seriously, I think if Elon could just sit back and shut the fuck up about everything since the beginning, he could have went down in history as one of the greatest man alive.
Apartheid Space Karen just had to go and call the Thai cave diver a pedo because his tech bro submarine idea was dumb as fuck, and his fragile ego couldn’t handle the L.
I wondered if that was the trigger or just a symptom. I suspect, given his upbringing and previous reputation from other startups, it was just a symptom.
Edit: we’re discussing the down votes for this comment below. I’m baffled, because I’m merely asking for info. Please, if you want to down vote, reconsider, and consider replying to me why instead. 🙂 I don’t care about the votes, I’m just curious why a simple request could be so unpopular. Thank you.
He lets Nazis use his platform and calls it “freedom of speech”, although this exact freedom is limited by the wellbeing of others. And promoting Nazis is harmful to not only minorities, but the society in my opinion, as they strive to split the society with populist arguments.
Calling someone a Nazi is quite a serious accusation, and it’s going to need a lot better justification than that. I post gay porn on Twitter, and Elon lets me do that. Does that mean he’s gay too?
You’ve tied my head up in knots with this one. Haha
As to the argument above yours, fostering a space for Nazis to grow their movement is scary. I get that some segments of society think that posting gay porn is scary too, but gay porn never led to death camps for anybody.
I think all ideas are worth discussing, because if they’re hiding in quiet corners there are no voices of reason to refute them. It’s hard to take that stance nowadays with the internet working the way it does. Algorithms feeding information to people just because that information gets engagement is frightening.
I had a conversation with my neighbor yesterday about how he got interested in the whole furry thing. He said that initially, he read the critical comments online, took them seriously, thought it was funny, so he engaged in harassment of furries. His engagement led him to more furry videos. He began to like some of the people he was engaging with. Fast forward to now and he’s got fursuits hanging in his closet and everyone he hangs with is also a furry.
It got me thinking about how a lot of kids end up going down these rabbit holes online. Not that I consider being a furry a bad thing. My daughter is into that stuff and I support her being herself. His example just made me think of how other people fall into extremism online.
I disagree. It’s better to let naziz talk so their opinions can be argued against. Nothing is solved by censorship. The opinions are still there, you just don’t see them.
I don’t know why people today are so sensitive? Why is it hard to see someone say something you don’t agree with?
If you want to actually solve the problem that those people hate strangers for no real reason, you need to talk to them.
Elon isn’t promoting naziz, he is just not censoring them. Hopefully you see the difference.
I don’t know, maybe because it’s hard to not be sensitive about ideas that threaten your life and very existence?
Elon isn’t promoting naziz, he is just not censoring them.
Twitter disproportionately take action against LGBTQ+ individuals and ignore nazis. There is no debate that Elon is promoting right wing ideas by protecting nazi speech.
So you meant that the platform is nazi because it’s not supporting lgbtq+? Im not on that platform and don’t know anything about it, but the word nazi has traditionally not been used for gender issues, but race issues.
This is such a naive and ignorant take that assumes everything is argued in good faith and not with an army of bots posting literal propaganda, lies, and disinformation in order to brainwash people who don’t know any better.
What you’re arguing for is allowing cancer to spread rather than seeing a doctor about it “because the immune system will take care of it.”
We’re not arguing about “a marketplace of ideas” in real life, this is about weaponizing technology to serve the interests of a select few to the detriment of everyone else.
I don’t know why people today are so sensitive? Why is it hard to see someone say something you don’t agree with?
I also used to be a free speech absolutist, but they took that and ran with it. Just like so many other things in modern life, the crazies take over. If I can no longer use the service then they’ve gone too far and I’ll move to one that’s still civil (why can’t the nazis stay in their damn subreddit instead of infecting mine?)
Then we came to the us 2016 election and all the fallout since. I was just flabbergasted when people in the public space started denying reality. They admitted denying reality and making stuff up. They admitted denying reality and making stuff up and somehow still had followers. They admitted denying reality and making stuff up and still had followers that turned into votes. We all saw the point where crazies took that free speech and ran with it, where the uneducated and gullible or desperate hung in their every word. We saw damage to society right in front of our eyes. Before this, I would have said free speech at least brings it out into the open and lets people become educated. However now I see some people will say or do anything for the notoriety or wealth, some people will follow it blindly and can’t be educated, and that directly increase divisiveness, violence, lawlessness, harassment and discrimination. I don’t know a better approach but I do know the current status is not ok.
Maybe it’s as simple as consequences. You have a right to free speech but you also need to face the consequences of your words. In the past that may have meant you’re ostracized from various parts of society, or marginalized, but online that doesn’t seem to work anymore. You can say anything as long as the clicks follow, without facing the consequences of your words. Maybe the Alex Jones lawsuit will help or maybe we need to find ways to facilitate situations like that: you have free speech but also face the consequences of your words, which may include taking the fortune you made with your “alternative facts”. But when we have a presidential campaign that names it, is proud of it, and people still follow, what can we do? When there’s a huge profit motive for outrage, what can we do? Where fleecing the rubes has no consequences, what can we do? Where there are no checks and balances to keep the entire system stable, what can we do? I’ve never been so disappointed in my fellow supposedly sentient beings.
