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Comment by LeoPanthera | Hacker News Reader

You're being rapidly downvoted but to play devil's advocate I wonder if you could explain why you think "American leftism" is "disturbing".

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I'm not the person you replied to, but today's American leftism practically mandates a belief in blank-slatism on race, gender, and IQ, to an extent that’s inimical to sincere science in those areas. And that ends up having a wide impact on science generally and policy generally.

Oh they don't like it when you repeatedly point out your favorite very sincere scientific facts collected by sincere scientists with the best calipers?

"I don't want to be a product of my environment, I want the environment to be a product of me."

^So that's where this quote came from, TIL..

https://quillette.com/2017/01/12/the-blank-slateism-of-the-r...

Modern American leftism, at least on social media, is really weird.

You have a lot of these so-called leftists rebelling against the philosophies of Marx and other communist philosophers on very fundamental issues (e.g. gun ownership for the proletariat, or the freedom of speech) all because of the current political climate in America. At the same time, these people will support and protect Big Tech and other capitalist interests when it is politically convenient to do so. I've heard American leftism once jokingly called Socialism with Silicon Valley Characteristics.

Ask any one of these new-age leftists what they think of Alex Jones' YouTube channel being banned, and they will hit you with a response that would disturb any of the Gen X leftists who grew up in an era where Communist was a dirty word and the protection of free speech was a top-most necessity. New-age leftists have grown up in the left-sympathetic social media era and cannot conceptualize the pendulum ever swinging the opposite direction.

In practice I think mainstream liberals are the gleefully censorious ones, not leftists. In a sibling comment I called these guys losers, but you can't argue that they're not walking the walk by setting up their own platforms. The people in these alt communities have been kicked off Reddit for rightfully pointing out how astroturfed it is by advertisers, police, and military agencies, so I'm not sure if you'd find much love for big tech among their ranks.

Setting up your own community with specific standards is totally fine imo.

>Setting up your community with specific standards is totally fine imo

In some sense I agree, but what happens when these communities begin to overflow with people, and chaos increases? It leads to opinion suppression( no I'm not talking about extreme opinions on any side of the political spectrum , I'm talking about opinions which differ from the status quo ), echo-chamber creation, and worst of all, unnecessary aggressive behaviour and mud slinging.

This criticism could just as easily apply to Reddit. The entire thing is an echochamber of American civic religion and they ban any subversive communities. Their director of content policy was plucked straight out of the Atlantic Council for f sake.

The thing that's weird is trying to group a bunch of people with differing sub-views on things into one "leftist" group and then trying to judge them all at once. Obviously they'll seem odd when you do that.

For me, it wasn't a place to satisfy my intellectual curiosity.

American rightism essentially leans towards Christian theocracy.

Does that lend itself more to your intellectual curiosity?

There are obviously other political spectrums, but those are all extremely insignificant minorities. Surely you don't only find satiation to your curiosities in said extreme minorities, that seems rather unfulfilling as any meaningful advancement in them is highly statistically unlikely in you or your direct childrens lifetimes.

For the same reason all the orthodox authoritarian ideologies are disturbing. Why would I want to join an online discussion forum where free thought isn't welcome?

Having "leftist" in the description makes people (at least myself) automatically jump to the conclusion that one can get cancelled/banned/deplatformed for posting any thought or argument that disagrees with the mainstream. I'm not a conservative or anti-vaxxer or anything like that, but this culture really creeps me out.

Also in the About page the author of the software says things like:

> [Reddit's] libertarian founders have allowed some of the most racist and sexist online communities to fester on reddit for years

(Implying that this community wouldn't permit certain types of discussion, defined by very broad and ambiguous terms that were weaponized such that they can be used against anyone who disagrees with the leftist ideology in any way).

And criticizes reddit for being:

> liberal, and pro-US, not left (leftism referring to the broad category of anti-capitalism)

I wouldn't be comfortable with participating in a discussion moderated by a person who says things like that.

Also, as a person who grew up in a country ruined by "anti-capitalism", I find that trend in American culture extremely disturbing. Can you think of any anti-capitalist country (now, or at any point in history) that you'd like to live in?

