Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
"Deprogramming" makes sense in the sense for the far right because there is a lot of misinformation and fake news and outrage bait and all that kind of stuff. Getting people out of those trappings is good because it allows them to see how things really are, rather than what people want them to think.
That isn't really a problem with the left. I mean, I'm sure you could find some extreme subreddit somewhere where people want to bring out the guillotine to kill all capitalists or cut everyone's genitals off in the name of gender equality... But ultimately they're much rarer than the equivalent alt right spaces.
Extreme conservatives are very common and an existential threat to many groups. Extreme liberals are a mild curiosity that need to go out and touch grass.
That should hopefully explain the votes, saying that you need to deprogram "extreme liberals" brings up questions about what you actually mean by "extreme liberal" given that it really isn't that big an issue in society.
... Or maybe all this is just my biases.
It's just your biases.
Of course it is. Since the terms left and right were invented (during the French revolution), left-wing extremism has been as much a problem as the right-wing variety. The ideology of equality and fraternity is a story of bloody revolutions, purges, famines, even genocides. Depending on definitions, the body count of left-wingery is arguably even higher than that of fascism.
Of course, what Americans call an "extreme liberal" (i.e. a woke progressive rather than a liberal) is not typically a murderous Stalinist. But the habit of fetishizing abstract ideas, and seeing everything in terms of group power struggles, and the obsession with ideological purity - I hardly need to cite examples, at least from abroad we can see that these things are alive and well in America and having bad outcomes.
Not as bad as the opposite extreme though, on that I will agree.
You can be woke, progressive, and liberal. You're talking nonsense.
Your tone here is not assisting constructive debate.