yes
Anti-Conservative
There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc.
There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.
There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.
For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.
As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.
So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whatever-the-fuck-kind-of-stupid-noise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism.
No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get:
The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
Most people everywhere are slightly left of centre*. Most leaders everywhere are slightly right of centre*.
*Not in the American sense. Y’all crazy.
Could you please define exactly what you mean by “left-wing”?
I believe all life have value, no matter what.
I believe in justice and equality.
I believe in the rule if law.
I believe in democracy.
I believe in the freedom of speech.
I believe in religious freedom.
I believe no one should go hungry.
I believe no one should freeze.
I believe no one should die from preventable diseases.
I believe everyone has a right to education.
I believe everyone has a right to healthcare.
I believe everyone has a right to participate in society and the internet.
I believe everyone should contribute if they can, because that is fair.
I believe people should be able to retire.
I believe most people are good, and want to do good.
I believe in cooperation, and working towards a common goal.
I believe that all people should have a minimum set of rights, that are non-negotiable.
I trust my neighbours, my family and strangers.
Based on these values I could be placed anywhere from center-right to far-left in Europe.
In the US I am a filthy commie
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I am unfortunately not. It was more meant as a way to say that for instance criminals (yes, even the worst ones) have value. That they deserve to live and have a decent life, no matter what.
That immigrants and asylum seekers should be treated with respect and given the help they need.
But also that animals have value. The way a lot of animals are treated is in no way acceptable.
I have tried being a vegetarian in the past, but have failed every time.
Sorry to disappoint. I wish I was better.
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Yes.
I’m a Marxist-Leninist, so yes. I think you’ll find most people on Lemmy in general fall into the major categories of “Liberal,” as in the US Democrat style, Anarchists, and Marxists. Different instances lean in different directions on this, with overall few outright conservatives.
Some of us are simply europeans.
A right wing European is still a little bit too liberal for MAGA
A right wing European is also a little too right wing for Lemmy.
Not only that, I’ve tried pitching the fediverse to right wing people, but they didn’t bite.
Even the crypto bros that were all about decentralization couldn’t see why a decentralized social media platform was superior.
This also didn’t matter for people who care about “free speech”.
You think the allure of being fully independent and having your own instance would be right up their alley given how they value independence, but nope.
Seriously? Why isn’t there a right wing instance? My guess is that a right wing person can’t fathom owning something that benefits others which doesn’t give them back profit.
i think there were one or two right wing instances, but they got defederated from everyone
Do they still exist? I’m honestly curious if they are active or if it’s abandoned
The only one I know of shut down and the admin posted this message:
I knew Lemmy had its challenges, but I hoped it would evolve for the better. Sadly after 2 years, the culture of censorship through defederation has only grown stronger.
So they shutdown because they couldn’t federate with any other instances and considered that censorship. A few people in that thread linked to another instance I’ve never heard of as an alternative and that one 404s if you type in the address so I guess they’re all still on reddit and twitter.
So they shutdown because they couldn’t federate with any other instances and considered that censorship
Damn, I actually didn’t see that coming, I guess they will move the goal post from any starting point.
I’m going to play devil’s advocate and ask: How is it not censorship?
Cause no one is stopping you from going to said instance and just having the discussion there.
If there was this super important leak that needed to be out there, if it’s posted on a right wing instance that is a defederated ghost town, it’s still out there. People can link to it and leverage the instance to have the needed discussions.
Censorship means removing access, defederation does not wipe it off of the Internet.
I would argue that censorship includes the suppression of information in its definition, not only it’s removal.
Which were they? As in what was their domain name?
one of them was called exploding-heads.com.
Because “crypto bros” care about making money, not any ideology, except in a performative sense. If you pitched the fediverse to the original researchers inventing cryptocurrency and the early adopters, they would likely be receptive. But these are no longer associated with the current crypto crowd.
Trump’s tremendous social media platform truth dot barf runs on Activity Pub, they just don’t federate with anyone by default. It’s like they don’t want dissenting views on there. Weird.
there are 3 major right-wing instances: lemmy.ml(ran by the Lemmy developers), lemmygrad.ml(the openly fascist version of lemmy.ml) and hexbear.net.
if anyone wants to argue, I don’t. Anyone supporting Russia is right-wing. Authoritarianism is inherently conservative, reactionary and therefore right-wing.
Authoritarianism is inherently conservative
Sorry, but no
There’s a reason the step up from just left/right axis is the up/down of libertarian v authoritarian. Auth-left is very much a thing and is what tankies are
worldwide, I would put most people on the right side of the American left/right. there are a lot of people in south asia for example. china and russia are conservative as fuck also. without looking at a wikipedia table I think that’s probably most people already.
Western Europe is pretty leftish I guess, but it’s not a lot of people
The American “left” is on the far-right of almost every other country in the world. Not right, not even center. You need recalibrating
you are thinking of the western countries, not the world. most of the worlds population is not in the west. most are living in highly conservative societies where the social progression led by the western world is decades behind.
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I promote right-wing policies: you should always use the right wings for your airplane, using whatever wings you happen to have left in stock is a recipe for disaster. Left-wing policies are dangerous.
Do you work at Boeing? 😜
I’m left handed. I don’t have wings.
This is the fediverse it’s full of new people, adventurers, change makers. The majority of people who would be interested in this platform will have a more progressive bent. So the majority of people here will be more accepting of liberal policies.
Quibble: Many here are explicitly leftist, in the a leftist-not-liberal sense, and will even use “liberal” derogatorily. So, progressive, yes, but liberal, not necessarily.
to make matters more fun, many ‘explicitly leftist’ lemmings are tankies (blind supporters of russia, china, north korea, etc), who are explicitly not leftist but authoritarians masquerading in the skinsuit of the people’s revolution.
Good point, many think left = liberal = US democrats who are centrists at best from the international perspective. So no, most people on here probably aren’t actual leftists, but I’m guessing when they say they ‘lean left’ they mean US-liberal-not-conservative, not socialist or whatever.
From my perspective I think that that is very silly. I don’t care for purity tests, but what would I know? I’m just a dirty libertarian.
Liberal policies are an actual thing, a thing that leftists frequently disagree with.
Libertarians are often placed on the right part of the left-right divide. The fact you’ve chosen the label libertarian instead of conservative is animated by the exact same “purity test” that you find so silly.
I would like to throw out there that the ACLU is a libertarian organization that would likely line up with the majority of the beliefs of Lemmy users. With that said I understand most people aren’t using libertarian in its ‘correct’ meaning as the ACLU does.
Yea I tend to think than when someone identifies as a Libertarian they almost certainly don’t mean a civil libertarian, which is how the aclu actually identifies themselves.
We have grown from a roomful of civil libertarians to more than 4 million members, activists, and supporters across the country. The ACLU is now a nationwide organization with a 50-state network of staffed affiliate offices filing cases in both state and federal courts. We appear before the Supreme Court more than any other organization except the Department of Justice.
This is literally the only time the word libertarian appears in their own history https://www.aclu.org/about/aclu-history
it’s full of new people,
Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not a new people. I’ve been a people for almost my whole life. I bet most of us have.
there’s a few thousand commies too
