oh not at all, it's an easy mistake to make when someone isn't versed in communist terminology.

I might have skipped the majority of communist theory except a few excerpts here and there. But I’m here to learn.

Here is a good study guide for the basics: https://lemmy.ml/post/43309494

Who said this is a forum for the working class? I have not seen this mentioned anywhere. Read the sidebar: this is a generic forum for everyone. I’m inclined to think you are making this up.

Why do you want people with extreme views (left or right) in your community?

Nah fuck conservatives.

Quick question: Are you a cis, white, heterosexual male with Christian/agnostic beliefs? Or at the very least, could you be mistaken for somebody like that? And do you live in an urban area, or a suburban or rural area?

Because as a bi trans woman who grew up in a relatively red part of one of the deepest blue states in the country and spent a LONG time being able to hide as a cis white male, it is two very different experiences of life in the US before and after transitioning and what kind of area that I've lived in. Cities are natural melting pots of diversity and run very liberal/leftist as a result, suburbs can be a mixed bag depending on where they are (though like often follows like and you tend to get concentrations of similar beliefs close together due to socio-economic factors), and rural areas are often very group-think oriented and form cliques like it's highschool. I also spent a lot of time listening to what conservatives say when they think they're in like company. And it's very political.

You know how people say that the two things you should never bring up at work are politics and religion? Every place that I've worked, the people who cannot stop talking about politics have always been conservatives. From hating on immigrants or trans people to the guy yesterday who went on and on about how people only hate Teslas because they're liberals who hate Elon and how great Teslas are while we all side-eyed each other (somebody said that the cyber truck is dangerous and looks ugly), they are constantly either trying to convince you that they're right or just assume that you agree with them in the first place. I had a "both sides" so-called "centrist" trap me and another coworker in a conversation about another one of our coworkers after he found out that they were a trans man and just kept going on and on about how they had trans friends but our coworker would never be a "real man," just like his trans friend would never be a "real woman." Didn't stop talking about it for over an hour, just talking in circles with barely a moment to take a breathe before he started talking again. I would've thought he was gonna pass out if I didn't already know that he's one of those people who would probably die if they ever stopped talking. He would also go on and on about the "violent left" but would get oddly quiet whenever a right-winger or MAGA voter would shoot up a place or something. Despite the fact that the US accounts for something like 95% of all school shootings in the world, and all but a couple of those have been committed by white men who either traditionally voted for Republicans or grew up in a conservative household, and that in the past 10 years something like 80% of mass shooting victims were shot by people (most often men, and usually white men) who also either traditionally voted for Republicans or grew up in conservative households

It's only been in about the past 6 months that I've mostly stopped seeing MAGA flags outside people's houses or on people's trucks. Though there is one pickup at work that the owner stuck a "MAGA Edition" label onto just above the branding, and there is one guy who up until recently would wear a Trump 2024 shirt occasionally. He might still, but I haven't seen it in awhile.

There are now about 20 states where it is either unsafe for me to travel due to state laws or where my existence is outright illegal in some way. Trans people were having their passports, driver's licenses, birth certificates, and other forms of identification confiscated by the DMV after the election but before Trump even entered office. A law in Utah banning trans girls from school sports got overturned because it affected a total of 3 girls in the state and it was therefore considered a law targeting specific individuals, which is illegal. You can make it illegal to turn right on a red light at a particular street corner, but you can't make it illegal for Tom, Larry, and Diane to turn right on a red light.

You can have reasonable discussions with conservatives, but because conservatism largely consists of the belief that there are groups that the law should protect but not bind, and groups that the law should bind but not protect, it can very quickly fall into arguing what kind of people do or don't deserve to be treated like humans. Very often with them, respect means "respect my authority or else I won't treat you like a person." Back before 2001 and the rise of right-wing extremism these past 20 or so years, there were much more mild discussions between Democrats and Republicans, but that's because the US largely has no true leftist institutions. The Democrats are largely a moderate conservative to left-leaning centrist party with a few moderate leftists thrown in (who are unpopular with the party leadership but usually popular with voters). So debates were largely about whether or not the tax break for corporations should be 5% or 7% higher than last year. Both parties largely agreed on policy.

