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I want to draw attention to the elephant in the room.

Leading up to the election, and perhaps even more prominently now, we've been seeing droves of people on the internet displaying a series of traits in common.

  • Claiming to be leftists
  • Dedicating most of their posting to dismantling any power possessed by the left
  • Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
  • Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
  • Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is "to the left of them"
  • Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system
  • Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism

When you look at an aerial view of these behaviors in conjunction with one another, what they're accomplishing is pretty plain to see, in my opinion. It's a way of utilizing the moral scrupulousness of the left to cut our teeth out politically. We get so caught up in giving these arguments the benefit of the doubt and of making sure people who claim to be leftists have a platform that we're missing ideological parasites in our midst.

This is not a good-faith discourse. This is not friendly disagreement. This is, largely, not even internal disagreement. It is infiltration, and it's extremely effective.

Before attacking this argument as lacking proof, just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn't take advantage of it?

By refusing to ever question those who do nothing with their time in our spaces but try to drive a wedge between us, to take away our power and make us feel helpless and hopeless, we're giving them exactly that vector. I am telling you, they are using it.

We need to stop letting them. We need to see it for what it is, get the word out, and remember, as the political left, how to use the tools that we have to change society. It starts with us between one another. It starts with what we do in the spaces that we inhabit. They know this, and it's why they're targeting us here.

Stop being an easy target. Stop feeding the cuckoo.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 minutes ago* (last edited 5 minutes ago)

There are an awful lot of unsubstantiated claims being made in this thread, especially wrt what these supposed maga-bot/trolls all claim or do.

If the post contained any actual examples of comments that OP believes are either bots or trolls, it might be possible to actually analyze whether their assumptions and claims have validity.

As it stands, however, making broad insinuations about the ill intentions of anyone who disagrees with you is not very Nice, and is certainly not Assuming Good Faith.

The mods here are very active, and very capable. We don't need people starting witch hunts here to "root out the fake Leftists", and based on OP and some others' reactions in this thread, that's clearly what's happening here.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 hours ago

I'm not an american (but anti-electoral nonetheless), and I do get the critique and think it is perfectly valid if one views things through liberal framework - vote for the lesser evil, minimize suffering, not voting is letting the bad candidate on getting the upper hand, etc.

However, this isn't an objective position but an ideological one, as it operates within lesser-evilism, coalitionism within capitalist institutions and having a definition of "the left" that generalizes them to essentially having to be "pro-democracy somewhat progressive liberals", and any deviation makes them into a troll or a right winger or something like that.

What is important to realize is that most leftists aren't liberals - in fact, many leftists, particularly Marxists, view elections as:

  • A way to legitimize the class rule that leads into passivity among the working class who are being ruled over, essentially recognizing that this "tool that we are given" is just an illusion and leads to neutralization of worker power,

  • Enabling of 'capitalist-tribalism' in the form of "which capitalist manager do you support" which is seen in US through party loyalty and basically disarming the working class from realizing their own interests.

Essentially, their goal isn't to just "vote for the lesser evil" or "achieve the maximum good through the means we're given" but to abolish the system entirely, and electorialism/voting is counter-productive in that regard due to legitimizing effect that it has that I mentioned previously. This does go against the "liberal left" and their goals, and being on the same political wing does not automatically mean there's an alliance or shared goals, nor does it mean that two positions aren't going to have antagonistic goals.

Besides, why blame the left for the electoral failure who abstained from voting? Why not blame MAGA for voting in an enemy that goes against your interests (as in, people who have actually voted)?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I came back to the post, and boy, did you get them riled up lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Hopefully it serves to further demonstrate my point. It certainly has solidified its legitimacy for me.

It's also very helpful of them all to come draw attention to themselves so those who wish to identify and block them have an easy opportunity.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

They all speak sort of similarly to each other, too.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

A lot of them are probably literally the same person.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I am highly curious to know what's really going on there. Maybe it's like 3 really influential accounts that are all very confident in themselves, and 50 other people who are looking for that all started imitating them, and at this point it's mostly self-sustaining just from confused leftists. Maybe it's a little team of 5 people all assigned to Lemmy, and they take shifts but only 1-2 of them are active at a time. Maybe it's just one guy. Maybe it's two whole separate teams, one for China and one for Russia, and they coexist with each other without being bothered or trying to coordinate all that much. Maybe it's all in my head. Maybe some of them are American? That seems unlikely, I don't think any GOP operation is this in-depth at this stage and some of them periodically make slip-ups that reveal that they're not from the US even though they're claiming to be, but who knows.

