Is Lemmy getting more radical lately?
Have seen a few posts popping up recently just straight up calling fo violence barely disguised as memes
Had thought Lemmy had chilled out a bit on that kinda thing for a while but seems to be coming back now
Anyone else noticing the same or just me?
Can you think of anything that happened in the past month or so, perhaps involving US politics, that might have a tendency to radicalize people?
Its not really just Lemmy tho. Its everywhere.
People are just mad these days and that event in NYC ignited their anger they always had.
I think most people are more like saying "LOL" at what happened rather than "Lets kill [insert person name here]". I mean, nobody really asked for it, nobody gave the pepetrator the "okay" to do it, the person just did it. People aren't sympathetic because the dead person wasn't such a nice person.
Remember how people celebrated Bin Laden's death, this is like that. Different nationality, same killer mindset that they had in common.
bin laden didn't kill nearly as many americans as united health has
how people celebrated Bin Laden’s death
Ouch, some deep introspection is required if you get to a point in life where you, being an insurance CEO and being killed lead to the same kind of mob reactions as Bin Laden's death.
I think most people are more like saying “LOL” at what happened rather than “Lets kill [insert person name here]”.
I've definitely seen quite a few memes that were like "Here are the names and faces of a few other health insurance CEOs. No particular reason ;)". But yeah it's probably not most.
Fair I'm not really on any other forums anymore and I haven't heard anything about this CEO death until just now
Fascinating. Are you in the US?
I could not have avoided knowing about it. Even if I were to stay off the internet completely, it has been a major conversation topic in real life with friends and family. My work has BCBS health insurance coverage so when they were dropping coverage for anesthesia, all casual conversations at work with colleagues were about it too. I couldn't have avoided it if I actively tried.
First shots in defense of the working class have been fired in the class war and most of us are surprised it took this long.
As someone who’s father was killed by health insurance companies, the assassination of the UHC CEO brings out some really passionate bloodthirsty emotions in me. And I’m just one person….
The assassin is my hero. Too bad if it hurts your sensibilities. Fuck him, fuck his family, no sympathy. I hope there are many copycats, there are many deserving targets.
Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent revolution inevitable. They have it coming.
Sorry to hear about your father. There's maybe nothing more horrific in Western society than the way we fund the lavish lifestyles of mass murderers like Brian Thompson.
Yeah it's awesome, need more of it
Is Lemmy getting more bootlicker lately?
Slaves cheering when a slave owner dies seems pretty normal, no?
Nothing of the sort happened lately in the news.
Hopefully!
what is the opposite of "radical", in your opinion, and was lemmy like that before "lately"?
god willing
The recent killing of the UHC CEO seems to have pushed all the right buttons in activating people's bloodlust and mob mentality. But I actually looked at some of the threads on reddit after being a bit taken aback by the reaction on Lemmy, and redditors were being just as violent. So I don't think it's Lemmy getting more radical, it's just the flavor of the week right now to celebrate violence, as long as it's against the bad guys.
I think in general there's just a lot of people getting to the end of their rope at the moment. This isn't just hatred directed at insurance companies (although that was certainly the catalyst to get it started), but I think it's also a reflection of growing agitation towards the upper class
The main doctor Reddit had to delete a whole thread due to bloodlust.
We are rampant for a revolution. Everyone is united in how pissed they are over health insurance. We need to seize this moment.
A successful revolution takes a whole lot more than bloodlust and directionless anger. The emotion is there, but there is no revolutionary framework or ideology in place to direct that feeling towards meaningful change. This seeming "unity" is ephemeral, it'll be forgotten as soon as the next media cycle starts.
He killed a mass murderer who murdered people who's names he didn't even know so rich people could get staggeringly rich.
Like ok, vigilante justice is a mixed bag. But if you've ever felt relief at any killing of a dangerous and violent person who victimises the vulnerable then the only reason you wouldn't feel that now is because you think some words on a scroll change morality.