In the US, there are two genders: Man and "political." Two races: White and "political." Two sexualities: Straight and "political." Two religions: Christian and "political" (and which flavor of Christian you are can be considered "political" based on the region of the country that you're in). If you can fake being in the former group in any way, you'll have a very different experience living in the US than you would otherwise.

I'm saying that not every conservative is shitty and bigoted. Lemmy doesn't want to admit that though. That's my point.

Lemmy has about 1.366 million registered users worldwide (with monthly active users way lower, around 48,000–50,000). That's less than 0.0004% of the US population of roughly 343 million. Not even close to representing how the general US population feels about things.

Please explain "you guys."

I'm not republican. I didn't "let" anyone run anything. The US voted, and Trump won. And next election people have the option to vote someone else in.

Are you assuming I'm republican just because I said not all republicans are bad?! Dude, come on...think about that. Fucking Lemmy, man.... lol

Ok, well good luck and hope ya do better in the next election than you did in the last one.

Substack from my limited experience was a bunch of ChatGPT written sychosis.

I said it before:

I do not want conservatives prohibited from joining Lemmy, but I do want conservatives to feel unwelcome joining Lemmy.

Not dominance through authority, but through culture.

They're not all shitty and bigoted, but they are all comfortable with shittiness and bigotry, and that's functionally the same thing

There is no such thing as a moderate conservative

IDK, I'd think most Democrats in Congress this decade are moderate conservatives (stupid Overton window shift).

Schleswig-Hollstein

It would be important for people to understand that what separates good people from bad people is decency and basic human kindness, not political ideology. In reality, the good people are in the center, and the bad people are on the extremes. Yet, due to the polarization of public discourse, a left leaning person may be convinced that the good people are to the left, and the bad people are to the right from them. If they keep drifting towards the extreme, and keep thinking that everyone to the right is a bad person, eventually they will hate all the decent people in the center, while everyone still to the left from them is an actual monster. Needless to say, the same goes for people who start right leaning and keep drifting to the right. I wish more people realized that the enemies are the crazies on either side, not the moderates on the other side.

And what if so many came on, that they started to work on making liberals feel unwelcome here? And they would post in threads laughing about it much they wand liberal people to feel unwelcome. How would you feel then? Because look at what you guys are doing here...

How about different opinions can co-exist as long as there is no hate involved? You are an example of the very extremist divider that OP and some others are talking about.

Not true. Again, you can't speak for everyone and you are just spouting the usual extremist stuff that Lemmy does. The fact that so much of Lemmy thinks reddit is actually conservative tells ya how out of touch people here are. lolol

A: you assume I’m American. I’m not.

Then you don't know how America really is and have no room to talk with any authority about it. All you know is what you have read on news and Lemmy. That's only accurate for extreme stuff. The vast majority of the US is quiet and boring. Which is awesome.

Lemmy has about 1.366 million registered users worldwide (with monthly active users way lower, around 48,000–50,000). That's less than 0.0004% of the US population of roughly 343 million.

Cool. I don't care

Good cherrypicking, look at B and C

The paradox of tolerance is real, it has been broken. They wanted to genocide me after Charlie Kirk died because I made meme. Millions of people used their voices to call for violence against the left. Like left of hitler basically.

So yes you have chosen a side. You turn a blind eye to the horrors unfolding across your country and pretend like people are innocent actors. Keep ignoring the calls for violence, I suppose if you don’t feel included in them, then they can’t hurt you 🤣

If January 6th wasn’t enough to rethink your party members, then you chose a side, and you’re with the traitors and oath breakers.

How else to you reconcile being on the same side as all the bigots? You are clearly comfortable with them

I'm sure that's what will happen because that's what always happens. The left makes a cool space and conservatives slime their way in and ruin it. I don't give a fuck if you call me an extremist, I want you and yours to feel unwelcome.

Probably because none of those are exclusively conservative values, they’re if anything, generally liberal ones.