I really would like to know the answer. I think I never will find out, but it would be fascinating.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

It could also be AI generated responses with similar prompts. Or a call center with specific guidelines for tone and content. Or some sort of remote platform with guidelines for posting. I know there are call centers full of scammers and the same was true of bot-farm employees at some point, probably still.

It is pretty fascinating. But yeah, the odds of ever getting a real answer are pretty low unless there's some sort of whistleblower.

But hey, I bet said whistleblower could start a pretty profitable career in independent investigative journalism if they did provide that information to the right people, or if they self-published successfully. Just a thought, if such a person happens to be reading this!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 hours ago

Welcome to propaganda and people affected by it. You're not safe from the stuff online.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Happy International Worker's Day. Every single leader of emancipatory movements in the history of labor rights would disagree with you, having fought and been very vocal against the different flavors of oppression in order to get the liberal concessions that you seem to cherish today. Hopefully if you participate, you might find some leftists celebrating in the crowd. Please don't get too angry at them for not defending genociders, I'm sure a lot of them ended up voting for Kamala anyway, but at least they got the confirmation that even opposing genocide is too great a hurdle for them.


I'm tired but I guess I'll still address some of the traits you identified:

Claiming to be leftists

I'm a leftist

Dedicating most of their posting to dismantling any power possessed by the left

Okay that doesn't sound like leftist behavior, you're totally right. I just hope you don't mean that "power possessed by the left" is the democratic party, but sure, that broadly sounds like liberals or feds.

Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates

There's a point to which you can push liberal concessions for damage control or for actually gaining some more concessions. I think criticizing voting is healthy since it's still playing the capitalist's game and a liberal "democracy" with almost no wiggle room anymore, but considering how little effort it takes to vote I'll always advocate to both play their game and also assume that nothing will come out of it without actual pressure.

I've mostly seen people advocate for withholding their vote in the favor of some concession (please don't do genocide), I've never seen someone say "don't vote and also don't do anything else", but I'm sure they exist, you find all kinds of confused people online.

Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party

Is genocide disqualifying for a political party or not? I'm asking you, specifically, if you think that a party that commits (funds, arms, protects, justifies, excuses, does constant propaganda for) a genocide in the face of their own atrocities, while actively silencing the voices within their own ranks that speak out, is worth defending? Again, I think the idea was to hopefully change the democratic party to the radical position of "anti genocide". That failure is on them, not the people who threatened not to vote for them.

Not highlighting that issue is frankly criminal.

Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is “to the left of them”

Yeah that's leftism, that's always been leftism, but again I hope to god you don't mean that "leftist political power" here represents the democratic party, so I'm gonna assume you mean more broadly what they call "purity politics" and constant division in the left. I think it's fair to criticize people to the right of you, I'm to the right of anarchists and I welcome their criticism, even when I don't agree with it. If I spent my time shitting on them I think they would be completely legitimate in calling me out for someone with ulterior motives, or a reactionary shithead.

Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system

I want you to examine your own sentence just for a second. To disempower an attempt at legitimate engagement with the political system. Opposing genocide isn't used as a moral cudgel against whatever 10 steps removed version of power this is (and I'm not criticizing the way you put it, quite the opposite), it's used AGAINST GENOCIDE.

People are out in the streets and criticizing liberal complicity because we talk about GENOCIDE not some vague questionable US foreign policy.

Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism

So that's the democratic party, right? That's why I'm confused because leftists are out in the street, even the most liberal ones with their "fight oligarchy" campaign, while the democrats are still out defending genocide, doing filibusters without a cause, and generally trailing so far behind the average population that it's mind numbing. So I don't know what you mean when you say "leftists", because you seem to refer to two groups at the same time.