I think that free speech is okay, IF it’s consensual and if each person is represented by themselves. I do not think bots and duplicate accounts are free speech. I do not think spamming messages and overwhelming media is free speech.
Imo if I dislike what people are saying, then it’s up to me to look at things systemically rather than personally. Fascism seems to be akin to a societal response to external threats, almost like a scab forming. Which is why so many leftists do indeed turn to fascist methods to fight fascists - wasps swarming their hive.
If we reduced external threats, maybe modeled non-threatening behaviors, it could help every day. The Black Panthers, for instance, used to feed people (reducing the external threat of starvation). Remember how friendly everyone used to be? I try to bring some of that back by complimenting people, asking about their day. It may seem minor, but that’s what communities are built on. And modeling prosocial behavior is, at its core, antifascist.
What happened in 2016 was so clear, along with Jan 6th. It is quite disturbing how many people still support him - I went on vacation to Newport.Beach recently, near LA, and there were multiple businesses there and on Balboa Beach openly supporting Trump. I saw Trump merch everywhere including hats. It was honestly insane to see something like that within 30 miles of a major city. These are people with money and access to education (not that they use it…). These are some of the people who literally own most of the American economy (California is the 5th or 6th largest economy in the world by itself). And they don’t want to acknowledge climate change or that fascism is bad. It’s bad here.
Reducing freedom of speech wouldn’t change how bad things are here.
And please give your fellow Americans some grace. Yes, it’s wild they can’t see what’s going on, but it’s kinda obvious someone took the CIA’s classic plan for destabilizing a country and uno reversed it onto us, right? Like the obvious attacks on education, business, medicine, etc, this isn’t happening on accident. There are countries paying billions for your mom and my dad and everyone’s grandparents to be hypnotized into self sabotaging.
That makes sense I guess. I don’t live in the US and I didn’t follow the election but I understand it was very strange. But just look at the political leaders there. Of course it’s going to be an absurd election.
It’s like picking between cartoon characters.
That being said, I appriciate your view on free speach. When it seems that people are not rational, of course you don’t want them to have a voice.
I am not talking about feeling attacked, but rather to not give anti-societal movements any platform.
Also, that ideology is not based in factual arguments, so why would arguing succeed? The real solution would be for them to get to know foreigners to seez that they are just people, but that doesn’t happen on twitter.
Yes, I see the difference, but its indicative of his ideology I think.
I am wondering why there is such a down vote count on this. I thought there was a new development that he’s actually a Nazi supporter, rather than just letting them roam free on his platform.
It’s not even an opinion. I’m literally curious to know more facts lol.
Like I’m not going to say Elon is perfect. But on here they live in fantasy land. He seems to be living rent free in their head.
Space X is the biggest one where it becomes obvious how biased it is. Space X will public announced that they are testing something and expect it to fail. Then it does better than expected but doesn’t complete everything perfectly. Then everyone on here acts like the greatest space company in the world is failing singlehandedly because Elon is stupid and also an evil genius. Also that he has too much control and that is had too little.
Facts don’t matter here. Everyone is too fragile so free speech is scary to them.
Nope. Lefties like to call any outspoken conservative a “Nazi” to discredit them. It’s like when conservatives call lefties “communist.” It’s juvenile IMO, but I guess it works.
If you’re looking to have a public forum, you need a representative sample from all sides of the political spectrum. Look at parliamentary systems as an example of that, where you have literal fascists and communists sitting alongside one another as a very vocal, but incredibly small minority. If that’s your goal, you need to take the good with the bad.
That is what Musk has stated as his goal, so what you’re seeing makes absolute sense with that stated goal.
That said, I don’t like Musk or what he claims to believe in politically, I just think the idea of an open town square is desirable. I hope someone can pull it off (doesn’t seem like Musk is doing it), which is part of why I’m working on a Reddit/Lemmy alternative that discourages echo chambers and encourages high quality discourse. Doing that is incredibly hard, because people like to group up into tribes, and I think Musk absolutely does that as well (hence why I don’t like him). However, I don’t think Musk is a “Nazi” because he allows Nazis on his platform, I think he’s just incapable of running the type of social media platform he wants to see exist.
I don’t, but there seems to be a very strong correlation between leftist political views and calling people who tolerate Trump “Nazis.”
That said, I’m not a leftist or a conservative, I dislike Trump, Musk, and what they stand for. I’m libertarian, and not in the “I’m a conservative who likes weed” way (I have no desire to use weed, but it should 100% be legal), but in a “We should work toward open borders” way. I respect Musk’s statement that he wants Twitter/X to be a free speech platform and understand him allowing Trump et al back on, but I think he has really lost what made Twitter interesting. I don’t think he actually wants free speech, he wants people to agree with him to be heard, and “free speech” is the excuse to get them platformed again.
