.
I honestly feel like Lemmy got considerably less vitriolic toward Americans after the election.
I used to think Lemmy was too insignificant for Russian influents, but I’m not sure anymore.
I’m American and the main reason I don’t aim the same criticism towards other countries is that I’m American and don’t know enough about them. Maybe some people are agitating for malign purposes, but how much does that matter to a responsible netizen? No one knows who anyone is - maybe idiot takes are made by idiots or bad actors, it doesn’t change much. Lastly, one quote stuck with me after the last election season : " the reactionary is always right about what is wrong but almost always wrong about what would be right"
Best take, honestly. It’s tribalism. People love to generalize and lean on prejudice to feel superior to a broad swath of people based on things largely out of their control. Which is exactly why the same approach also happens to work as propaganda.
The US bullies nearly every other nation on the planet, they also bully thier supposed friends. People have little option with a bully aside from vociferous push back.
You’re right that the US is strong, they way you deal with your disputes is violence, or implied violence.
Look at the ICC where they will hurt the judges becase they have an arrest warrant out for Netanyahu to investigate war crimes but were all ra ra when the Court did the same for Putin. The US has an invade the Hauge Act if the same court investigates any US citizens for war crimes
https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-becomes-law
Lemmy is more geographically diverse then many places online, so perhaps instead of taking umbrage, listen ?.
HALP: This social media platform that isn’t owned by a US corporation is not suppressing criticism of the US enough!
You can always go back to your safe space on Reddit or Facebook or whichever corpo US social media site.
A corporate owned platform is not going to expose you to viewpoints that are against its interests. Lemmy is more inline with the actual state of the world as you are talking to other humans.
Sure at times we many not like what we hear but that is ok. We all need to hear other viewpoints, it is how we grow. Its not a personal attack and if you think about it being critical of a government is good, people should want their government held accountable and working for the people.
It is also not about red vs blue or any of the other bullshit labels . None of that matters, you are more like the average Russian than your leaders. Most people just want to get on with their lives with as little bullshit as possible. As for loyalty to the nation, I like Einstein’s answer here.
Viereck: “Do you look upon yourself as a German or as a Jew?”
Einstein: “It is quite possible, to be both. I look upon myself as a man. Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.”
I am from Europe and I am highly critical of the US as they are a bully, They are not some moral do-gooders that the movies paint them as. They have military bases all over the place and have meddled with so many countries. They are an empire.
“The U.S. has engaged in nearly 400 military interventions between 1776 and 2023”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_United_States
As for the platform aspect, do you think Twitter or facebook and the rest have been a net positive for humanity ?
Sure there have been positives but there have been massive negatives such as
- the undermining of Democratic elections, brexit and trumps campaigns.
- things like xkeyscore where these companies in some cases collaborated with the NSA or if not the greed facilitated the collection of data.
- the algorithms that promote hate because it drives engagement, thus further driving a wedge in the fabric of society.
- we have seen governments pressure these companies to hand over data and they then arrest, torture or kill the users.
- things promoting US Interests are pushed such as the Arab spring but things against it such as occupy wall street or criticism of Israeli genocide is silenced or shadow banned.
- suicides from bullying
For the record I am critical of my own government too where it makes sense but they do not invade other countries.
I’m less worried about the anti-American tendencies than about the pro-Russian and pro-Chinese ones.
Because how could anyone support the country with a higher living standard than America changed in the time frame of one generation, right?
North Korea really is amazing isn’t it?
!If you don’t get it, North Korea allegedly is a wonderful place to live with very high living standards but obviously isn’t. Closed communication countries like China, North Korea, and increasingly Russia’s claims about “how good things are” must be taken with an absolute grain of salt. Unfortunately, this list could even come to include the United States soon given Trump’s desire to silence critics.!<
Your wasteful sarcasm aside, what China has done for its people economically and for standard of living is unbelievable. Continue your whataboutism though
I mean, if by those metrics alone you mean to tell that it’s a great country, 1940’s Germany must really appeal to you. After all they did an economic miracle no one thought possible and the standard of living of their citizens increased dramatically. Who cares that they murdered millions of people, those were not REAL citizens, right?..
Stop the lib whataboutism. The only response you can have when you hear China did something good right?
I’m not opposed to there being good stuff in China, but the economic miracle of China was built on top of slave labor and repression. It’s easy to get an economic miracle if you’re willing to sacrifice part of your population, which is why I have the Germany example since that’s exactly what was done there.