Anyway, voting goes both way, you can't pretend to vote in a vacuum for the lesser evil without recognizing that you empower them and their genocidal endeavors.

And I'll be a little more incisive: If you criticize a leftist of not caring about minorities (which I've seen a lot and is deeply ironic considering who did and didn't vote for the dems) you open yourself to be criticized for having proudly voted and called on everyone else to vote for a party that does genocide, and having attacked the ones that tried to actually make a difference in shifting their position or using that moment to show what their true colors are.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Let's just get a few facts out of the way:

  • Genocide is the worst crime humanity is capable of
  • The US has a direct hand in multiple genocides
  • Record levels of homelessness in the richest nation on earth is unacceptable
  • Death from preventable illnesses in the richest nation on earth is unacceptable
  • Highest infant mortality in the western world in the richest nation on earth is unacceptable
  • Democrats are not interested in changing the status quo
  • Republicans want a return to chattel slavery
  • Neither party is willing to help us, nor will they ever allow us to vote third party by adding ranked choice or anything like that
  • Therefore, our best bet to break the cycle is to collectively vote for, say, the green party

You think leftists are unrealistic for being disgusted with Democrats? The genocide was live streamed to the world. Did you not see any of it? Did it not move you?

By the way, the Democratic party is not left-wing. It is right-wing. Please educate yourself.

Also, are we hopeless? Fuck no. Boycotts have been making progress. Noncompliance has accomplished a lot. Unionizing, if you can swing it, can accomplish a lot. Meshtastic can offer resiliant communications if Trump declares a national emergency. Democrats want you to panic. Leftists want you to organize.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

This post is beyond delusional. It’s like the meme about everything I don’t like is woke. The liberal version basically being everything I don’t like is a Russian/MAGA bot. Is it really that hard to believe that left leaning people don’t agree with the Democratic Party platform? You’re deeper in your bubble than you realize my friend.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Oh look, someone who's generalizing op then tries to discredit them! Way to prove their point

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

They didn’t make any type of platform or political argument to even debate against. Basically saying that everyone who dislikes democrats is secretly a republican. That’s all I’m calling them on. Total nonsense.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Misdirection, nice! That's cuz this is not about platforms or any political argument, dr Troll

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

You’re goofy man. I don’t even know what your point is. OP said something. I said I disagreed with it. Epic troll by me I guess.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Go to a politics or platforms community if you're looking for a politic argument or stuff about platforms

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

Thank you for the suggestion.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

As a leftist:

  • True, It's a piece of paper. If you think that will save us, you're a dumbass.
  • Mostly True, Look up the ratchet effect.
  • Mostly False, we've had due process. It's been unfair to minority communities, but in general it's existed.
  • Mostly False, He was mildly better. This is faint praise given he was a demented fossil facilitating a genocide.
[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Mildly better. Well, if this post accomplished one thing it was self-identification of the people it is about.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Neat how you ignored the rest of the sentence there. Probably because those aren't contestable points huh?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

"Mostly False, He was mildly better."

Does that help?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

This is faint praise given he was a demented fossil facilitating a genocide.

You know what I meant. Being obtuse doesn't help your case, it just makes you look like a debate pervert.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn't take advantage of it?

This is the same kind of argument that the tankies use to dismiss anyone who disagrees with them as a CIA plant. At least they name the CIA, you seem to be pointing to an even more ambiguous "they" that are out to get us. This is a conspiracy theory, dress it up all you want but your pointing to some ambiguous "they" and blaming them for your problems with no proof.

Occams razor is that they are leftists who hate the democratic party. They critique them more then the Republicans because the liberal side of lemmy covers that pretty well already, half the front page is shitting on trump right now. That's good but at a certain point your beating a dead horse, everyone here already hates trump and thinks he's bad, no point in reinforcing that past a point. A lot of people on here still have loyalty to the democratic party though that far exceeds the democrats loyalty to the left, so pointing that out can be effective and help change people's minds instead of posting/commenting trump is hitler for the millionth time.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

Your interpretation of Occam's razor is that no one ever lies? Do you really think all human beings being honest about everything they say requires the least number of assumptions?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago

You've successfully clustered a bunch of trolls, time to block a bunch?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

In a sense yes, people generally tell the truth more than they lie so the default assumption should be that someone is telling the truth, otherwise you enter into paranoia. That assumption can be broken when there is a clear gain from lying. Eg. You catch a thief outside the store they robbed they have a very clear reason to lie and say they were just walking by.

