When asked, I usually tell people that I vote Dem because it’s as close to my anarchist ideals as I can get. I would consider myself a social-anarchist, in that I feel laws shouldn’t be written around societal structures and ideals. Society and culture changes, and I shouldn’t be punished because some dude generations ago decided that something was inappropriate back then. It isn’t now, and shouldn’t be codified that way,
Are most people here left-wing?
Submitted 1 day ago by Hickak@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
psion1369@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
zxqwas@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
My priorities in politics is:
- Don’t wreck the economy.
- Uphold the rule of law.
In my country that makes me right leaning. In the US with the current president that apparently makes me a leftist.
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 14 hours ago
You communist!
arotrios@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Progressive who’s been here for a bit. The fediverse has definitely swung more left-wing recently - when I first started up two years ago there was a fair amount of conservative bs, libertarian tech-bros and russian bots - it was about a 50/50 split depending on what instance you were on.
The bot problem seems to have been largely dealt with now, and conservative voices have been more or less drowned out by the new influx of users fleeing twitter and Reddit crackdowns. Many are agreeing that the current administration is bad for everyone. There are a number of hard auth-left moral purity testers that kind of a pain in the ass that pop up from time to time.
NeilBru@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc.
There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.
There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.
For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.
As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.
So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism.
No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get:
The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
- Frank Wilhoit
60d@lemmy.ca 8 hours ago
Thanks, Frank! Very eloquently put!
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
I like to consider myself leftist. But it’s true that I don’t agree in all that most current left wing political parties stand for.
I think all human are born equal, and should have a good life. That politics should be used to improve everyone’s life.
But in the what does this mean or how to do it I feel more and more differences lately.
To give an example, I cannot really stand identity politics. I think that the best course of action is to dissolve identitarian (is that word real?) groups instead of exacerbating their differences. I feel like people should be getting rid of labels instead of having more and more labels every day.
That’s just a personal opinion, based on the idea that if you define different groups the chance of conflict between groups is bigger than if you define only one group. And I do get the idea behind identity politics within the left wing spectrum. I just don’t agree that’s the best course of action.
RedAggroBest@lemmy.world 42 minutes ago
I also have a hard time with ID politics and the like, but I’m also a privileged white dude so my primary gripe will always be focused around economic disparity. The BLM protests helped me see it this way: There is not war but the class war, but there are multiple fronts. If we don’t at least try a little to protect minority groups, we won’t have any progressives left
IndieSpren@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
yes
Forester@pawb.social 1 day ago
This is a platform full of new people adventurers change makers. The majority of people who would be interested in this platform will have a more progressive bent. So the majority of people here will be more accepting of liberal policies.
Nemo@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
Quibble: Many here are explicitly leftist, in the a leftist-not-liberal sense, and will even use “liberal” derogatorily. So, progressive, yes, but liberal, not necessarily.
libra00@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Good point, many think left = liberal = US democrats who are centrists at best from the international perspective. So no, most people on here probably aren’t actual leftists, but I’m guessing when they say they ‘lean left’ they mean US-liberal-not-conservative, not socialist or whatever.
hypnicjerk@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
to make matters more fun, many ‘explicitly leftist’ lemmings are tankies (blind supporters of russia, china, north korea, etc), who are explicitly not leftist but authoritarians masquerading in the skinsuit of the people’s revolution.
Forester@pawb.social 1 day ago
From my perspective I think that that is very silly. I don’t care for purity tests, but what would I know? I’m just a dirty libertarian.
thisdude1092@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Just say yes
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
it’s full of new people,
Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not a new people. I’ve been a people for almost my whole life. I bet most of us have.
libra00@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Not me, I’ve only been a person for the past couple years. Prior to that I was a caffeine-powered AI.
Randomgal@lemmy.ca 10 hours ago
Yes. They are fanatics too. Like Twitter but instead of wanting to kill people for profit, IRS wanting to kill people for not being left.
Apepollo11@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Come on, that’s not true. We just want to “re-educate” you guys
spittingimage@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Most people everywhere are slightly left of centre. Most leaders everywhere are slightly right of centre*.
*Not in the American sense. Y’all crazy.
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 14 hours ago
Yes. Signing up is not easy. Most people here can understand written instructions and have some basic technical knowledge. People who are not stupid tend to lean left.
pubquiz@lemmy.world 1 day ago
By LEFT do you infer compassion, empathy, and class solidarity? In contrast, by RIGHT do you infer me-first, only my rights matter and only those in my clan deserve to be cared about?
Then, yes.
thisdude1092@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Spoken like a true liberal.
Tungsten5@lemm.ee 18 hours ago
Well we know where you stand without doubt
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Not only that, I’ve tried pitching the fediverse to right wing people, but they didn’t bite.
