Id rather slam my penis in the door of a luxury sedan than ever go back on twitter.
Tits! We can make that happen for you!
LOOK AT MY LITTLE TEETH
it very much is
@pizzaiolo@epicspongee I used to use Twitter all the time before it got to a point where I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I felt like a weight had been lifted off of me after I deleted the app.
There’s a reason she’s got drug problems and Twitter is part of that reason
People are still using that dumpster of a platform?
People who have a large following and magic emojis next to their name will keep using it because it gives them their validation. Twitter celebs are really in a sad state of existence
Elon Musk is an actual Nazi and anyone who still uses twitter is sus imo
I got so confused reading this, my brainy hurt :(
it's such an unfunny joke I had to read it three times to even understand what she was trying to say
Some people are unfamiliar with Obama's drones.
or the genocide in Yemen, or his role as the deporter in chief, or that he engineered the largest transfer of wealth from the Black community to capital interests, or, or, or
Guns from Libya to Syria = ISIS wasn't great either
Don't forget Boko Haram got their start of Libya's destruction too.
Absolutely wild that things escalated from a "reset" of relations with russia to the maidan coup in like 4 years, I honestly wish I knew more of what was going on there.
Some people are. This particular people has absolutely no excuse for such ignorance lol
Crazy, isn't it?
During his presidency, Obama approved the use of 563 drone strikes that killed approximately 3,797 people. In fact, Obama authorized 54 drone strikes alone in Pakistan during his first year in office. One of the first CIA drone strikes under President Obama was at a funeral, murdering as many as 41 Pakistani civilians. The following year, Obama led 128 CIA drone strikes in Pakistan that killed at least 89 civilians.
Your Excellency, Barack The Obama: classy, polite, trivial controversies, last ‘boring’ president
😤
It's pointing out hypocrisy. But people have forgotten that or are just ignorant? I can't see how you'd come to that conclusion unless you were very "both sides".
I'm a level seven enlightened centrist. I wait in line at polling stations just so I can fill out a blank ballot.
Remember when Obama saw the largest transfer of wealth away from black US citizens to the wealthy in the history of the United States?
Remember when he set the precedent that it us cool to assassinate US citizens in the open (as opposed to covertly) without trial?
Honestly I get being mad at "Obama's biggest controversy was the mustard"
Obama’s biggest controversy was the mustard
That's not what she said lol. Sorry as a neurodivergent person I get that this tweet might be hard to read possibly, but she's being sarcastic here. Maybe in poor taste, but it's a joke. She's well-aware of the shit Obama's done and isn't a fan of him.
She says that Obama was bad. Everyone understands she was being sarcastic. Since she was being sarcastic it means that she is trying to say that Obama wasn't bad (because that's how sarcasm works).
Since she was being sarcastic it means that she is trying to say that Obama wasn't bad (because that's how sarcasm works).
I mean… no? Sarcasm works in multiple ways lol. This is like a children’s picture book-level of understanding of sarcasm.
ok, this has gone over my head. can you explain what she meant? her "joke" reads like a retreading of stale memes from /r/politics.
Every US president is a War Criminal.
However, most sane people would agree that Obama was, as far as U.S. presidents go, very uncontroversial. Well spoken, very few scandals, centrist policies, didn't make a fool of himself every time he met a head of state, etc.
So the conservatives latched onto the WEIRDEST shit. Made him up as a Kenyan citizen (???), actually made a big deal about his choices of condiments or suit colors, etc. These were all real things that made the mainstream news cycles, because Obama wasn't livetweeting his every thought or being indicted every day, but US conservatives had to complain about something.
This is to be contrasted to the mainstream Republican figureheads, who are unbelievably crass&corrupt traitors yet receive nothing but praise from the same media/pundits that thrashed Obama for his choice of mustard.
Absurdist contrast like this is, indeed, comedic. I rest my case.
(Also Natalie has talked in-depth about how shitty this faux-leftist "the democrat candidate is actually center-right and imperfect, therefore I shall not vote for them even if it gives the win to the literal rapist who will absolutely jail me for my political beliefs, gender expression, or sexual orientation if given the chance" in her videos, most notably the 2020 campaign video, but of course none of that fits in 240 characters, also comedy doesn't tend to work when overexplained, thank you for coming to my TED talk)
Uncontroversial because the democrats suddenly stopped caring about drone strikes, illegitimate wars, the Patriot act, and gitmo once he was electedm
This is absolutely just a regurgitation of people saying Obama's biggest scandals was the pants he wore. The joke doesn't have a punchline otherwise, barring missing context that you should have led with if there was a misunderstanding.
Isn't the punch line holding that belief? As in she was being sarcastic in saying that the sauce was the worst thing he did. It is an absolutely absurd belief to hold and thus humorous
I mean... sure? But that comment written by that particular person I can not see how it can be interpreted as a criticism against Obama. Unless it's a kind of 4chan humor, which is shameful to understand anyway.
Never argue with someone from Hexbear. They're all at least comfortable with being in a community overrun by tankie trolls.
But OP never made any argument, so they are fine. :comfy-cool: :tank: :troll:
This comment is a great example of the "insight" that you find on that instance. Random insults that don't make much sense unless you uncritically agree with the most boot licking China / Russia defenders.
It's not insulting, it's just boring. It's like bots repeating old Chapo comments from different articles, none of which make sense.
I see it as mocking conservative news networks that acted like it was a controversy. Which you absolutely can do and still believe Obama was a bad president or whatever.
I have an issue when the same people who were cheering during the Bush years, gave grudging acceptance at drone strikes during Obama, and were silent during the Trump years, pipe up and say drone strikes are bad now.
Progressives have been saying this the whole time.
Also, a reminder that Obama tried to write regs limiting the use of drone strikes at the end of his presidency. Trump promptly threw them out on entering.
As always, when a Republican does something, it's good and just. When a Democrat does literally the same thing, they're the devil incarnate.
Loyalty over principle.
Drone strikes are the holy grail of the military-industrial complex. They are cheap to run meaning that the air force doesn't have to give them a huge budget yet consume precision bombs and missiles at a steady rate meaning that the weapon industry get a secure revenue stream. And they can be scaled up almost infinitely since there is no bad news coverage of wounded veterans or crying widows on us television.
Also, a reminder that Obama tried to write regs limiting the use of drone strikes at the end of his presidency
That doesn't sound good.
I mean. It definitely carries the implication that Obama has done very little wrong whether or not you intended it that way. Natalie's inability to own up to mistakes is either a serious character flaw or she thinks that the murderous actions he took were justified.
Or she is just pandering to her liberal audience
Since she basically stopped making content, I'm a little surprised she still has an audience. Like so many otherwise curiously influential and interesting people, she's doomed herself to drowning in the social media space when everyone would be better off (her most of all) if she just logged the fuck off.
She does streaming, I think.
I agree they all should log off instead.
I think, still, it's a reflection of what the conservative media at the time was making a big deal about. It wasn't the drone strikes or war crimes, it was the tan suit that was run on Fox for several weeks.
It's like they never gave a shit about civilian deaths. Ever.
sure, but I'm not convinced the people making the jokes care any more about civilian deaths, either.
Natalie's inability to own up to mistakes is either a serious character flaw or
I don't think that that is a flaw she has is in question at this point tbh
Studied Philosophy as a PhD. That's one of the biggest flaws a human could have.
It's not really hard is it? "Yeah people are right about this." and then growing from it. I don't think I've ever seen that from her, not a single time. Everyone is always wrong except her, it is always the internet's fault, and she is perfect and right about everything.
I have much more respect for people like Noah Samsen who has made mistakes with epic debatebros and just owned up to it like "Yep engaging with them was a mistake I shouldn't have done it and won't be in future". Just fucking learn from things ffs. Grow.
Such an annoying reckless behavior to publicly Call Out a community you're supposedly part of like this. Every time someone does this, I get a clear mental image of a dog licking its own ass. Just shut up, having random slapfights and compulsive arguing are childish zoomer traits
Time for her to make another 4 hour video about how she was 1984'd into deleting a tweet.
That would require her making a video
that joke is so overused i don't even think the libs over at r/politics finds it funny anymore
I used to think it was funny just because it WAS absurd that Hannity (it was Hannity right?) made a big deal out of Obama ordering "fancy mustard" and therefor being unAmerican. I thought it was a good commentary on conservative media's weird tics. But once I noticed that libs were using it (and tan suit jokes) just as much to absolve Obama of having "real controversies" and not just making fun of Fox News, it lost its edge for me.
ETA: Also its really corny of Contra to engage in such an overused joke, beyond how lib she's being its also just really gauche.
She's actively regressing into a chud.
Wealth and connections often bring out the worst parts of people.
Tan suit Dijon mustard was amusing until I realized how much of politics is theater. It was just too blatant this time, but so much of American news is only slightly more serious than Dijon mustard.
