I disagree with the “criticism is just giving them a platform” thing. It’s not giving them a platform. That would require allowing them to speak and letting their ideas go unchallenged. And there is a large leftist presence on here, which imo is a good thing. It provides an opportunity to combat misinformation. I will concede that online political shit slinging is often unproductive between the people commenting. But I’ve learned a lot as a lurker reading through these arguments. Reading arguments have given me things to read about and form my own opinion on. Perhaps the ones involved in the argument won’t have their minds changed but that doesn’t mean someone uninvolved reading it won’t be convinced or at least have their interest piqued.
A lot of mainstream political discourse excludes leftists. And I feel it’s a big reason people are dissatisfied with the state of modern politics (especially the US). When “both sides” are on the same side where it matters most, it’s obvious that neither of them have an interest in changing the trajectory the country/world is on. This leads to people looking for answers outside of the mainstream, because our states are failing and in denial. When you have an inherent distrust of the system and start looking for alternative perspectives and analysis, “stigmatized knowledge” becomes normal and informs a lot of your perspective. This creates a space for people acting in bad faith to take advantage of those who, through decades of concentrated effort by people (often within or adjacent to our own governments), have had their capacity for critical thinking and reasoning eroded. Leading to conspiratorial thinking.
Further complicating things, there are a lot of conspiracy theories that are correct and true. COINTELPRO and MKULTRA for example. They both sound like some tinfoil hat bullshit but the CIA has literally admitted to both and hundreds of documents on these programs have been declassified. When people are in the process of deconstructing the ideologies they’ve been raised on, these bad actors are in a perfect place to manipulate them. With these things in mind it’s easy to see how going from “capitalism is bad” and “western propaganda misrepresented daily life in post-revolution USSR” can be twisted into “tianamen square was a psyop” and “modern Russia is justified in their invasion of Ukraine”.
These things are further complicated by concepts like critical support and a vague, misguided sense of anti-imperialism, which are common in authoritarian left spaces. A sythesis of these two concepts leads to support of nations and parties that are objectively terrible in many areas that should not be ignored. When your ideology is twisted into “the west is bad and must be eliminated at any cost” you see countries like China and Russia as allies and as something to be replicated. It’s all very intentional.
Conspiracy theories and bad takes infect every ideology. Democrats, republicans, fascists, Marxists, anarchists and everyone else aren’t immune to conspiratorial thinking. It’s something that needs to be consistently combatted. And the best way to do that is by speaking the truth unapologetically. Consensus reality has been broken and there is a power struggle going on every day to win hearts and minds. This in itself isn’t a bad thing, the status quo is cruel and coercive. But it’s created a ripe space for those with bad intentions to steer the conversation towards areas that are favorable to them.
I disagree with the “criticism is just giving them a platform” thing. It’s not giving them a platform. That would require allowing them to speak and letting their ideas go unchallenged. And there is a large leftist presence on here, which imo is a good thing. It provides an opportunity to combat misinformation. I will concede that online political shit slinging is often unproductive between the people commenting. But I’ve learned a lot as a lurker reading through these arguments. Reading arguments have given me things to read about and form my own opinion on. Perhaps the ones involved in the argument won’t have their minds changed but that doesn’t mean someone uninvolved reading it won’t be convinced or at least have their interest piqued.
A lot of mainstream political discourse excludes leftists. And I feel it’s a big reason people are dissatisfied with the state of modern politics (especially the US). When “both sides” are on the same side where it matters most, it’s obvious that neither of them have an interest in changing the trajectory the country/world is on. This leads to people looking for answers outside of the mainstream, because our states are failing and in denial. When you have an inherent distrust of the system and start looking for alternative perspectives and analysis, “stigmatized knowledge” becomes normal and informs a lot of your perspective. This creates a space for people acting in bad faith to take advantage of those who, through decades of concentrated effort by people (often within or adjacent to our own governments), have had their capacity for critical thinking and reasoning eroded. Leading to conspiratorial thinking.
Further complicating things, there are a lot of conspiracy theories that are correct and true. COINTELPRO and MKULTRA for example. They both sound like some tinfoil hat bullshit but the CIA has literally admitted to both and hundreds of documents on these programs have been declassified. When people are in the process of deconstructing the ideologies they’ve been raised on, these bad actors are in a perfect place to manipulate them. With these things in mind it’s easy to see how going from “capitalism is bad” and “western propaganda misrepresented daily life in post-revolution USSR” can be twisted into “tianamen square was a psyop” and “modern Russia is justified in their invasion of Ukraine”.
These things are further complicated by concepts like critical support and a vague, misguided sense of anti-imperialism, which are common in authoritarian left spaces. A sythesis of these two concepts leads to support of nations and parties that are objectively terrible in many areas that should not be ignored. When your ideology is twisted into “the west is bad and must be eliminated at any cost” you see countries like China and Russia as allies and as something to be replicated. It’s all very intentional.
Conspiracy theories and bad takes infect every ideology. Democrats, republicans, fascists, Marxists, anarchists and everyone else aren’t immune to conspiratorial thinking. It’s something that needs to be consistently combatted. And the best way to do that is by speaking the truth unapologetically. Consensus reality has been broken and there is a power struggle going on every day to win hearts and minds. This in itself isn’t a bad thing, the status quo is cruel and coercive. But it’s created a ripe space for those with bad intentions to steer the conversation towards areas that are favorable to them.