Even the crypto bros that were all about decentralization couldn’t see why a decentralized social media platform was superior.
This also didn’t matter for people who care about “free speech”.
You think the allure of being fully independent and having your own instance would be right up their alley given how they value independence, but nope.
Seriously? Why isn’t there a right wing instance? My guess is that a right wing person can’t fathom owning something that benefits others which doesn’t give them back profit.
Letme@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
“free speech”, as your quotation marks imply, does not really exist outside of theory. In reality, free speech is a set of laws governing hate speech or other dangerous speech.
Both the right and the left have ideas of what they think these laws should be.
But there is no such thing as “free speech” in the real world.
Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
You think the allure of being fully independent and having your own instance would be right up their alley given how they value independence, but nope.
Because it’s not about freedom of speech for them, it’s about freedom to force people to listen. Having their own server where they can shout at each other all day doesn’t serve their purpose. Their panties get wet by forcing others to listen.
amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 hours ago
there are 3 major right-wing instances: lemmy.ml(ran by the Lemmy developers), lemmygrad.ml(the openly fascist version of lemmy.ml) and hexbear.net.
if anyone wants to argue, I don’t. Anyone supporting Russia is right-wing.
gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 hours ago
Authoritarianism is inherently conservative
Sorry, but no
There’s a reason the step up from just left/right axis is the up/down of libertarian v authoritarian. Auth-left is very much a thing and is what tankies are
FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 1 day ago
Trump’s tremendous social media platform truth dot barf runs on Activity Pub, they just don’t federate with anyone by default. It’s like they don’t want dissenting views on there. Weird.
Sidyctism2@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
i think there were one two right wing instances, but they got defederated from everyone
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 9 hours ago
Which were they? As in what was their domain name?
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Do they still exist? I’m honestly curious if they are active or if it’s abandoned
dev_null@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Because “crypto bros” care about making money, not any ideology, except in a performative sense. If you pitched the fediverse to the original researchers inventing cryptocurrency and the early adopters, they would likely be receptive. But these are no longer associated with the current crypto crowd.
Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 22 hours ago
They don’t care about making money, they care about gambling and having a gambling addiction and trying to justify it
xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org 1 day ago
Why isn’t there a right wing instance?
Because all other instances would assume that it’s for Nazis and defederate.
libra00@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Like everything on the right, decentralization is a means to an end, not a value in itself. They only care about it when it’s useful for helping them get ahead. Just like they only care about free speech when it’s them speaking to people who don’t want to hear their bullshit.
tocano@lemmy.today 11 hours ago
Maybe they would like nostr more
IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
I’m team right-wing.
The right chicken wing is always tastier, so I eat that first.
Edit: Wait, this is politics? Wrong thread.
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
I promote right-wing policies: you should always use the right wings for your airplane, using whatever wings you happen to have left in stock is a recipe for disaster. Left-wing policies are dangerous.
TheFudd@lemmy.world 1 day ago
See, this is why so many right-wingers are seen as simply not intelligent enough to understand basic science. Numerous studies have shown that the left-wing is on average, plumper, juicier, and more tender.
I bet you probably also believe those wing pieces with two bones are better than the big one-bone wings that look like little chicken legs, too. Typical right-winger, your brain has been melted by right-wing propaganda.
Sorry, but reality has a left-wing bias. Educate yourself, and do better.
BleatingZombie@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
Do Twix have wings?
Buffalox@lemmy.world 1 day ago
If you consider Democrats left wing then yes, by far the most here are left wing, since by most European standards Democrats are clearly right wing.
Republicans are extreme right by most standards. Republican (MAGA) is basically an American version of AfD!
So by that standard I guess about 80% here is left wing.Ideonek@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Maybe. But your impression of it may be skewed, buceoyse there are a lot of non-USA people here. That couse some mismatch in therma that tend to overwaight the perceived size of left-leaning people. But it’s terminology, really. What in USA is considered “left” more-or-less align with what is considered left outside of USA. But what an average Trump supporter call “conservative”, in the rest of the word is simply know as lunacy.
ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
What in USA is considered “left” more-or-less align with what is considered left outside of USA
What is considered left in the USA is largely considered center or center right outside of the USA
Geetnerd@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Most current US Democrats are Neoliberal Reagan Republicans.
US Republicans since Reagan are fucking Nazis.