It may be gauche, but it is certainly not de gauche
Libs on /r/politics only make jokes about the Ork-shaped Slavic Brainpan and how many indictments Trump is currently under.
Its great that the Obama post got her dunked on by Ethereal Bisexual
Obama punching the air right now and cursing Marx
Uhhh let me date here
Is contra going lib again?
She's always been lib, sadly. I still love her content tho! But her political takes are def a little ehh
Yeah, I like have a soft spot for her because she helped show me that there was actually a left beyond voting for labour every now and again, and like she was the only trans rep young me really had, but like her politics are cringe af - is way cooler imo
contra's godawful takes on NB people / gender in general + her tendency to triple down when criticized really soured me on her content. it took all the fun out of the theater for me.
Yeah, I think I could stand her if she would just admit that she was wrong for once, about any of it
what did she say about nonbinary people? :(
Nothing to my knowledge, she has a few videos defending nonbinary identities and rejecting people insisting it's one or the other. I have no idea where the takes in this comment section are even coming from
PT makes good videos, but she is closer to contra than can be coincidental. I mean, what are the odds of two trans women making leftist (at least at one point) political video essays in an overly theatrical style with old english letters as pen names.
Yeah they're friends and they used to help each other with the video production, I'm just saying that Abbie has wayyyy better politics than contra does (and her videos are better to - also she's a fellow trans person enduring the hellscape that is TERF island with me so that endears me to her)
They used to be freinds. They had some sort of falling out though. Although her politics are better than contra's
In other words - PT is Contrapoints, but it's good instead of whiny liberal asslicking.
This is just pitting trans people against each other for no reason. PT were less theatrical before they came out, but acting like a theater kid in your video editing choices isn't exclusive to any one YouTuber.
I was just comparing them since they're decently close friends, they're in the same niche and go for basically the same audience, and do things in the same style, it seemed like a pretty natural comparison to me
I understand, your comparison was fine. The person responding to you makes it sound like PT is ripping off Contrapoints though. Comparing their ideas, their production value and choices is fine, they do exist in a similar space, but there's nothing wrong with PT existing in a similar space. Straight white men are allowed to coexist with identical videos on YouTube. But someone in a marginalized group? Their channels are constantly pitted against each other.
Vaush/Xanderhal, Asmongold/Penguinz0 are all allowed to be successful even though they pretty much make the same videos and stream clips on the same topics. But for some reason creators from marginalized groups can't have similar tastes and ideas.
I'm pretty sure the person you were responding to is also trans like me and presumably you
Could you please correct the misgendering in your post? PT uses she/her pronouns exclusively.
I think it's a joke - it's an absurd comparison so I don't think it's meant to be taken seriously
If I had a nickel for every time it happened I've have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
Facts
Can you elaborate? Love her content, wonder if I’m missing anything about her I’m not aware of.
Some internet leftists are anti-jokes and our greatest insult is to call someone a liberal.
our greatest insult is to call someone a liberal
What do you mean by this?
In the US, we use liberal to describe a person who is left of center on the political spectrum, who is not a socialist. And we use conservative or neo-liberal to describe someone right of center.
Is the goal to make fun of people left of center or to make fun of people right of center? I honestly cannot tell from the above conversation. This may simply be regional based confusion on my part.
so, liberalism is decidedly right of centre. it requires buying into capitalism, but it’s not as far gone as the GOP. The US dems are left of the GOP, but right on a more absolute political meter.
Bernie is leftist, but Biden & co are properly right of centre. Your Overton window has shifted so far to the right that a leftist politician will have a harder path than a snowball in hell.
I say this as someone that has a neolib prime minister (Trudeau).
Suffice to say, liberals and conservatives have the same goals, liberals just prefer a sustainable labour class.
Based on this, I think this is a regional issue. In the US, liberal means left of center.
I would say Bernie is democratic socialist. I would call myself a social democrat, so slightly to the right of Bernie, but slightly to the left of a liberal. I would also say liberals are to the left of moderates who are to the left of conservatives/neo-liberals who are to the left of fascists.
The US Overton window is way to far to the right though.
Liberals can claim the word means whatever they want it to to make themselves feel better, but as long as they are pro-capitalism, liberals today are not on the left, since leftism is anti-capitalist by definition.
And not only are they not on the left, they actively enable and bolster the right:
And not only are they not on the left, they actively enable and bolster the right:
I would call the liberals you are referring to neo-liberals or conservatives. The few liberals I met in real life and the many liberals I've met online are fiercely anti-fascist.
I think this Vox article gives a more historically accurate take on how defeating the Nazis was a team effort by the Allies. Capitalism was essential to defeat the Axis powers. By the logic in the first article, capitalism is therefore anti-fascist.
Liberals call themselves a variety of things, ranging from “democratic socialists” to “social democrats” to even “socialists”
I had the pleasure to chat with a socialist online briefly. They wanted to tear down US democracy with a socialist revolution. I am certain that socialist was not actually a liberal in disguise. Or a secret fascist for that matter.
I definitely see how liberal is used as a way to describe how everyone who is not a communist is actually a secret fascist.
The third article actually admits the group it's really talking about is neo-liberals, ie conservatives. The article claims capitalism and free market economies have to go, but doesn't explain what will replace them. The author claims he wants a true democracy, which we have in the US by the way, so some it sounds like he wants some form of social democracy. I also want social democracy in the US. Communist countries have demonstrated that their economies are too brittle to survive long term. Even China allows a certain amount of free market. Quite a lot according to this guy.
The fourth article really seems to be highlighting the semantic difference in the use of the word liberal vs neo-liberal. As a related example, I really doubt the millions of people who voted against Trump, many of whom I'm sure self identify as liberal, are secretly fascists.
The issues in the US are a difference of progressives ideas versus conservative ideas. The conservative movement in the US is what is being co-opted by fascists. For example the Republican party is now controlled by fascists.
On a related note, the Mises Caucus has already orchestrated a fascist take over of the libertarian party in the US. These libertarians in the US were always conservative libertarians. They already believed might makes right and that their freedoms should supersede other peoples' freedoms. So it doesn't really surprise me that this happened to them.
That's fine, just understand that you're using a US-centric framework that differs from what socialists mean when they say "libs". From our perspective, if you're pro-western-capitalism (and thus pro-neoliberalism) you're a lib. Democrats, Republicans, doesn't matter.
I am a social democrat which is a part of the socialist family as far as I'm concerned. As far as I'm aware, the US-centric framework is what everyone, including socialists, use in the US. Just as socialists else where, such as the UK or EU, use their own meaning for the word liberal.
Based on what you are saying, this particular instance of disagreement does not seem to be a regional one. As regional differences on definitions should translate and be something we both navigate around. What you are describing seems to a disagreement based on definition.
Conflating supporting some form of capitalism, in my case regulated capitalism, ie mixed economy, with neo-liberalism is intellectual dishonesty. You calling me a lib for supporting some form of capitalism is no different than me calling you a tanky for simply being anti-capitalist. Just because you seem to be against capitalism does not make you an authoritarian communist.
Democrats are not currently fascists, so that does matter. I'm registered independent though, so I'm not particularly interested in defending Democrats. If Democrats don't become more progressive, as they are predominately neo-liberals right now, they could easily go the way of the Republican party and become fascist.
Look, I won't argue with you on semantics. You're free to disagree with the common definition of liberalism that socialists use. It's really just a convenient term for people that are pro-capitalist. It's not intended to be a nuanced term, and I doubt most reasonable socialists would directly equate Republican fascists with Democratic progressives, even if they see both as problematic.
We're talking about US politics, quit muddying the water to make yourself look more pure
I can't claim to be an expert, and this is strictly in a USA context, but I'd explain it this way: "Liberal" is used to insult someone for having and promoting bad, insufficiently leftward political principles, instead of good ones. The good ones depend on what principles the person doing the insulting holds. The right side of the political spectrum also uses Liberal as an insult, so it can be confusing.
Elements of the far left consider Liberals hardly better than (and in practice indistinguishable from) political centrists, conservatives, or fascists, due to the perception that Liberals support policies that won't disrupt systems that perpetuate injustice, and will carry water for other liberals even when they commit acts they would denounce their political opponents for doing.
The right uses Liberal as a catch-all term for leftists generally (whom they despise), but it has diminished a bit, being supplanted by "woke" "groomers" "antifa" and "BLM."
Yeah, I've started seeing the far left use liberal to describe anyone to the right of them. And weirdly, people on the far left decry wokeness the same way a conservative would. It has been weird. =/
Fuck off Judean People's Front! We're the People's Front of Judea!
I would use neo-liberal to describe many American politicians, including a majority of Democrats, as they tend to have views right of center. But I would use liberal to describe many of the people voting Democrat as their views reflect positions that are at least center left.
Center to center right. Liberals tend to see themselves as left of center though and the word has very little meaning overall. I was mostly just making a joke though.
