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.
Perfectly summed up.
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.
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.
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
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
People who cheer when others point out flaws in USA but start screaming when flaws in Russia or China are pointed out.
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
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.
Left/right isn’t an exclusively American concept, it is used all over the world regardless of the political system of the country.
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.
Finally words of wisdom. The rest of the comment section is a dumpster fire.
I’m not gonna start using niche political terms on a daily basis. Yes, I know that Democrats and Republicans are basically the same but nobody outside a small group of people cares. See that I put both in quotation marks as well.
to be fair, you wouldn’t say that Democrats or republicans are the same if you happen to be part of the groups the Republicans are currently advocating death for. There is a difference between NeoLiberal shill and “America should be a white ethnostate”
Wait, is “advocating death for” the evolution of “right to exist”? That sure escalated quickly.
I mean, sure one could argue that the Rights attacks on trans and LGBTQ people, calling them all pedophiles that need to be exterminated can be seen as a “right to exist” argument, in the same way that “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” can be seen as a “right to exist” statement…
Very nuanced take, I like it.
It’s pretty meaningfully different when one side wants to fix the climate and create social and economic policy that benefits the majority, while the other wants to concentrate wealth into the hands of the few at the expense of everyone else, and the climate, and is creating propaganda aimed at the dehumanization of LGBTQ+ and perceived-non-Americans (even when they’re citizens).
Any party that label themself as left or right is applying the same politics that benefits those in power and lie about it to the public.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
The “tankies” are absolutely not utopian. There was a great big schism about this very question more than a century ago, with Marxists roundly rejecting the utopianism of the libertarian socialists (Anarchists). Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels is a good starting point.
Yeah that’s a whole lot of words for “both sides”. Maybe you’d be happier on Reddit.com/r/conservative
I see just as much if not more complaining about “tankies” as on subs like subredditdrama, it’s not that leftist
Tankies are a tiny subset of extreme far leftists which even far leftists have a right to despise, though.
if they truly are a “tiny subset” then why even spend the time to complain about them?
Because they’re very vocal online, are annoying, and also give actual leftists bad rep. If you’re promoting egalitarianism and distributing social power among everyone, you wouldn’t like people who support authoritarism to share a label with you.
every state in the world is authortarian
Are you saying this as a retort to me indirectly calling tankies authoritarians? If so, that’s pretty rich.
The Soviet Union suppressed people who used Marxist analysis to argue that the higher echelons of the party aparatus had constituted itself as a separate, dominant class that held the ultimate political power, which resulted in a tendency to exert that power undisputed and continued accumulation of privileges. Once enough time had passed, some of the people leading that aparatus decided they wanted an even larger share of the cake, so they decided to drop the pretense, drop the nominal communism and embrace privatisation. When working people tried to oppose that process, the authoritarian state used its repressive forces to protect the ruling class. What is most interesting about this is that you can see similar processes in almost every single country that followed the leninist vanguardist model, ultimately losing any political equality that was initially sought in its revolution, and any self-respecting Marxist should have taken the hint that this makes Leninism and its godchildren a failed avenue for socialism.
To connect this with your not too hidden assertion that “since every state is authoritarian, me supporting authoritarian states is ok”: any state and society is going to decide the margins outside of which behavior and politics are not acceptable, but that is absolutely no excuse to give free reign to any government to become as authoritarian as they aim to no matter the cost. When we do that, we come across disgusting situations such as the difficulties for working class Chinese people being unable to self-organize and protect their rights if the local party strongman arbitrarily decides they’re too much trouble. Any kind of emancipatory project soon turns crippled under those circumstances, which you could have easily noticed if you weren’t drown in liturgy.
https://redsails.org/western-marxism-and-christianity/
ML states are the only successful socialist states in history to hold out for a significant amount of time against the United States empire. I’m not super attached to the vanguard model myself, but can you show me a single other successful model? I think this quote is quite relevant here:
"This was another very difficult question I had to ask my interview subjects, especially the leftists from Southeast Asia and Latin America. When we would get to discussing the old debates between peaceful and armed revolution; between hardline Marxism and democratic socialism, I would ask: “Who was right?”
In Guatemala, was it Árbenz or Che who had the right approach? Or in Indonesia, when Mao warned Aidit that the PKI should arm themselves, and they did not? In Chile, was it the young revolutionaries in the MIR who were right in those college debates, or the more disciplined, moderate Chilean Communist Party?
Most of the people I spoke with who were politically involved back then believed fervently in a nonviolent approach, in gradual, peaceful, democratic change. They often had no love for the systems set up by people like Mao. But they knew that their side had lost the debate, because so many of their friends were dead. They often admitted, without hesitation or pleasure, that the hardliners had been right. Aidit’s unarmed party didn’t survive. Allende’s democratic socialism was not allowed, regardless of the détente between the Soviets and Washington.
Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence of a liberal international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it really supported – what the rich countries said, rather than what they did.
That group was annihilated." - Vincent Bevins, The Jakarta Method
Authoritarianism under the banner of socialism isn’t success. It’s just a different kind of failure.
Because some of the founders of Lemmy are the worst examples.
do you mean the devs or people using it? because the only 2 main devs are ML, not “some”
(also I’m a lemmygrad user, I’m a spooky scary tankie btw
)You’re a homophobic authoritarian?
cuba has the most progressive family code in the world, try again next time
I literally saw a guy earlier today in that one large memes thread trying to convince people that Eastern European countries yearn for the USSR days.
Only tankies try to do that lol.
A lot of people there do yearn for the return of the USSR. You can argue about why, but the polling is quite clear that many people miss socialism
“Why don’t you ask people from Socialist countries what they thought”?