My issue here has nothing to do with Musk, but with the liberal (pun intended) use of the term “Nazi” to label people you don’t like. There are actual Nazi movements that could apply to, such as the Proud Boys, and abusing the term just cheapens the meaning of the term.
Really? Because the right doesn’t throw the Nazi card around like there’s no tomorrow at the left with their disingenuous “national socialism bullshit”. Only one party/political leaning is actually courting the neo-nazi vote.
Of course they don’t, the Nazi card is a far-right concept. The far-left analog is communist, and they did plenty of that during the “red scare.” They still use “communist” or “socialist” terminology to write off opponents.
And no, the Republican party isn’t actively courting neo-nazis, it’s neo-nazis that are using Republican talking points to appeal to a broader audience. There’s certainly a venn diagram overlap there, so Republicans can appear to be supporting neo-nazis, but that’s really just neo-nazis trying to appeal to more of the mainstream.
Don’t get caught up in the partisan name-calling, it sucks when Republican do it, and it sucks when Democrats do it, it’s just a really stupid version of a strawman. Democrats don’t want to seize the means of product but Republicans want you to think they do, and Repbulicans don’t want to kill minorities but Democrats want you to think they do. Don’t buy in to the divisiveness BS, look at the facts and make your own decisions from there.
I personally hate both parties since neither actually deliver on the parts I like from their platforms, and they tend to behave similarly on the issues I care about (e.g. both largely support Israel, both seem happy to continue undeclared wars, both seem happy to run up deficit spending with little to show for it, etc). Screw the two party system and “pundits” in general.
No, I disagree with each of your definitions. Here’s how I see them:
leftist - anyone left of center; this is a big tent with both capitalists and communists
progressives - leftists who want significant, but moderate political change (e.g. universal healthcare, high minimum wage, etc)
liberals - anyone who believes in individual rights and private property, so basically the capitalist wing of leftist ideology; originally, liberals were more synonymous w/ modern libertarians, but now they tend to prefer larger government
So in terms of size of the groups: leftists > liberals > progressives. The communist part of the left is largely mutually exclusive from progressives and liberals, though some progressives are in favor of some elements from socialism.
At least that’s how I see it. I’m neither leftist or conservative, I’m a pretty centrist libertarian. I’m left of many leftists and right of many conservatives, depending on the issue.
You may disagree, but it is a pretty widely agreed upon distinction. It’s a symptom of the issue of a fractured left wing. The left leaning communists wanted to distinguish themselves from the left leaning capitalists, so they started calling themselves leftists and not liberals.
It’s just a bunch of different labels, it’s not really set in stone or definitive. I totally understand why you disagree.
My point really was just that a conservative calling someone a communist isn’t insulting to a lot of self described leftists because they are communist, it’s mostly just considered an insult to a conservative. Kinda like calling an alt right person a Nazi is an insult from a leftist, but plenty of alt righties wouldn’t be insulted because they are (jk but not really but jk)
The left leaning communists wanted to distinguish themselves from the left leaning capitalists, so they started calling themselves leftists and not liberals.
I don’t really care what they call themselves, I care what people in general mean by the terms they use. Academics use “leftist” to mean anyone on the left, “liberals” to mean those who prioritize individual liberties and private property (e.g. founders of the US), and “progressives” to mean those interested in utilitarian changes to existing systems to improve outcomes. “Liberal” has change a bit recently with the right using it to describe the left, but it’s also not wrong because both Dems and Reps are liberals, Reps are just socially conservative liberals, and Dems are socially progressive liberals. Those have clear definitions that are generally understood by the public, and changing their meaning just confuses things IMO.
My point really was just that a conservative calling someone a communist isn’t insulting to a lot of self described leftists because they are communist
But most aren’t. Calling Biden a communist because he wants to expand access to medical care is similar to calling Trump a fascist because he wants stronger border protections. They’re just inflammatory, inaccurate labels used for political gain. The communist label is relying on the “red scare” nonsense, and the fascist label is relying on holocaust imagery. Both are inaccurate and harmful IMO.
Yes, there are legitimate communists on the left and legitimate fascists on the right, but they’re such a minority that using them for any public figure is almost guaranteed to be inaccurate.
Liberalism is not necessarily capitalist. It is possible to be an anti-capitalist liberal by recognizing the inalienable right to workplace democracy @technology
I don’t think that’s true, at least not given the classical definition found here on Wikipedia. In general, I think John Locke embodies liberalism really well, and he believed in a natural right to life, liberty, and property. So to me, property has been a foundational part of liberalism since its creation.
Then again, a lot of people use “liberal” to essentially be the same as “leftist,” meaning anyone left of center. But I think that’s silly, because in my eyes and using the academic definition of liberalism, both the Democratic Party and Republican Party have strong liberal roots, and they’re different in where they deviate from that (Democrats are weak on property rights and free markets, Republicans are weak on civil liberties and secularism).