Yeah, basically she has in the past talked about how she admires leftists and I don't think she isn't one, but that she thinks leftist ideas come from envy of people who are more fortunate, and that leftist ideas are bad cuz they're ant-consumer. Admittedly tho its been a long time since I remember her talking about politics and my memory isnt the best but those are things I think I remember... Try the 'envy' video
She went fully lib like two or three years ago and has not had even a trace of being a socialist since.
Again? I imagine you don’t recover after hanging out with Hillary Clinton. Maybe unless you’re
last I heard, he relapsed into Marianne Williamson electoralism. get well soon, Chairman Daou
High off the fumes of patreon dosh she had a podcast episode with
Always has been
Going? I think the least lib she ever got was making two videos about capitalism being bad and then concluding it with this statement:
You know maybe we should do something in the meantime. Uhh so I dunno, I guess vote Labour, tweet radically, try to eat more vegetables, uhh… Try not to be manipulated into waging war against other downtrodden people, and can we please not hand more power to the absolute worst dingbats our society has on offer.
twitter is really good at making words and phrases meaningless through extreme hyperbole rule
Can I ask whats being made meaningless here? I hope you don't mean "war criminal". Because drone bombing a wedding is definitely a war crime.
Maybe you mean Contra's joke though idk lol
Oh you are saying we shouldn't communicate and instead rely on aesthetics to signal each other? Thats literally fascism but you do you.
can someone please explain why the word rule appears in titles so often
its a thing from /r/196
/r/196's thing is its a "rule" that you have to post something whenever you visit the sub. And most people post "rule" when they do so.
This comm is just reusing the tic.
Ok, so it looks like stormfront is a website that promotes white pride. It sounds like there might have been a subreddit at some point based on that stormfront image.
I'm using non-reddit links because I don't want to direct traffic to reddit.
Can you help me find a source that shows, stormfront, a white pride website, influenced the 196 rule please? This seems like an important point to learn more about. I've been googling, but I haven't found any connection yet.
Its a hexbear joke to call reddit stormfront
It's a long running hexbear joke to compare Reddit to stormfront given how racist and white it was
That's why the emoji booty used is called :reddit-logo :
I see, thanks.
The original sub was banned from Reddit for repeatedly saying a person who killed slave owners did nothing wrong, as some additional context
Who was the person who killed salve owners? I honestly do not know the history of the original sub.
Also the emoji is just making fun of how openly or (poorly) covertly white supremacist reddit is in general.
196 kind of was chasery at first but got less chasery as time passed
Ah, gotcha
196 was creepy and chaser-y about trans folks?
Not from what I've heard. edit:spacing
The vaush meme subreddit creeped me out.
What was that subreddit about? =/
196 had extreme crossover with the vaush sub, I think mods too? Either way I got banned for shittalking NATO there over 3 years ago and haven't bothered to check in since.
I didn't participate in 196 when I was on Reddit. And I've just now learned about Vaush. For what it's worth, I haven't seen him mentioned on this 196.
Although I'm pro-NATO. I've no way to know how representative that stance is of the general user base of this instance. But I'm of the opinion that it's a common position.
I really don't understand how someone can come the conclusion that NATO is a good thing? :/ They've carried out some absolutely awful military operations that have taken many lives. They are not, in any way, a "defensive alliance" and have never acted like one. Like, the bare minimum that I ask is "Russia and NATO are both bad" (and thats not even wrong, its just said in bad faith sometimes). But outright saying NATO is good? :/
The West has the right to defend itself. As does everyone.
"The west" as a whole does not have a right to defend itself. "The west" is not a nation. Considering it one has white supremacist vibes, I'm sure from your other posts that you don't intend them, but the implications are there.
You have been lied to about Yugoslavia. In fact, the bombing of Yugoslavia would have been one of the atrocities I brought up, considering the 500 civilian deaths and 6000 civilian wounded that resulted from it. At the very least, while there may have been a genocide going on there, NATO's goals were not to stop it. It was an excuse to enforce further western hegemony over the region. I Unfortunately I am not prepared with sources on that issue so I hope someone else in this thread will come through with some for you. I always forget to bookmark sources even though I know I'll need them later. You'll just hopefully trust me that I have read stuff about this before. I just forgot to save it.
Lastly, its stated goals mean nothing to me when they supported the invasion of Afghanistan (as just one example). Was that a defensive war?
The observed baseline for libs on reddit is defending as if it's a left wing position because the republicans are 'worse', with lots of unexamined western chauvinism piled on top, and hostile misogyny if you push back on it.
Obama was president when NATO returned the slave trade to Libya- to quote his secretary of state Hillary Clinton: "we came, we saw, he died". I'm sure you have all sorts of state-approved positions on Americas state enemies, but that's the historical reality you're whitewashing.
I'll admit my knowledge on US involvement in Libya is lacking. I was a junior in high school at the time and I don't remember hearing much about it. I'll have to read up on it if I'm going to debate it with you. At a glance, it looks Obama would agree with you. Reestablishing the slave trade in Libya doesn't seem to be the outcome he was hoping for. edit: typo
"Trans friendly" is a weird way to say creepy chasers, the amount of overt sexualisation and objectification of trans people from non-trans people there is horrendous.
You're reading too hard into the reddit=stormfront thing. It's just a common leftist refrain off-reddit because 90% of the site is pro-nato white supremacy and nationalism even if a handful of communities might be slightly less bad.
most of the posts there make my skin crawl. im basically a boomer at this point in the trans community (10+ years transitioned), younger trans people really need to learn what fake allies look like. just because theyre nice/sexualize you doesnt mean they actually support you. i know when the world hates your guts the bar is low, but you need to make that bar high for your own good.
r/196 kinda gives me Vaush vibes in that way (and also in the radlibbiness ofc)
It's a joke to dunk on Reddit, it's become part of our parlance so we tend to drop it pretty casually. I can see how it comes across as accusatory here, but I think the user probably didn't mean anything by it.
That seems to be the case. Other people are indicating it was joke and not even one directed at on 196.
It's certainly new to me anyway.
its because there used to be a stormfront subreddit on reddit for like 10 years or something before it got banned, and that was their logo.
And /r/196 is a leftist meme posting subreddit that is trans friendly.
Back when i still visited reddit, i got bullied pretty hard by them for pointing out that it's latently transphobic, assimilationist and toxic to shit on the way r/traaaaaaaa was inclusive of trans catgirl culture. They had an entire thread on how the memes on r/traaaaaaa were cringe and unfunny and it was full of latent bigottry like that. Made them sound like a bunch of chuds and truscums. r/196 also has a not insubstantial amount of chasers. Fetishizing us and talking about your favorite trans porn while dismissing the opinions of trans women as cringe isn't trans friendly, it is objectifying and shitty and r/196 can go fuck itself.
I only know about r/196 what I've read about it from other sources. You'll be happy to know we don't do that here. This is a trans friendly space.
heavy-handed moderation to keep it that way is a good idea. if someone engages in soft transphobia/chaser shit, warn and ban -- don't leave room for debates about how much trans positivity is too much.
I hope i can take your word for that, it's generally what i'd expect of a place called zone, too. I'm just voicing my own experiences with the reddit sub.
I think stormfront the user, Stormfront the right wing website, and Stormfront the Apple store are all 3 seperate entities.
I think you got them mixed up. I hope you mixed them up and they aren't somehow connected anyway.
I honestly know very little about Stormfront, beyond what I've googled. I don't support white pride groups. I have seen people referencing it on Lemmy though.
it's a joke about reddit's tendency towards racism and other bigotry, not the literal stormfront website.
I won't contest that racism and bigotry existed on reddit. It definitely did. I also experienced and saw kindness and acceptance. Saying Reddit in its entirety is racist is really no different that saying everyone is racist. And not everyone and not everyone on reddit is racist.
it's about the platform and the majority membership, not a judgment of every community that exists there. there are quite obviously cool corners on reddit, but the platform as a whole defends bigotry as free speech, at an admin level.
It does seem like the admin level is an issue when it comes to reddit and racism. This is easier to observe as there are fewer admins than users. I do want to see some kind of data to be convinced it is the majority of people on reddit. I only have my personal experience to go on. I remember fondly how conservatives bemoaned that reddit was dominated by liberals. So from my personal experience the racists were the minority. I could be wrong though, because I don't have political census data on redditors.
I remember fondly how conservatives bemoaned that reddit was dominated by liberals.
Tories have also complained since the beginning of time about how the BBC has a supposed leftwing bias, and no amount of slandering leftists by the BBC has dissuaded them of that. Conservatives just want to feel persecuted.
They do have a persecution complex, I'll give you that. =D
Reddit (the platform) banned us for celebrating a guy who killed slaveowners, that's why we call them .
Who was the guy you celebrated?
John Brown
yeah its a joke making fun of a large portion of reddit
you're giving real "all lives matter" vibes with this response
They said elsewhere that they're autistic. The need to be exact and truthful when people generalize something like a community is something i identify with. Its why I dont really love the stormfront joke myself, just go along with it for community peace. This person to me is clearly well intentioned and is an example of the dunk impulse going too far because I think they're trying to do right.