I say it's getting less radical when 20 years ago a country got invaded, a million killed, based on nothing but lies and no one bat an eye on any forum.
I think it's America that's getting more violent. You see the same thing on other platforms.
It's useful to remember that Americans are a minority on the English-speaking internet. There's only 330 million of us, while the world has an estimated 1.5 billion English speakers. Probably much more if we include people that just know some of the language.
English is the global trade language, it's frequently taken in school as a second language all over the world. If you learn some English, the amount of activities available to you dramatically increases.
Sure, I'm not American myself. But I'm pretty sure much of the violent rhetoric on social media right now around killing CEOs etc is from Americans. The murder of Brian Thompson happened in America after all and all the anger around health insurance wouldn't really make sense in most of the world where there's universal health care.
Need to get rid of all the guns in America.
There is definitely a trend towards calling for death and violence against billionaires and other powerful figures that I've observed over a while.
Yes and no.
There are more calls for violence, yes.
But a lot of people on Lemmy have a lot of catching up to do in understanding the world, nuances and getting rid of outdated and harmful thinking stagnated by clinging onto certain ideologies and belief systems.
That would be way more 'radical' than just violence alone.
Lemmy started as tankie safe-haven, and those memes are all over, not just on lemmy.
So I'd say, no.
What communities?
Not that much, but I blocked some pretty nsfw instances…
Just yesterday I read a post about a woman being stalked by a supposed Nazi. At least 5 comments were quite literally 'buy a gun and shoot him', those had by far the most upvotes. When I said I hope theyre joking, I got downvoted and told you dont joke around when it comes to Nazis.
So yeah, maybe Lemmy is becoming kind of radical.
The alternative would be to call the cops, who would say "we can't do anything as long as nothing has happened".
Personally I'd call the nearest Antifa group.
Tbf, "self defense," while technically being "violence," is the only time violence is actually acceptable. She should buy a gun if she's being stalked by anyone, but of course just buying one isn't enough. Also needed is practice to learn how to shoot (preferably with an instructor if you can afford it, but you can learn most of that stuff from the right sources online actually like Jerry Miculek's videos on it, if that's your only option), carry permit if your state needs it, and learning the laws regarding use of force in your area. Also buy/carry OC spray if it's legal (for instance it isn't legal in NYC) in case he ends up being a threat, but not a deadly threat.
Practicing nonviolence is a worthy pursuit and I'm also a proponent of it, but to go so far as to forego self defense in the name of pacifism is just foolish in my personal opinion. The advice isn't just "shoot him next time you see him," (that's called murder lol), it's "just in case he tries to kill you, be prepared with an Uno reverse card."
There's not exactly nuance when you're dealing with a world that is growing far right, and has only hatred to show.
Maybe the radical is the Nazi, not the need to stamp out Nazism?
The creed everyone should have is: the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi. Humanity has fought against fascism 85 years ago, and some people are thinking the same things as fascists now.
Comrade. Do not deny, defend, or depose the past.
The same is happening now as in the quote, just add queers and Muslims to it. I see your perspective, but what you are saying effectively comes over as, "oh no! a poor Nazi getting threatened!", when the better action would be to stop and think:
Is it better that tolerance is intolerant against intolerance? Or should tolerance mean allowing hatred to destroy that very tolerance?
Yes, but, see everyone else's statements.
Also, lemmy.ml is widely seen as a very radical instance. The polarization and downvoting for contrary opinions is far worse around here.
Radical but not logical. Make a post about a violent criminal who murders someone. And then poll the community if that criminal should get the death penalty. And I'll bet the majority would say no and be against the death penalty for all convicted criminals. But those same people have no problem cheering on the murder of someone that they don't like. If a person can live with this contradiction I'd guess that they just aren't thinking for themselves but following a crowd.
There is actually no contradiction. I'm pretty sure everyone would be on board with those CEOs going to prison for life instead of them being killed.