If you’re anti-capitalist, by definition you’re not a liberal IMO. And I think most people who claim to be anti-capitalist aren’t actually anti-capitalist (can’t speak for you though), they’re just frustrated at our corrupted form of capitalism. A purer form of capitalism (less protectionism, i.e. fewer IP protections, fewer options to limit liability, etc) accompanied with a healthy safety net (e.g. something like UBI) and worker protections is probably more than adequate to most who espouse anti-capitalist sentiment.
It is exactly people’s right to property that rules out capitalism. The principle behind property is getting the positive and negative fruits of your labor. The capitalist employer-employee relationship has the employer appropriating 100% of the positive and negative fruits of workers’ labor while employees receive 0% of the property rights to the produced output and liabilities for the used-up inputs. The only way for workers to get the fruits of their labor is in worker coops @technology
No, the way for workers to get the fruits of their labor is to not sell their labor, but instead sell the fruits of their labor. Worker coops are one way to do that, or they can become independent contractors. Both of those are capitalist, since the only real requirement for capitalism is for property ownership to be owned by an individual or small group, not collectively. A coop is essentially the same thing any other corporation, but the workers are the shareholders. There’s still a well-defined system of exclusive ownership of the means of production (i.e. the workers become capital owners).
But a lot of people don’t actually want that. Owning your own business (or having a share of your business) means taking on a lot of risk. If times get hard, your income takes a big hit because you’re absorbing the risk. If the venture fails, that capital disappears.
That’s why a lot of people prefer to sell their labor, they like the consistent paycheck. If the company loses money, they still get paid at their agreed-upon rate, or they lose their job and find a job elsewhere. It’s the same reason why a lot of people prefer to rent instead of owning their own property, they don’t want the risk associated with capital ownership. I create more value for my company than I earn, and that’s 100% okay because I’m looking for stability (I have a wife and kids), so I’d rather someone else get the rewards for hustling than have the stress of having to do that myself. I tried contracting for a few years, and that all ended when COVID happened and all of my clients disappeared. So now I’m content selling my labor and getting stability in return.
If worker coops are what you want, then you’re not anti-capitalist, you’re just against selling your labor and are comfortable taking on some risk. That’s completely valid in a capitalist society, and you have every right to start or join a coop. If you’re okay with labor unions, then you mostly just want to empower workers to get more leverage over their employers to force them to have thinner margins (but they’ll still need to be compensated for the risk). If you’re truly anti-capitalist, you wouldn’t be satisfied with coops or unions since those are capitalist systems.
It certainly seems that way. I think social media has made people turn on eachother. Everything is dumbed down. Sides are calling eachother names. Its all so useless.
Then again, politics has always been divisive and resorting to name-calling isn’t anything new. The research, however, seems to indicate that it has gotten much worse with social media.
Yes, it’s obvious even without any research papers, at least to me who grew up before social media. It has changed and weaponized people against eachother. People assume the worst about people just from reading a comment.
And it’s kind of ironic, it’s closer to “anti-social media” than “social media.” It works to bring together small groups (e.g. book groups), but anything of any real scale and it breaks down into us vs them mentality.
Someone actually did phrase the term “anti-social media” for stuff like Lemmy. I like the term a lot but it actually is a better fit for describing all forms of social media where people are instantly judging and fighting eachother, because that’s not what we do in real life.
Someone says something we don’t agree with in real life, and we just move on. It’s their opinion and we don’t have to fight it. We can express what we think and that’s it. But on these platforms, some people are instantly going to war over it. They block people, they block entire instances, and they think they are fighting some kind of battle, such as fighting against nazism appearently.
It’s just silly.
If I don’t like gay people, as an example, then I’m appearently part of the third reich and want to send them all to gas chambers. Yeah sure, not an overreaction at all is it? :)
Yeah, genius thought that creating CyberTruk and turn full Nazi will expand his consumer base.
Sucks for real founders of Tesla, but hey, at least you helped bootstrapping switch to EVs.
seriously, I think if Elon could just sit back and shut the fuck up about everything since the beginning, he could have went down in history as one of the greatest man alive.
Apartheid Space Karen just had to go and call the Thai cave diver a pedo because his tech bro submarine idea was dumb as fuck, and his fragile ego couldn’t handle the L.
I wondered if that was the trigger or just a symptom. I suspect, given his upbringing and previous reputation from other startups, it was just a symptom.
Definitely. But it was the moment where a LOT of people started seeing the real elon
Oh, billionaires and their submarines. I wish Elon wanted to tour the Titanic.
He’s a Nazi? Like, literally? What’s the latest?
Edit: we’re discussing the down votes for this comment below. I’m baffled, because I’m merely asking for info. Please, if you want to down vote, reconsider, and consider replying to me why instead. 🙂 I don’t care about the votes, I’m just curious why a simple request could be so unpopular. Thank you.
