Bias is always present in this type of thing, the critical difference is honesty, openness, freedom to dissent (in theory and in practicality) and integrity of which big tech companies do not even possess a homeopathic amount.
There’s also the fact that the ‘left-wing’ has constant infighting… about how to help people, whereas the ‘right-wing’ are (mostly) single issue voters who don’t care what the other conservatives do so long as they get their thing. So a left-wing ‘echo chamber’ is kind of amusing when you try to imagine a Social Democrat and an Anarchist tacitly agreeing to almost anything.
Is there bias? Sure. What exactly that constitutes seems, to me at least, to be ‘I don’t think people should be in camps/have their rights removed/lose bodily autonomy, or that governments should spend more subsidizing oil and gas than all other areas.’
I agree with the spirit of the point, but I also think it is critically important to SCREAM into the air right now that actually yes we do agree on a whole lot more on the leftwing than rightwing people do amongst their lame circles of hate.
It is our vibrant arguments, passionate disagreements and loud messy divisions and categories that keep leftism from becoming an echo chamber, as you nod towards in putting it in parentheses as ‘echo chamber’. Yes this is true and necessary to point out, but also the leftwing simultaneously and not in the least bit paradoxically agrees on way more than conservatives do. Don’t mistake blind compliance with whatever dominant narrative is being broadcast at the moment (hating trans people, being afraid of an “”“”“”““immigrant crisis””“”“”“”", not believing in evolution?? (did that go out of style yet? (sorry I wrote this aside like lisp code))) for a group of people being in true agreement and solidarity.
Interview a bunch of conservatives individually and ask them basic questions about how their espoused values connect with real world policies, actions and circumstances and if you ask about ANYTHING that isn’t the hot topic right now to hate on in conservative circles you will get a random mix of complete and utter amateur speculation and shockingly silly re-imaginings of things that already exist because of problems that have already been solved (i.e. libertarians).
Interview a bunch of leftist individually and do the same thing and you will get basically the same damn answers every time on the important stuff.
Is healthcare a human right?
Yes
Does everybody deserve to earn a living wage?
Yes
Are all people created equal and worthy of empathy?
Yes
Does everybody deserve housing and the ability to live in a decent living situation?
Yes
Is climate change real and are humans driving it?
Yes
Do you believe in the seperation of church and state?
Yes…?
Do you condone any form of racism?
Emphatically no, never. I am an anti-racist which means also resisting structural racism not just overt racism
Are you a feminist?
Fuck off, why are you condescending me, of course I am
Is disability a weakness?
No, blind worship of strength is
Do you support LGTBQ+ people?
entirely
OF COURSE there are exceptions, but by and large do this to leftists and you will get a consistent expression of leftist ideology throughout their beliefs that agrees at a basic level (especially among younger folks) with almost every other leftist you interview, with massive exceptions in the details of course…
There are annoying and bad and toxic people on the left, yes, but let us remember we are much more effective at ensuring we are interacting on a basis of shared values, and we are much louder and much more annoying when people violate those basic values.
It is our vibrant arguments, passionate disagreements and loud messy divisions and categories that keep leftism from becoming an echo chamber, as you nod towards in putting it in parentheses.
Yes, I could have been more direct there absolutely. Left-wing discussions cannot become echo chambers because there’s nothing to echo other than ‘help people.’ I’m in a workers assembly, and we constantly disagree on how to make major change. We do all of it, however, while handing out gloves, socks, and toques to the unhoused. We do it while making survival packs with menstrual pads in them for unhoused women. We do it while marching in solidarity with striking workers.
I have never, ever seen a single ‘centrist’ join us in any of these things. No right-wingers, no Centrists, just Marxists, Anarcha-Feminists, Socialists, hell even a tankie once.