ETA: Actually I got them mixed up with another user they never said they were autistic. But I still think they are well intentioned.
Their further response to me tells me they aren't well intentioned.
Ah damn, I misplaced my faith.
its okay to believe the best in people, can't fault you there
It goes without saying all lives matter. It needs to be said that Black Lives Matter. I am aware racism exists on reddit. I'd love to see a survey or study that indicates a majority of people are racist on reddit.
I'm not convinced that calling reddit predominantly racist is based on actual sympathy for people of color. There is a competing reason I can think of why someone would want to discredit reddit however. They tended to moderate against authoritarian communists, people who are notorious for their support of governments that committed genocides against minorities.
It is true that there are plenty of people who use reddit that are not racist (setting aside the idea that everyone who lives in a racist society, which we in the west do, has at least some internalized racism). Some people on reddit even actively fight against it, to their credit. That said, as a platform, both in terms of the people who run and administrate it, as well as the larger majority mass of users, definitely tends towards racism. This can be seen in all kinds of ways, from admins always siding with of racists over bipoc to the frothing-at-the-mouth hatred of the "orcish hordes" that dominates in every popular subreddit (and the silencing of those who offer even the mildest criticism of it), to the understandable yet very telling rabid defense of the privilege so many of them insist they earned when it is nothing more than old fashioned white privilege. You seem to agree that reddit is bad for its corporatist bullshit and its laser focus on profit at the expense of people. We agree. But that alone is inherently systemically racist for sociological reasons that I'm assuming you're aware of, given some of your other comments. For all these reasons, it is hardly an overreaction or unfair to refer to reddit as "a racist website."
As for "authoritarian" communists, all I'll say here is that I hope you can learn to seriously, genuinely question a lot of what you have learned from what amounts to an ocean of propaganda deliberately spread for decades (even over a century) to demonize any successful socialist revolution. I'd encourage you to ask some of us "tankies" in good faith about some of that propaganda in other appropriate threads.
I definitely did see popular subreddits that would display racial biases to black people. They would bad mouth a black person doing something in a clip and then the next day defend a white person doing similar things. It didn't happen that way every time, but it did seem like it happened that way more often than not. Also, there does seem to be a valid argument in that systemic racism asserts itself in instances of corporate greed like we've seen from reddit. In the sense it's probably white people who are going to benefit from the enshitification.
At the very least I'm hoping we can have good faith discussions about progressive topics. IRL I typically talk to people more conservative me, so it is interesting to talk to someone coming from a different end of the political spectrum.
Damn, I really had faith you were well intentioned. I'm disappointed.
Honestly I don't even know why you're here if you're so happy with Reddit's moderation policies.
We moderate tankys here too. Welcome to 196.
I'm mad at the corporate take over of reddit. The shitification if you will. edit:typo
I wonder why a website that has been taken over by corporations (it was pretty much always corporate, but I agree its gotten worse) would aggressively silence communists, I also wonder if they would perhaps promote certain narratives about the enemies of the west. I also wonder why someone who is anti-corporate would support that.
Believe it or not, I really want our communities to get along because Hexbear is aggressively pro-trans.
I won't contest that racism and bigotry existed on reddit. It definitely did. I also experienced and saw kindness and acceptance. Saying Reddit in its entirety is racist is really no different that saying everyone is racist. And not everyone and not everyone on reddit is racist.
reddit is full to the brim liberals and liberals are at best fascist enablers, at worst - especially when foreign politics are involved - they are fash-lite, consciously or otherwise
What an absolute dumpsterfire of a comment section
Some people really need to fucking log off and find a lesbian to marry
Yes.
Natalie should know better. But also... the really nasty shit under Obama was heavily under-reported and only ever seemed to penetrate media in a select few circuits. Casually tossing off a "What even did Obama do that was so bad?" is almost forgivable if you're not a terminally online 30-year-old who makes hour long YouTube videos about politics, history, and culture.
Am I reading this wrong? I assume Natalie is making a joke about how people under report Obama's nasty shits
I think she's joking about how people over-report his trivial shit. But it can be read as blithely ignoring the monstrous crimes Obama did commit while in office, because it echoes a lot of the liberal apologia of the administration that amounted to "The worst thing Obama ever did was wear a tan suit".
While I don't think she has talked about Obama's war crimes or things adjacent to it, I find it hard to believe that she would be saying that seriously especially the both sides part. Tho her response to the criticism doesn't make it better.
You're reading it wrong, she's stating you can't make a moral equivalence between Obama and, say, Trump or something because supposedly the worst things obama did were silly.
For me, it's someone that savvy casually dropping a "both sides" comment. If I didn't know better I'd assume it was bait. Its hard to imagine that level of cluelessness.
Observation selection bias is an easy one the GOP likes to take advantage of. Eg: not testing for covid to show covid went down.
Also: drone strike civilian casualties.
Not testing for covid to show it went down is the current strategy of the Biden admin
Lol. Look at this galaxy brain equivicating there start of a pandemic with an endemic with vaccine.
I mean, obviously the covid hospital occupancy rates would be identical if the actual case rate was the same.
What's that? Less then 10k vs over 140k? Definitely the exact same situation! /s
Don't trip over yourself making excuses now
Hospital rates are down because we killed a lot of people and the rest aren't being recorded as covid.
I know people who very recently have caught and have had their bodies permanently damaged by this disease within the last few months, one of them being a family member who did everything right, so the whole "lol no big deal it's endemic now" shit is really fucking depressing, ngl. It kind of handwaves away a very real pain people are going through.
Yeah because it's too late now. Covid has become just another disease spreading around now. If people actually wore masks and got vaccinated we could have eradicated it but now it's like the flu where it changes to quickly to manage.
Which was the whole point of the quarantine and masks and social distancing but god forbid Sarah doesn't hang with her besties and John doesn't get to party on the weekends
If people actually wore masks and got vaccinated we could have eradicated
Not really, there was no chance of us eradicating covid. Covid spreads well even among the masked and the vaccinated. We could only slow it down.
but now it's like the flu where it changes to quickly to manage
It was like that from the start, there were multiple competing strains of covid right from when it was first discovered since it had already been spreading for at least 2 months at that point and was all over the world.
Covid was always going to become endemic.
Yeah, eradication was never a goal. It was always about slowing the spread so hospitals would hopefully not get overwhelmed.
Also: drone strike civilian casualties.
When did they change how they count civilian casualties? I heard it was under Obama's administration, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
There is quite the back and forth between Democrats pushing for accountability and the GOP pushing against.
From Wikipedia, which has all the references one might need:
"On July 1, 2016, President Barack Obama signed an executive order requiring annual accounting of civilian and enemy casualties in U.S. drone strikes outside war zones ("Areas Outside of Active Hostilities"), and setting a deadline of May 1 each year for the release of such report. However, soon after taking office, President Donald Trump designated large areas in Yemen and Somalia to be "areas of active hostilities," thus exempting them from disclosure. The Trump administration also ignored the 2017 and 2018 deadlines for an annual accounting, and on March 6, 2019, Trump issued an order revoking the requirement. "
"During the Obama administration, proposed U.S. drone strikes in locations outside active war zones (i.e., in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia) required high-level approval. The Obama administration process for approving drone strikes in such locations featured centralized, high-level oversight, based on intelligence about individuals suspected of terrorism activity. Obama's approval was required for every strike in Yemen and Somalia, as well as "the more complex and risky strikes in Pakistan" (about one-third of the total as of 2012), and insisted on deciding whether to approve a strike unless the CIA had a "near certainty" that no civilian deaths would result.
...
October 2017, Trump abolished the Obama-era approval system in favor of a looser, decentralized approach, which gave the military and CIA officials the discretion to decide to launch drone strikes against targets without White House approval.
"
All sorts of references corroborating those summary:
The short version is: Obama demanded accountability and his approval. Which did not exist before and was revoked after. Hence, the different counts of casualties is not representative of an actually difference. Only representative of the GOP being shit.
I am thankful that I touch grass enough to not know what any of this means
Being on Twitter must be exhausting
Id rather slam my penis in the door of a luxury sedan than ever go back on twitter.
Tits! We can make that happen for you!
LOOK AT MY LITTLE TEETH
it very much is
@pizzaiolo @epicspongee I used to use Twitter all the time before it got to a point where I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I felt like a weight had been lifted off of me after I deleted the app.
There’s a reason she’s got drug problems and Twitter is part of that reason
People are still using that dumpster of a platform?