He lets Nazis use his platform and calls it “freedom of speech”, although this exact freedom is limited by the wellbeing of others. And promoting Nazis is harmful to not only minorities, but the society in my opinion, as they strive to split the society with populist arguments.
Calling someone a Nazi is quite a serious accusation, and it’s going to need a lot better justification than that. I post gay porn on Twitter, and Elon lets me do that. Does that mean he’s gay too?
You’ve tied my head up in knots with this one. Haha
As to the argument above yours, fostering a space for Nazis to grow their movement is scary. I get that some segments of society think that posting gay porn is scary too, but gay porn never led to death camps for anybody.
I think all ideas are worth discussing, because if they’re hiding in quiet corners there are no voices of reason to refute them. It’s hard to take that stance nowadays with the internet working the way it does. Algorithms feeding information to people just because that information gets engagement is frightening.
I had a conversation with my neighbor yesterday about how he got interested in the whole furry thing. He said that initially, he read the critical comments online, took them seriously, thought it was funny, so he engaged in harassment of furries. His engagement led him to more furry videos. He began to like some of the people he was engaging with. Fast forward to now and he’s got fursuits hanging in his closet and everyone he hangs with is also a furry.
It got me thinking about how a lot of kids end up going down these rabbit holes online. Not that I consider being a furry a bad thing. My daughter is into that stuff and I support her being herself. His example just made me think of how other people fall into extremism online.
Nazis say they want to murder people until there are enough of rhem to do so. Gay porn afaik has not murdered anyone and has no agenda to do so.
I disagree. It’s better to let naziz talk so their opinions can be argued against. Nothing is solved by censorship. The opinions are still there, you just don’t see them.
I don’t know why people today are so sensitive? Why is it hard to see someone say something you don’t agree with?
If you want to actually solve the problem that those people hate strangers for no real reason, you need to talk to them.
Elon isn’t promoting naziz, he is just not censoring them. Hopefully you see the difference.
I don’t know, maybe because it’s hard to not be sensitive about ideas that threaten your life and very existence?
Twitter disproportionately take action against LGBTQ+ individuals and ignore nazis. There is no debate that Elon is promoting right wing ideas by protecting nazi speech.
So you meant that the platform is nazi because it’s not supporting lgbtq+? Im not on that platform and don’t know anything about it, but the word nazi has traditionally not been used for gender issues, but race issues.
It’s well known that Nazis aren’t very fond of lgbtq+ people, despite them being more known for being anti-Semitic and just generally racist.
But I would like to know, what would constitute promoting nazi ideals for you?
Yes of course but not liking lgbtq+ people is not nazism.
Wishing for their eradication sure is.
Again, what do you think Elon would need to do for his actions to constitute promoting nazism?
This is such a naive and ignorant take that assumes everything is argued in good faith and not with an army of bots posting literal propaganda, lies, and disinformation in order to brainwash people who don’t know any better.
What you’re arguing for is allowing cancer to spread rather than seeing a doctor about it “because the immune system will take care of it.”
We’re not arguing about “a marketplace of ideas” in real life, this is about weaponizing technology to serve the interests of a select few to the detriment of everyone else.
That’s a good point. Thanks.
I also used to be a free speech absolutist, but they took that and ran with it. Just like so many other things in modern life, the crazies take over. If I can no longer use the service then they’ve gone too far and I’ll move to one that’s still civil (why can’t the nazis stay in their damn subreddit instead of infecting mine?)
Then we came to the us 2016 election and all the fallout since. I was just flabbergasted when people in the public space started denying reality. They admitted denying reality and making stuff up. They admitted denying reality and making stuff up and somehow still had followers. They admitted denying reality and making stuff up and still had followers that turned into votes. We all saw the point where crazies took that free speech and ran with it, where the uneducated and gullible or desperate hung in their every word. We saw damage to society right in front of our eyes. Before this, I would have said free speech at least brings it out into the open and lets people become educated. However now I see some people will say or do anything for the notoriety or wealth, some people will follow it blindly and can’t be educated, and that directly increase divisiveness, violence, lawlessness, harassment and discrimination. I don’t know a better approach but I do know the current status is not ok.
Maybe it’s as simple as consequences. You have a right to free speech but you also need to face the consequences of your words. In the past that may have meant you’re ostracized from various parts of society, or marginalized, but online that doesn’t seem to work anymore. You can say anything as long as the clicks follow, without facing the consequences of your words. Maybe the Alex Jones lawsuit will help or maybe we need to find ways to facilitate situations like that: you have free speech but also face the consequences of your words, which may include taking the fortune you made with your “alternative facts”. But when we have a presidential campaign that names it, is proud of it, and people still follow, what can we do? When there’s a huge profit motive for outrage, what can we do? Where fleecing the rubes has no consequences, what can we do? Where there are no checks and balances to keep the entire system stable, what can we do? I’ve never been so disappointed in my fellow supposedly sentient beings.