The issue we have is that, especially since the 80’s, ‘centrists’ (with the directions of the Right-wing) have tried to make it seem like there’s something ‘extreme’ about the Left-wing. Like there’s some sort of thing to fear, some sort of spooky hidden agenda. The reality is that they can pretend the Soviet government and it’s progroms or the CCP and it’s Uyghur massacre are somehow ‘left-wing,’ and not authoritarian and conservative. Wanting to ‘keep things as they are/have in and out groups’ is a core tenet of Conservatism, which is right-wing. The reality on the left is all of our infighting is about the hows and not the whats. Any infighting the Right has is about the what’s and not the hows. They don’t care how they pay less in taxes, they want to pay less in taxes. They don’t care how they get their religion made into law, just that it happens. They don’t care who gets deported, so long as it’s not them and ‘gets it done.’ They are complete and total amorality, with a singular objective of more for themselves.
Our issue on the left is one of organization (which, as part of an assembly, I have seen live quite a lot) and choosing a path forward. We all know we want to protect 2SLGBTQIA+ people. We all know we want to protect women, children, the unhoused. Do we work with the government, like the Social Democrats want? Do we burn it all down, and rebuild smaller communities, like the Anarchists want? Do we simply reject capitalism, build our communes, and work together there?
Unfortunately right now those are objectives in the far future. We need to survive to that point, and right now, we’re losing. The left in the US hasn’t been something a government would fear to cross since the 70’s. If it should rise up, if it should finally admit that violence is going to happen whether we want it or not, and we have to meet it with violence in return, then we will see change. If Americans follow this guide and make it impossible for Trumps fascist regime to do what they want, then we have a chance. Yet if they don’t, the rest of the world is in for an extremely bad time. We tried voting, we tried peaceful marching, we tried peaceful protests, we tried begging, pleading with them. Our children begged us to stop killing the planet and their very futures, and we refused. The social contract was broken.
What will you do, America? Will you watch yourselves go through what Germany did in the 1930’s, on the back of a climate that is going to absolutely be hell for our children, and their children? When do you stand up and refuse to watch? When do you stand up, and do offline what you do online?
I want so very much to believe you’ll fight.
I am so sad that many of us will have to die defending people who can’t defend themselves, or shouldn’t have to. I plan to die that way, whether taking a bullet for a young girl protesting for her bodily autonomy, a beating meant for an unhoused person who just wants to survive, or a baton meant for a young man in transition who just wants to be left alone. I love you all. <3
Our issue on the left is one of organization (which, as part of an assembly, I have seen live quite a lot) and choosing a path forward. We all know we want to protect 2SLGBTQIA+ people. We all know we want to protect women, children, the unhoused. Do we work with the government, like the Social Democrats want? Do we burn it all down, and rebuild smaller communities, like the Anarchists want? Do we simply reject capitalism, build our communes, and work together there?
The answer to all of the above is yes I said yes I will Yes.
a longer answer
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed
to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for
a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There
was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my dream
to the lodgekeeper, and had no answer, and peering closer
through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge
was uninhabited.
No smoke came from the chimney, and the little lattice
windows gaped forlorn. Then, like all dreamers, I was
possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like
a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound
away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always
done, but as I advanced I was aware that a change had come
upon it; it was narrow and unkept, not the drive that we had
known.
At first I was puzzled and did not understand, and it
was only when I bent my head to avoid the low swinging
branch of a tree that I realised what had happened. Nature
had come into her own again and, little by little, in her
stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with
long, tenacious fingers. The woods, always a menace even in
the past, had triumphed in the end.
They crowded, dark and uncontrolled, to the borders of the drive.
The beeches with white, naked limbs leant close to one another,
their branches intermingled in a strange embrace, making a vault
above my head like the archway of a church. And there were other
trees as well, trees that I did not recognise, squat oaks and
tortured elms that straggled cheek by jowl with the beeches,
and had thrust themselves out of the quiet earth, along with
monster shrubs and plants, none of which I remembered.
The drive was a ribbon now, a thread of its former self,
with gravel surface gone, and choked with grass and moss.
