Since Trump, I’m finding the Lemmy.world experience to be increasingly akin to an echo chamber and it’s quite frankly starting to bore me. (Inb4, I’m a left winger and I don’t like Trump, but I’m much more interested in a good spirited debate or novel points of view than I am in Orange man bad Nazi circle jerks)
If I wanted the same repetitive comments to be upvoted and any different opinion at all to be downvoted and even blocked/banned, I’d have just stayed on Reddit.
Are there any instances where different, opposing and novel points of view are celebrated and debated rather than simply derided and downvoted?
No single instance has very “broad” POVs, however some instances are federated more broadly and thus get more points of view. To that end, Lemm.ee and Lemmy.ml are much more diverse than Lemmy.world, which is defederated from the major instances with large populations of Marxists.
Hexbear and Grad tend to have a lot of Marxist (and Anarchist, in the case of Hexbear) perspectives you aren’t really seeing much of on Lemmy.world, which is very “US Democrat Liberal.”
You aren’t going to find anywhere where the virtue of being “different” is worthy of celebration when it comes to POVs, and I think that’s a bit of a lost cause. I don’t see much value in entertaining the opinions of fascists, as an example.
Thanks for this. Will definitely check out those instances.
No problem! If you’re looking for right-wing viewpoints, you can already see them from a Lemmy.world account, they usually hang out either on Lemmy.world or sh.itjust.works, it’s more the Leftists that Lemmy.world censors from your view.
never seen an anarchist on hexbear tbh, but I’ve been alwaus banned pretty fast for stating my opinions on the state and the ukraine war
I’ve seen many, and Anarchist theory is linked and discussed frequently. Sectarianism is banned, so you haven’t likely seen Anarchists getting into fights with Marxists. As for the Ukranian war, Hexbear overall adopts the viewpoint of Lenin’s analysis of Imperialism as a special stage in Capitalist development, including the Anarchists, so you likely disagreed on those grounds.
I don’t disagree that the us is imperialist, I’m just saying that it’s also imperialist to invade your neighbors to restore the russian empires western border and increase your sphere of influence
You’re describing different phenomena under the same title, which only adds confusion and not clarity. You should read Lenin, Imperialism isn’t that long and it describes the modern form of Capitalism very accurately. Moreover, I don’t really think that’s an accurate outlook on the Russo-Ukranian war as a motive.
oh, yes I belive it is, why else is russia invading ukraine?
I don’t think it makes any real sense to say that it’s about returning to restore a Russian Empire’s borders. From what we know, there has long been an antagonistic relationship between NATO and Russia, and this continued even after Socialism fell, because Russia eventually kicked out the Western Capitalists that bought up and privatized the former state industry. This was accelerated when Ukraine suffered from the Euromaidan coup, and the Russian-speaking areas of Donetsk and Luhansk broke away.
You were almost correct when you said it was to increase their sphere of influence, the goal of Russia is to either assure Ukraine’s neutrality or demilitarize it completely, as NATO has been intentionally encircling Russia and threatening them into opening up and letting the Western Capitalists back in.
A better question is which instances have dominant points of view that actually align with the material reality we inhabit. Difference of opinion is only valuable when the opinion is grounded in factual understanding of the real world. It’s valuable to have different views and interpretation of the facts, but if a view is divorced from reality then it’s just noise.
just like vanguardism
Can you elaborate?
I don’t like the state and like the idea of a vanguard party even less and I belive that user to be vanguardist
thank you for providing an example of dialogue that’s detached from reality
so you are not a vanguardist?
or am I wrong about vanguardism being bad?
please elaborate
It’s detached from reality because you’re just randomly chucking in some political terms you learned on reddit under an unrelated comment thinking it’s some kind of slam-dunk.
no, I know what a vanguard party is and that I don’t support it, now we’re arguing about why I don’t support it
You are wrong about vanguarism being bad because history clear shows that it is the most reliable method for actually combating capitalism. Anarchists refuse to accept this basic reality and continue advocating approaches that have failed time and again for over a century now. It’s quite telling that this ideology exists primarily in the western imperial core.
no, I just think that freedom is more important than defeating capitalism
I’d rather take my hrt, guns and free speech over a vanguard, sorry
also see how it has worked in russia, how the soviet union has defeated capitalism and how capitalist western germany was almost economically stronger than the entire ussr (including eastern germany)
What do you think the “State” is? Marxists and Anarchists generally disagree on what constitutes the state, Marxists see it as a tool of class oppression and Anarchists see it as a tool of hierarchy. Neither Marxists nor Anarchists seek to perpetuate the State.
As for a Vanguard, all that means is the most politically advanced of the revolutionary class. Since political knowledge is unequal, there will always be more and less advanced among a class, whether you formalize it into a party or not. The consequences of refusing to formalize this difference means you can’t democratize it or protect against bad actors, a problem elaborated on in The Tyranny of Structurelessness.