Ideonek@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Well, it’s a big and heterogeneous “outside” if we want to be nitpicky about it.
nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 hours ago
worldwide, I would put most people on the right side of the American left/right. there are a lot of people in south asia for example. China and Southeast Asia are conservative as fuck also. without looking at a Wikipedia table I think that’s probably most people already
Arcane2077@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
The American “left” is on the far-right of almost every other country in the world. Not right, not even center. You need recalibrating
RandomVideos@programming.dev 7 hours ago
There are a lot of countries where being gay results in prison or death
In my country (one where its technically illegal to insult people based on their sexual orientation), a candidate that wants to make civil unions legal for same-sex couples is considered left-wing because of that
nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 hours ago
you are thinking of the western countries, not the world. most of the worlds population is not the west
Korrok@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
I hope so
FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org 1 day ago
Is the sky blue?
yaroto98@lemmy.org 6 hours ago
I don’t consider myself left leaning. Both left and right are corrupt and neither actually practice what they preach. The left is the US is currently the lesser of two evils though. I do consider myself a socialist-libertarian. I think government should be there to keep the populace safe, and provide basic human necessities to all, and no more. The govt should not be able to execute capital punishment nor declare war. Retalitory strikes, defense and supporting allies defending themselves are all fine, but we could get rid of most of the military and funnel that money back to socialist programs and be a MUCH wealthier and happier country.
Letsdothisok@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
The only reason the left is the lesser of the 2 evils right now is because they aren’t in power.
Opinionhaver@feddit.uk 19 hours ago
I don’t adopt views wholesale—I evaluate each issue on an individual basis, so my views tend to be a mixed bag. From a political standpoint, most people would probably see me as an unreliable ally as my views can be hard to predict. While I agree with many, if not most, “left-wing” ideas, there are still plenty of others that would get me labeled as a Nazi MAGA Republican.
That said, on Lemmy I’m definitely in the minority when it comes to holding certain beliefs that many would label “right-wing,” even though on other issues I can out–left-wing even most leftists.
Sk3rgi0@lemm.ee 22 hours ago
I’m all for the better man (or woman, or whatever). If we see eye to eye on all the important stuff then I’ll vote for you if I’m legally allowed. I don’t care about your affiliations as much as your history and your record as a public servant. Hence, why I always vote Dem because there’s absolutely NOTHING but pussy ass nazi bitches in the GOP.
libra00@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
I think most people feel this way, right? Like you are left-leaning if you like the policies in left-wing platforms put forth by left-wing parties, so you vote for the left-wing candidates who advocate for them. Likewise, candidates are left-wing because they are members of such parties and advocate for such policies. So saying ‘I only vote for people on the basis of their policies and voting record’ is like saying ‘I only drink water when it’s wet’—technically true, but it misses the point that the thing you’re selecting already comes with the quality you’re claiming to prioritize.
Tungsten5@lemm.ee 18 hours ago
It does seem that way from what I’ve seen. What am I? I’m the guy whose got it figured out. Always vote for the worst candidate. Its reverse psychology and works like a charm
Skyrmir@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Right wingers have, or cause, trouble in open forums, so most social media that isn’t operated as a walled garden, tends to be more left leaning.
untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Depends on what kinda right wingers your talking about Ik a few people who believe in more laissez-faire free market economic policies, and they’re pretty chill
Lexam@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’m left handed. I don’t have wings.
libra00@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
I am extremely left-wing, so probably skew the average all by myself. :P
MiniMoose4Free@lemm.ee 1 day ago
People that cry they are being silenced will say yes.
rabber@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Yeah right wing opinions will just get you banned on most instances
Takapapatapaka@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Apart from the Tankie Triad, i’d doubt right wing opinions would get you banned (i’m not against believe it if i saw some examples though).
Hate speech and promotion of oppressions that right wingers tend to consider as simple ‘opinions’ might though.
MBech@feddit.dk 1 day ago
The rules are usually really quite simple. Don’t be a dick and don’t spread hate. If “right wing opinions” can’t stay out of those simple rules, they’re not right wing opinions, they’re bigots and that has never and will never be okay.
libra00@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Listen, there are assholes everywhere, and even mild centrists can be dicks and break the rules. We can speak about tendencies and generalizations if you like, but there are plenty of people who aren’t bigots who are giant flaming assholes on social media.
anonymouse2@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Is there a difference? Chicken is chicken. But I do like flats more than drums.
edgemaster72@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’ll take your drums, you can have my flats.
uuldika@lemmy.ml 2 hours ago
I’m a left libertarian. I embrace decentralization, collectivism, freedom from corporate and central government tyranny, and want to maximize individual liberty and progressive values as we ideally move towards a society like the Culture series by Ian M. Banks.
I’m not Anarchist because it’s too chaotic and unrealistic, and I’m not ML because I don’t like State authoritarianism and central planning.
TheDoozer@lemmy.world 3 minutes ago
Can you give some examples of how that works? Like, who pays for roads, who handles environmental regulations (or are there any), who establishes education standards (or are there any), etc. I’m not trying to argue, it just seems like on the internet people referring to “state authoritarianism” and “central government tyranny” ranges from “adults can’t be transgender” to “I have to pay taxes and the government won’t let me own slaves.”