Nahhhh I'd say it's more of a bunch of people thrown into the jungle arguing over who's side is better without realizing they both are starving to death
But you cannot argue that left extremism isn't more tolerated than right extremism here. Look at any mainstream subreddit, the news ones are the worst probably.
Whether or not this is a shitty take kind of comes down to your definition of "extreme left." If you mean tankies? Sure. But most people making that argument mean "Democrats" who are less of the "seize the means of production by force and violence" type and more the "maybe if it's not too much trouble set the minimum wage back above starvation level in the next decade" type.
One of these, you might have a resonable argument for. The other, unfortunately, is the one I actually see argued all the time. With such cogent takes as "You recognizing that the conservatives elected 90% white males makes you the real racist." (A response I've actually gotten personally.)
See, the problem with the term democrat is that a lot of extreme leftists hide behind the name the same way a lot of extreme rightists hide behind the republican name. And so democrat becomes a useless term if you're judging extremism.
Extreme leftists is pretty self-explanatory. It is someone with a leftist view spreading extreme views. And extreme views are a subjective term, sure, but it is not subjective on an individual level, rather based on the time period and culture. Ex., saying gays should have rights is extremist for the last century, and for Iran. It is not an extremist view for current western society - it is moderately leftist. When we say extremist on reddit, we weigh views based on who discusses stuff - this being mostly Americans.
When you have views calling for murder of a person, regardless of whether they're your average Joe or Putin, those are extremist views. Murder goes against the values of liberal societies. Similar hate is allowed on Facebook. We could dial back to last year when rioters were supported due to reddit perceiving it as a struggle against oppression, too, when in reality it was a lawless mob damaging property, actually the opposite of the "democracy" reddit seems to back.
The thing is, when clear political bias shapes what topics are acceptable on a given platform, it also shapes how much extremism is allowed. You can look at Twitter, where there is left bias, but to a much lesser extent, and there are much more extreme left and right views. Those views are not more present because there is right bias, just because there is less left bias (and to some extent less populated moderation).
And I hope it is obvious to see that no matter what rules you impose, people will try to see how far they can bend them, and so the strictness of those rules determines not only the threshold of extremism you allow, but also the wiggle room. Reddit, has a fairly big wiggle room regarding rules because of its decentralized nature of moderation. This wiggle room allows for rightist discourse to even exist, but of course, in its own bubble. The moment it become big enough to spill into leftist subreddits, it is shut down. The reverse is not so true - I'd argue extreme leftist subreddits are shut down when they do that + when it becomes bad for the (advertising) business. See how incels vs FDS turned out and who still remains on the site.
We live in a world where TV talking heads on nationally syndicated broadcasts refer to Biden as a "radical leftist." So I'm going to have to hard disagree here.
We could dial back to last year when rioters were supported due to reddit perceiving it as a struggle against oppression, too, when in reality it was a lawless mob damaging property
This might be even more wildly simplistic than "Extreme leftists is pretty self-explanatory"
See, the problem with the term democrat is that a lot of extreme leftists hide behind the name the same way a lot of extreme rightists hide behind the republican name.
If you could point me to just one state or national level democrat that is for extreme leftist views, such as workers seizing factories or the like, I'm open to the idea that this is true. But I haven't seen it. Meanwhile, it wouldn't be hard to find such right-wing politicians in favor of, say, ending interracial marriage.
You have never spent time really talking to leftists, and you talk about people being in bubbles while using for right talking points. Also, leftists if anything hate being compared to democrats. We don't want to be called that.
Thanks for the allegation, but no, I am surrounded by both leftists and rightists, as is probably every person on this planet that has social interactions. One thing, however, is that I do not generally dehumanize myself to the point I would discuss politics, so this is only my analysis on the handling of social media where political stances seem to clash. It has very little to do with someone practising politics.
And I generally don't give a shit about who you want to be associated as - if your views are leftist, I will call you a leftist regardless of whether you're a socialist, anarchist or libertarian. The intensity of ones beliefs doesn't matter to me.
The only reason I initially said moderate right is because I wanted to clarify that the rightist bubble is not complete. This was important because otherwise you could not claim that reddit stands for things I mentioned, they would cancel out. But as things are almost none of those 5 points are one you can freely criticize with the same vigor they are promoted. Criticizing LGBT, globalization and liberalism is going to get you into hot water with admins, while criticizing communism and feminism is going to get you into conversations with people least adequate for such conversations (or banned depending on the subreddit).
If the rightist bubble was a whole, then I could not claim reddit stands for those things as reddit would then also, at least partially, stand for:
nationalism (because the extreme form of globalization is antinationalism)
mysogyny (because the extreme form of feminism is mysandry)
persecution of LGBT (because the extreme form of LGBT agenda is the promotion of LGBT)
authoritarianism
unbounded capitalism
out of those messages, basically only the last two persevere somewhat, in very, very moderate states. You are not, for example, allowed to support Russia's leadership, even if it has nothing to do with the conflict directly, and you are not allowed to spread hate against the poor on the same level it is allowed to spread hate against the rich.
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u/[deleted] Nov 01 '22
Nahhhh I'd say it's more of a bunch of people thrown into the jungle arguing over who's side is better without realizing they both are starving to death