Furthermore, there is historical proof of the effectiveness of Vanguard parties in establishing Socialism and improving the lives of the Working classes, from the peasantry to the proletariat. Calling such a strategy “detached from reality” is wrong, there is clear theoretical and historical evidence for the practicality and effectiveness of Vanguard parties.
I actually belive the state in its current form to be a tool of economical, personal and class opression
and I belive no state can exist without at least 2 of the above, but I want none of the above
What’s your proposed solution? You can’t force everyone’s political knowledge to being fully equal, so there will be a vanguard whether you formalize and democratize it or let it form naturally and behind closed doors. Further, you can’t get rid of both class and hierarchy without returning to tribal forms of hunter-gatherer societies, large industry requires administration. A horizontal network of communes retains classes by turning everyone into petite bourgeoisie, so you either want to abolish hierarchy, class, or industry.
if I had to choose I’d rather end all hirarchy
You might be better off looking for a community where the moderation optimizes for that kind of discussion (ex. Removing low effort comments, requiring citations, academic oriented, etc). It’s harder to find an entire instance that matches those points, but there should be a few communities like that
Then you can use the subscribed feed only, or block the communities you don’t like
Closest I can think of is Hexbear’s News Megathread, but it isn’t really for debate, just analysis of current events. Is there a comm like that elsewhere?
Gotta second this, it’s a little hard to find from a separate instance- you need to go to /c/[email protected] and pick it from the pinned threads
The mega access was one of the biggest factors in making a Hexbear account for me, to be honest. A lot of great info in them (plus I like the casual chatting format of the general mega when I don’t want to make a full post).
i agree with this
i started a free speech community and theres no downvoting allowed which encourages healthy arguing instead of comments just getting buried in downvotes or removed
i started a free speech community
Which one is it?
not telling
Imagine your issue with .world being that it’s too left-wing
I’d be getting bored if it was an echo chamber of any flavour.
As I’ve said in other comments, I’m here to learn and part of that means exposing myself to people that do not think alike to me. I’m not hear to circle jerk about how right we are, maybe that was fun the first few thousand times, it’s just boring now.
Ideally I’d like to get involved with a broad spectrum of people that somewhat represent the society that we live in.
Maybe I should just get offline and go to the pub.
What is it that you’re trying to learn? Like, are you interested in what Communists think? Anarchists? Why? Is the virtue of these POVs being different a fascination of yours, or are you trying to find the correct stance through comparison?
Not OP, but personally I think diverse discussion is some of the more important work a person can participate in.
There is too much potential energy in our networks when we don’t understand each other, and I support a calm controlled release of that energy. I am scared of how people will leverage that energy at the expense of many.
So I want to exist in a place of diverse thoughts so I can help the world calmy understand itself.
That, I think, is only virtuous if misinformation and hateful ideologies like fascism are thoroughly stomped out, rather than platformed. Too many people think themselves knowledgeable enough to speak, yet add to a miasma of misinformation. Moreover, some points of view are friendlier to the ruling class, and therefore get materially boosted via the media and other such mechanisms despite a lack of truth. What’s dominant rarely correlates with what is true.
I agree that misinformation gets platformed. And that the information landscape we navigate naturally supports those who own it and have the most powerful megaphones.
I also don’t believe that there is a perfect ideology. We would all have to be identical to make a perfect world. Though I do think that by making thoughtful connections we can process the world differently. And that how we see the world is how we navigate it.
Therefore, to be a healthy memeber of society you cannot protect your beliefs from criticism. To navigate a collective world you have to try and see others’ maps. Otherwise you’ll be baffled by the decisions of others, and you won’t be able to communicate about important topics.
So direct, calm and curious conversations with those who disagree are vital to living in harmony. At least in my opinion. I don’t think we can guess good enough, I’d rather ask directly.
How do you fight fascism without understanding why it’s supporters do what they do?
I don’t think many people would oppose the virtues of good criticism. That’s a core tenant of Marxism-Leninism, in fact (at least, among comrades). I, however, don’t really think internet debate is the proper stage for such criticism. Just my 2 cents.
Yeah at the end of the day I can agree. You need to be in a pretty remote alcove to not get trolled. It can end up as a big waste of time.
If by “diverse” you mean “has western conservatives”, then considering how the entire concept of the fediverse is progressive, you’re not going to find many of them here. On Reddit, there’s r/AskPolitics which overall leans liberal and is US centric but is more open to discussion than other subreddits. There’s some other debate subreddits as well which you might be interested in. They’re helpful for developing political views, but after that hearing the same BS from people who have fundamentally different values gets tiring and people leave so that’s why there aren’t many of those spaces.
If you’re open to other viewpoints that are opposed to both Republican and Democrat, leftist instances like lemmy.ml, Hexbear, Lemmygrad, and dbzer0 have that, and they can have very different stances on other issues as well (i.e. Lemmygrad vs dbzer0). They can still be echo-chambery (which is hard to avoid) but they also tend to have more users that are interested in intellectual debate.