Overall China is getting better, and in a couple of generations they might be a relatively nice place to live, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that people there today are as free as people living in a democratic nation.
That may be true as long as you are on party line.
Bro thinks 1.1 billion people work for the government.
How is China is any way closed communication? Don’t answer.
Don’t answer.
Exactly, you’re getting it.
Don’t answer.
Because the CCP will come arrest you if you do?
Because they’re just dealing brain dead slop
The great firewall exists. They have to use euphemisms to get around the censors.
Yes that doesn’t equal closed. Tiktok is censored but a lot of recent US movements have spread via the app
If you can’t criticize authority I don’t find that to be an open Internet. TikTok doesn’t exist in China. Try to say Trans rights are human rights on Douyin and see what happens.
Try to say trans rights are human rights to any American official. Stop with the whataboutism, red scare, racism. Just say you’re stuck in the Cold War. Any liberal when you say anything about China positive acts like a child.
There are cases where they legitimately offer something better so they are viewed favorable. Especially China for some regional investments.
These are in my opinion good reasons and you have to ask yourself what the West can do better to change it.
We could always emulate China and start rounding up our minorities into camps and arresting any citizens who speak out. Would that be better?
Read a history book.
American here. When you elect a man—twice—whose character and policies have led to a fractured nation, a failing education system, crumbling infrastructure, and a healthcare system that leaves millions behind, it’s no surprise that the world views us with disdain. When your citizens are struggling to afford basic necessities like rent and groceries while a handful of individuals hoard wealth that rivals entire nations, we’ve earned every ounce of criticism.
Buckle up, because the descent into this nightmare is far from over. The worst is yet to come, and it’s going to be a long, suffocating fall.
Don’t forget one of our largest cities is currently on fire because of our own man made climate change that we are (I believe) the number one cause of, but those same leaders are telling us to shrug and say “who knows why”
strong tendency to criticize the US
The whole world has been criticizing the USA since I was born 50 years ago. All I remember is that their way of life is declining all the time, they lied to go to war with Irak, and now they elected Trump, which makes is worse.
someone somehow found a way to criticize the US in it
I can say the reverse. All the time I see Americans talking about the USA in conversations where it is not the topic. What do you think about this? Like someone made a pizza in a random Asian country, and the whole conversation will switch to how NY pizzas are the best.
they may be Russian, Chinese, et al. agents
You’re paranoid. It’s the internet, it’s global, everyone criticizes everyone else. As for causing chaos, you elected one of the most disgusting felon who exists, the chaos is already there.
Lemmy was founded to be where anti-American Americans would go after a lot of their subs were quarantined on Reddit.
That said, it has a major American focus because a lot of users are angry with the American system and don’t have a ton of experience with others directly. They’ve developed an echo chamber here and only got interrupted by the Reddit exodus.
I agree wholeheartedly. My assumption was that such behavior was simply a symptom of the relatively larger proportion of Europeans on this site, and their obvious jealousy and insecurity regarding Americans. I still believe that is the most likely explanation. To be clear, America has done hella dumb shit lately, and is deserving of criticism on many fronts. But what OP is referring to goes beyond that. It’s emotional animosity that overflows the bounds of reasonable criticism and targets individuals rather than governmental decisions or policies.
The number of times that I have seen people refer to the American contribution to WWII as cowardice, meaningless, etc, is too damn high. 400,000 Americans died in that war. Read a fucking history book you ignorant, insensitive fucks.
It’s certainly possible that there are agents in our midst sowing divisiveness, although unlikely. I don’t have any beef with any nationality, because I don’t judge people based on where they were born. That should be common sense, but it’s apparently difficult for some people to wrap their heads around.
You think Europeans are jealous of Americans? You couldn’t pay me to live there, especially with Trump in power.
Yes. America controls the world, and Europeans are salty about it. I didn’t even realize how salty until I started using Lemmy, but it’s incredibly obvious on here.
FWIW, I would be salty too. But you can also be mature about it and realize that the average American isn’t to blame for this reality.
No, stop, I can’t fucking breath… 🤣🤣🤣
their obvious jealousy and insecurity
don’t judge people based on where they were born
very difficult to wrap your head around isn’t it.
and their obvious jealousy and insecurity regarding Americans.
ba
ha
hahahah
hahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahha
Thanks, I haven’t had such a good hearty laugh in a long while… 😂😂😂
The lack of self awareness truly is fucking staggering.
Fucking clown.
