Hear me out: I am a leftist. Don’t ban me - this is something i’ve been thinking about quite a bit recently.
I mean, at a macro level comparing the far left to the alt-right – we seem to be a lot more focused on egalitarianism (while disagreeing on the means to that end). The alt-right seems to be focused on creating an ethno state, pretty much. Comparing them, the morality clearly skews towards our direction.
However, what concerns me is how we (you and i) are further insulating ourselves into message boards. When I first think about insulation, what comes up to my mind are those idiots who get brainwashed by alt-right facebook propaganda. They interact with it, then that’s all they see on their wall, and all of a sudden they are in an echo chamber. We’ve all heard about these and know how bad they are.
My first thought is: “Oh, well, I’m educated and I read books and theory. I’m not like them. Alt righters are just dumb ass facebook moms who haven’t read a book in years.”
My second thought is: “Oh, shit. I’m insulating myself JUST like them, though.”
I don’t know. I’m just kind of conflicted. Left ideologies aren’t morally bad, unlike alt-righters. But, at the same time we are creating an echo chamber, just like how /r/thedonald did with thedonald.win – after we both got banned by a traditional news outlet.
What are the effects of that? Is this good or bad?
It’s impossible to be completely in the bubble as leftist - the establishment narrative is all around us.
This is a bad take, chief, and here’s a few thoughts on why.
TheDonald was a cesspit of hatred, bile, and classism that went unchecked for years. It wasn’t only tolerated, it flourished on reddit and turned the rest of it sour. If not for Chapo providing a counterweight to their incessant raids and subtle gaslighting of local community subreddits, it would have been even worse. You want echo chambers? TheDonald already was one. They could exist unchallenged in their space despite sorely needing it.
The left has rarely been afforded the same luxury to gather together, to speculate, to debate, to exist, without being broken up violently by the right and their cronies. This is nothing like what TheDonald is doing because they’re creating an escapist echo chamber to jerk each other off and clap each other on the back for being well-off white dipshits.
We are creating a space to safely interact with each other, a rarity that has not been afforded, especially in such volume, for the left.
Just read any thread about China, about electoralism, about anything. You’re having higher level discussions because you don’t have to drag down the discourse to 101 level horseshit just to make your point. This is hardly an echo chamber. Your thoughts here do not go unchallenged. Our ideology is not that of fear.
So stop worrying and post already, Jesus.
lib take tbh, fascists are bad because fascism is a genocidal ideology of capitalism, not because they insulate themselves. Think the distinction of form vs content is something you should definitely look into.
We got banned for saying slave owners and landlords should die, they got banned for promoting white supremacy? Idk you decide
Honestly this is a really simple but accurate statement. That’s what it comes down to. We’re similar to t_d in that we’re both on the outer edges of “mainstream” acceptability, and we’re not apologetic about it. But like, we want human rights for everyone, and they… don’t?
Comparing the Chapo sub to t_d is pretty disingenuous and I think really downplays how t_d was moderated, and to a lesser extent passively supported by Reddit’s admins. T_d was run top down, any dissent(edit for chud_apatow) was banned immediately whereas Chapo is a constant struggle session about the podcast or any possible tendency.
Sure there are memes but generally they speak some truth to power whereas t_d was almost entirely facebook tier harrassment of marginalized people. Also, it took years of rule breaking, brigading and general fuckery before admin at reddit did anything at all about them even though, and I don’t have proof of this but after watching 2016 play out, much of the subscriber base there were probably bots/astroturfers(I don’t mean Russians to be very clear, I’m talking fake grassroots lobbying groups in the good old USA).
Like, there’s gonna be groupthink on the internet but to say, how is this inclusive weird-left community loosely affiliated with a podcast not unlike a heavily moderated ideological meme propaganda mouthpiece for a candidate and now sitting president, seems like some real evil bullshit.
Further, if your asking whether it’s ok for Chapo to create a new community somewhere other than reddit after being purged for “reasons”, yes it’s ok because the people that run reddit are awful. Just because this place exists doesn’t mean you can’t go argue with fash enabling libs on reddit or look at really zoomed in pictures of assholes or whatever else comes up on r/all. You know, don’t let them take this from you too.
