I can’t really think of a reason for that as Reddit is hated somewhat equally by “both” sides of the spectrum. It’s just something I find interesting.
Not really meaning for this to sound as arrogant as it’s going to, but… Lemmy is almost entirely populated by nerds so far.
Nerds tend to be open to tech, maybe a little smarter overall. You know? You can tell by the grammar, the spelling. It’s a different group here.
Reality is left leaning, and the stupider someone is, in general, the more likely they are to lean right politically. The rest of the right are the really rich, who tend to be up the psychological spectrum toward sociopathic, so of course they would have no time for caring for others’ needs.
Reality is left leaning
I know this was a joke Colbert made, but the truth is the reverse: the left is reality-leaning. It’s truly terrifying to see how divorced from reality the right-wing is, and how gleefully they just keep storming in that direction.
Reality is left leaning…
It really is. So much of conservatism involves pissing into the wind, and trying to argue against objective truth.
The super rich are usually highly educated but they live in such a homogenous bubble that they’re opinions on the majority of society should be entirely discounted. They usually have a total lack of empathy for people and vote for politicians with the same attitude. I have met some super rich people who try very hard to go against the grain and not fall into that mindset, but something about the need for protecting your money and lifestyle usually promotes an untrustworthy and skeptical view of everyone in their lives including their own family.
The political vibe on Lemmy isn’t really a new thing. Reddit had it 15 years ago. Good forums and IRC channels had it before that. It’s been part of the “golden age” of every online social medium
Eventually, teenage edgelords find start taking up too much space. Shortly after that, the far-right turn up to prey on them.
The people who made the platform good in the first place leave and the cycle begins anew.
To an extent. But whenever there is a political discussion on Hacker News, the lib right response is very, very loud, and I try to remind myself I appreciate Hacker News for its tech news.
I think the culture is just different. Lemmy was started and run by Tankies. Hacker News was started by Y Combinator, which incubates silicon valley startups. They’re going to attract different audiences, or at least different groups of people who will put up with different politics. I can’t claim to be particularly upset about the .ml domains being pulled and the center mass of Lemmy moving away from those instances.
What’s a tankie? I keep seeing it.
People who cheer when others point out flaws in USA but start screaming when flaws in Russia or China are pointed out.
I had to look it up too. Apparently it’s an authoritarian leftist. Thinks state-socialism was a good thing. As while most leftists are more of the democratic, market, and anarchist varieties.
State socialism is a good thing, what tankies promote is something else, they’re fascist that can’t accept that fact because it would mean having something in common with the fascists in the USA, a country that they hate so much that they’re ready to deny reality to have an anti USA opinion.
They’re authoritarian. Not fascist. There is a difference. Even if both groups are more dedicated to authoritarianism than anything else. I would not be caught dead voluntarily anywhere with a fascist. While I disagree heavily with ML communist I might associate with them a little bit. But just never give them power.
I’m confused, and you seem to be a lot more familiar with the term. I read the wiki link that explains tankies. I don’t personally know any left leaning people who support Russia/Stalin/China regimes. Maybe because of my America-centric viewpoint and where things are today, but typically people who are economically left are also socially and politically left (equal opportunity is more important than individual freedoms), which is very anti-fascist. I’ve heard people say how great a true communism could be if it were possible, but no one’s ever made it past a dictatorship to get there.
Are tankies people who are economically left but socially and politically right, and think someone has achieved a communist utopia without knowing anything about the corrupt oligarchies in Russia or CCP China?
The problem is not state socialism, it’s the authoritarian side of it. Tankies promote authoritarian views similar to fascists but with a different economics view (not even that different some times), hence they prefer the dictatorships like USSR (in these days even Putin, which is idiotic), North Korea, China; over what they perceive as imperialist, the USA (I agree on calling it imperialistic and disliking it, but not on considering it worse than dictatorships).
I’m a communist which likes state socialism, but what is and was present in those dictatorship (ignoring the authoritarian side which I despise) is state capitalism.
Thank you for taking the time to explain! I appreciate you!
Thanks for explaining for me, that’s exactly what I meant, I just didn’t have the time to reply!