People who have a large following and magic emojis next to their name will keep using it because it gives them their validation. Twitter celebs are really in a sad state of existence
Elon Musk is an actual Nazi and anyone who still uses twitter is sus imo
I got so confused reading this, my brainy hurt :(
it's such an unfunny joke I had to read it three times to even understand what she was trying to say
Some people are unfamiliar with Obama's drones.
or the genocide in Yemen, or his role as the deporter in chief, or that he engineered the largest transfer of wealth from the Black community to capital interests, or, or, or
Guns from Libya to Syria = ISIS wasn't great either
Don't forget Boko Haram got their start of Libya's destruction too.
Tell me more about the wealth transfer.
when he bailed out the banks but left largely minority homeowners saddled with NINJA loans, he subjected them to foreclosures which will prevent a whole generation of Black people from ever owning homes again.
The current state of Russia-US relations can be pinned on Clinton and Obama as well
This aged like milk.
Absolutely wild that things escalated from a "reset" of relations with russia to the maidan coup in like 4 years, I honestly wish I knew more of what was going on there.
Some people are. This particular people has absolutely no excuse for such ignorance lol
Crazy, isn't it?
Source
I didn’t post it because her joke was funny lol
I figured, it just had me
It’s a common liberal take on Obama.
Cheeto man = loud, uncouth, vulgar.
Your Excellency, Barack The Obama: classy, polite, trivial controversies, last ‘boring’ president
😤
It's pointing out hypocrisy. But people have forgotten that or are just ignorant? I can't see how you'd come to that conclusion unless you were very "both sides".
I'm a level seven enlightened centrist. I wait in line at polling stations just so I can fill out a blank ballot.
Remember when Obama saw the largest transfer of wealth away from black US citizens to the wealthy in the history of the United States?
Remember when he set the precedent that it us cool to assassinate US citizens in the open (as opposed to covertly) without trial?
Honestly I get being mad at "Obama's biggest controversy was the mustard"
That's not what she said lol. Sorry as a neurodivergent person I get that this tweet might be hard to read possibly, but she's being sarcastic here. Maybe in poor taste, but it's a joke. She's well-aware of the shit Obama's done and isn't a fan of him.
She says that Obama was bad. Everyone understands she was being sarcastic. Since she was being sarcastic it means that she is trying to say that Obama wasn't bad (because that's how sarcasm works).
I mean… no? Sarcasm works in multiple ways lol. This is like a children’s picture book-level of understanding of sarcasm.
ok, this has gone over my head. can you explain what she meant? her "joke" reads like a retreading of stale
memes from /r/politics.
Every US president is a War Criminal.
However, most sane people would agree that Obama was, as far as U.S. presidents go, very uncontroversial. Well spoken, very few scandals, centrist policies, didn't make a fool of himself every time he met a head of state, etc.
So the conservatives latched onto the WEIRDEST shit. Made him up as a Kenyan citizen (???), actually made a big deal about his choices of condiments or suit colors, etc. These were all real things that made the mainstream news cycles, because Obama wasn't livetweeting his every thought or being indicted every day, but US conservatives had to complain about something.
This is to be contrasted to the mainstream Republican figureheads, who are unbelievably crass&corrupt traitors yet receive nothing but praise from the same media/pundits that thrashed Obama for his choice of mustard.
Absurdist contrast like this is, indeed, comedic. I rest my case.
(Also Natalie has talked in-depth about how shitty this faux-leftist "the democrat candidate is actually center-right and imperfect, therefore I shall not vote for them even if it gives the win to the literal rapist who will absolutely jail me for my political beliefs, gender expression, or sexual orientation if given the chance" in her videos, most notably the 2020 campaign video, but of course none of that fits in 240 characters, also comedy doesn't tend to work when overexplained, thank you for coming to my TED talk)
Uncontroversial because the democrats suddenly stopped caring about drone strikes, illegitimate wars, the Patriot act, and gitmo once he was electedm
This is absolutely just a regurgitation of people saying Obama's biggest scandals was the pants he wore. The joke doesn't have a punchline otherwise, barring missing context that you should have led with if there was a misunderstanding.
Isn't the punch line holding that belief? As in she was being sarcastic in saying that the sauce was the worst thing he did. It is an absolutely absurd belief to hold and thus humorous
I mean... sure? But that comment written by that particular person I can not see how it can be interpreted as a criticism against Obama. Unless it's a kind of 4chan humor, which is shameful to understand anyway.
Never argue with someone from Hexbear. They're all at least comfortable with being in a community overrun by tankie trolls.
But OP never made any argument, so they are fine. :comfy-cool: :tank: :troll:
This comment is a great example of the "insight" that you find on that instance. Random insults that don't make much sense unless you uncritically agree with the most boot licking China / Russia defenders.
It's not insulting, it's just boring. It's like bots repeating old Chapo comments from different articles, none of which make sense.
I see it as mocking conservative news networks that acted like it was a controversy. Which you absolutely can do and still believe Obama was a bad president or whatever.
Obama didn't start that, that was Clinton in
Which one are you referring to?
I have an issue when the same people who were cheering during the Bush years, gave grudging acceptance at drone strikes during Obama, and were silent during the Trump years, pipe up and say drone strikes are bad now.
Progressives have been saying this the whole time.
Also, a reminder that Obama tried to write regs limiting the use of drone strikes at the end of his presidency. Trump promptly threw them out on entering.
As always, when a Republican does something, it's good and just. When a Democrat does literally the same thing, they're the devil incarnate.
Loyalty over principle.
Drone strikes are the holy grail of the military-industrial complex. They are cheap to run meaning that the air force doesn't have to give them a huge budget yet consume precision bombs and missiles at a steady rate meaning that the weapon industry get a secure revenue stream. And they can be scaled up almost infinitely since there is no bad news coverage of wounded veterans or crying widows on us television.
That doesn't sound good.
I mean. It definitely carries the implication that Obama has done very little wrong whether or not you intended it that way. Natalie's inability to own up to mistakes is either a serious character flaw or she thinks that the murderous actions he took were justified.
Or she is just pandering to her liberal audience
Since she basically stopped making content, I'm a little surprised she still has an audience. Like so many otherwise curiously influential and interesting people, she's doomed herself to drowning in the social media space when everyone would be better off (her most of all) if she just logged the fuck off.
She does streaming, I think.
I agree they all should log off instead.
I think, still, it's a reflection of what the conservative media at the time was making a big deal about. It wasn't the drone strikes or war crimes, it was the tan suit that was run on Fox for several weeks.
It's like they never gave a shit about civilian deaths. Ever.
sure, but I'm not convinced the people making the jokes care any more about civilian deaths, either.
I don't think that that is a flaw she has is in question at this point tbh
Studied Philosophy as a PhD. That's one of the biggest flaws a human could have.
It's not really hard is it? "Yeah people are right about this." and then growing from it. I don't think I've ever seen that from her, not a single time. Everyone is always wrong except her, it is always the internet's fault, and she is perfect and right about everything.
I have much more respect for people like Noah Samsen who has made mistakes with epic debatebros and just owned up to it like "Yep engaging with them was a mistake I shouldn't have done it and won't be in future". Just fucking learn from things ffs. Grow.
Such an annoying reckless behavior to publicly Call Out a community you're supposedly part of like this. Every time someone does this, I get a clear mental image of a dog licking its own ass. Just shut up, having random slapfights and compulsive arguing are childish zoomer traits
Time for her to make another 4 hour video about how she was 1984'd into deleting a tweet.
That would require her making a video
that joke is so overused i don't even think the libs over at r/politics finds it funny anymore
I used to think it was funny just because it WAS absurd that Hannity (it was Hannity right?) made a big deal out of Obama ordering "fancy mustard" and therefor being unAmerican. I thought it was a good commentary on conservative media's weird tics. But once I noticed that libs were using it (and tan suit jokes) just as much to absolve Obama of having "real controversies" and not just making fun of Fox News, it lost its edge for me.
ETA: Also its really corny of Contra to engage in such an overused joke, beyond how lib she's being its also just really gauche.
She's actively regressing into a chud.
Wealth and connections often bring out the worst parts of people.
Tan suit Dijon mustard
was amusing until I realized how much of politics is theater. It was just too blatant this time, but so much of American news is only slightly more serious than Dijon mustard.
It may be gauche, but it is certainly not de gauche
Libs on /r/politics only make jokes about the Ork-shaped Slavic Brainpan and how many indictments Trump is currently under.
Its great that the Obama post got her dunked on by Ethereal Bisexual
Obama punching the air right now and cursing Marx
Uhhh let me date here
Is contra going lib again?
She's always been lib, sadly. I still love her content tho! But her political takes are def a little ehh
Yeah, I like have a soft spot for her because she helped show me that there was actually a left beyond voting for labour every now and again, and like she was the only trans rep young me really had, but like her politics are cringe af -
is way cooler imo
contra's godawful takes on NB people / gender in general + her tendency to triple down when criticized really soured me on her content. it took all the fun out of the theater for me.