You're explanation on why they're lying isn't very clear. First off, you fail to name who these people are and leave it ambiguous to let the person reading fill it in with their enemy (maga, nazis, russians etc.) just like every other conspiracy theory. Since the subject isn't clear neither is the motive, you just sort of fill that in with "they hate the left, why do they hate the left? What are they gaining from convincing maybe a couple dozen liberals that the democrats suck on a very marginal social media? This isn't the politburo for the comintern, there is barely any power on here to diffuse, so why put effort into doing so when there are far larger platforms to influence.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

I'd like to draw a parallel to data security. Why make a strong password if nobody's out there trying to break into accounts? Why secure your server's ports if nobody's going to attack them? Why take precautions against malicious collection of data to sell to third parties if we're not sure who or how that data would be used?

These are behaviors that we don't know the specific motivations for, we don't know the individual bad actors in question or who they're working for or what their specific plans are. But we know that if someone calls you claiming to be Geeksquad and tells you to go buy a bunch of gift cards to read to them over the phone, you're being scammed. We know that if someone pretends to be a representative of a company and comes asking for your password, you shouldn't trust them. We know that if certain kinds of traffic are spamming your ports looking for vulnerabilities, they don't mean well.

Why? Because we are aware of the threat vector and can move to protect it before knowing the details of who in particular is planning on exploiting it. I don't need to know specifically which hacker wants to break into my server to limit open ports. I don't need to know who wants to steal my Steam account to know setting up 2fA is worthwhile.

Assuming good faith in bad actors is a vulnerability. The exploit vector is an attack on the political power of the left. I don't need to know specifically who is behind it. I could speculate. Maybe it's MAGA, maybe it's Russia, maybe it's some foreign bot-farm being hired by some other authoritarian regime, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is that allowing the threat vector to remain open disempowers the left.

Why Lemmy? Why a small niche leftist platform rather than a larger platform?

Let's say you're a time traveler who hates punk music. What would be more effective to stop it before it starts? Sabotaging the planning for the Warped Tour in the 90s, or burning down CBGB in 1973?

CBGB was a small club at the time, barely notable at all. The Warped Tour, on the other hand, was a massive endeavor involving dozens of bands and thousands upon thousands of punk and ska fans. But if you know your history, you know that CBGB was a small venue with a massive impact on the American punk scene. It was a place where a lot of the bands that we know today got their start and came up. The Warped Tour, on the other hand, while probably influential on 90s teenagers who got to go see 20 bands in person for 20 bucks, was mostly just riding the wave of punk's popularity and capitalizing it.

Targeting leftist spaces, especially small leftist spaces, could potentially be much more effective than targeting more general spaces. Lemmy in particular selects not only for leftists, but for anti-corporate, anti-establishment people with enough of an interest in tech and enough social media presence to jump on the bandwagon of a relatively unknown protocol just so they don't have to rely on corporate social media. It has a barrier for entry that most of the public find to be either too daunting to bother to surmount, or that involves enough obscurity that they're not even aware of it to begin with.

Beehaw in particular has human-vetted signups and even has a history of defederating with instances that have open sign-ups in order to be able to deal with moderation. A lot of that moderation is literally just contending with social conservatives who show up spouting racism, queerphobia, sexism, and ablism.

In other words, we are a small space that caters to a particular crowd of people well outside the mainstream politically, socially, and technologically. Small, niche spaces have a tremendous potential for resulting in wider-spread influence.

It's not about convincing us that democrats suck. Most of us aren't particularly happy with the democratic establishment anyway. It's about demotivating us and frustrating our internal communications. It's about trying to sabotage a potential locus for resistance.

