Online left-wing infighting seems to me to be about applying labels to people because they argue or have argued one thing on a particular topic, and then use it to discredit an unrelated argument topic or paint their overall character. I know there are pot-stirring trolls and compulsive contrarians, but I do witness users I personally judge to have genuine convictions do this amongst each other.
Within US politics, CA Gov. Newsom is an illustrative example (plenty of examples exist too for other countries and around Lemmy/Fedi). I don’t particularly like him, he has done things I think are good, some things I think are funny, something things I think are bad and some things I think are downright horrible. Yet I have encountered some users online who will say they can’t ever applaud a move of his if one specific other policy or set of other unrelated policies crossed a line for them. I’m not asking people to change their mind on what they think of a person because of an isolated good thing they do, but to at least acknowledge it as a good thing or add nuance describing what about it you like or don’t. I can accept saying “I don’t think this is a good thing in this circumstance”, “this person will not follow through with this thing I think is good thing because ___”, or “they are doing a good thing for wrong and selfish reasons” too. But to outright deny any support for an action because of a wildly extrapolated character judgement of the person doing it, when that user would support it otherwise, vexes me greatly.
I know this is not every or most interactions on Lemmy, but these are just some thoughts I have to get out of my head. You don’t have to agree with me. I’m using ‘left-wing’ because the definition of ‘leftist’ or ‘liberal’ is wide-ranging depending on who you talk to. And on the side of the spectrum I’m calling left to left-centre, we seem to let the fewer things we disagree with get in the way of the many more things we would agree with each other. That’s all, thanks for reading.
Go vote for a genocidal maniac. Go on. Put up Gavin Newsom and see what happens. Blaming leftists won’t save you.
The rest of us will sit here watching you. Judging for history.
🤡
You lost. Clownposting won’t save you.
🤡
Most intelligent liberal, this one.
Poor little fella is completely cooked by trolley problems and capitalism to the point he can’t even form sentences to defend his position. Ouch.
silly .ml troll thinks he’s entitled to engagement 🤡🤡🤡
Engagement isn’t interesting, dunking on liberals is.
“if we fuck up our primaries, I’d still rather vote for a mediocre centrist by US standards, than allow what would likely turn out to be an actual factual Nazi to come to power through inaction/further bad choices.”
“ACKSHUALLY you’re on the right!”
“clown” – my default response when some fuckwit from .ml starts purity testing about leftism. Hi, by the way, you do realize you’re the exact kind of dipshit the OP is complaining about, right? Why are you even here?
… did OP get your knickers in a knot in another post?
“I’m gonna pretend like you didn’t just call me a clown, and tell you what you already know, that Gavin Newsom sucks; but that because you’re voting pragmatically instead of based on What I Think True Leftism Is, I don’t like you and therefor I’m right and you’re wrong” – and while subtly implying I don’t know political theory, that’s cute. I like your moxie.
>I proceed to explain why you’re a clown, that this country’s elections do not operate in a way that will result in anything better than “the least bad choice” being the correct way to vote until we reform how our elections work.
>instead of taking this moment to reflect on what I actually said in my first comment – I even just re-wrote a summary of it, just for you, first line in this comment, keep up sport – you decide to divert into “g-genocide!! newsom bad!! y-you’re still on the right if you vote for him!!!”
… I know he’s bad, you breathtakingly dumb fuck. Ideally, primaries will mean I don’t have to vote for him – Ideally, we have a primary that selects a more progressive candidate, and hopefully they then win in the general election. But I live in the real world, and here in the real world, we run the candidate that wins the primary, and frequently our primaries are won by the exact kind of person Gavin Newsom is. Which is terrible, but still better than Trump (and I shudder to imagine how he could be worse).
>followed by a bit of
>you think this is somehow dunking on me.
Man, I’d hate to see your performance when you think you’re losing. 50/50 shot I’d piss myself laughing or weep. I’m done now, best of luck in your future endeavors. 🤡