The trees had thrown out low branches, making an impediment to progress;
the gnarled roots looked like skeleton claws.
Scattered here and again amongst this jungle growth I would
recognise shrubs that had been landmarks in our time, things
of culture and of grace, hydrangeas whose blue heads had
been famous. No hand had checked their progress, and they
had gone native now, rearing to monster height without a
bloom, black and ugly as the nameless parasites that grew
beside them.
Bias is always present in this type of thing, the critical difference is honesty, openness, freedom to dissent (in theory and in practicality) and integrity of which big tech companies do not even possess a homeopathic amount.
Same story with trust for that matter…
There’s also the fact that the ‘left-wing’ has constant infighting… about how to help people, whereas the ‘right-wing’ are (mostly) single issue voters who don’t care what the other conservatives do so long as they get their thing. So a left-wing ‘echo chamber’ is kind of amusing when you try to imagine a Social Democrat and an Anarchist tacitly agreeing to almost anything.
Is there bias? Sure. What exactly that constitutes seems, to me at least, to be ‘I don’t think people should be in camps/have their rights removed/lose bodily autonomy, or that governments should spend more subsidizing oil and gas than all other areas.’
I agree with the spirit of the point, but I also think it is critically important to SCREAM into the air right now that actually yes we do agree on a whole lot more on the leftwing than rightwing people do amongst their lame circles of hate.
It is our vibrant arguments, passionate disagreements and loud messy divisions and categories that keep leftism from becoming an echo chamber, as you nod towards in putting it in parentheses as ‘echo chamber’. Yes this is true and necessary to point out, but also the leftwing simultaneously and not in the least bit paradoxically agrees on way more than conservatives do. Don’t mistake blind compliance with whatever dominant narrative is being broadcast at the moment (hating trans people, being afraid of an “”“”“”““immigrant crisis””“”“”“”", not believing in evolution?? (did that go out of style yet? (sorry I wrote this aside like lisp code))) for a group of people being in true agreement and solidarity.
Interview a bunch of conservatives individually and ask them basic questions about how their espoused values connect with real world policies, actions and circumstances and if you ask about ANYTHING that isn’t the hot topic right now to hate on in conservative circles you will get a random mix of complete and utter amateur speculation and shockingly silly re-imaginings of things that already exist because of problems that have already been solved (i.e. libertarians).
Interview a bunch of leftist individually and do the same thing and you will get basically the same damn answers every time on the important stuff.
Is healthcare a human right?
Yes
Does everybody deserve to earn a living wage?
Yes
Are all people created equal and worthy of empathy?
Yes
Does everybody deserve housing and the ability to live in a decent living situation?
Yes
Is climate change real and are humans driving it?
Yes
Do you believe in the seperation of church and state?
Yes…?
Do you condone any form of racism?
Emphatically no, never. I am an anti-racist which means also resisting structural racism not just overt racism
Are you a feminist?
Fuck off, why are you condescending me, of course I am
Is disability a weakness?
No, blind worship of strength is
Do you support LGTBQ+ people?
entirely
OF COURSE there are exceptions, but by and large do this to leftists and you will get a consistent expression of leftist ideology throughout their beliefs that agrees at a basic level (especially among younger folks) with almost every other leftist you interview, with massive exceptions in the details of course…
There are annoying and bad and toxic people on the left, yes, but let us remember we are much more effective at ensuring we are interacting on a basis of shared values, and we are much louder and much more annoying when people violate those basic values.
Yes, I could have been more direct there absolutely. Left-wing discussions cannot become echo chambers because there’s nothing to echo other than ‘help people.’ I’m in a workers assembly, and we constantly disagree on how to make major change. We do all of it, however, while handing out gloves, socks, and toques to the unhoused. We do it while making survival packs with menstrual pads in them for unhoused women. We do it while marching in solidarity with striking workers.
I have never, ever seen a single ‘centrist’ join us in any of these things. No right-wingers, no Centrists, just Marxists, Anarcha-Feminists, Socialists, hell even a tankie once.