The problem is not state socialism, it’s the authoritarian side of it
The communist utopia needs authoritarianism to work
The confusion comes from so much mass media that equates socialism with communism. They’re orthogonal concepts! Saying socialism is the same as communism is like saying beer-making is exactly the same as cheese-making. Anyone who understands what beer and cheese are would be like, “I’m sorry, what‽”
The best way to think of socialism is that’s it’s a governance strategy that can be used wherever you want. Want everyone to pay taxes in order to fund and deliver government-run firefighting services? That’s socialism. Want to do the same with the military? Socialism. Whenever the government is delivering some good or service by way of taxpayer dollars that’s socialism.
Capitalism and communism are economic systems. You can have socialist government constructs under either capitalism or communism. It’s just that communism doesn’t really have the flexibility to provide goods or services in any other way than via the government.
Then there’s countries like China that claim to be communist (and the Right loves to call them that) but really, they’re more capitalist than communist. What they do have that most communists and fascist governments have is authoritarianism.
That authoritarianism is what fascists and “tankies” have in common: Fascists support an authoritarian, pseudo-capitalist government while “tankies” support an authoritarian, pseudo-communist government.
I appreciate your break down on this, I feel like I get so confused with auth/fasc terms
people who support Russia/Stalin/China regimes.
Congratulations: That, and only that, is a tankie. It is a good practical defintion for the term.
Are tankies people who are economically left but socially and politically right
As I see it, tankies are just the same as the Trumpers. You can’t really say where they stand socially and politically, because they do not have a coherent opinion or ideology. Everyone who opposes their favorite regime is WRONG, and everything their favorite regime does is RIGHT. Bonus points for every action and opinion that hurts “woke lefties”, because the favorite regimes of tankies are all inevitably incompatible with progressive ideas and ideologies.
without knowing anything about the corrupt oligarchies in Russia or CCP China?
Imagine the answer a Trumper would give when you ask them if they don’t know about Trump’s corruption and character. The tankies answer just the same in response to allegations in regard to corruption and character of their favorite regimes:
First of all, none of that is true, because the woke lefties, the media, and everyone are all corrupt, and lying. And what is true, is all a well played move of brilliant 5D chess which will save us all, because the supposed “corruption” is actually all part of a very smart and deliberate system of ploys and strategems which the woke lefties just don’t understand.
Now, do the tankies and Trumpers truly believe that? Who knows. Doesn’t really matter anyway. What is clear is that both of those “ideologies” are dumb idiots.
Thanks for not leaving out the anarchists
I don’t think you understand how small of a global majority white European men are.
Basically authoritarian leftists that are caricaturized as worshipping the Soviet Union
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Are those groups right wing, or just centrists that don’t react well to people trying to push far left ideals in their spaces?
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It’s not the tech nerds funding the right wing; it’s the venture capitalists
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Those are CEOs.
There’s a huge contingent of socialist/leftist techies. How do you think the open source movement happened? The most popular operating system for both servers and smartphones is given away to the world by a .org
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I’m not saying there are no right-wing tech nerds, I’m saying that your argument that tech nerds are right wing is overly reductive.
You concede my point about FOSS but then try to muddy the waters from there by citing “their platforms started getting cracked down on and [their having] adopted cryptocurrency” to try to make your prior pidgeon-holing still work. Mind citing me a source for either of those claims? Neither of those seem to me to be issues plaguing the wider FOSS community, and as a participant I’m interested to hear about this news I’ve apparently missed.
Silicon Valley is not representative of tech nerds in general. It is, like Hollywood, a small area filled with desperate people trying to turn their talents into fame and fortune. Insinuating that tech nerds in general have the same culture as Silicon Valley is like insinuating that actors in general dress, act, and think like Hollywood actors do. It’s ridiculous on its face.
All this to say it really sounds like you’ve built up a stereotype based on what you read in the news rather than by engaging with the actual community in question.
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I wouldn’t call them nerds because they’re venture capitalists not nerds. Nerds implies some sort of technological or engineering skill or ability. Steve Jobs would qualify; not these two.
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Perfectly summed up.
Your username/instance combo is amazing. 10/10
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Theres a difference. While nerds are often book smart, we often have social difficulties.
Lol! I am totally a nerd
There’s been tons of right-leaning Reddit alternatives before, but they always quickly devolved into Nazi spaces.
Lemmy was the first one that I’m aware of, which told Nazis to fuck off right from the beginning.
They just have their own instance and are defederated by some but not all, which is the best solution as it means they stick to their part of the fediverse instead of hijacking subs that weren’t right leaning in the first place.
Yeah, right-wingers flock to “safe-spaces” as much as the far-left does. Lemmy doesn’t have the tools to make a single community isolated like they could on Reddit, so they have to go to their own instances and end up defederated.
