this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts
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For all we know the people that are on the right have gone to other platforms. That doesnt stop you jerks from saying im on the right even though im not. For some reason both sides have adopted a "with us or against us" mentality and everyone is a nazi.
That’s exactly what a Nazi would say!
/s
People throw around the word too much, there are actual Nazis around and we need to reserve the term just for their special brand of evil. Otherwise the phrase gets so watered down as to essentially become meaningless.
Otherwise they are just rightwing dipshits.
The rightwing dipshits are now mostly nazis though, the moderate and neutral have been mostly boiled off.
I can only base this on my own government but I'd say about only a small fraction of the right wing party are full on Nazi's, the rest are just awful people but they're not evil. Although it is hard to tell because quite a lot in the greedy, which from a distance can't look the same.
I want to upvote you for your rational take on nazis but downvote you for calling so many people awful.
Watering down language is part of the right wing platform. I think they actually want to be seen as nazis so the term is less powerful. On the other side, they are calling everyone groomers to water down that language as well.
I’ve had people in this thread say that I advocate for genocide.
I don’t think the right are the ones watering down the language
Maybe you should do more research instead of advocating for then.
I know what the word ‘genocide’ means. The left just misuses words all the time.
I don’t need to ‘do more research’
You definitely could do more research since you disagree with scientific consensus on trans issues and think you know better how it aught to be.
I didn't see anyone accuse you of genocide but from your other comments I wouldn't be surprised if you did and just didn't know it or tried to pretend you didn't because of a technicality.
I would have disagreed with lobotomies too, had I been around for that. I don’t really see the point you’re trying to make here.
There really isn’t any such thing as scientific consensus, not as it relates to truth. Science is ever evolving and asking questions, and re-answering old questions when we discover new information.
There is no ‘this is settled’ in science.
Well, you don’t know what genocide means. It’s okay
Sorry, this is the case on both sides. I'm a leftist, and I see it happen from my side all the time. Deflecting and claiming only Republicans do it is ignorant or blatant gaslighting.
I'm called a nazi sometimes from people in my own party. It 100% happens.
You know your political views are truly independent when both the left and right accuse you of siding with the enemy.
Independent.. you mean a dirty centrist?!?
The hate for anyone who weighs ideas no matter which team they're from is very transparent.
I'm all for saying both sides are bad, because they are, but I'm guessing you either did something to warrant being called a nazi or found a cringey liberal to argue with.
Hell, "gaslighting" itself is a good example of this phenomenon, and it's mostly on the left.
You are absolutely correct. Not all fascist are Nazis.
Conservative =/= fascist
Change my mind
Don’t forget the classic, “You sure with insert political extremist group on an issue. At least my side doesn’t team up with them.”
Most commonly seen when talking about Nazis obviously. I’ve been criticized for supporting free speech on social media sites because obviously only Nazis would benefit from being able to voice their opinions without worrying about being deplatformed.
Exactly. Blame/credit (blame in this case) doesn't travel that way.
Take the following example: Alice and Bob both support view X. Bob also supports view Y. Y is evil. Then, Bob can be deemed responsible for supporting view Y. But X does not become evil because Bob is. And so Alice is completely fine.
There was already a right wing exodus from Reddit. /r/RedditAlternatives was created during that exodus, which is why their pinned list of alternatives includes things like gab(racists) and ovar.it(terfs).
I like seeing things forbwhat they really are, so I consider myself a centrist. Both sides hate me they are so brainwashed.
Neither side has all the answers. Both sides have valid points, but these fools choosing a side stop using their brains to think for themselves, and just puppet whatever the rest of their cult is parroting.
Well you just got it all figured out!
I'm waiting for your centrist answers for everything! Please do tell.
"I have no strong feelings one way or the other!"
Centrism is just being able to acknowledge that both parties have flaws. If you can’t find any issues with the party you support, that means that you got your political views from someone else instead of developing them yourself.
People on a left-leaning site don’t wanna hear it, but US Democrats aren’t perfect. Their policy on immigration is not sustainable. A de facto open border policy for refugees and people who cross illegally while people with college degrees can’t even get a work visa is absurd. As a nation we are not obligated to help others when many of our own citizens are struggling. Biden’s student debt relief plan would have caused tuition prices to increase at an even faster rate than before and guaranteed further debt relief executive orders would be required in the future. Plus it set an insane precedent that the president could authorize billions in spending without any congressional oversight. Democrats were frightengly authoritarian during COVID with stuff like vaccine mandates and online censorship. Things were labelled as “misinformation” and later accepted to be the truth… repeatedly, and people simply didn’t care. One day you could get banned from every social media site for saying COVID may have come from a lab, and the next day it was perfectly plausible. That stuff would have been unthinkable prior to 2020 and it’s just apparently normal today.
And then there is the stuff where they’re just hypocritical or simply providing lip service. Biden could remove marijuana’s schedule 1 classification today with an executive order, but he won’t. Instead his administion argued in court that marijuana users cannot be trusted owning firearms and the ATF is right to prohibit them from buying guns. Speaking of guns, Biden also signed an executive order declaring pistol braces to be stocks after years of the ATF saying they weren’t stocks, making millions of gun owners into felons, many who didn’t even know about the reclassification. A piece of plastic that was legal one day is now 10 years in federal prison. Democrats are guilty of putting corporate interests before individual interests, much like republicans. Democrats love to talk about how much they care about the environment and climate change, but would sooner pass a law saying people can’t set their AC below 80 degrees than dare invest money into nuclear power or stop subsidizing fossil fuels.