The difference is that a convicted murderer is being punished. Healthcare CEOs are instead rewarded with a life of luxury for killing people. The law does not punish them for their transgressions. A citizen can not imprison the CEO for life. What they can do is shoot em.
So what many people are saying is that "rather a bad person gets punished than rewarded". And if the only realistic punishment possible is killing them, because it's fast and easy to do, then that's deemed as acceptable even though killing is bad. Being rewarded for being evil is worse.
The state has convicted and executed innocent people. The average criminal subject to capital punishment has killed an order (or several) of magnitudes fewer people than the health insurance industry.
As a country we seem to weigh more heavily acts of individual violence than those of systemic violence or violence borne of policy even when the latter 2 have far more impactful and wide spread negative results. It's completely logical to draw a distinction between the 2 circumstances.
I'm not saying all vigilante justice is good, and I wouldn't necessarily be against the state holding to account executives who have produced systems and policies that result in the harm or death of the state's citizens, but in the current system justice is rare and in this act millions of people received justice.
and I wouldn't necessarily be against the state holding to account executives who have produced systems and policies that result in the harm or death of the state's citizens
Right, except if everything went exactly correctly as per the current justice system, the company would be found at fault, fined an absurd amount of money and closed. The wealthy executives who made the decisions that actually resulted in country-wide deaths would get sizable severance packages, take a short vacation, and 6 months to a year later open up the same business under a new name that imposes the same policies. It'll be right back to throwing poors into a furnace to fuel their lamborgini's until the next slap on the wrist.
We have no system to hold people accountable for their decisions as part of a company. We blame the company and then trust the company to police their staff accordingly. I'd love a widespread rework of the justice system to actually target the people responsibly for a companies actions, but we won't get one, so instead, someone has been shot.
It's not necessarily a contradiction. Lots of people now trust a "fellow man" to make a judgement on who deserves death more than the state.
So they aren't against killing "evil" people, they just don't agree with the state's definition of "evil", and deny its right to decide that.
Basically, it's the premise of Batman: When the state has failed to deliver justice, the people turn to vigilante justice.
Vigilante justice is so cool right up to the point that it is used against the people that you admire. And that is the contradiction.
I don't understand why people think in these terms, "If you approve of violence being done by your side, you must also approve of violence done against your side." I'm not taking a principled stand in favor of violence for violence's sake. I support that which hurts the enemy and oppose that which hurts friendlies.
Stealing from the rich? Good. Stealing from the poor? Bad. Killing exploiters? Good. Killing the exploited? Bad. There's no contradiction here because my stance is based on self-interest and the interest of my class, not on any sort of categorical moral claim about some particular form of action.
Lemmy seems to have more crazies on it lately who are advocating for murder of innocent people just because they don't like them.
Reddit sucks and now Lemmy is going down the tubes. Hopefully these people either get banned or Lemmy servers that advocate for senseless violence get shut down.
CEOs aren't innocent
just because they don't like them.
Wow what a way to oversimplify the problem. Would you have been saying this in May 1945?
It's not oversimplified.
What's next? The guy who runs the corner gas station sells cigarettes at his store. Cigarettes are addictive and known to cause cancer. So this means the guy who owns the gas station should get murdered?
What about the CEOs of the gun companies? Should they get murdered because they put out a product that people use to kill others?
Where do you think they got the $10 million/year to pay this man? Who do you think instituted a policy to use AI for approvals/denials, which resulted in a 90% false rejection rate? What's crazy is acting like the murder of thousands of people through denial of medical care for money, if done from a sufficient distance, is somehow less abhorrent than doing it up close and with a gun.
Expecting people who have either been directly impacted or had family medical care impacted by the policies of this man to show sympathy for him isn't just unrealistic, it's deranged. Considering United is one of the largest insurance companies in the US, that's a lot of fucking people who are at best apathetic about the whole situation.
Obligatory 'I suspect some people who can't read might reply to this' disclaimer: obviously you shouldn't murder people. Including if you're a healthcare CEO and it's done by setting policies to squeeze the maximum profit out of people before they die.