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  • Instead of focusing on hate, people need to be trying to court the people they've driven into voting for republicans in the first place; find common ground - don't just scream at them because they might have a difference of opinion.

    • they've driven into voting for republicans in the first place

      You MADE me be a Nazi, so now you have to be nice to me until I understand why being a Nazi is bad!

      That's not how it works

    • You think that we elected a hateful criminal predator, TWICE, primarily because Democrat supporters were not nice enough when begging them to save our country?

      Hmm, though I guess it’s true that any time I’ve seen stories ranging from rolling coal in people’s faces to ripping people with brown skin out of their established communities, there are those damn leftists and progressives doing CRITICISM and even sometimes using BAD WORDS!

      I think you might just be buying into some bad faith arguments rooted in the paradox of tolerance.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

    • Dude... You're about 10 years too late on this sentiment. We tried it before and all we got was screamed at and mocked. Patience ran out and yet more was always demanded "You shouldn't be upset when we call you pedos, learn to take a joke, you are so weak with your mamby pamby kumbaya bullshit. Come to dinner, shut up and let us get away with ruining your mental health over and over and over... " Constantly being asked, dickered reall, to put up with this behavior and be all peace and love so that there never be any consequences.

      A lot of us learned that the only way people will learn is if they stick their hand on the burner of the stove themselves. We tried dialogue, we tried appeals to empathy we tried to lead them gently away but you know what? All we did was waste our time and patience and those resources are not endless. Now after all the harm they've done to us directly and independently they come to us with burnt hands now that they are the ones effected and they want us to kiss it all better.

      This isn't a "difference of opinion" they fucking burnt us over and over and yes, we'll forgive them because we need them to do something useful for a change but if they valued us and our health and well-being like we cared enough about theirs to try so hard for so damned long to get through to them then maybe they would have grace. So if you are the freshly burned, welcome to the movement, a lot of us are not interested in cooing over your wounds and making you feel good because we're past that.

      At this point if supporters are still clinging to the identity they made as supporters then it's legitimately dangerous to court them. They are authoritarians who have spent the past decade programmed to dismiss every source and citation outside their own as illegitimate and to pervert debate into stupid circus tricks. They are a waste of our time because every minute spent arguing with brick walls is a minute that could be spent bypassing them and organizing to mount a resistance.

      While it's true the best way to deradicalize is to keep a line of communication open and leave them a path out it's only viable if they actually valued you already. If you think you can get someone out all the power to you but the time is past for new applications and appeals to be nice. Nice got us here.

    • Driven to vote for Trump? Is this ''I'm a piece of shit because you've driven me to being a piece of shit and not by any means I'm accountable for'' type of thinking? That's wiggity wack to be honest.

    • Divorcing someone is not the same as screaming at them. Cutting toxic people out of your life is always a good idea.

    • Dude, I read everything that you wrote here. Every one of your replies. It's so sad to see that no one, literally no one, has actually agreed with what you said here.

      It's scary how extreme left the whole community of Lemmy is. I'm not even a US citizen, and even if I were a US citizen, I wouldn't be a conservative by any means. I wouldn't be a full on extreme left winger eaither though. And it's just really confusing how the left, the side that is supposed to be empathic and understanding, scientific and logical and level headed, fails so hard to see how they come off to someone who hasn't taken a side. The leftists think of themselves as logical and sane and moral, while they see the other side as pure evil, and pure insanity, stubbornness and stupidity. Not realizing that at least, at least some of the things that they do and say, are extremely immoral, stupid, and illogical.

      The left usually claims moral superiority, but I really don't think that's how they're coming off AT ALL to the average person or any neutral person at this point. They ALSO come off as immoral and evil. They ALSO come off as stupid and crazy.

      Like here, just watch these videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueoYTPnxPMk

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GHVJv8tSyo

      It's from a conservative tech blogger, talking about just how many tech projects and communities are explicitly banning, and straight up silencing ANY opinion that differs from them. You don't have to be into tech at all to sympathize with the message of his videos.

      In one of his videos he talks about how some people that threatened to literally kill him, were given a pass because they had otherwise the "Politically Correct" opinion, while people who even just questioned the choice of moderators, and how they were allowing these death threats to "Evil Right Wingers" to continue, were getting banned and silenced, having their messages being deleted.

