In leftist spaces, right-leaning ideas are challenged. In right-leaning spaces, leftists are banned and leftist ideas are censored. Why are conservatives opposed to the free marketplace of ideas?

Serious question.

  • Dkarma@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Conservatives know in their hearts that they are a fringe minority when it comes to views on how to treat others.

    Colbert was right reality has a liberal bias and conservatives need a safe space to pretend that the numbers are equal and that their arguments have validity.

    Often times you notice conservative threads that are locked contain misinformation and outright lies. For instance they call the Russia investigation a hoax.

    If reality pierces that bubble they are shown for the fools they are so they have to pretend that liberals are brigading in bad faith and not simply showing conservative views are simply invalid factually.

    • Dodecahedron December@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      1 year ago

      Thanks for the reply. This sounds a lot like how AM / Talk radio works on the right as well. Leftist talk shows actually bring on interesting guests, but right wing shows always cut the mic when the guest says something thought-provoking.

      I would think conservatives would benefit from having their ideas challenged. It was the main reason why I started paying more attention to leftist ideas: they are actually defensible.

      • PM_ME_FEET_PICS@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        You see the same censoring on right YouTube as well. “so and so owns WOKE Trans non-binary sheep” but it’s really just a clip that’s cut off after their bad argument and before a logical rebuke destroys it.

  • quizno50@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    This is a confirmation bias thing, not a political thing. If you are in charge of a discussion forum you will always push it to support your confirmation bias. This is why the first amendment is so important. If the government is in charge of public discourse, the people in charge (either side) will work extra hard to ensure their opposing ideas are simply dismissed as without merit.

    • Dodecahedron December@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      1 year ago

      This just isn’t what I’ve seen in lots of leftist spaces, personally. I think it’s more of an issue when it comes to indefensible topics. For example, in a leftist community, a right-leaning person may make a statement, but then many more people will typically pile on and present arguments as to why the statement is incorrect. Sure, some of them will resort to ad hominem attacks, but for the most part, leftists attack the ideas, not the person.

      But what you’ve described is 100% my experience when it comes to the conservative community. I was permabanned on reddit because a conservative mod didn’t like what I had to say. And what I had to say was pretty mild. It was argumentative and possibly toxic but boiled down to calling them “slow”, which sums up the entire ideology - slow to adapt, slow to progress, regressive.

      • thecrotch@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        for the most part, leftists attack the ideas, not the person.

        It was argumentative and possibly toxic but boiled down to calling them “slow”

        Lol

        • Dodecahedron December@sh.itjust.worksOP
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          1 year ago

          What’s funny? Got anything to share? I don’t lie.

          You should try contributing to the conversation instead of showing your lack of understanding.

          This is my biggest issue with conservatism: there’s no pragmatics, only ad hominem attacks and overconfidence. Wouldn’t you rather be correct?

          • thecrotch@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            What’s funny?

            Your stunning lack of self awareness. You posted a paragraph shitting on the other side for ad hominem attacks then immediately followed it with a paragraph bitching that they banned you for an ad hominem attack. That’s funny.

            showing your lack of understanding

            I understand what you said, that’s why I laughed at you

            only ad hominem attacks

            Right, like the one that got you banned from reddit

            Wouldn’t you rather be correct?

            My opinion is that both conservatives and liberals are insufferable twats without an original thought in their collective heads who vehemently defend their off-the-shelf prepackaged beliefs with snark and insults and zero substance while denigrating the other side for doing the exact same thing. I am correct.

            • Dodecahedron December@sh.itjust.worksOP
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              1 year ago

              “Slow” is a speed at which some people are. “Conservatism” by its very name is a bit of a call to “slow down”. Sorry if the truth hurts. I’m also slow in a lot of respects. Might be a little ad hominem, but it’s no where near the level of ad hominem attacks you’re making, I’ll give you that.

              • thecrotch@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                The fact that you keep implying I’m a conservative, like you can’t comprehend that there’s anyone out there who doesn’t subscribe to either ideology and despite the fact that I lump them in with you every chance I get, is also hilarious.

                • Dodecahedron December@sh.itjust.worksOP
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                  1 year ago

                  Once again I was trying to explain to you that there are more than 2 ideologies. You’re the one who kept forcing this binary. I haven’t called you conservative.

        • Dodecahedron December@sh.itjust.worksOP
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          1 year ago

          I do. And I am still unbanned. Only time I have ever gotten banned has been by conservatives for saying the most milktoast of things. Luke warm criticism. Then again conservatives melt away at the slightest bit of heat.

          I ask again… do you have proof?

          Hell, conservatives freak out when I mention vagina, penis, sperm.

          • r3df0x ✡️✝☪️@7.62x54r.ru
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            1 year ago

            r/conservative is notorious for cancelling people who disagree with them.

            Go to a progressive subreddit and tell them that the Covid vaccine is a dangerous scam and see what happens.

            proof

            • Dodecahedron December@sh.itjust.worksOP
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              1 year ago

              Well spreading lies and misinformation about healthcare another thing entirely. You can’t just have a separate opinion on that. You aren’t a virologist.