Yeah, I think I could stand her if she would just admit that she was wrong for once, about any of it
what did she say about nonbinary people? :(
Nothing to my knowledge, she has a few videos defending nonbinary identities and rejecting people insisting it's one or the other. I have no idea where the takes in this comment section are even coming from
PT makes good videos, but she is closer to contra than can be coincidental. I mean, what are the odds of two trans women making leftist (at least at one point) political video essays in an overly theatrical style with old english letters as pen names.
Yeah they're friends and they used to help each other with the video production, I'm just saying that Abbie has wayyyy better politics than contra does (and her videos are better to - also she's a fellow trans person enduring the hellscape that is TERF island with me so that endears me to her)
They used to be freinds. They had some sort of falling out though. Although her politics are better than contra's
In other words - PT is Contrapoints, but it's good instead of whiny liberal asslicking.
This is just pitting trans people against each other for no reason. PT were less theatrical before they came out, but acting like a theater kid in your video editing choices isn't exclusive to any one YouTuber.
I was just comparing them since they're decently close friends, they're in the same niche and go for basically the same audience, and do things in the same style, it seemed like a pretty natural comparison to me
I understand, your comparison was fine. The person responding to you makes it sound like PT is ripping off Contrapoints though. Comparing their ideas, their production value and choices is fine, they do exist in a similar space, but there's nothing wrong with PT existing in a similar space. Straight white men are allowed to coexist with identical videos on YouTube. But someone in a marginalized group? Their channels are constantly pitted against each other.
Vaush/Xanderhal, Asmongold/Penguinz0 are all allowed to be successful even though they pretty much make the same videos and stream clips on the same topics. But for some reason creators from marginalized groups can't have similar tastes and ideas.
I'm pretty sure the person you were responding to is also trans like me and presumably you
Could you please correct the misgendering in your post? PT uses she/her pronouns exclusively.
I think it's a joke - it's an absurd comparison so I don't think it's meant to be taken seriously
If I had a nickel for every time it happened I've have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
Facts
Can you elaborate? Love her content, wonder if I’m missing anything about her I’m not aware of.
Some internet leftists are anti-jokes and our greatest insult is to call someone a liberal.
What do you mean by this?
In the US, we use liberal to describe a person who is left of center on the political spectrum, who is not a socialist. And we use conservative or neo-liberal to describe someone right of center.
Is the goal to make fun of people left of center or to make fun of people right of center? I honestly cannot tell from the above conversation. This may simply be regional based confusion on my part.
so, liberalism is decidedly right of centre. it requires buying into capitalism, but it’s not as far gone as the GOP. The US dems are left of the GOP, but right on a more absolute political meter.
Bernie is leftist, but Biden & co are properly right of centre. Your Overton window has shifted so far to the right that a leftist politician will have a harder path than a snowball in hell.
I say this as someone that has a neolib prime minister (Trudeau).
Suffice to say, liberals and conservatives have the same goals, liberals just prefer a sustainable labour class.
Based on this, I think this is a regional issue. In the US, liberal means left of center.
Here is an example of regional differences.
Here is a wiki page called Liberalism in The United States that also provides a nice summary in the first section.
I would say Bernie is democratic socialist. I would call myself a social democrat, so slightly to the right of Bernie, but slightly to the left of a liberal. I would also say liberals are to the left of moderates who are to the left of conservatives/neo-liberals who are to the left of fascists.
The US Overton window is way to far to the right though.
Liberals can claim the word means whatever they want it to to make themselves feel better, but as long as they are pro-capitalism, liberals today are not on the left, since leftism is anti-capitalist by definition.
And not only are they not on the left, they actively enable and bolster the right:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/14/liberalism-and-fascism-partners-in-crime/
https://blacklikemao.medium.com/how-liberalism-helps-fascism-d4dbdcb199d9
https://truthout.org/articles/fascism-is-possible-not-in-spite-of-liberal-capitalism-but-because-of-it/
https://nyanarchist.wordpress.com/2019/01/23/scratch-a-liberal-a-fascist-bleeds-how-the-so-called-middle-class-has-enabled-oppression-for-centuries/
I would call the liberals you are referring to neo-liberals or conservatives. The few liberals I met in real life and the many liberals I've met online are fiercely anti-fascist.
I think this Vox article gives a more historically accurate take on how defeating the Nazis was a team effort by the Allies. Capitalism was essential to defeat the Axis powers. By the logic in the first article, capitalism is therefore anti-fascist.
https://www.vox.com/2014/6/16/5814270/the-successful-70-year-campaign-to-convince-people-the-usa-and-not
The second article has this gem.
I had the pleasure to chat with a socialist online briefly. They wanted to tear down US democracy with a socialist revolution. I am certain that socialist was not actually a liberal in disguise. Or a secret fascist for that matter.
I definitely see how liberal is used as a way to describe how everyone who is not a communist is actually a secret fascist.
The third article actually admits the group it's really talking about is neo-liberals, ie conservatives. The article claims capitalism and free market economies have to go, but doesn't explain what will replace them. The author claims he wants a true democracy, which we have in the US by the way, so some it sounds like he wants some form of social democracy. I also want social democracy in the US. Communist countries have demonstrated that their economies are too brittle to survive long term. Even China allows a certain amount of free market. Quite a lot according to this guy.
https://hbr.org/2021/05/americans-dont-know-how-capitalist-china-is#:~:text=What%20is%20it%20that%20Americans%20don%E2%80%99t%20understand%20about%20China%3F
The fourth article really seems to be highlighting the semantic difference in the use of the word liberal vs neo-liberal. As a related example, I really doubt the millions of people who voted against Trump, many of whom I'm sure self identify as liberal, are secretly fascists.
The issues in the US are a difference of progressives ideas versus conservative ideas. The conservative movement in the US is what is being co-opted by fascists. For example the Republican party is now controlled by fascists.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/15/the-modern-republican-party-fascism-robert-reich
On a related note, the Mises Caucus has already orchestrated a fascist take over of the libertarian party in the US. These libertarians in the US were always conservative libertarians. They already believed might makes right and that their freedoms should supersede other peoples' freedoms. So it doesn't really surprise me that this happened to them.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/libertarian-gop-alt-right/
That's fine, just understand that you're using a US-centric framework that differs from what socialists mean when they say "libs". From our perspective, if you're pro-western-capitalism (and thus pro-neoliberalism) you're a lib. Democrats, Republicans, doesn't matter.
I am a social democrat which is a part of the socialist family as far as I'm concerned. As far as I'm aware, the US-centric framework is what everyone, including socialists, use in the US. Just as socialists else where, such as the UK or EU, use their own meaning for the word liberal.
Based on what you are saying, this particular instance of disagreement does not seem to be a regional one. As regional differences on definitions should translate and be something we both navigate around. What you are describing seems to a disagreement based on definition.
Conflating supporting some form of capitalism, in my case regulated capitalism, ie mixed economy, with neo-liberalism is intellectual dishonesty. You calling me a lib for supporting some form of capitalism is no different than me calling you a tanky for simply being anti-capitalist. Just because you seem to be against capitalism does not make you an authoritarian communist.
Democrats are not currently fascists, so that does matter. I'm registered independent though, so I'm not particularly interested in defending Democrats. If Democrats don't become more progressive, as they are predominately neo-liberals right now, they could easily go the way of the Republican party and become fascist.
Look, I won't argue with you on semantics. You're free to disagree with the common definition of liberalism that socialists use. It's really just a convenient term for people that are pro-capitalist. It's not intended to be a nuanced term, and I doubt most reasonable socialists would directly equate Republican fascists with Democratic progressives, even if they see both as problematic.
We're talking about US politics, quit muddying the water to make yourself look more pure
I can't claim to be an expert, and this is strictly in a USA context, but I'd explain it this way: "Liberal" is used to insult someone for having and promoting bad, insufficiently leftward political principles, instead of good ones. The good ones depend on what principles the person doing the insulting holds. The right side of the political spectrum also uses Liberal as an insult, so it can be confusing.
Elements of the far left consider Liberals hardly better than (and in practice indistinguishable from) political centrists, conservatives, or fascists, due to the perception that Liberals support policies that won't disrupt systems that perpetuate injustice, and will carry water for other liberals even when they commit acts they would denounce their political opponents for doing.
The right uses Liberal as a catch-all term for leftists generally (whom they despise), but it has diminished a bit, being supplanted by "woke" "groomers" "antifa" and "BLM."
Yeah, I've started seeing the far left use liberal to describe anyone to the right of them. And weirdly, people on the far left decry wokeness the same way a conservative would. It has been weird. =/
Fuck off Judean People's Front! We're the People's Front of Judea!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4
Lol, pretending to be a democracy must get confusing for communist dictatorships.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
In the US we use liberal to refer to people left of the American center which is already skewed right. Liberals are center right.
I would say that American politicians are skewed to the right, but the American people themselves are not.
Progressive ideas are popular with Americans.
I would use neo-liberal to describe many American politicians, including a majority of Democrats, as they tend to have views right of center. But I would use liberal to describe many of the people voting Democrat as their views reflect positions that are at least center left.