I think that free speech is okay, IF it’s consensual and if each person is represented by themselves. I do not think bots and duplicate accounts are free speech. I do not think spamming messages and overwhelming media is free speech.
Imo if I dislike what people are saying, then it’s up to me to look at things systemically rather than personally. Fascism seems to be akin to a societal response to external threats, almost like a scab forming. Which is why so many leftists do indeed turn to fascist methods to fight fascists - wasps swarming their hive.
If we reduced external threats, maybe modeled non-threatening behaviors, it could help every day. The Black Panthers, for instance, used to feed people (reducing the external threat of starvation). Remember how friendly everyone used to be? I try to bring some of that back by complimenting people, asking about their day. It may seem minor, but that’s what communities are built on. And modeling prosocial behavior is, at its core, antifascist.
What happened in 2016 was so clear, along with Jan 6th. It is quite disturbing how many people still support him - I went on vacation to Newport.Beach recently, near LA, and there were multiple businesses there and on Balboa Beach openly supporting Trump. I saw Trump merch everywhere including hats. It was honestly insane to see something like that within 30 miles of a major city. These are people with money and access to education (not that they use it…). These are some of the people who literally own most of the American economy (California is the 5th or 6th largest economy in the world by itself). And they don’t want to acknowledge climate change or that fascism is bad. It’s bad here.
Reducing freedom of speech wouldn’t change how bad things are here.
And please give your fellow Americans some grace. Yes, it’s wild they can’t see what’s going on, but it’s kinda obvious someone took the CIA’s classic plan for destabilizing a country and uno reversed it onto us, right? Like the obvious attacks on education, business, medicine, etc, this isn’t happening on accident. There are countries paying billions for your mom and my dad and everyone’s grandparents to be hypnotized into self sabotaging.
Wars aren’t always fought with guns
That makes sense I guess. I don’t live in the US and I didn’t follow the election but I understand it was very strange. But just look at the political leaders there. Of course it’s going to be an absurd election.
It’s like picking between cartoon characters.
That being said, I appriciate your view on free speach. When it seems that people are not rational, of course you don’t want them to have a voice.
I am not talking about feeling attacked, but rather to not give anti-societal movements any platform.
Also, that ideology is not based in factual arguments, so why would arguing succeed? The real solution would be for them to get to know foreigners to seez that they are just people, but that doesn’t happen on twitter.
Yes, I see the difference, but its indicative of his ideology I think.
Thus website doesn’t like any opinion that is anyway different to theirs. They want the echo chamber.
I am wondering why there is such a down vote count on this. I thought there was a new development that he’s actually a Nazi supporter, rather than just letting them roam free on his platform.
It’s not even an opinion. I’m literally curious to know more facts lol.
This website fucking insane in all honesty.
Like I’m not going to say Elon is perfect. But on here they live in fantasy land. He seems to be living rent free in their head.
Space X is the biggest one where it becomes obvious how biased it is. Space X will public announced that they are testing something and expect it to fail. Then it does better than expected but doesn’t complete everything perfectly. Then everyone on here acts like the greatest space company in the world is failing singlehandedly because Elon is stupid and also an evil genius. Also that he has too much control and that is had too little.
Facts don’t matter here. Everyone is too fragile so free speech is scary to them.
Maybe you’re right. I’m not here to argue with anyone over Elon, I’m just here for the show/trainwreck and the popcorn lol.
Yea it fills some time. Enjoy.
Nope. Lefties like to call any outspoken conservative a “Nazi” to discredit them. It’s like when conservatives call lefties “communist.” It’s juvenile IMO, but I guess it works.
If you let Nazis in your house and kick out people saying they don’t want to hang around Nazis, what does that make you?
Collaborateur! 📣
If you’re looking to have a public forum, you need a representative sample from all sides of the political spectrum. Look at parliamentary systems as an example of that, where you have literal fascists and communists sitting alongside one another as a very vocal, but incredibly small minority. If that’s your goal, you need to take the good with the bad.
That is what Musk has stated as his goal, so what you’re seeing makes absolute sense with that stated goal.
That said, I don’t like Musk or what he claims to believe in politically, I just think the idea of an open town square is desirable. I hope someone can pull it off (doesn’t seem like Musk is doing it), which is part of why I’m working on a Reddit/Lemmy alternative that discourages echo chambers and encourages high quality discourse. Doing that is incredibly hard, because people like to group up into tribes, and I think Musk absolutely does that as well (hence why I don’t like him). However, I don’t think Musk is a “Nazi” because he allows Nazis on his platform, I think he’s just incapable of running the type of social media platform he wants to see exist.
What are you talking about? Who has he kicked out for that?