The main differences between left-wing and right-wing communities is that the right-wing ones quickly deteriorate towards a lot of hate related things. This leads them to being isolated from the rest. The left wingers are mostly tolerable and are just over zealous in preaching things like forcing everyone to use pronouns, lmao.
And everybody wins!
I’m sorry but what is considered to be “Nazi” in this platform? I’ve seen even socialists being called Nazis
I do not speak for this platform, but what I mean with Nazis here, are people who support the exclusion, inhumane treatment or exploitation of arbitrary groups of people, generally for the Nazi’s (perceived) benefit and in spite of basic morals.
And what would exclusion, inhumane treatment and exploitation mean? It’s key to clearly define the concepts before applying the label to someone, as if they stay undefined everyone can have the label applied
Right, so another policy from the early days of Lemmy that I thought was quite vital: No endless discussions on what precisely constitutes Nazi behaviour.
It’s truly not hard to not be a Nazi. And if someone is even roughly in the ballpark of being a Nazi, the community as a whole just doesn’t care to have that person’s input here.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that I do not think, it’s relevant to clearly define these terms.
I’ve never had a productive conversation that started with “please define what counts as a Nazi for me”.
progression tends not to be conservative
I’m afraid future will be conservative nevertheless due to the simple fact that they’re the only ones making kids. I’m liberal myself but I don’t have kids and will never have so my traits don’t pass to the next generations. The conservative neighbours with 7 kids on the other hand…
But if that logic held wouldn’t religion tend to increase instead of decrease?
Yeah it probably will. We’ll see in the next few decades. Aging population and low birthrates are much bigger problems that most people realize. Increasingly small amount of workers has to cover the living costs of the increasing numbers of retirees.
Politics being genetic, of course.
What?
politics aren’t genetic, but they are obviously still inheritable
Is that controversial? Look around…
I don’t know. I think it depends more on where they grow up and who/what they’re exposed to (in person and online). At the high school I work at, we have a bunch of lgbtq+ teens whose conservative parents have no idea they’re queer or go by a different name. But I also don’t live somewhere like Wyoming with a much higher conservative population. I live in a college town in a (barely) blue county surrounded by red counties in an ultimately very blue state.
I hope we find a way to kill the online radical right pipeline and continue to expose more teens to other ideas, other cultures, and other ways of life, and maybe it won’t matter so much who their parents are.
Only if we can kill the online radical left pipeline too. Too many tankies
Lemmy is much less US-centric than Reddit.
IDK, seems like European right wing is considered left wing in USA.
So for most Americans, most Europeans are left wing.
Maybe lemmy has more Europeans?
I always hear people say that but I can’t figure out why; in some ways, Europe is more right wing (specifically anti-immigrant) than the US. Can you give any examples?
Nobody here is against healthcare for all.
Agreed, although many people claim that Britain is increasingly privatizing their healthcare. I suppose I’m just saying that the American right simply cares about different issues than the European right.
I was using that as an example, because it’s a pretty central point of the different mindsets.
It is literally like the right here is similar to the American left (liberals/democrats). Anything remotely like the Republicans would be not just extreme right, but VERY extreme right here. Here right wing Republicans are mostly viewed as somewhat insane, and there are almost no moderate republicans left, if the image we get from the media can be somewhat trusted.
And yes extreme right does exist, but the equivalent of the 50% rightwing (republicans) in USA, would probably only be 10% of the population in most of Europe.
The differences regard many things for instance the right here still believe in minority rights, healthcare for all, social benefits, environment, abortion rights (except Poland and Hungary), and many other issues. They were simply just too many to mention, so I found your question very strange.
For instance we have basically no climate change deniers here. We also don’t have nearly the same extreme Christian right here, that you do in the USA, libertarians are also rare, in USA it’s seens as sensible even moderate. Here it’s very extreme.
The anti immigrant popularity here has a few reasons. For instance we have many more muslims, and we don’t want muslims to become what the Christian right is in USA, also we have way higher social benefits, and we don’t want that system stressed and reduced in quality for the rest of us. Muslims haver a very poor adaptation rate. In USA emigrants basically have to adapt or die, they are contractually obligated to not receive benefits.
Still it seems to me the American right is at least as xenophobic as the European.
That’s fair, thank you for your detailed response.
