Political Memes

The only thing more important than "do nothing wrong" is to loudly correct those who are doing "almost right" and "in the right direction."

I had an interaction once where I thought I used double quotes around a word to imply something obvious related to the posted article. A random person got mad at me and claimed I knew nothing about solidarity.

I felt insulted, they didn't know my life experiences up to that point. I chose to ignore my feelings and pressed them to teach my why I was so wrong. They eventually disappeared from replies because they had nothing behind that image of righteousness. Rare win but I'll take it.

If someone put themselves in harms way to punch an authoritarian follower in the face in my defence and also uses slurs I could find offensive to myself, that's not my enemy. That's someone awesome who could use a little more education. Later. When the current situation isn't so wild.

Words are just words. That's not as effective as punching a fascist in face.

I haved discussions with others here where its people are just not happy with baby steps and want full change right away. Problem is we need to make more friends not enemies with each other.

I spent a bunch of time in such spaces before the election and was shocked how much time and energy was squandered with virtue signaling and purity testing. There was literally no room for anything else in some of them.

And sometimes those people will even destroy active progress because it doesn't meet their definition of perfect.

Very good take.

I complained to a partner once about something they'd done that seemed vaguely unethical (by my understanding of their ethics). After they apologised, I was still upset, and they said "maybe I'm a little bit shit, just like everyone else."

That really stuck with me. People (including myself) are often OK with accepting imperfections in other people in some spaces, but not in others. It's pretty weird.. Life is messy, even the bits that seems straightforward. And no one has a perfect understanding of any situation..

obviously a trap set by bougie liberals to try and get me to vote for a Democrat.

but i'm too smart for them

I think this "do nothing wrong" tendency has something to do with intragroup power dynamics. I've often seen it used as a cudgel to knock down others within a group and stop mild dissent even though everyone is on the same team. Usually the most prolific wielder of the "do nothing wrong" cudgel rises to a position of some authority in the group, after which the group fragments because the person is insufferable but unassailable due to their moral superiority.

This one is fun because it could be both about tankies and actual leftists depending on what you believe in.

Great now we get to argue what nothing and something is…

The problem is they keep dissagreeing on details and forget, they'll never agree on everything.

I don't usually participate in communities of my interest, like vegan, communist, anarchist, etc. because I know I don't agree a 100% and that there will always be people that think are better than others or that have a lot more time to spend on activism than me. But all my friends know I never back down when discussing important topics with anyone, I always tell them that I will take the time to discuss with people they don't like, like weird conservatives and other uncomfortable groups (which have a big presence where I study).

I usually can recognize when someone is close to being more left-leaning than what they think they are, and I take the time to talk to them about it, which a lot of leftist communities don't (at least from what I've seen). Yes, there are trolls, but usually when talking in person, they aren't that stupid.

online leftist

Important things happen offline, online is more or less a distraction.

No improving the current system allowed!

That's not only a problem of online leftists spaces. The left has always been pretty busy with discussing what page of the capital is more beautiful written...

There's nothing wrong with encouraging others to be better versions of themselves. The problem is many people aren't capable of doing so without being toxic AF.

Yes let's start a 3rd party

wave of downvotes and idiots screaming about RCV even though that's not a disqualifier

Gatekeeping, purity testing, virtue signaling, and no self accountability. These are the four reasons why every leftist space outside of the center left is a complete and utter joke. These traits are cultural in left wing spaces, and they are very common. They are so common that they'll never be going away and they are the root reasons why the left will NEVER accomplish anything substantial during my lifetime.

I have referenced this post so many times but was never able to find it so thanks

I would say largest problem with leftist spaces is a little more challenging to identify; it's that leftists are broadly intellectuals or at least identify as intellectual because of effort they put into honoring nuance. And the primary opponent of leftists are conservatives, and they are proudly not intellectual and view people who use the lens of intellectualism and nuance as weak or elitist.

Because it's incredibly difficult to have any kind of meaningful intellectual debate with your opponents, we have all retreated to our safe-spaces and online bubbles, our discord groups and algorithm-driven feeds. We don't even walk in the same environments or view the same media anymore,

So in order for people on the left to feel any kind of satisfaction and feel like their mental strength actually has a use, they find someone else who is ostensibly on the left and attack something that person said or did which they feel does not represent their own leftist values.

Our eternal, infernal infighting problem is because we have an army of head-warriors who have no heads to butt against. Even if there were people on the right willing to have intellectual debates, they're not even in the same talking-space anymore. The only place you can go to have debates are contentious battleground where nobody is even arguing in good faith and just screaming their talking points for audience upvotes. So leftists, being humans, take the easy path and turn on each other to feel like they're making any progress or are involved at all in making things better.

On the right it's much easier to feel like you're part of the movement or doing something for your group, all you have to do is buy a gun or stockpile trumpcoins and canned food or harass someone or get drunk and scream about minorities. It's mindless and pointless but it feels like action. And sadly, more and more people are being turned away by this kind of mental effort and emotional labor of "doing the right thing" so they're getting sucked in by the mindless orcs who have more fun and have easier victory conditions.

some people are all 'the system is broken' and other people are like 'the system is working exactly as intended' and im just screaming 'DID YOU OR DID YOU NOT VOTE IN THE LAST ELECTION?'

This is what I've been saying. The gatekeeping is unreal. How the fuck are we supposed to grow as a movement if we can't accept those who maybe did and/or said some questionable shit in the past? If someone is trying to make positive changes and is demonstrating it with their actions and/or words than we should accept them. I guarantee the vast majority of you here have said or did something that goes against your current beliefs.

I believe it's actually the opposite. So many extremists or "I don’t agree with you therefore you’re a troll" bullshit.

You get censored and banned for pretty much anything. Lemmy is no exception and pretty obviously like that.

An alarming number of leftists are not revolutionaries but dictators without power.