Verified pro-Nazi X accounts flourish under Elon Musk https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-twitter-elon-musk-nazi-extremist-white-nationalist-accounts-rcna145020
IBM pulls advertising from X/Twitter after report says they appeared next to pro-Hitler and pro-Nazi content https://fortune.com/2023/11/17/ibm-pulls-advertising-from-x-twitter-antisemitism-elon-musk-nazi-hitler/
Elon Musk Will Reinstate Neo-Nazi on Twitter https://lamag.com/internet/elon-musk-will-reinstate-neo-nazi-on-twitter
Elon Musk expresses support for antisemitic post on X, calling it “the actual truth” https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-antisemitic-comments-x-post-actual-truth/
Elon Musk Is Turning Twitter Into a Haven for Nazis https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7zm9q/elon-musk-twitter-nazis-white-supremacy
None of this addresses my question
when you’re sitting with these people guess what? you’re a nazi
How do you know they are left?
I don’t, but there seems to be a very strong correlation between leftist political views and calling people who tolerate Trump “Nazis.”
That said, I’m not a leftist or a conservative, I dislike Trump, Musk, and what they stand for. I’m libertarian, and not in the “I’m a conservative who likes weed” way (I have no desire to use weed, but it should 100% be legal), but in a “We should work toward open borders” way. I respect Musk’s statement that he wants Twitter/X to be a free speech platform and understand him allowing Trump et al back on, but I think he has really lost what made Twitter interesting. I don’t think he actually wants free speech, he wants people to agree with him to be heard, and “free speech” is the excuse to get them platformed again.
My issue here has nothing to do with Musk, but with the liberal (pun intended) use of the term “Nazi” to label people you don’t like. There are actual Nazi movements that could apply to, such as the Proud Boys, and abusing the term just cheapens the meaning of the term.
Really? Because the right doesn’t throw the Nazi card around like there’s no tomorrow at the left with their disingenuous “national socialism bullshit”. Only one party/political leaning is actually courting the neo-nazi vote.
Of course they don’t, the Nazi card is a far-right concept. The far-left analog is communist, and they did plenty of that during the “red scare.” They still use “communist” or “socialist” terminology to write off opponents.
And no, the Republican party isn’t actively courting neo-nazis, it’s neo-nazis that are using Republican talking points to appeal to a broader audience. There’s certainly a venn diagram overlap there, so Republicans can appear to be supporting neo-nazis, but that’s really just neo-nazis trying to appeal to more of the mainstream.
Don’t get caught up in the partisan name-calling, it sucks when Republican do it, and it sucks when Democrats do it, it’s just a really stupid version of a strawman. Democrats don’t want to seize the means of product but Republicans want you to think they do, and Repbulicans don’t want to kill minorities but Democrats want you to think they do. Don’t buy in to the divisiveness BS, look at the facts and make your own decisions from there.
I personally hate both parties since neither actually deliver on the parts I like from their platforms, and they tend to behave similarly on the issues I care about (e.g. both largely support Israel, both seem happy to continue undeclared wars, both seem happy to run up deficit spending with little to show for it, etc). Screw the two party system and “pundits” in general.
Leftists are communist though. Liberals are the progressives that prefer capitalism
No, I disagree with each of your definitions. Here’s how I see them:
So in terms of size of the groups: leftists > liberals > progressives. The communist part of the left is largely mutually exclusive from progressives and liberals, though some progressives are in favor of some elements from socialism.
At least that’s how I see it. I’m neither leftist or conservative, I’m a pretty centrist libertarian. I’m left of many leftists and right of many conservatives, depending on the issue.
You may disagree, but it is a pretty widely agreed upon distinction. It’s a symptom of the issue of a fractured left wing. The left leaning communists wanted to distinguish themselves from the left leaning capitalists, so they started calling themselves leftists and not liberals.
It’s just a bunch of different labels, it’s not really set in stone or definitive. I totally understand why you disagree.
My point really was just that a conservative calling someone a communist isn’t insulting to a lot of self described leftists because they are communist, it’s mostly just considered an insult to a conservative. Kinda like calling an alt right person a Nazi is an insult from a leftist, but plenty of alt righties wouldn’t be insulted because they are (jk but not really but jk)
I don’t really care what they call themselves, I care what people in general mean by the terms they use. Academics use “leftist” to mean anyone on the left, “liberals” to mean those who prioritize individual liberties and private property (e.g. founders of the US), and “progressives” to mean those interested in utilitarian changes to existing systems to improve outcomes. “Liberal” has change a bit recently with the right using it to describe the left, but it’s also not wrong because both Dems and Reps are liberals, Reps are just socially conservative liberals, and Dems are socially progressive liberals. Those have clear definitions that are generally understood by the public, and changing their meaning just confuses things IMO.
But most aren’t. Calling Biden a communist because he wants to expand access to medical care is similar to calling Trump a fascist because he wants stronger border protections. They’re just inflammatory, inaccurate labels used for political gain. The communist label is relying on the “red scare” nonsense, and the fascist label is relying on holocaust imagery. Both are inaccurate and harmful IMO.