Left and right are two stupid categories built up by propaganda, get them out of your head and start to think on your own terms
The main thing I don’t like about these categories is how they try to lump both moral and political issues into one group as either right or left. They’re two different things. Societies do legislate morality, but as far as defining a person’s overall views I think it’s a poor metric. Personally I have some left views politically, but some right views morally.
I think it can be expected people participating in the Fediverse are somewhat anti-capitalist. We come here to get away from corporate driven media. That being the case I think it’s not erroneous to say Lemmy is more left politically and I appreciate that. However that does not mean I agree with all left views. There are some moral issues I may not agree with, but I don’t engage since I’m not interested in debating morality in these forums.
This. There an infinite number of ideologies that you could have, but our first past the post voting system (in the US) only allows for two candidates, so an infinite spectrum gets funneled into two camps.
I think there’s a wide range of people on Lemmy too but the extreme right and extreme left have ended up on instances that have been defederated from the main group. So what you’re seeing are the sensible, rational people, and in America such people are considered left wing I guess 😉
Left wingers: “The right is full of neo-fascists who want to exploit natural resources, subjugate minorities, project their own pedophilia habits onto us, roll back the clock on women’s rights, and are willing to lie, cheat, beg, borrow, and steal to get it all done!”
Right wingers: “The left is ANNOYING!”
Also the left projects and makes shit up constantly. Hell, one of their favorite phrases “dog whistle” means “My opponent did not say X, but I want him to say X, so I’m going to pretend he said X”
You: “The left projects and makes shit up constantly!”
Also you: Proceeds to project and just make some shit up in the next goddamned sentence.
What did I make up? You can see @TrismegistusMx@lemmy.world use “dog whistle” in that exact fashion.
The problem with using the term “the left” (much like any board term) is that is definition is nebulous. Political leaning is relative to the reference ideals.
The point I’m getting at is that it’s imaterial to your issue, with this one person and while you have your right to be upset with them it’s a bad basis for an argument against a group especially one so ill defined.
I would argue that, in an informal and somewhat overvgeneralised sense, people do trend to the left and right sides. A person who hates abortion is more likely to be for gun rights, for example.
And in my experience, the people who use the term dog whistle tends to trend towards the left socially.
Just say you don’t understand what dog whistling is and move on
See that technique you just used is call “gaslighting.” A dogwhistle is when you say something that’s not exactly advocating for unspeakable ideas, but indicates that you hold those ideas and is intended to garner support. So when you said “Mohamed raped a 9 year old, and reddit doesn’t like that particular fact about that particular religion” you were dogwhistling to other islamophobes and hateful people the idea that all Muslims are child rapists.
Yeah but now you can just say that instead of actually talking about the subject. If it were any other time, you would say something like “there is no credible source that Aisha was 9 when they married” or “are you saying that christians didn’t historically marry 14 year-olds?” Or whatever other rebuttal you can have. And someone who doesn’t know anything about the subject who is reading this might be swayed to your position. If you just say “fuck off with this dogwhistle” people might not be convinced.
Oh, nice, dog whistle inception! I never said the “all Muslims are child rapists”, but you wanted me to have said “all Muslims are child rapists”, so you’re pretending I said “all Muslims are child rapists” anyway. And you claimed I was gas lighting, when it was you who was. Truly the shitty cherry on top.
No, what I really mean is Muslims worship a child rapist, which I thought was pretty clear.
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Newsflash: Words can have unspoken connotations that signal your politics to a group of people. We call that “dogwhistling”.
I wonder how much of that on Reddit is just bots and shills, ie corporations paying to create and upvote posts and comments that support their agenda
This actually makes a lot of sense. A lot of people are using Lemmy either because they prefer federated web platforms to centralized, which makes it antithetical to corporate interests, or because they’re opposed to Reddit’s API policy, which was a blatant move to squeeze more money out of their users. Either way, Lemmy’s appeal is very anti-capitalist, and since opposition to capitalism is a generally left-wing philosophy, I can totally see why most Lemmy users would be left-wing.
Yup it is. There are a lot of communist techie people I guess. I still generally state my political opinions here though. Let them be downvoted.
Reality has a well known left leaning bias.
Conservatives and their politics do not have equal status. In this climate, “both sides” is toxic and suggest each is equally supported and viable. They are not. The right is an incredibly hateful minority end should be treated as such.
“It’s not my fault if reality is Marxist” -Che Guevara
I’d say it’s mainstream media-type liberal bias. Inclusive aesthetically, and occasionally sincerely too, but mostly shit.