      It is horrifying, horrifying how the left who was once the party who would hear you out, listen to you, and empathize with you, has become the party that silences and advocates for extreme censorship of opinions. The party who has become so obsessed with creating echo chambers where everyone just agrees with each other and no mental exercise of any kind is needed. Echo chambers don't improve the situation. They only serve to radicalize you, and make you mentally lazy and impatient with any opposing opinion.

      The party who was once about listening to different opinions and ways of living, has become the party that advocates for echo chambers. I have witnessed so, so many conservatives being banned from communities, and somehow, I REALLY haven't experienced the same phenomenon in right wing communities. They allow people who disagree with them to the community (eg. Trans people). Do they fight and argue with them? Yes. Do they call them names? Yes. But most of them actually don't kick the person out of the community just because they disagree with them. The left though? Absolutely. Somehow, having the slightest difference of opinion gets you kicked out of left wing communities.

      The party who was once about being inclusive, has become about being extremely exclusive.

      It's just so sad to see. I value free speech and agency above anything else. I don't care how "stupid" or "evil" your voice is. You should be allowed to talk. We shouldn't just grab stupid people by the throat and pull their vocal cords out with bare hands. Somehow though, something tells me that a dangerous portion of the Democratic party, now wants to do exactly that. If there was a button that you could push to just kill right wingers on the spot and erase them from the world, something tells me that a DANGEROUS portion of these empathic, understanding, logical, and level headed people, would instantly push the button. And that's horrifying, and very, very sad and disappointing to see.

      And before anyone replies with a "But what about the paradox of tolerance!!!", let me say, the whole idea behind it is wrong. It essentially conveys that good people, should make bad people behave, otherwise bad people will hurt everyone and everything.

      That's good and all, but firstly, how are you a 100% sure that you are on the good side of absolutely EVERYTHING??? Do you have knowledge of the future? Do you even know absolutely everything about anything RIGHT NOW?? If not, then silencing the opposing opinion, rejecting the mental exercise of arguing with people who would otherwise end up agreeing with you, and just silencing them in the name of the good, is exactly something that a fascist would do. I don't think any evil person thinks that they're evil. Almost every evil real life person, when asked, would tell you that they did what they did for the right reasons and because they genuinely thought that it was something that had to be done.

      Secondly, it goes completely against free speech. I don't want anyone to silence bad, evil people, even if they are (somehow) objectively deemed as bad and evil. And no, claiming that free speech is allowed but that you're not exempt from the consequences of what you said, is again, something that a dictator, a fascist would say.

      • I appreciate you taking the time to write all that, I read the whole thing. However, I have to disagree with your take. You are making sweeping generalizations about online communities. I know for a fact that countless people have been banned from r/conservative, as a counter example to your claim that you only see leftist communities banning people they don't want to tolerate.

        You're also making huge generalizations about the left in general, a famously fractured part of the political spectrum. I think these echo chambers you're describing are a natural result of people trying to find a safe harbour to congregate in the face of all the vitriol between the sides of the political spectrum.

        That's a nice anecdote about the conservative tech blogger. Most reasonable people would agree that death threats are bad, I've never seen the point. I think it's disengenuous to claim that the left is equally crazy, stubborn, stupid, or whatever because some guy got a few death threats and kicked out of tech communities.

        Zooming out, in my view the modern conservative ideology is one based on telling people how to live their life and depriving people of rights. If subscribing to that way of thinking gets you booted from a tech project, then boo hoo. If someone subscribes to modern conservatism and has no interest in budging on their opinion what value is there in giving them a platform? Sure, there are probably communities out there that are too heavy handed in how they moderate discourse, but that's inevitable regardless of political leaning. Humans are flawed beings and moderation is always a balancing act.

        I think many leftists are happy to have discussion, but not when it's pointless. I think blindly saying 'free speech' is being infringed when comnunities moderate discussion is bad. With the internet, it's no longer someone preaching on a street corner, you have much more reach now. I think that means communities have more of a duty to chose who gets to stand at the pulpit. No one is pulling anyone's vocal chords out, they are free to share their opinions elsewhere.

        Anyway, those are just some thoughts from a leftist who should be more informed on these matters. Also, please don't conflate the Democratic party with leftism.

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