Yes, there are legitimate communists on the left and legitimate fascists on the right, but they’re such a minority that using them for any public figure is almost guaranteed to be inaccurate.
Liberalism is not necessarily capitalist. It is possible to be an anti-capitalist liberal by recognizing the inalienable right to workplace democracy @technology
I don’t think that’s true, at least not given the classical definition found here on Wikipedia. In general, I think John Locke embodies liberalism really well, and he believed in a natural right to life, liberty, and property. So to me, property has been a foundational part of liberalism since its creation.
Then again, a lot of people use “liberal” to essentially be the same as “leftist,” meaning anyone left of center. But I think that’s silly, because in my eyes and using the academic definition of liberalism, both the Democratic Party and Republican Party have strong liberal roots, and they’re different in where they deviate from that (Democrats are weak on property rights and free markets, Republicans are weak on civil liberties and secularism).
If you’re anti-capitalist, by definition you’re not a liberal IMO. And I think most people who claim to be anti-capitalist aren’t actually anti-capitalist (can’t speak for you though), they’re just frustrated at our corrupted form of capitalism. A purer form of capitalism (less protectionism, i.e. fewer IP protections, fewer options to limit liability, etc) accompanied with a healthy safety net (e.g. something like UBI) and worker protections is probably more than adequate to most who espouse anti-capitalist sentiment.
It is exactly people’s right to property that rules out capitalism. The principle behind property is getting the positive and negative fruits of your labor. The capitalist employer-employee relationship has the employer appropriating 100% of the positive and negative fruits of workers’ labor while employees receive 0% of the property rights to the produced output and liabilities for the used-up inputs. The only way for workers to get the fruits of their labor is in worker coops @technology
No, the way for workers to get the fruits of their labor is to not sell their labor, but instead sell the fruits of their labor. Worker coops are one way to do that, or they can become independent contractors. Both of those are capitalist, since the only real requirement for capitalism is for property ownership to be owned by an individual or small group, not collectively. A coop is essentially the same thing any other corporation, but the workers are the shareholders. There’s still a well-defined system of exclusive ownership of the means of production (i.e. the workers become capital owners).
But a lot of people don’t actually want that. Owning your own business (or having a share of your business) means taking on a lot of risk. If times get hard, your income takes a big hit because you’re absorbing the risk. If the venture fails, that capital disappears.
That’s why a lot of people prefer to sell their labor, they like the consistent paycheck. If the company loses money, they still get paid at their agreed-upon rate, or they lose their job and find a job elsewhere. It’s the same reason why a lot of people prefer to rent instead of owning their own property, they don’t want the risk associated with capital ownership. I create more value for my company than I earn, and that’s 100% okay because I’m looking for stability (I have a wife and kids), so I’d rather someone else get the rewards for hustling than have the stress of having to do that myself. I tried contracting for a few years, and that all ended when COVID happened and all of my clients disappeared. So now I’m content selling my labor and getting stability in return.
If worker coops are what you want, then you’re not anti-capitalist, you’re just against selling your labor and are comfortable taking on some risk. That’s completely valid in a capitalist society, and you have every right to start or join a coop. If you’re okay with labor unions, then you mostly just want to empower workers to get more leverage over their employers to force them to have thinner margins (but they’ll still need to be compensated for the risk). If you’re truly anti-capitalist, you wouldn’t be satisfied with coops or unions since those are capitalist systems.
It certainly seems that way. I think social media has made people turn on eachother. Everything is dumbed down. Sides are calling eachother names. Its all so useless.
Yup, and that’s more than a feeling, there’s a lot of evidence for it. Here’s a PDF research paper about polarization in social media, here’s an article, and here’s a related poll of people in emerging markets.
Then again, politics has always been divisive and resorting to name-calling isn’t anything new. The research, however, seems to indicate that it has gotten much worse with social media.
Yes, it’s obvious even without any research papers, at least to me who grew up before social media. It has changed and weaponized people against eachother. People assume the worst about people just from reading a comment.
Funny actually.
Exactly!
And it’s kind of ironic, it’s closer to “anti-social media” than “social media.” It works to bring together small groups (e.g. book groups), but anything of any real scale and it breaks down into us vs them mentality.
Someone actually did phrase the term “anti-social media” for stuff like Lemmy. I like the term a lot but it actually is a better fit for describing all forms of social media where people are instantly judging and fighting eachother, because that’s not what we do in real life.
Someone says something we don’t agree with in real life, and we just move on. It’s their opinion and we don’t have to fight it. We can express what we think and that’s it. But on these platforms, some people are instantly going to war over it. They block people, they block entire instances, and they think they are fighting some kind of battle, such as fighting against nazism appearently.
It’s just silly.
If I don’t like gay people, as an example, then I’m appearently part of the third reich and want to send them all to gas chambers. Yeah sure, not an overreaction at all is it? :)
I wish people would calm down and breathe.