I’ve been seeing a worrying number of these people on Lemmy lately, sharing enlightened takes including but not limited to “voting for Biden is tantamount to fascism” and “the concept of an assigned gender, or even an assigned name, at birth is transphobic” and none of them seem to be interested in reading more than the first sentence of any of my comments before writing a reply.
More often than not they reply with a concern I addressed in the comment they’re replying to, without any explanation of why my argument was invalid. Some of them cannot even state their own position, instead simply repeatedly calling mine oppressive in some way.
It occurred to me just now that these interactions reminded me of nothing so much as an evangelical Christian I got into an argument with on Matrix a while ago, in which I met him 95% of the way, conceded that God might well be real and that being trans was sinful and tried to convince him not to tell that to every trans person he passed, and failed. I am 100% convinced he was trolling – in retrospect I’m pretty sure I could’ve built a municipal transport system by letting people ride on top of his goalposts (that’s what I get for picking a fight with a Christian at 2AM) – and the only reason I’m not convinced these leftists on Lemmy are trolls is the sheer fucking number of them.
I made this post and what felt like half the responses fell into this category. Am I going insane?
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I met him 95% of the way… and failed.
That’s because the people you’re picking fights with only care about being right. It’s why the American government undergoes a political ratchet toward the right: the people pushing for radical change at all costs and the people seeking compromise are not evenly distributed.
There’s this half baked idea that keeps bouncing around in my mind, let’s give it a engagement friendly name: Scam Theory.
Scam Theory, stated simply, is the idea that most of society is composed of scams. Scams, in this case, are any relationship where a large group of people come to believe lies that harm them and others, told by a small group of people who peddle those lies because they benefit from that harm.
It’s like Category Theory, where you start to see the commonality across many disparate domains of math; except in this case it’s commonality across many different social groups, and the commonality is the cycle of abuse.
Under Scam Theory, there are only minor implementation details that differentiate political zealots and religious zealots. Given some time, I could probably think of dozen more commonalities between leftist revolutionaries and christian doomsdayers. Or any other religion’s extremists for that matter. Or people that buy into get rich quick schemes. Or capitalism. Or any other type of scam.
One of the main aspects of commonality amongst all scams is that there are the in-group, who participate and get to go to heaven/live in utopia/become fabulously wealthy/find happiness/stay young forever/etc, and the out-group, who didn’t participate get to burn in hell/get walled for being counterrevolutionary/stay poor/be miserable/grow old and die alone/etc.
All you have to do to support Scam Theory is be vigilant of scams, spread this info, and don’t be like one of the easy targets who will suffer (scams) for not buying into Scam Theory
Marxism and Christianity only share the fact that they contain frameworks for analyzing material reality(Marxism through Materialism and Christianity through representing reality as though it is divine, and thus explainable via the divine), and this post seems to not be willing to honestly engage with Marxism as a concept.
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Marxists do not oppose incremental change. Marxists believe that minor concessions under Capitalism are insufficient to actually fix the underlying problems, and this point of view is built on a thorough understanding of the Marxist critique of Capitalism.
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Marxists do not oppose reform, they just believe it is impossible to do successfully without sliding backward, because the state is built in a manner that supports Capitalism and resists change.
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Marxism is an economic critique of Capitalism, a philosophical framework, and a call to action. It is a complete set of tools to look at the world, analyze it, and how to fix it. In this manner, it can be superficially compared to Christianity, but only on the surface.
That’s really it.
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It’s of course possible to just be opposed to the meat grinder that is modern society without requiring me to be some kind of revolutionary?
And I would raise the argument that the vast majority of “leftists” are like that and are not actually revolutionary because most people can’t be bothered to be revolutionary. It’s hard work and even if you succeed, then you have to do more work.
I’m quite happy for a government to exist, I just want it to be a good one. I’m not even asking for a Star Trek utopia, just not actively evil. That’ll do for now.
It’s of course possible to just be opposed to the meat grinder that is modern society without requiring me to be some kind of revolutionary?
Sure. But people who support the meat grinder will call you one anyway.
Yeah sure but this comment seems to be from the opinion of other "leftists. Although it is actually probably from the perspective of someone who is actually centralist and have just have convinced themselves that they have a political opinion. That way they can look down on everyone and feel smug.
The right are evil, and the left are apparently religious nut jobs. Yay balance.
Centrists will always have some rationale for dismissing anyone to their left. In this case, they have decided to use the idea that pining after instant and poorly considered revolution is common to all leftists, and have used that stereotype to construct this “authoritarian religious nut” narrative, via which they can dismiss anyone who is less than content with the Democratic Party’s open hostility to the left.
Hell, just read this thread. It’s a veritable bingo card of dismissal excuses.
What I’m after is some consistency. Every time I say “hey I’m a leftist, but I don’t think revolution or temporary autocracy would be an improvement over the current system” all I get is ideological gatekeeping, litmus tests and accusations of left punching.
You have to admit, that internet leftism, and Lemmy in particular is heavily biased towards ML philosophy, and they really do not like 20th century revisionism. I just think the world deserves a better class of communist, but apparently that’s regarded as wrong think.
Stop trying to divide the working class against itself.
We are all working class.
If you’re fighting against reform and shill for China and Russia then you’re acting against all of our own best interests, don’t get mad when people retaliate over your bullshit.
I am being called a fascist for voting for a left of center politician who is not far enough left of center, and I am the one dividing the working class?
I am being called a fascist for voting for a left of center politician
I have a friend who has come to reflect this exact behavior to an extraordinary degree of accuracy.
It’s interesting because the near puritanical nature of their responses to nearly anything has become more extreme than even the most devoutly religions individuals. Obviously the focus of their evangelizing is very different, but it has become difficult to even have a conversation.
I’ll give you an example: I saw a new game called Pal World, which looked absurd, mentioned and was instantly met with the fact that the game was unacceptable because it supports forced labor.
Additionally, there seems to be an immense amount of hypocrisy in regards to what is good and what is bad, largely driven by what best I can refer to as their “leftist Zeitgeist.” As bad as I can tell now, according to them, I am a liberal, and apparently liberals are bad, and the only true salvation is being a leftist?
Of course, I have a much more varied and complex set of moral and political values that likely don’t fall under a singular label… But what do I know about anything.
was instantly met with the fact that the game was unacceptable because it supports forced labor.
If this is true, it should be constantly called out. You’re shrugging at slavery?
Edit: I don’t play or care about this game. Obviously I don’t give two shits if creatures are slaves in video games as long as there’s nothing about it that makes it seem like a good idea for sentient creatures
Fiction is fiction. This is the same kind of logic that adults used when I was a kid because Harry Potter promoted witchcraft, or when the country had a moral panic because Call of Duty had their children killing people. Nothing in the game literally advocates for or glorifies IRL slavery, that would be absurd.
If you can’t parse fiction from reality, then you aren’t fit for just about anything. Movies, music, video games, books, etc. Every medium frequently depicts things you shouldn’t emulate. Even the literal Bible has depictions of slavery, rape, incest, and murder.
Wait until you hear about cookie clicker.
If you consider the game slavery to make monsters work for you, then I guess. Problem is that covers a huge amount of games beyond palworld.
Yo dipshit I don’t play this game and assumed if someone called out forced labor then it was actually a real thing
Yeah well who’s the dipshit now? 😉
Yeah probably the person who thought words gave meaning