And it isn't just Lemmy. It isn't even just the left that's being targeted. We know social media is being used to pollute discourse and manipulate politics. We know there's an artificial rightward push going on, and we know that it isn't just the United States that's being targeted with it. But anyone who wants to advance this artificial rightward push has a strong motivation to exploit any vulnerabilities that can be found in the US because of our position globally. Now that that position is crumbling, they have a strong motivation to make sure it doesn't recover.

We have a responsibility to address that threat vector no matter who those parties are.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

I like to point out that Frederick Douglas worked for Lincoln even when Lincoln was not running on ending slvery.

It's amazing how many people on the 'Left' think that Douglas was a traitor to his principles.

When the bring out the MLK letter from Birmingham Jail, I point out that King never explicitly supported LGBTQIA+ rights, even though one of his most important aides was gay. Suddenly, understanding the historic situation becomes important.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Misdirection is a good one too! You're off topic m8

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 hours ago

Douglas spent the majority of Lincoln's presidency mercilessly and publicly attacking him - claiming he was 'working for him' is not only fairly disingenuous but an extremely odd way to characterize their relationship

Idk what your point is with LfB but that letter absolutely slaps.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

Watch out for the following five fallacies, and the cuckoo is easy to spot:

  • oversimplification: false dichotomy, ignoring relevant factors
  • genetic fallacy: instead of focusing on what is being said, the cuckoo always focuses on who says it
  • straw man: cuckoos are really eager to put words into your mouth, and try to force you to defend claims you never did in first place
  • ignore refutation: if you prove without a shadow of doubt that the cuckoo's claim is wrong, they'll ignore your refutation and still use it to back up even dumber claims
  • ad nauseam: same claim over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Then as you spot the cuckoo, the rest is easier - for example, IMO a sensible approach is to point out what the cuckoo is doing, to whoever might be reading your comment, while disengaging so you aren't giving the cuckoo further time to sing.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 hours ago

That's quickly becoming my approach. Point it out and then immediately block them and stop engaging. Once you block them, they can't keep following you around spamming the same noise.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

straw man: cuckoos are really eager to put words into your mouth, and try to force you to defend claims you never did in first place

This one is a really key tell. The people who spend most of their message emphasizing what it is that their opponents believe, and only in passing deal with what they believe (which tends to be along the lines of "well they all want to kill Palestinian babies but I don't want that, so clearly you can see the difference"), and immediately start telling anyone who talks with them what they believe also... that's an important signal.

I think it is so popular because it is substantially lower-effort than engaging with anything the person is actually saying, and also it works on anything. You don't have to be on the right side of the argument, you can just assign your opponent some awful crazy shit, and then get to work disagreeing with that.

Edit: Just for some examples. Here are things people have told me today:

your attitude that good people who would absolutely give you their last meal for days or literally stand in front of you to take a bullet that you may or not deserve are disposable lives

(Literally no idea what this is about)

I don’t think it’s unconscionable that the police are minimally held to that expectation

(I, also, think that the police should be held to the expectation they're talking about, and said so repeatedly)

you were unnecessarily bringing race into this discussion

(I wasn't, I did bring BLM into a discussion about the police)

Your saying things like “don’t refuse to give ID” or “Just talk with them. Tell them what you know, help them figure out the situation.” as a blanket suggestion

(I said the exact opposite of that)

I don’t mean to condescend to liberals – shouldn’t have used “libs” I guess – but I think of them, in the US, as primarily just trying to get the democrats back into power and then mostly disengage. The most outspoken of them tend to have much more energy to fight universal healthcare and other the social democratic reforms of a Bernie Sanders rather than actually take aim at the capitalist, state, and other hierarchies making our lives worse.

(I wasn't explicitly included in this grouping, but this person was explicitly talking to and about me when they said this. Obviously none of this has anything to do with anything I think or want. This is a form of indirect strawman "You are group X and all group X people think Y and Z" that is particularly hopeless to ever have any kind of success in disagreeing with)

So kindly fuck off with your genocidal apology nonsense

(I pointed out with alarm that there is literally 0 food in Gaza currently and people are likely to start to starve on a mass scale this month)

And so on

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