As far as what instance actually has the most diverse points of view, I’d say lemm.ee which federates with basically everybody and I’ve seen users there from all over the political spectrum. However, there’s isn’t much in terms of political discussion there compared to other instances.
Is db0 left wing? I felt like they lean closer to .world than left.
They claim to be anarchist and I’ve seen a lot of users from there criticize Democrats, although they hate Marxists also, so I’m not sure. They’re also one of the few instances that federates with Hexbear, but they do block Lemmygrad.
They try to be anarchists but they’re mostly from western countries so they have permanent programming they refuse to shake off (i.e. calling anyone that doesn’t think eurocentric anarchism is the only real left wing ideology a tankie.). Compared to .world’s Hillary Clinton though they’re like Marx.
Perhaps surprisingly when it comes to breaking the echo chamber and having diverse political points of view and approaches (on subjects like identity politics, intersectionality, geo politics, organization building, strategy…etc) I’d say even ML circles have a lot more of that than just vaguely leftist safe liberal stances (at the very least they might have novel ideas and no orange man bad meme).
If you want more diversity of opinions you can expand in different directions, but I hardly see what good would be a place that has both fascists and anti-fascists for example and most of us are tired of picking internet fights. I suppose as long as you’re aware of which kind of discussion you’ve more tolerance for you’re good, but whether it’s tolerance for the occasional black crime rate statistic or an esoteric graph of the falling rate of profit, you’re not likely to find a space that has both.
In general I’d go with Cowbee’s recommendations though (for something that’s still obviously fairly leftwing)
What kind of diversity of thought are you looking for?
Could you give an example?
Is there an intellectually honest point of view that Donald Trump isn’t a fascist?
I don’t think he’s a fascist necessarily, although he is a far-right, authoritarian ultranationalist. So that makes him… oh.
Do people do good, spirited debates anymore? Most of what I see would be more akin to wrestling a pig.
Debating online is largely useless for convincing the other party. Sometimes onlookers learn, but if it’s a debate neither party usually concedes. Education works, ie someone asking for more information, but that’s about it.
We have to be the change we want to see
No.
E: okay, it’s not fair to just tell you the answer when you’re already broadcasting a desire to read a bunch of stuff so here goes:
If you want to see analysis and consideration of the right from an outside perspective you ought to be on hexbear or grad. Both instances don’t have near as many sky is falling posts or comments and trend towards figuring out why something is happening within the framework of doctrinaire Marxism Leninism or imperialism or at least what should be done to mitigate the effects rather than having a big ol hissy fit over it.
If, as is implied by your post and comments (“ good spirited debate”, “ opposing and novel”, celebrated and debated“, “ worthy of discussion or debate”), you just wanna see people fight each other online then check out reddit, x (the everything app) and facebook where that happens often.
If you have, and this is a reach, the desire to understand people who you think are on that right wing spectrum around you in real life, go talk to them. People love telling you what they think and when they don’t it’s because they know something you don’t or they’re up to something.
Your best bet is to be in a lot of instances. My experiences so far is that basically any singular instance has its bias’, and while some unapologetically ban users for disagreeing with them, the ones that don’t still down vote for disagreeing with them.
While one of these forms of censorship is worse than the other, it’s all censorship, and the only way to see a variety of views is to stay in the varying instances.
The point of the fediverse is to give people the option to create communities by themselves and not be subject to the ruling of one central allmighty entity. If someone does not like one community they have the chance to create their own with their own rules. This means people can decide for themselves what content they want in their community. However people coming from traditional social media seem to mistake this kind of freedom with not needing to follow any rules but that’s not how it works.
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I had a much better experience with Reddit than a lot of people express. Of course that all changed that year and half ago. But my point is that I was deep into a world of intellectualism on Reddit that I have not found since it was wrecked. I have found Lemmy to be an infant version of that.
It is hard to find communities like I had, if there is any activity in my interests at all. I have not found a news feed as quick as the ones I followed on Reddit if any feed at all. Information sourcing and original content almost never happen. The politics are highly tribal and intellectual here. The science barely exists. The hobbies and special interests have little to no activity. I only have the app on my phone to look for a quick read.
if you’re looking for an instance that won’t ban you based on your political belives check out lemmy.blahaj.zone
EDIT: not entirely true, you actually have to belive in basic human rights to be part of this community
Blahaj takes an openly anti-Marxist stance, at minimum.
don’t really think so, I’ve seen pretty much any form of leftists over there, tho they will disagree with you regarding genocide acusations in china
Usually blahaj has liberals and US Empire-friendly Anarchists. There aren’t really any Marxists I’ve seen in any significant numbers, and 196 maintains anti-Marxist rules.
Blahaj zone will ban you at the drop of a hat based on political belief.
and for what belive have you been banned there?
For being opposed to western chauvinism.