The issue we have is that, especially since the 80’s, ‘centrists’ (with the directions of the Right-wing) have tried to make it seem like there’s something ‘extreme’ about the Left-wing. Like there’s some sort of thing to fear, some sort of spooky hidden agenda. The reality is that they can pretend the Soviet government and it’s progroms or the CCP and it’s Uyghur massacre are somehow ‘left-wing,’ and not authoritarian and conservative. Wanting to ‘keep things as they are/have in and out groups’ is a core tenet of Conservatism, which is right-wing. The reality on the left is all of our infighting is about the hows and not the whats. Any infighting the Right has is about the what’s and not the hows. They don’t care how they pay less in taxes, they want to pay less in taxes. They don’t care how they get their religion made into law, just that it happens. They don’t care who gets deported, so long as it’s not them and ‘gets it done.’ They are complete and total amorality, with a singular objective of more for themselves.
Our issue on the left is one of organization (which, as part of an assembly, I have seen live quite a lot) and choosing a path forward. We all know we want to protect 2SLGBTQIA+ people. We all know we want to protect women, children, the unhoused. Do we work with the government, like the Social Democrats want? Do we burn it all down, and rebuild smaller communities, like the Anarchists want? Do we simply reject capitalism, build our communes, and work together there?
Unfortunately right now those are objectives in the far future. We need to survive to that point, and right now, we’re losing. The left in the US hasn’t been something a government would fear to cross since the 70’s. If it should rise up, if it should finally admit that violence is going to happen whether we want it or not, and we have to meet it with violence in return, then we will see change. If Americans follow this guide and make it impossible for Trumps fascist regime to do what they want, then we have a chance. Yet if they don’t, the rest of the world is in for an extremely bad time. We tried voting, we tried peaceful marching, we tried peaceful protests, we tried begging, pleading with them. Our children begged us to stop killing the planet and their very futures, and we refused. The social contract was broken.
What will you do, America? Will you watch yourselves go through what Germany did in the 1930’s, on the back of a climate that is going to absolutely be hell for our children, and their children? When do you stand up and refuse to watch? When do you stand up, and do offline what you do online?
I want so very much to believe you’ll fight.
I am so sad that many of us will have to die defending people who can’t defend themselves, or shouldn’t have to. I plan to die that way, whether taking a bullet for a young girl protesting for her bodily autonomy, a beating meant for an unhoused person who just wants to survive, or a baton meant for a young man in transition who just wants to be left alone. I love you all. <3
…did you get that from Pig Bodine?
The answer to all of the above is yes I said yes I will Yes.
a longer answer
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodgekeeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited.
No smoke came from the chimney, and the little lattice windows gaped forlorn. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done, but as I advanced I was aware that a change had come upon it; it was narrow and unkept, not the drive that we had known.
At first I was puzzled and did not understand, and it was only when I bent my head to avoid the low swinging branch of a tree that I realised what had happened. Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers. The woods, always a menace even in the past, had triumphed in the end.
They crowded, dark and uncontrolled, to the borders of the drive. The beeches with white, naked limbs leant close to one another, their branches intermingled in a strange embrace, making a vault above my head like the archway of a church. And there were other trees as well, trees that I did not recognise, squat oaks and tortured elms that straggled cheek by jowl with the beeches, and had thrust themselves out of the quiet earth, along with monster shrubs and plants, none of which I remembered.
The drive was a ribbon now, a thread of its former self, with gravel surface gone, and choked with grass and moss. The trees had thrown out low branches, making an impediment to progress; the gnarled roots looked like skeleton claws. Scattered here and again amongst this jungle growth I would recognise shrubs that had been landmarks in our time, things of culture and of grace, hydrangeas whose blue heads had been famous. No hand had checked their progress, and they had gone native now, rearing to monster height without a bloom, black and ugly as the nameless parasites that grew beside them.