What do you believe that most people of your political creed don't?
What do you believe that most people of your political creed don't?
Just wanted to prove that political diversity ain't dead. Remember, don't downvote for disagreements.
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I'm generally leaning towards progressive or left-wing ideas, but with a few exceptions.
- While I support the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion, I believe that DEI initiatives are highly susceptible to exploitation because of the widespread and largely uncritical public support of the concept (or even just the abbreviation) with little regard to the implementation; and by tokenizing ethnicity, gender, and identity, it is at risk of doing what it was meant to prevent.
- I believe that law enforcement is a deeply flawed system to say the least, but ultimately necessary because the alternatives are lawlessness or ineffectual systems. This is of course colored by my European perspective where guns and driver's licenses aren't handed out like candy.
- The "tolerance is a social contract" mentality is hurting society. A person who experiences rejection and exclusion from progressive communities for voicing "intolerant" opinions will not be interested in reconciliation, and will inevitably fall in with a more radical group where they experience acceptance and belonging, where they will never be exposed to different ideas and their views will never be challenged. Integration should be sought whenever reasonable.
The last point is especially important to me. I grew up in a fairly conservative environment, and it took me a lot of conscious effort to un-learn my prejudices and learn acceptance. But whenever I get downvoted and shouted down for voicing an opinion that aligns with conservatives, or simply isn't "leftist" enough, it makes me want to distance myself from "leftist" ideology and adds to my disillusionment.
The first point is a fairly common opinion among communists, who understand "DEI" to be a liberal cooption of liberationist language and thought that tokenizes identities and reworks the concepts in favor of exploiters (and was doomed to be shed the moment it was less profitable for exploiters).
It may be beneficial to consider the second point with some nuance that is often neglected in order to agitate. Again with communists, you will find many that hate their country's cops but acknowledge the necessity in a post-revolutionary framework, either in their own visions for their own revolution or in defending the actions taken by their comrades that rapidly discover the need for some form of organized enforcement. One way to think about this is that the police are an arm of the state, and who that state serves via its structures and nature changes how they operate. In OECD countries, cops primarily serve capital. They protect profits based on shop owner complaints, shut down capital-inconvenient demonstrations, etc, and spend little time helping average people. In many capitalist countries, cops are underpaid and openly corrupt, so they do the same things while being more obvious bribes. In countries run by socialists, cops of course still do many cop things, but you will find them spending more of their time on other tasks, there are fewer per capita, and the job of being a cop in capitalist counties has been split into many different jobs that don't involve having a gun or otherwise carrying out the worst actions taken by cops. So, in short, it is entirely coherent to hate your local cops as an arm of capital that will beat you for protesting while not condemning the mere existence of cops in other countries while also understanding that we want to create a society free of them.
For the third point, it really depends on what you mean by accepting. Socialists need to educate people where they are, warts and all, but you also cannot be taillist and morph your work into accepting reactionary positions. That defeats the entire point of rejecting reactionary positions. Patience in explaining is valuable, tacit agreement with racism/xenophobia/sexism/homophobia/transphobia/etc is counterproductive. In addition, getting dunked on can and does create results. Despite growing up conservative and getting dunked on by those to your left, you now think of yourself as non-conservative. Are you sure none of those dunks ever led you to question your positions?
I can't address the entire reply since it's 3 in the morning, but I just want to point out something.
I'm not a communist. I'm not a socialist, or a Marxist-Leninist. I don't consider myself to be a "leftist" (which I see as an overly broad term), and I'm sure as hell not a centrist. If my views are inconsistent, it's because I don't follow any single doctrine.
Yes, and I didn't label you as any of those things. I sharee that the first two points overlap with some communist ways of thinking, which I view as a positive. I list the third point as food for thought and I was fairly qualified in how I described your politics so as to match what you had said and no more.
Hey dude, I just wanted to let you know there is an option in your settings so you don't see upvotes or downvotes.
Lemmy (AFAIK) doesn't even show you your total upvotes (karma... whatever it's called) by default either. None of these imaginary points fucking matter.
So why don't you do yourself a favor and uncheck these boxes and not give a fuck what others think about your comment.
I know I have.
(Lemmy is rad as fuck)
But whenever I get downvoted and shouted down for voicing an opinion that aligns with conservatives, or simply isn't "leftist" enough, it makes me want to distance myself from "leftist" ideology and adds to my disillusionment.
Why does disillusionment with the people involved in a movement influence your opinion on the ideals behind the movement?
Should the idea itself be bigger than the people that espouse it? If empathy and compassion are worthy goals, you don't just give up on them because other folk don't display them. If rejecting sexism is a worthy goal, you don't dial up the sexism because some folk think you don't go far enough in rejecting it.
It's more accurate to say that I'm growing disillusioned with the movement as a whole and the people who claim allegiance with it, not its ideals. I support the ideals that I find right and just, and given limited options (votes and such), will support the people who promote those ideals.
Rationally, it shouldn't; but we're human, so it does.
There is even a rational viewpoint too -- we can synergize if we work together with people who align with us and back a common interest, instead of all independently voicing slightly different political voices. But if other people in that group do something we really dislike, it tempts us to drift away and align with a different and smaller group instead.
Sure, if you fall out with a group, you might end up shifting your views when a new group you join sees things slightly differently. Lots of progressive groups fight and argue with each other over the specifics, and it often gets quite heated. But that's not the same thing as radically shifting your moral compass to point in another direction altogether.
So what is the alternative to "downvoting" someone's opinion? You can't support it, obviously, that would be stupid. I just see no other way than "downvoting", saying "well, I see where you're coming from, but your opinion is wrong and doesn't achieve what you want".
I think downvoting serves to make an opinion less visible, so you should remember that when you are downvoting someone you disagree with, it is serving to make their opinion less visible. Downvoting hostile or dangerous or low-quality comments is good, but downvoting dissenting opinions in general leads to polarization.
I would rather spend time in a community with many different perspectives than just one perspective, which is why I don't downvote people simply because I disagree with them.
Hexbear doesn't have downvotes, you are encouraged to reply and actually address the bad comments.
Your example is about as spicy as lukewarm water. The responses I got involved the words "bootlicker", "nazi", "fascist", and "chud", various expletives, called into question my mental health and respect for minorities, and listed several examples of why holding those views made me the scum of the earth.
I appreciate you keeping it real. It sucks that this community's response to dissenting views is so often hostility. I haven't looked at your comment history so maybe you really are a fascist, I don't know; if so, this doesn't apply. But if not -- I do wish people would think about how to bring people around to their point of view instead of rejecting them.
Well yeah, but that doesn't invalidate the "tolerance is a social contract" mentality, it invalidates baseless accusations and extreme hostility. What I said is the actual intended result of the "don't tolerate intolerance" mentality. If that is fine with you, then you don't actually have any issue with the mentality itself, but with the implementation.