“Wait, not those people”.
Where can I see that polling?
https://lemmy.world/comment/1618443
Here’s a link to a comment with some polling
So really not a lot of people, mostly Russians and countries that have strong ties to Russia.
That’s what the first source says and as someone already pointed to a more recent polling showing that it’s no longer the case for eastern European countries.
Hungary source is an old article and the same recent polling shows otherwise.
Romania source link doesn’t even work.
Eastern Germany is a pretty complex and nuanced topic, one that I won’t get into so I’ll give that one the benefit of the doubt that they actually want soviet socialism back.
Czech source link also doesn’t work.
Serbia source literally has the article saying “the Serbian citizens primarily refer to better economic situation and standard of living, but the majority of them would not go back to that period.”
And then there’s the Russian part, which is completely understandable considering the USSR was just a form of Russian imperialism.
Lemmy is much less US-centric than Reddit.
Lemmy was initially created by communists.
It’s still in the process of being created, and the communism is a bit less in your face now alongside there being other contributors to the code, but that’s how it started.
What made the communism ‘in your face’ except for the lack of others posting content?
And now that the founders pretty much don’t post anymore, how is it ‘a bit less’ but still ‘in your face?’
What does the code comment have to do with it? Do you think this was FB or Twitter, with the devs pushing their political ideology with secret algorithms?
You see, I really don’t understand your reply. You seem to be arguing against the statement ‘Lemmy is much less US-centric than Reddit’ - right?
But Lemmy being less US-centric is exactly why people like communists make up more of a percentage of Lemmy, which is what makes their voices more visible/accessible.
If Lemmy becomes US-centric, it will naturally also become predominately right-wing like all other social media platforms in the US.
Are you arguing that Twitter is right wing because it is US-centric, and not because of Musk’s leveraged buyout?
I would argue that US social media platforms are (now) right wing because of aggressive financial attacks meant to break up open social engagement, as this is bad for business and sociopaths looking to exploit people for profit. Reddit was left wing, until it was bought and sold. Same with Twitter.
However my comment was merely rejecting the idea that Lemmy is left wing because it is not US-centric. Lemmy was started by tankies, who say they’re left wing and have some left wing ideologies, but really they’re more authoritarian fascists, and fascism is in fact right wing. However as Lemmy grew it became apparent that this stance would impede its growth - particularly in western markets - so the main devs have tried to minimise their political views and keep the program neutral; now those views are primarily concentrated at lemmygrad.
Lemmy is not US-centric, but that’s not why it’s left wing. Lemmy is left wing because rational empathetic thought is naturally left wing. Lemmy is full of communism because it was started by communists/tankies.
If you think Marxist-leninists are fascists, or like fascists, then you don’t really understand what either of those words mean man.
Communists are anti-state, tankies are pro-state.
Lemmy is not US-centric, but that’s not why it’s left wing. Lemmy is left wing because rational empathetic thought is naturally left wing.
And yet if Lemmy were US-centric, it would lack rational and empathetic thought because it would lack left-wing representation.
Are you arguing that Twitter is right wing because it is US-centric
Yes, that’s correct.
I wonder if there are demographics by IP already? TBH most of the threads I’ve been in have felt very US Centric. I also came with the great reddit migration too though.
On my feed, at least, I have my frontpage set to whatever the kbin equivalent to “all” is. I see lots of other languages beyond English populating - particularly German. The Lemmy instance I chose when I initially made my way to the fediverse operates out of China. They’re chill over there.
I dunno. I think if you’re only finding people discussing the US here, then you’ve probably accidentally pigeonholed yourself based on your own interests. The fediverse is diverse.
I mean yeah. Being only English speaking with gringo Spanish doesn’t let me understand memes in German or any of the other various non-english speaking magazines lol.
English is the defacto lingua franca though. Particularly on the web. The diversity I’ve seen still heavily leans English, and western, which makes plenty of sense.
Lemmy is exactly as left leaning as Reddit was before the wave of propaganda and bots emboldened the right wing crazies to think they were the majority or welcome. I remember the falsely inflated upvotes that made those morons think they were the “silent majority”.
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 😉
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
deleted by creator
I’ll quote Drew Curtis of fark.com fame:
“Reality has a liberal bias.”
Whenever I see a political thread here, it seems like the comment section is dominated by the most extreme of the left, with takes like “All right wingers are part of the MAGA crowd and advocating genocide” and “The right wing is weak, stupid, evil, and dangerous so we need to shut it down.”
As a centrist (not a rightist,) I don’t like this. We need rational discourse, not extremism and hate. Actually talk with reasonable people from outside your political circle please. (Reasonable people, not the right wing extremists that seem to be the only right-wingers y’all hear about.) Remember when we actually had a class struggle that made the people in power nervous instead of identity politics that get the working class fighting each other?
But then, most of the places I talk in are pretty politically left-leaning, so I guess being a centrist does make me look right-wing to a lot of people. I’m rarely seen pushing back against right-wing ideas, but that’s because I rarely see right-wing ideas being presented (outside of leftists pointing at rightist ridiculousness) to push back against. That probably has to do with the internet as a whole leaning more left than right.
Anti-corporate platforms don’t generally appeal to people that built and uphold the existing corporate status quo.
The first wave here were anticapitalists, anarchists or communists. The second wave are the most anti-corporate “liberals”.
The second wave are the most anti-corporate “liberals”.
Prime for conversion. We just have to teach them what a liberal is so that they stop calling themselves that.
I absolutely agree. I also think the irritating environment created by the current digital red scare trend will eventually subside once they move onto some new scare words because the existing ones are losing their edge.
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.