It’s looking very much like exclusive conservative values are those of exclusion and prejudice.

today but its been this fall the party has taken over time. go look what teddy roosevelt did and this was not one of those congress just happened to do it during his presidency. He was fully behind and putting forth a lot of it. This is what they mean by democrats being right of republicans. you go back far enough and republicans actually had some stuff besides lower regulation and taxes on the wealthy. they actually were behind tax increases because of the pay as you go thing. Really nixon sorta started the fall even though he did some stuff that was do to pressure on him along with stuff he wanted to do but abandoned or reversed course due to pressure. Then you get reagan who through out a lot of thier financial stuff and that was pretty much the lower regulation and lower taxes on weatlhy were all that mattered. They still gave some lip service to things like moral stances or trump to get the religious folks on their side but even that is going out the window. its crazy when you look at the changes in the party from roosevelt to nixon to reagan to bush jr. to trump.

real moderate or usian moderate?

Real life. If you want moderate, complex opinions. Talk to real people. Not the bots and shills that populate this place.

I agree with your broader point but the bit about supporting auth-left fighting Nazis is a risky bet. I don't think we're close to having a marxist-leninist vanguard party overthrow the regime here in the US, but historically when they have been empowered to enact violence against fascists they end up taking the state monopoly on violence for themselves and turning it on anarchists and other socialists with slight disagreements.

But Iike you said, they're not the ones controlling the state at the moment. It's just something to keep in mind for the future in case an ML vanguard party leading a revolution in the US actually ends up being on the table. Depending on how bad things get a lot of people might consider it worth the risk.

That's obvious.

I'm not republican tho. I said they are not terrible people. But hey, we're on Lemmy, where's its dangerous to have a different opinion....lololol

How old are you? And what do you do for work?

(ive been told my writing style is a bit abrasive, but i got a touch of the tism', and that can effect the "cadence" of how i write. so take that into perspective when reading this inside your head. im not hostile.)

"Who said this is a forum for the working class?"

its implied, considering almost 99% of the worlds population needs to work to make a living and to support their loved ones who cant. and the vast majority of the people who post here arent billionaire oligarchs, or petty bourgeoisie. its statistically unlikely. therefor, fair to say.

"Why do you want people with extreme views (left or right) in your community?"

radicals are at the forefront of change in every conflict. for better, or for worse.

today (in the US) to be opposed to fascism, is to be considered a "far left terrorist" or ANTIFA. another boogeyman made by the fascists to scare people away from "socialism" or the "wokes" or some other nonsense.

the new modern definition of "far left extremism" is a dog whistle used by fascists trying to play the "both sides bad" or "innocent centrist" take that ultimately leads left leaning people and fence sitters further down the road of fascism, for those who take it at face value. overuse of the word "tankie" as well, which has been used as a blanket term for socialists/communists a lot more in recent days. but most people dont understand its roots, or the roots of socialism/communism, and how they have changed since their inception.

unfortunately, the reason so many "far left" voices appear here, is because platforms like reddit started banning people because they called out fascism, and began communicating on how they should stop it. or simply joking about it. i personally am one of those people, i said elon musk did a nazi salute, and was likely a nazi to some degree. and i was perma banned within minutes. for "violent" content. (it wasnt in the slightest) so here i am. and honestly its quite nice, people are more level headed, kind, and willing to discuss things thoughtfully. without the "gotchyas" and hostile armchair intellectualism that is so rampant on platforms like reddit.

this is a platform of the people, each instance essentially ran/hosted by volunteers. working class people, like you or me. thats the basis of the fediverse. anyone can spin up an instance, some bigger/better than others, and choose to link with all/certain instances. some instances can be honey pots, filled with bots, AI slop. or real human beings, making real connections. who knows. its crazy out here. still small, quiet. but growing, and getting louder.

the best thing about the fediverse, is that if you dont like an instance. you can leave it.

but if you dont leave quietly, its always a little bit sus as to your real motivations.

OP seems to be confusing people with a distaste for fascism/general knowledge of communism/socialism, and the history that birthed them, for actual "tankies"

a common mistake made by the misinformed, and a common tactic used by the misaligned.

but id rather not make those assumptions, and assume its coming from a purely anecdotal view/experience of the world that i havent seen reflected in my own use of lemmy.

regardless, at the end of the day, its not left vs right, its up vs down. and i think thats the bigger zeitgeist here on lemmy

sorry for the wall of text. i hope this helps provides a bit more context.

Don't look for a specific moderate instance, instead block extremist instances. I'm not positive but I think that also blocks you from seeing posts by users of those instances even when they post to other instances, but I'm not 100% sure

Yeah, that's why I mentioned votes --- I think that it'd make sense to be able to maybe do something like build a score aggregated from multiple lists or something.

