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3 yr. ago

  • To be fair, you can’t say they’re wrong.

    Most of them are. Some of them are even plain old factually wrong, not just condescending or exaggerating.

    It's important to understand that many of these instances were raised by people who didn't like reddit's widespread US-defaultism (including people claiming reddit is left-of-center because it swings Democrat) and its tolerance of bigots and trolls. Now if someone wants to set up their own instances to clone reddit and keep all the bad parts, sure, all we can really do is ignore them or get ignored by them. But when those people complain that this is "a bunch of 14 year olds" with "vote bots" or a "political echo chamber", that's just plain old ignorant, or shocked that they're suddenly in a place with a different culture and struggling to believe it's mostly just normal nerdy people like reddit is.

  • Of course, but it's there now and they're happy to abuse it. Call them hypocrites all you want, they couldn't care less.

  • This is correct, and also, Nazis don't care about good faith argumentation. They're explicitly anti-liberal (as in, liberty, freedom) and will only pretend to have these values to try and point out an apparent contradiction ("You believe in rights to speech and democracy, so why are you censoring us?")

    In this video of former white supremacists talking about how they left the ideology, one brings up that on their Nazi website, it was normal and common to argue for points they knew were garbage, like the Great Replacement theory. It's about power and results, not liberalist idealism.

    Violent methods usually aren't the preferred way of dealing with Nazis (because it's harder to get a mass movement to join in and support it, and because it's riskier, legally, which makes it harder to sustain), but it works. It broke up the BUF in Britain, it's kept the local turds scared to show their faces or reveal their true thoughts (don't worry, they still usually get revealed by researchers anyway). Violence works. They know it and we know it. But when they're the government, their violence is now legal.

  • Well, I tried looking up videos of this and found one more reason not to: someone brought a bucket of hot water to their car and slipped on the icy driveway, spilling it on their face.

  • I was clarifying and adding more details, and also restating to make it clear I wasn't disagreeing at all or trivializing it.

  • Maybe. It could also be just a general aversion of politics in the workplace, it's usually not a good place to start (non-work related) political fights.

  • Is it because of pedestrians, or just heavy car traffic? [edit: just read the road details, looks like it's a one-way 'living street' with pedestrians, capped at 20 mph]

    (just posting OSM link for anyone else like me avoiding Google) https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/13526138

  • For what it's worth: something I haven't seen come up (so while this is a pragmatic perspective, don't pretend I'm dismissing the importance of your relationship and your values! I'm only adding this for variety and discussion)

    People can change. Many won't, but some do. [vid: former white supremacists describing their process of leaving] Whether you think your brother is willing or able to change is your call, and whether it's worth the emotional and mental strain is your call. You aren't obliged, but it's worth considering.

    People who have left these ideologies, from what I've heard, often come back to two main points - they had someone in their life who cared about them, but was also unwilling to tolerate their bullshit, and they had to want to leave it by themselves. Honestly, I see parallels with people recovering from serious drug addictions and cults like QAnon.

    But, again, this isn't easy and there's no guarantee of them changing, so do not feel obliged to even try. Your health is more important, and there are plenty of other ways you can help change the world.

  • In an ideal world, I support one of the opposition parties to Hamas.

    But pragmatically, in reality, that's just not feasible. Palestine's main defensive power is Hamas. So while I agree it's an Zionist Regime vs. Palestine conflict, Hamas is to Palestine what the IOF is to the Zionist Regime - that is, their military power. It doesn't really mean much if someone "supports Israel in the conflict but doesn't support the IDF", that doesn't make sense outside of abstract ideas.

  • Correct me if I'm wrong: IIRC the feds sent back mock pictures to 'confirm' the victims were killed, so I don't know if anyone was assassinated in reality but, as you said, Ulbricht payed to have them murdered.

  • I have talked to people. That's how I've found fellow socialists at work, alongside some others who are increasingly (and surprisingly) critical of capitalism and systematic issues affecting them.

    Obviously culture changes from place to place, I don't know your circumstances, but I expected my workplace to be especially conservative.

  • Dr. Strangelove is a surprising adept analogue - immigrant from a white supremacist regime who can't leave it behind, weird and socially awkward, [supposed] tech expert. Maybe I'm stretching it a bit.

  • 'Accident' isn't the word I'd use to describe a famous, clear, unique and repeated gesture. It's not something one does unknowingly. I'd lean more towards 'association', 'intuition', perhaps 'familiarity', if it weren't premeditated. It's no secret that Musk is frequently interacting with and boosting neo-nazis on their social media platform, the most doubt I could possibly give them is they wanted to do a powerful victory gesture, picked the first one that came to mind and they were too damn ignorant to realize even US conservatives don't like Nazi symbols.

  • Some people who were in Special Ed report, like, major emotional trauma from it.

    Is that with people also in Brazil? Because your experience sounds very different from the cases I've heard in some other countries where Special Ed students are isolated rather than given extra classes at the end of the school day.

  • Pervitin (aka. Desoxyn)

  • And further, there were German coup plots to assassinate Hitler for the same reason, to try and put someone competent in there.

  • Jerkoff

    Jump
  • You know it's gotten pretty bad when even the anarchist flag usernames are meming about how ridiculous the anti tankie attitude is.

  • for a service/site/mom-and-pop shop to be sustainable without unending growth.

    I've been on somewhat niche sites which have lasted decades, with waves of people coming in whenever related sites screw up and trickles of people leaving when an alternative community becomes more popular. It's a comfy, slow existence, which works for some communities, but not for ones like this which thrive on diversity and chattiness, rather than really well thought-out replies days apart from each other. On reddit-like sites, time penalizes how high a post goes (unlike a forum where years-long threads are very normal to see on a front page) so there is an inherent benefit in having consistent activity. That doesn't imply boundless growth, but at least sustaining a decent level of activity. We're not chasing ad revenue, growth for growth's sake is not what we want or need.

    But with that said, a community with no new visitors can only lose them. That can be a slow process, but it's inevitable. Been there, done that. Again, doesn't imply that pointless growth is a good thing.