Center to center right. Liberals tend to see themselves as left of center though and the word has very little meaning overall. I was mostly just making a joke though.
Yeah, basically she has in the past talked about how she admires leftists and I don't think she isn't one, but that she thinks leftist ideas come from envy of people who are more fortunate, and that leftist ideas are bad cuz they're ant-consumer. Admittedly tho its been a long time since I remember her talking about politics and my memory isnt the best but those are things I think I remember... Try the 'envy' video
She went fully lib like two or three years ago and has not had even a trace of being a socialist since.
Again? I imagine you don’t recover after hanging out with Hillary Clinton. Maybe unless you’re
last I heard, he relapsed into Marianne Williamson electoralism. get well soon, Chairman Daou
High off the fumes of patreon dosh she had a podcast episode with
Always has been
Going? I think the least lib she ever got was making two videos about capitalism being bad and then concluding it with this statement:
twitter is really good at making words and phrases meaningless through extreme hyperbole rule
Can I ask whats being made meaningless here? I hope you don't mean "war criminal". Because drone bombing a wedding is definitely a war crime.
Maybe you mean Contra's joke though idk lol
Oh you are saying we shouldn't communicate and instead rely on aesthetics to signal each other? Thats literally fascism but you do you.
can someone please explain why the word rule appears in titles so often
its a
thing from /r/196
/r/196's thing is its a "rule" that you have to post something whenever you visit the sub. And most people post "rule" when they do so.
This comm is just reusing the tic.
Ok, so it looks like stormfront is a website that promotes white pride. It sounds like there might have been a subreddit at some point based on that stormfront image.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Stormfront
And /r/196 is a leftist meme posting subreddit that is trans friendly.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=r%2F196
I'm using non-reddit links because I don't want to direct traffic to reddit.
Can you help me find a source that shows, stormfront, a white pride website, influenced the 196 rule please? This seems like an important point to learn more about. I've been googling, but I haven't found any connection yet.
Its a hexbear joke to call reddit stormfront
It's a long running hexbear joke to compare Reddit to stormfront given how racist and white it was
That's why the emoji booty used is called :reddit-logo :
I see, thanks.
The original sub was banned from Reddit for repeatedly saying a person who killed slave owners did nothing wrong, as some additional context
Who was the person who killed salve owners? I honestly do not know the history of the original sub.
John Brown
Redditor trying to decipher the bit:
I think you should be more judicious about who you're dunking on tbh. This person seems well intentioned enough.
ETA: I take this back.
Lol
when the precog hits
What does your ETA acronym mean? I usually read "ETA" to mean "estimated time (to) arrival"...
Edit to sdd
196 was creepy and chaser-y about trans folks?
Also the
emoji is just making fun of how openly or (poorly) covertly white supremacist reddit is in general.
196 kind of was chasery at first but got less chasery as time passed
Ah, gotcha
Not from what I've heard. edit:spacing
The vaush meme subreddit creeped me out.
What was that subreddit about? =/
196 had extreme crossover with the vaush sub, I think mods too? Either way I got banned for shittalking NATO there over 3 years ago and haven't bothered to check in since.
Are you talking about this guy?
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/vaush
I didn't participate in 196 when I was on Reddit. And I've just now learned about Vaush. For what it's worth, I haven't seen him mentioned on this 196.
Although I'm pro-NATO. I've no way to know how representative that stance is of the general user base of this instance. But I'm of the opinion that it's a common position.
I really don't understand how someone can come the conclusion that NATO is a good thing? :/ They've carried out some absolutely awful military operations that have taken many lives. They are not, in any way, a "defensive alliance" and have never acted like one. Like, the bare minimum that I ask is "Russia and NATO are both bad" (and thats not even wrong, its just said in bad faith sometimes). But outright saying NATO is good? :/
The West has the right to defend itself. As does everyone.
NATO has intervened to stop genocide.
NATO is in fact a defensive alliance. Here is article 5.
"The west" as a whole does not have a right to defend itself. "The west" is not a nation. Considering it one has white supremacist vibes, I'm sure from your other posts that you don't intend them, but the implications are there.
You have been lied to about Yugoslavia. In fact, the bombing of Yugoslavia would have been one of the atrocities I brought up, considering the 500 civilian deaths and 6000 civilian wounded that resulted from it. At the very least, while there may have been a genocide going on there, NATO's goals were not to stop it. It was an excuse to enforce further western hegemony over the region. I Unfortunately I am not prepared with sources on that issue so I hope someone else in this thread will come through with some for you. I always forget to bookmark sources even though I know I'll need them later. You'll just hopefully trust me that I have read stuff about this before. I just forgot to save it.
Lastly, its stated goals mean nothing to me when they supported the invasion of Afghanistan (as just one example). Was that a defensive war?
sure were amazing defensive actions in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq
The observed baseline for libs on reddit is defending
as if it's a left wing position because the republicans are 'worse', with lots of unexamined western chauvinism piled on top, and hostile 
misogyny if you push back on it.
Obama was president when NATO returned the slave trade to Libya- to quote his secretary of state Hillary Clinton: "we came, we saw, he died". I'm sure you have all sorts of state-approved positions on Americas state enemies, but that's the historical reality you're whitewashing.
I'll admit my knowledge on US involvement in Libya is lacking. I was a junior in high school at the time and I don't remember hearing much about it. I'll have to read up on it if I'm going to debate it with you. At a glance, it looks Obama would agree with you. Reestablishing the slave trade in Libya doesn't seem to be the outcome he was hoping for. edit: typo
https://www.newsweek.com/obama-responsible-libyan-slave-trade-730875
From the article you just posted, I clicked the link to read what he actually said, and I read it as he expressed regret for not intervening more!
It's like criminals expressing regret for getting caught.
"Trans friendly" is a weird way to say creepy chasers, the amount of overt sexualisation and objectification of trans people from non-trans people there is horrendous.
You're reading too hard into the reddit=stormfront thing. It's just a common leftist refrain off-reddit because 90% of the site is pro-nato white supremacy and nationalism even if a handful of communities might be slightly less bad.
most of the posts there make my skin crawl. im basically a boomer at this point in the trans community (10+ years transitioned), younger trans people really need to learn what fake allies look like. just because theyre nice/sexualize you doesnt mean they actually support you. i know when the world hates your guts the bar is low, but you need to make that bar high for your own good.
r/196 kinda gives me Vaush vibes in that way (and also in the radlibbiness ofc)
It's a joke to dunk on Reddit, it's become part of our parlance so we tend to drop it pretty casually. I can see how it comes across as accusatory here, but I think the user probably didn't mean anything by it.
That seems to be the case. Other people are indicating it was joke and not even one directed at on 196. It's certainly new to me anyway.
its because there used to be a stormfront subreddit on reddit for like 10 years or something before it got banned, and that was their logo.
Back when i still visited reddit, i got bullied pretty hard by them for pointing out that it's latently transphobic, assimilationist and toxic to shit on the way r/traaaaaaaa was inclusive of trans catgirl culture. They had an entire thread on how the memes on r/traaaaaaa were cringe and unfunny and it was full of latent bigottry like that. Made them sound like a bunch of chuds and truscums. r/196 also has a not insubstantial amount of chasers. Fetishizing us and talking about your favorite trans porn while dismissing the opinions of trans women as cringe isn't trans friendly, it is objectifying and shitty and r/196 can go fuck itself.
I only know about r/196 what I've read about it from other sources. You'll be happy to know we don't do that here. This is a trans friendly space.
heavy-handed moderation to keep it that way is a good idea. if someone engages in soft transphobia/chaser shit, warn and ban -- don't leave room for debates about how much trans positivity is too much.
I hope i can take your word for that, it's generally what i'd expect of a place called
zone, too. I'm just voicing my own experiences with the reddit sub.
I think stormfront the user, Stormfront the right wing website, and Stormfront the Apple store are all 3 seperate entities.
I think you got them mixed up. I hope you mixed them up and they aren't somehow connected anyway.
I honestly know very little about Stormfront, beyond what I've googled. I don't support white pride groups. I have seen people referencing it on Lemmy though.
it's a joke about reddit's tendency towards racism and other bigotry, not the literal stormfront website.
I won't contest that racism and bigotry existed on reddit. It definitely did. I also experienced and saw kindness and acceptance. Saying Reddit in its entirety is racist is really no different that saying everyone is racist. And not everyone and not everyone on reddit is racist.
it's about the platform and the majority membership, not a judgment of every community that exists there. there are quite obviously cool corners on reddit, but the platform as a whole defends bigotry as free speech, at an admin level.
It does seem like the admin level is an issue when it comes to reddit and racism. This is easier to observe as there are fewer admins than users. I do want to see some kind of data to be convinced it is the majority of people on reddit. I only have my personal experience to go on. I remember fondly how conservatives bemoaned that reddit was dominated by liberals. So from my personal experience the racists were the minority. I could be wrong though, because I don't have political census data on redditors.