Another thing I've mentioned in the past is using this as a mechanism for tagging. The NSFW flag was a hack that Reddit put in because some people wanted to browse Reddit at work and some people wanted to post stuff that wouldn't be considered acceptable in most work contexts. There are many, many different categories that someone might want to "tag" things on. Some people are fine with nudity. Some people are fine with gore. Some people are fine with suggestive content. Some people object to specific items in the above. I think that it will never be the case that everyone will manually tag their own content in all the same areas, but it could be the case that someone could create "lists" that one could subscribe to that could permit that sort of tagging; same mechanism.

I didn't suggest Republican, I suggested conservative. Having different opinions isn't dangerous, but some opinions are dangerous, so maybe don't believe hateful dehumanizing things or be comfortable with those who do and suddenly you'll find people more accepting.

And I'm 400 years old and the King of Wales, professionally, since you seem to think either of those factors have some bearing on my opinion.

Nowadays reasonable is radical. Moderate isn't enough and conservative is poison

Wait, I thought you weren't a conservative? Who'd you vote for then?

Answer B and C

You can't be trying to "both sides" everything, when one side have a secret police that kidnap children from their houses and destroy families

Yeah, tags/labels are useful but do run into:

• scaling issues

  • you can end up with an overwhelming amount of tags
  • if moderator adds tags then the post quantity can be overwhelming

• abuse

  • if poster side then not adding the tag
  • if viewer side then adding it when the poster disagrees

• disagreements

  • what constitutes a given label - so most moderation arguments

Still, agreed they're a useful addition

I refuse to give in to the negativity and extremism of Lemmy. I choose to fill my life with love, laughter, friends, and understanding.

I'm not conservative. And I refuse to give in to the negativity and extremism of Lemmy. I choose to fill my life with love, laughter, friends, and understanding.

Thee was no question on B. For C, it depends on what they say. Because Lemmy thinks a lot of stuff is shitty and bigoted, and it's not. Lemmy thinks a lot of stuff is Nazi and Fascist that's not. You guys are so out of touch with reality it's crazy. Again, Lemmy has about 1.366 million registered users worldwide (with monthly active users way lower, around 48,000–50,000). That’s less than 0.0004% of the US population of roughly 343 million.

I'm not conservative. I support third party voting. Democrats suck as much as the Republicans.

I’m sure that’s what will happen because that’s what always happens.

But your ok if it happens for your side, right? Because that's what people are trying to do. Same ole hypocritical Lemmy as always I guess...

I want you and yours to feel unwelcome.

What?! I'm not republican or conservative. Because I say that not every conservative is a bad person, you think I'm conservative?! Say wat mate?! Feel free to go thru my posts and comments and feel free to point out anything you think is republican.

I refuse to give in to the negativity and extremism of Lemmy. I choose to fill my life with love, laughter, friends, and understanding. But hey, you do you. Nothing you do or say affects my real life in any way whatsoever.

They wanted to genocide me after Charlie Kirk died because I made meme.

No they didn't. Also, how about not make a joke of someone being murdered. Never cool. Never funny.

Keep ignoring the calls for violence, I suppose if you don’t feel included in them, then they can’t hurt you

I see much more calls for violence on Lemmy than anywhere else. I refuse to give in to the negativity and extremism of Lemmy. I choose to fill my life with love, laughter, friends, and understanding.

I'm not republican or conservative tho. So that has nothing to do with me.

I choose to live in reality, where I don't ignore and enable the one side that have a secret police that kidnap children from their houses and destroy families.

But you obviously don't care about that, as long as your little bubble of unreality is safe.

Ah yes, and the rest of all are all angry loners who hate friendship, very astute assessment

What are you going on about, mate? I didn't respond with that statement to you at all. I simply said that I refuse to give in to the negativity and extremism of Lemmy and that I choose to fill my life with love, laughter, friends, and understanding.

And you downvoted it, and somehow read that as "you all are angry loners"?! What is going on in your life right now? How on earth did you see that in what I said?

Today is a beautiful day here and I'm heading out to go hiking in the mountains w my gf, and i hope your day will be amazing today too, mate.