                • Dodecahedron December@sh.itjust.worksOP
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                  1 year ago

                  No, you don’t. You don’t have the credentials.

                  You’re free to spout lies, but when lies aren’t allowed, you get your comment removed. That’s moderation, baby!

  • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Conservatism is hierarchy. Conservatism is hierarchy as a theory-of-everything. The modern ideology originates with confused French revolutionaries saying ‘well somebody’s got to be king.’ To those people, the problem with monarchy was deciding who got to be the wise ruler over all and who got to do backbreaking labor… not the existence of absolute power or crushingly severe inequality.

    This tribalism is how humans think, by default. It’s an instinct from the ancestral environment. Your tribe was good because it’s your tribe, and your tribal leaders must be right about nearly everything or else they wouldn’t be leaders, and this worked okay for about a hundred thousand years. Occasionally civilizations would be utterly destroyed, or get really into blood sacrifices, but on average it was a low-effort way to understand a confusing world.

    Expressions of this stick out in advanced societies, on account of how we’ve examined our bullshit and answered most old questions, so there’s no excuse for trusting your local witch-doctor over medical science. Text and recorded media also let the average layman spot inconsistency, hypocrisy, and outright bullshit. So when someone’s just changing their opinion to maintain allegiance, and picking arguments to excuse whatever their betters told them, you can tell. It is visibly distinct from being swayed by evidence or rhetoric. It’s the behavior that makes people go ‘how can they X when yesterday they Y?’ or ‘well if they want Z they missed obvious opportunity N’ when the obvious answer is that they’re just lying. Their stated ideals are ad-hoc justifications. They are performing ingroup loyalty. They picked a conclusion based solely on interpersonal trust, and if the same guy says the opposite tomorrow, they’ll parrot that instead.

    Reality is a team sport, to some people.

    I dare anyone to tell me that’s not exactly what’s going on in the Republican party today. We have The Idiot declaring he can declassify documents with his mind, as if “abuse of power” is a contradiction. We have people defending all the crimes he committed in full public view, as if due process is only a ritual that legitimizes some knee-jerk partisan attack. The House speaker torpedoed a bipartisan deal to keep the government running because he’d rather hold federal employees hostage than let a faction of his party work with icky nasty smelly Democrats, with their cooties. My state’s governor is at war with facts about historical racism, as if his ingroup’s ancestors being awful is a personal attack on everyone who looks like him.

    Their only defense against this is to pretend everyone does it. Sorry, that makes it sound like they know better and they’re being wrong on purpose. Rather: they do not defend this worldview, because they do not believe there’s anything else. They think everyone’s doing what they’re doing. “Both sides,” says one side. So when COVID recommendations went from obsessive hand-washing to wearing a mask, they figure that’s identical to saying ‘it’s a hoax!’ and ‘eat horse dewormer!’ in the same paragraph. And if we got to impeach The Idiot then they get to impeach Biden, because that’s only fair. And if Charles Darwin secretly recanted on his deathbed, poof, a century of evolutionary biology doesn’t count.

    Forums to the left of alt-right crazytown tend to be open because we’d desperately love to think these folks have some consistent set of claims that we can work with and compromise on. We keep asking each other what they really believe. But conservatives do not believe things. Conservatives believe people. And as that tribal worldview crumbles on contact with the harsh realities of economics, infectious disease, social science, climate change, et very cetera, their choices dwindle. They can stay open, fumble their way through how they think debate works, and get dunked on by anyone with object permanence. Or: they can circle the wagons. Cut out skeptics. Silence criticism. Enforce trust exercises. Do some purity tests. Maintain ingroup cohesion at all costs, because of course, ingroup loyalty is what’s important. Ingroup loyalty is the only thing that matters.

    This is the same dynamic as a cult. There’s no coincidence. Cults do cult stuff in service to some supreme leader, whose arbitrary and capricious decisions must be accepted regardless of how they are questioned. If the new truth sounds like contradictory nonsense, it is each devotee’s job to “study it out” and decide how nuh-uh.

    That’s really difficult to maintain when outsiders can point out the obvious, because they’re not suppressing doubt to protect their fragile social standing.

    • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Shout-out to the bigot whose hot take underlined the “pretend everyone does it” part. Threatening death over being asked to say anything else. Blaming their violent outburst on polite explanations of what trolling is and how they’re doing it.

      The party of free speech, ladies and gentlemen, hurling slurs over being asked what they think.

    • Dodecahedron December@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      1 year ago

      Banger of a response. I’ve understood some of those things about conservatism but you’ve filled in a lot of the missing parts in my understanding.

      Conservatives believe people.

      There’s a lot of truth in that. Kind of makes sense that they would rally behind the idiot because it would take a criminal mastermind to pull of a real coup. He’s good with the criminal part, just not the mastermind part. Though, the 45th-dimensional chess play would be that he’s secretly a democratic asset.