• lennybird@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Right-wing in-group: “So long as you be just like us in every way and fall in line, you will be accepted. Sort of.”

    Left-wing in-group: “So long as you’re not an asshole, we don’t care what you believe or do.”

    Right-wing out-group: Anyone not like them.

    Left-wing out-group: Anyone who is an asshole.

    • TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      The key being what constitutes being an asshole, and what you allow yourself to do to someone once the label can be pasted onto someone. It’s really the same thing seen through different gross stereotypes - they could literally say the same thing.

      That’s not to say there aren’t very real differences between parties, but they aren’t extreme sides of a one dimensional line (or vague notions in a two dimensional mapping) which is basically a propaganda tool for the ego.

      • AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        It’s funny. I have a blog post from Ken Arneson who talks about “The Right to be an Asshole” and here’s how he defines an asshole:

        An asshole is a selfish person whose selfishness causes foreseeable indirect collateral damage to the people around them.

        He goes on:

        Assholes take risks that provide upside to themselves, but transfer the downsides of those risks to other people.

        But the true test case for the limits of freedom is the asshole. Philosophically speaking, assholes walk the line between intentions and consequences. Assholes form the boundary between freedom and control.

        Assholes don’t intend to do direct harm. They just don’t think about, and/or care about, and/or believe, and/or comprehend, that their actions can or will have negative consequences for other people beyond their direct intentions.

        He goes on to recount the tale of COVID Patient 31 from Seoul, South Korea. Shortly after receiving her diagnosis, she decided to seek comfort at church. Hundreds of deaths and thousands of infections were traced back to her through contact tracing. So, now we come to intentions vs. consequences. Patient 31 wasn’t intending to make anyone sick or die, she was merely seeking comfort through faith. Any reasonable non-asshole could have told her and probably did tell her, that attending church while infected would cause others to be infected and possibly die. How should this asshole be judged? If we judge her by her intentions, then she’s as much a victim as anyone. But if we judge her by her consequences, then she’s a mass murderer.

        So the question we have to ask as a free society is: What the fuck do we do about assholes?

        Assholes have a very clever trick that allows them to keep being assholes.

        If you try to stop them from being an asshole, they will declare you to be an asshole who, although perhaps intending to prevent some bad thing from happening, causes harm by denying some very fine people, who have no intention of harming anyone, their freedom. So who’s the real asshole here, anyway?

        • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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          2 months ago

          What the fuck do we do about assholes?

          Simple. Dicks fuck assholes. Its necessary, but the problem is they get shit all over the place!

        • Petter1@lemm.ee
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          2 months ago

          Why is he downvoted? One is not an asshole if one is just too dumb to get what they are causing. The problem is that we not educate our children good enough so that they not fail to get what makes sense and what not.

          But as long as we have stupid religious fanatics in power, we are doomed. Fuck Religion!

          • AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Religion has done something very clever, too. Christianity in particular has, through some means, found a way to divorce actions from character, as opposed to viewing one’s actions as a reflection of their character. They see good and evil as things that someone is instead of what someone does.

            You ever notice how suburban white Karens clutch their pearls when called racist? Well, consider what I just said about their view of evil. Now, make “racism” == “evil”. By calling one racist, you have effectively called them evil, and they most certainly do not view themselves as having an evil character.

            Or how, when doing evil deeds, they don’t see themselves as being evil despite their actions? Or when someone does a good deed, they accuse that person of being evil?

            It’s just intriguing how they’ve pulled off this alchemy.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      2 months ago

      Left-wing out-group: Everyone, especially other leftists

      I mean, it doesn’t have anything to do with the ideology, but the far left is famously like that.

      • Leviathan@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I don’t usually use this expression, but you might need to touch grass. I pretty regularly hang out with far left people and other than debates over personal philosophy we’re all pretty chill. The internet is not an accurate representation of any actual social dynamics.

        • NegativeInf@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          All my liberal homies smoke weed and shoot the shit and try to vote for people who don’t want to kill outgroups. So agreed, he needs to touch grass.

            • NegativeInf@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              Well, I meant my lefty friends. If you look at my comment history, I’m not much a liberal myself, but I don’t consider tankies on the left. I consider them authoritarian fuckbags that will say anything to get power. Just like authoritarian fuckbags on the right.

              • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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                2 months ago

                I consider them flat Earth theorists that weren’t right-wing enough for the normal conspiracy pipeline. The Stalin stuff is pretty much just decoration.

                I’ve seen plenty of anarchist gatekeeping, too, although when you haven’t organised in the first place there’s less to split.

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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          2 months ago

          TBH there’s barely a center-left where I live, even, so you’re right that I wouldn’t know. However, the history of real-world Western socialist organisations doesn’t inspire confidence that it’s any different.

      • orrk@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        to be fair, tankies arn’t left wing, they fully support the most Draconian right wing solutions to everything, but pretend that their führer isn’t evil or something.

          • orrk@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            I mean, they have a point, you literally can’t go “but Lenin created vanguardism” as a reason why the all powerful single party state supposedly controlled by the “will of the people” and get upset when people call you out for being an authoritarian.

            Anarchists gate keeping tankies isn’t some moral wrong, it’s just learning from history, because they would rather work with literal Nazis/ ethno-fascists than with an anarchist, the anarchists were the first to be shot by all the fascists, German, Romanian, Italian, or Soviet.

            • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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              1 month ago

              Yeah, but even if you allow that, they’ll gatekeep each other over dietary systems, for voting or not voting, over which economic systems are too market, over who was on the right side of a personal falling out, for believing in rules of any kind and on and on. There never is an end to it.

              • orrk@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                I don’t know who you’ve been hanging out with, but anarchists don’t care if you’re vegan or not, and generally their issue isn’t with markets, it’s with the system giving all the power to a small group of feudal lords, but I think the issue is that you only know anarchists by shitty online memes, maybe you should go get in contact with your local lawn dealer

                • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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                  1 month ago

                  Sure. All the anarchists fucking up for the last 150 years don’t count. You folks in this thread swear there’s different, cool ones; they’re just conveniently invisible.

                  and generally their issue isn’t with markets, it’s with the system giving all the power to a small group of feudal lords

                  And yet, pretty much none of them like ancaps. Mutualists or whatever other in-between are prime targets for purging from your not-a-political-party.

    • Petter1@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Hope the left sees that there are assholes turning to nice people if you take away the fear right-wing media puts on them.