Wow. Way to paint everyone with a different thought process the same. Very human of you.
Now you’ve convinced me! I really ought to have been the bigger man when my mom called me in the middle of the night to tell me that Trump’s a martyr like Jesus and that the Democrats are performing demonic baby-eating rituals inside underground tunnels, and just let her keep screaming about me being a brainwashed woke communist because we just have little differences and we all need to get along.
Haha, nope. I want scorched earth on every one of those conspiracy nut fuckers holding right-wing parties around the balls, since they went after my family with their brainrot. I don’t give a shit that a handful of people exist who don’t explicitly support Jewish Space Laser Marge or Venmo Bribes Clarence, because y’all still vote lock step to keep these crazy loons around because Roe v. Wade is worth killing for $300 extra on next year’s tax return.
Is it miserable?
Having your entire identity based on a political team?
Constantly being angry and thinking the worst about your peers?
Because it SOUNDS miserable.
Probably not as miserable as it is to have to spend all your energy pretending to not see how your political ideas have fully doomed humanity to drive itself extinct
my mom called me in the middle of the night to tell me that Trump’s a martyr
Gonna have to take any political and moral position you have with a grain of salt, since crazy runs in the family
That doesn’t make sense and you know it. It’s stupid and vindictive.
I once got dogpiled in r/lsd of all places for saying employers shouldn’t be allowed to drug test for thc. I got swarmed for “being a druggie” in a sub about lsd.
I quit reddit for good not too long after that. What a fucking shithole.
Probably because this migration may be related to the anti-corpo sentiment, which is more common in leftist circles
This is the first answer that is close to the truth.
I was on libertarian subreddits and the sentiment there is that corporations can do what they want. They mostly don’t have a problem with the changes Reddit made.
I would still call myself libertarian or libertarian leaning, but this part I don’t understand. For me, libertarianism is all about having to freedom to do what you want. And I wanted to leave Reddit.
Based. I really hope more people of different ideas come here as long as it’s not exporting the echo chambers Reddit had
Well, there’s a self-proclaimed Left which, though probably having started out with good intentions, is all about “lets classify people on visible things they were born with and then presume things about them purelly on their “classification” and treat them differently”.
If this sounds strangelly like the far-right thinking that’s because it is kinda derivative: the same architecture of deeming individuals as worthy/unworthy likely-good/likely-bad because they were born with certain characteristics as the far-right is used, and then the categories are swapped and the whole thing is called “being progressive” as if it was only unfair to judge and treat people because of their genetic makeup if done in one direction but not in a different one.
Then there is the tankie Left, which also started with good intentions but seem to have confuse the recipe-book of slogans and the Party über alles discipline invented in the late 19th century and early 20th century by middle class intellectuals to inspired the near-illiterate masses of the time to create an utopian leftwing world (which didn’t work) with the actual thinking Principles and Intentions from which the rules were made. Because these people follow the recipes without examining the against the principles and ideals and in contexts which are very different of the ones for which those rules were created, you went up with ridiculous ideas directly opposed to “the greatest good for the greatest number” principle like supporting Putin’s invasion.
The followers of such “Lefts” hate it when their faith-like beliefs are examined against the actual Principles of Equality and “the greatest good for the greatest numbers” and found often to be directly opposing them, just like when you grab some religious book or other and point out the inconsistencies in it: there is no greater hate than that of the faithfull who sees the basis of their Identity be examined under the cruel light of logic and found to be mainly bollocks.
Or in other words, I think the Left here is a lot more the product of thinking things through and concluding that it would be a lot better to live in a World with less poverty, more equality and were a few did not amass more power than whole countries thanks to their wealth, and continuing to actually continue to think things through when face with slogans from the tribalist flag waving slogan parroting and social-circle-jerk groups which call themselves “Left” and which are the leftovers from Marxism in the XXI Century and the Neoliberal-inspired “in the greed is good context, lets pursue personal-upside maximization as an ‘Identity’ group instead of individually so that we can claim we’re lefties”.
PS: If it sounds I’m raging against the Left here, that just because I find the pettyness and self-serving sociopathy of the modern Right to be self-evident. I actually don’t think you can be a true leftwinger genuinelly fighting for the greater good if you just blindly follow slogans and tribes. Funilly enough it also means I can actually respect a genuine old-style conservative, even whilst wholly disagreeing with him or her.