You don’t have to agree with everything I said here. But if you can’t find anything to criticize about your preferred party, or at least acknowledge that these are valid criticisms even if you disagree with them, you are part of the problem.
“Centrists” gets tons of hate online that’s unwarranted IMO. “Centrism” is just a label people like to put on independent voters because mocking them by acting like their political position can be summed up as “Democrats have some good points, but the Nazis do too” is an easy way to dismiss them, when the reality is that most centrists are voters who get no representation since we have a broken-ass two-party system. Admitting that the two-party system is bad doesn’t benefit you if you support one of those two parties. So here we are.
Now do the Republicans.
Is there really anything to say there that everyone in this comment thread would be surprised by?
Republicans care too much about culture war BS
Republicans are blatantly wrong on the issue of abortion, and it’s actually baffling that they continue to oppose abortion even though it’s going to cost them elections
Environment. Need I say more?
Republicans are guilty of supporting giant corporations and serving corporate interests just as much as democrats. The only reason I don’t say they’re more guilty than Democrats is because companies that I consider to be some of the most monopolistic and controlling are tech and media companies that get much more support from democrats. I consider it a tie until one party either blocks a corporate merger or breaks up a monopoly.
I touched on Democrats being creepily authoritarian regarding speech, but of course Republicans are just as eager to censor when they have the opportunity as well.
I could go on, but these are the glaring issues I can think of that immediately come to mind.
What about Desantis being authoritarian and creating his own militia for Florida, Trump going after Muslims and other non-white people, trump encouraging his base (all republicans) to perform a failed coup? You seem to be watering down some very serious things on the republican side. I'm glad you're sending your best efforts, but it's not going to be enough here, at least right now.
He reactivated the Florida State Guard. The samekingd of State Guard utilized by like 22 other states including California and New York. The FSG was created way before DeSantis came to office.
To be honest, it looks like you are biased to the republican side.
You make good points though.
Based on two comments I made do you truly think I’m “biased toward the Republican side” or are you just assuming that because you automatically assume anyone who disagrees with Democrats on certain issues is a Republican sympathizer?
I dont think anyone on the left would say the democrats in the US are perfect, in the UK we hate labour since the leader is defiantly not left leaning and the party has fallen in the past few years
Centrist doesnt always mean fence sitter... could just mean you agree with different points opposite of the eisle. Its almost like this whole political system wasnt intended to have a 2 party system or something...
It wasn't intended, just a long term effect of First Past the Post voting systems.
The right has moved onto other platforms.
A lot of people on the right who would post online have been banned from most of the left leaning platforms and have found their own places to talk.
And the end result is that every site is an echo chamber.
The state of the internet in 2023 is more or less, “Do you want the left-wing circlejerk or the right-wing circlejerk?” And if you want a place where people are allowed to express their views even if it disagrees with the majority opinion of the site, that no longer exists.
I’m sure it must be great if you identify as left or right, but it sure as hell sucks shit if you don’t align completely with either side.
I agree so much.
I love discussing things with people who think differently than I do, that’s how we learn. We should be able to disagree in a civil way and exchange ideas and understand each other and eventually agree to disagree.
But we can’t.
Online it’s either one extreme or the other.
When is someone going to have the balls to create a place where people can argue and talk shit out? Or is that just too mature for the kids online these days who cannot handle a disagreement?
Maybe there should be online discussions that are age restricted. No teenagers, 30+ adults only. I wonder if that would be better or worse
Aren't you doing that right now?
I mean I always try, because I believe in it.
I think I’ve probably lost 40% of my total upvotes having this conversation though. On reddit when you go too deep into negative karma you need to make a new account because you can’t post in a lot of communities at that point
I think you're speaking with people willing to engage and you're not seeing it. Downvotes don't mean people aren't discussing, it means they don't agree or they think you're coming from a trolling place.
No no, I don’t mean anyone specifically in this conversation
I was more speaking in general.
The end result is that some sites have a lot of white nationalists and some sites have very little white nationalists.
Conservatives have nothing humane to bring to the table at this point, even if not proudly saddled with your average ethonostate enjoyers, the platform is nothing but a fight against progress during a time where crisis requires it.
Which site has the least strawmen?
I know I shouldn't go into comment sections of these kind of posts, but man is this depressing.
It really is. So many vapid little monsters. You get to witness the ignorance and hatred spewed from people who think they're moral beacons for the rest of us. It would be funny if it wasn't so depressing, like you said.
I always find it funny (albeit in a depressing way) when people on the left act like anything short of totally open borders is white supremacy.
Wanna talk about ethnostates? Check out the demographics and immigration policies for countries like Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Iceland. Wanna talk about racism? Ask the average naturalized immigrant how they feel about illegal immigration.
Supporting more secured borders isn’t racist. The reality is that the American government should prioritize the interests of its own citizens before prioritizing the interests of people from other countries. It drives me up the walls to see how much support our government provides to refugees when meanwhile our own cities are struggling, most often in predominately black areas. Yes it’s a slight false dichotomy to act like we can’t support refugees while also improving our inner cities, but the reality is that we usually fail to do both as they’re often competing interests.
Is it really “supporting a white ethnostate” to say I’d rather have our country let in more immigrants with college degrees or at least a willingness to work over a bunch of people who have zero desire to integrate or even work.
“Progress” doesn’t mean trying to increase the population of our cities and diversity as much as possible even if it means bringing in millions of people who will rely on the government to survive, refuse to integrate into American society, and are the literal opposite of progressive. “Progress” means working to improve the lives of the people we have already living here, regardless of their ethnic background. And currently our immigration policy isn’t accomplishing that.