PSA: I noticed there's a lot of libs here lately,

While you were away, reddit made a big fuckup by charging a fortune to use their APIs, killing third party apps. This caused many redditors to jump ship to other platforms, and lemmy was the biggest alternative.

Hence all the libs.

Gotta say I was expecting some friction with ya’ll at lemmygrad after Federation (because we are all libs on hexbear) but so far you folks rock and I have been very pleased to see your high quality posts on my feed.

Loving to see posts like this. Can’t remember the Sankara quote but ya’ll know it. Cannot get tired of explaining ourselves because when the people understand us they will side with us.

Loving having new comrades in the posting trenches with us.

Hey this is about me!

I probably don't know the right words to use and I don't know my history or theory and couldn't hold my own in a real debate but I sure am learning a lot from you all when I find your posts on All and your comments all over the place.

Realizing that, I don't exactly know where I fall politically. Previously I would say I am left, but seeing conversations I realize that I don't even know where Left-land is. At the moment I don't see myself agreeing with a lot of stuff posted by hexbear/lemmygrad users, but I'm open to learn, and, more importantly, have a fuller understanding of your perspective(s).

Coming from Reddit I'm not used to the incredibly in-depth dialectic with a non-/anti-Western point of view, nor the intense levels of trolling/sarcasm/dunking that you all seem to love so much. So it's hard to navigate conversations sometimes, and figure out what is a joke and what is serious. And even if I personally don't engage in the conversation, usually someone with a similar mindset to me will do so, and I appreciate it when you folks take the time to soften your words/message to actually (edit to cross out judgy word) explain your position.

Additionally I hope we can see and treat each other as individuals and not our instance names when traversing the fediverse (honestly this is more about non-hexbear/lemmygrad users, but felt I should say it anyway). It certainly is a shame that some instances choose to defed you. I hope mine doesn't, but I'm prepared to move if mine gets overly censor-y, though my understanding is that sdf is unlikely to do so.

Anyway, keep it up, there are absolutely people out there lurking and reading what you all write, and occasionally learning something.

Stuff like this is why I loved the internet so much long ago (near 30 years, wow) and I'm really happy to see it hasn't gone anywhere, I just lost track of it.

Cheers!

I completely agree with that. I find the trick is recognizing whether a person disagrees, but wants to have a genuine discussion to understand where you're coming from or just trolling. I think we can give people the benefit of the doubt, but as the discussion progresses it's important to watch for signs such as the person ignoring or misrepresenting the points you're making, talking past you, using tropes, etc. At that point it's best to just leave a note pointing that out for people reading the thread and disengage.

Good point. I've probably been too short and snarky with them.

It's just frustrating to explain something only for them to deliberately ignore your argument in favour of pretending you just said something "uncivil" so they can dismiss you. Especially if American politics is involved (or Trump or Putin, my god, it's like their brains just short circuit when someone mentions "Orange man."

A primer on how to deal with libs would be extremely helpful. I can talk to people in person fine, but I just have no clue how to reach Americans, it's like their national pastimes are arrogance and ignorance.

Hmm, I have another take on it.

Nobody wants to think they were "lied to", even if it's true. Westerners default to thinking of themselves as the main character of the story, and swallowing the idea of having been fooled is difficult, nearly impossible. You can't be a victim, can you? That doesn't fit the narrative arc at all.

Come at it from the other angle. Even those people deep in the shit pit of reaction can still FEEL when an atrocity is wrong, even if they twist it into blaming it on minorities or whatever. The right wing runs entirely on feeling, it's literally all they have. The other side of their knife is taking blame away from the self- it's never their own fault, and they never have to sacrifice anything. The other edge of their knife is the dulling and nullification of feeling.

When someone you know- someone shamelessly liberal- agrees with you that an atrocity is indeed wrong, embrace them and build on it. Not "No, but", but instead "Yes, and"! They're feeling something, and the people profiting from their suffering would prefer if they dull that feeling. Instead, link the feeling to facts- "Here is why the bad thing is indeed bad"- and turn that feeling into praxis- "You can fix it!".

Huh? I Wonder what happened in 1942? Probably nothing, the USSR was probably developing exactly as planned…

I have absolutely zero patience for anti-communism

Seriously tho what's the difference between a Soviet gulag and a Western prison? Any society that still has crime requires correctional facilities, the USSR is no different. Why do libs insist on Soviet ones being called gulags? If you want to criticize their prison system just call it that. I know it's a Russian word but we're speaking English here which already has a word for prisons, and to me the Soviet system really does not seem different or unique enough to warrant its own word as a proper noun. (I-it's not just to make the Soviet system seem more evil by distancing it from their own Western prison systems right? I-it's not that right?)

These people are not our enemies

That’s where I disagree. Liberals fund the police and the military, which is the main reason much of the world is enslaved and unable to fight climate change. So long as anyone is making excuses for this shit, they are most certainly the enemy of history. That being said, people can change. I know that because I did.

However, we must remember these people are people

Correction: these people are proletariat. We have the same enemy. Mostly, the only difference between us and them is that we're a little better at identifying the enemy than they are.

Thanks for this. I saw a Lib get smashed pretty hard over on hexbear yesterday. They certainly didn't word their initial comment nicely but there were genuine questions that pointed to a lack of understanding. A few of the responses were just agro and started fights with the lib. A few of the replies were good faith answers to which the lib replied nicely.

It might feel frustrating but we need to start nice even when dealing with someone who starts in an aggressive tone. If they don't respond to calm reasoning then its fair to bring the hammer down and in some cases that is what they need.

If they have read and understand the theory, then that’s already better than most people.

Can someone actually link to those sources though?

Quite frankly, the term liberal refers to Democrats and Republicans not Conservatives and Centralists. I'm a Centralist and its sometimes weird when people outright call me a liberal. I don't pay attention it though.