Luckily this is a free software and anyone is free to run their own instance.

Politics aside - I wonder if it would be possible to create an instance focused on free speech, without automatically attracting all the worst people?

> Why would I want to join an online discussion forum where free thought isn't welcome?

Every community has ideas about what's right and wrong, and there will always be people who disagree. Moderation will always be required because that's just the nature of communities.

> Politics aside - I wonder if it would be possible to create an instance focused on free speech, without automatically attracting all the worst people?

To the point I just made: no, it's not possible refrain from moderating a community and then avoid having people there who engage in behavior you don't like. If your definition of "free speech" includes a complete lack of moderation, then you'll always run into this problem.

> as a person who grew up in a country ruined by "anti-capitalism"

Would you be willing to name this county?

You seem to place authoritarianism and capitalism on opposite ends of some spectrum, but they're unrelated. Russia, for example, is both authoritarian and capitalist.

Capitalism != individual freedom != democracy. Those are all separate axes.

> Having "leftist" in the description makes people (at least myself) automatically jump to the conclusion that one can get cancelled/banned/deplatformed for posting any thought or argument that disagrees with the mainstream. I'm not a conservative or anti-vaxxer or anything like that, but this culture really creeps me out.

Outside of maybe 8chan, what is a community that won't ban you for saying something they find harmful? Left/right/liberal/conservative communities all have this.

It's totally fine if a self-described left-leaning community is not for you, but there's nothing weird or creepy about it.

One way in which capitalism is closer to individual freedom is the notion of voluntary transactions between two parties. That is what ultimately makes up the market dynamic of supply and demand. There are some limits to this - for example with monopolies - but in the typical case I think this reasoning holds.

Somebody can correct me if my timeline is off, but I think Lemmy was largely embraced by exiled Chapos, much like Voat became a Groyper den.

I don't think it's even worth considering such a community left-wing. They're more like an anime poisoned grooming circle that embraced red aesthetics for shock value.

However pathetic that sounds though, I'm the bigger loser for even being familiar with this nonsense.

No, you're thinking of Hexbear. Chapos didn't go to Lemmygrad.

Sure I'll bite, none of what you said is true, in either timing or circumstances.

-They didn't go to Lemmygrad

-No definition of leftism would exclude the very leftist people who went over to Hexbear, the Lemmy instance for exiled r/Chapotraphouse posters

-they don't seem to be particularly into anime

-they are very into left politics, socialism, trade unionism, anti-imperialism, and so on. So like they are left-wing

if he uses the word "leftism" he can't say anything coherent about politics

Tbf, the sub-lemmy(?) seems to describe itself as leftist.

What would you call it?

I don't reduce myself to cliches, so, I wouldn't "call it" anything

That doesn’t seem coherent.

That's cute.

I haven't said anything meaningful about politics.

What I said, perhaps a bit too abruptly to be well understood, was "the use of a non-meaningful piece of slang that is almost entirely held by a specific group of poorly informed folks is a red flag that any attempt to discuss politics will end in a likely mix of muh jerbs and dumbocrats."

The phrase "leftist" properly applies to a group of people who essentially haven't existed in the United States in around 80 years.

It would be like if someone went to a baseball stadium and started calling people soccer hooligans. That is not a person from whom to learn sports.

Thanks for the attempt at a table turn. You've been a delight

> The phrase "leftist" properly applies to a group of people who essentially haven't existed in the United States.

There are large numbers of people who describe themselves today as leftists, and there have been for the past 80 years. People across the political spectrum, academics, and the news media use the term in relation to contemporary politics.

If you are using a definition that stopped being relevant 80 years ago, it will be hard for you to have a coherent discussion with people today.

The American left manages to combine the worst of the traditional far left - authoritarianism, enforced collectivism, a total lack of ideological flexibility combined with an as total lack of historical insight - with a willingness, nay eagerness to use non-state commercial actors to enforce their doctrine. It is as if they read Ayn Rand and decided that she got everything backwards so they made their own philosophy of Subjectivism, with a sprinkling of critical theory and a dash of Maoism.

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