Tories have also complained since the beginning of time about how the BBC has a supposed leftwing bias, and no amount of slandering leftists by the BBC has dissuaded them of that. Conservatives just want to feel persecuted.
They do have a persecution complex, I'll give you that. =D
Reddit (the platform) banned us for celebrating a guy who killed slaveowners, that's why we call them
.
Who was the guy you celebrated?
John Brown
yeah its a joke making fun of a large portion of reddit
you're giving real "all lives matter" vibes with this response
They said elsewhere that they're autistic. The need to be exact and truthful when people generalize something like a community is something i identify with. Its why I dont really love the stormfront joke myself, just go along with it for community peace. This person to me is clearly well intentioned and is an example of the dunk impulse going too far because I think they're trying to do right.
ETA: Actually I got them mixed up with another user they never said they were autistic. But I still think they are well intentioned.
Their further response to me tells me they aren't well intentioned.
Ah damn, I misplaced my faith.
its okay to believe the best in people, can't fault you there
It goes without saying all lives matter. It needs to be said that Black Lives Matter. I am aware racism exists on reddit. I'd love to see a survey or study that indicates a majority of people are racist on reddit.
I'm not convinced that calling reddit predominantly racist is based on actual sympathy for people of color. There is a competing reason I can think of why someone would want to discredit reddit however. They tended to moderate against authoritarian communists, people who are notorious for their support of governments that committed genocides against minorities.
It is true that there are plenty of people who use reddit that are not racist (setting aside the idea that everyone who lives in a racist society, which we in the west do, has at least some internalized racism). Some people on reddit even actively fight against it, to their credit. That said, as a platform, both in terms of the people who run and administrate it, as well as the larger majority mass of users, definitely tends towards racism. This can be seen in all kinds of ways, from admins always siding with
of racists over bipoc to the frothing-at-the-mouth hatred of the "orcish hordes" that dominates in every popular subreddit (and the silencing of those who offer even the mildest criticism of it), to the understandable yet very telling rabid defense of the privilege so many of them insist they earned when it is nothing more than old fashioned white privilege. You seem to agree that reddit is bad for its corporatist bullshit and its laser focus on profit at the expense of people. We agree. But that alone is inherently systemically racist for sociological reasons that I'm assuming you're aware of, given some of your other comments. For all these reasons, it is hardly an overreaction or unfair to refer to reddit as "a racist website."
As for "authoritarian" communists, all I'll say here is that I hope you can learn to seriously, genuinely question a lot of what you have learned from what amounts to an ocean of propaganda deliberately spread for decades (even over a century) to demonize any successful socialist revolution. I'd encourage you to ask some of us "tankies" in good faith about some of that propaganda in other appropriate threads.
I definitely did see popular subreddits that would display racial biases to black people. They would bad mouth a black person doing something in a clip and then the next day defend a white person doing similar things. It didn't happen that way every time, but it did seem like it happened that way more often than not. Also, there does seem to be a valid argument in that systemic racism asserts itself in instances of corporate greed like we've seen from reddit. In the sense it's probably white people who are going to benefit from the enshitification.
At the very least I'm hoping we can have good faith discussions about progressive topics. IRL I typically talk to people more conservative me, so it is interesting to talk to someone coming from a different end of the political spectrum.
Damn, I really had faith you were well intentioned. I'm disappointed.
Honestly I don't even know why you're here if you're so happy with Reddit's moderation policies.
We moderate tankys here too. Welcome to 196.
I'm mad at the corporate take over of reddit. The shitification if you will. edit:typo
I wonder why a website that has been taken over by corporations (it was pretty much always corporate, but I agree its gotten worse) would aggressively silence communists, I also wonder if they would perhaps promote certain narratives about the enemies of the west. I also wonder why someone who is anti-corporate would support that.
Believe it or not, I really want our communities to get along because Hexbear is aggressively pro-trans.
reddit is full to the brim liberals and liberals are at best fascist enablers, at worst - especially when foreign politics are involved - they are fash-lite, consciously or otherwise
hence the stormfront joke
It's a redditor habit.
What an absolute dumpsterfire of a comment section
Some people really need to fucking log off and find a lesbian to marry
Yes.
Natalie should know better. But also... the really nasty shit under Obama was heavily under-reported and only ever seemed to penetrate media in a select few circuits. Casually tossing off a "What even did Obama do that was so bad?" is almost forgivable if you're not a terminally online 30-year-old who makes hour long YouTube videos about politics, history, and culture.
Am I reading this wrong? I assume Natalie is making a joke about how people under report Obama's nasty shits
I think she's joking about how people over-report his trivial shit. But it can be read as blithely ignoring the monstrous crimes Obama did commit while in office, because it echoes a lot of the liberal apologia of the administration that amounted to "The worst thing Obama ever did was wear a tan suit".
While I don't think she has talked about Obama's war crimes or things adjacent to it, I find it hard to believe that she would be saying that seriously especially the both sides part. Tho her response to the criticism doesn't make it better.
You're reading it wrong, she's stating you can't make a moral equivalence between Obama and, say, Trump or something because supposedly the worst things obama did were silly.
For me, it's someone that savvy casually dropping a "both sides" comment. If I didn't know better I'd assume it was bait. Its hard to imagine that level of cluelessness.
Observation selection bias is an easy one the GOP likes to take advantage of. Eg: not testing for covid to show covid went down.
Also: drone strike civilian casualties.
Not testing for covid to show it went down is the current strategy of the Biden admin
Lol. Look at this galaxy brain equivicating there start of a pandemic with an endemic with vaccine.
I mean, obviously the covid hospital occupancy rates would be identical if the actual case rate was the same.
Oh wait...
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-hospitalizations
What's that? Less then 10k vs over 140k? Definitely the exact same situation! /s
Don't trip over yourself making excuses now
Hospital rates are down because we killed a lot of people and the rest aren't being recorded as covid.
I know people who very recently have caught and have had their bodies permanently damaged by this disease within the last few months, one of them being a family member who did everything right, so the whole "lol no big deal it's endemic now" shit is really fucking depressing, ngl. It kind of handwaves away a very real pain people are going through.
Yeah because it's too late now. Covid has become just another disease spreading around now. If people actually wore masks and got vaccinated we could have eradicated it but now it's like the flu where it changes to quickly to manage.
Which was the whole point of the quarantine and masks and social distancing but god forbid Sarah doesn't hang with her besties and John doesn't get to party on the weekends
Not really, there was no chance of us eradicating covid. Covid spreads well even among the masked and the vaccinated. We could only slow it down.
It was like that from the start, there were multiple competing strains of covid right from when it was first discovered since it had already been spreading for at least 2 months at that point and was all over the world.
Covid was always going to become endemic.
Yeah, eradication was never a goal. It was always about slowing the spread so hospitals would hopefully not get overwhelmed.
When did they change how they count civilian casualties? I heard it was under Obama's administration, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
There is quite the back and forth between Democrats pushing for accountability and the GOP pushing against.
From Wikipedia, which has all the references one might need:
"On July 1, 2016, President Barack Obama signed an executive order requiring annual accounting of civilian and enemy casualties in U.S. drone strikes outside war zones ("Areas Outside of Active Hostilities"), and setting a deadline of May 1 each year for the release of such report. However, soon after taking office, President Donald Trump designated large areas in Yemen and Somalia to be "areas of active hostilities," thus exempting them from disclosure. The Trump administration also ignored the 2017 and 2018 deadlines for an annual accounting, and on March 6, 2019, Trump issued an order revoking the requirement. "
The executive order:
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2017-title3-vol1/pdf/CFR-2017-title3-vol1-eo13732.pdf
Trump recinding the order:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/us/politics/trump-civilian-casualties-rule-revoked.html
Plus some other dumb shit by Trump:
"During the Obama administration, proposed U.S. drone strikes in locations outside active war zones (i.e., in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia) required high-level approval. The Obama administration process for approving drone strikes in such locations featured centralized, high-level oversight, based on intelligence about individuals suspected of terrorism activity. Obama's approval was required for every strike in Yemen and Somalia, as well as "the more complex and risky strikes in Pakistan" (about one-third of the total as of 2012), and insisted on deciding whether to approve a strike unless the CIA had a "near certainty" that no civilian deaths would result.
...
October 2017, Trump abolished the Obama-era approval system in favor of a looser, decentralized approach, which gave the military and CIA officials the discretion to decide to launch drone strikes against targets without White House approval. "
All sorts of references corroborating those summary:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/22/obama-drones-trump-killings-count/
The short version is: Obama demanded accountability and his approval. Which did not exist before and was revoked after. Hence, the different counts of casualties is not representative of an actually difference. Only representative of the GOP being shit.
I am thankful that I touch grass enough to not know what any of this means
why do contras posts always end up this way lmao
It's her curse.
Well, that escalated quickly