Is there a more politically conservative part of the fediverse?
I’m a conservative. I don’t mind the liberal stuff here. It’s good to learn the other side, but I don’t want a liberal echo chamber. I’d like to be more politically balanced in the fediverse. Is there any way I can do that?
Not likely that there will be a conservative instance. Lemmys core principles are "left leaning" so that already lowers tolerance for the audience "the right" attracts. Every conservative instance eventually gets deleted and defederated because toxicity is baked into the idea. America's "left" is already right wing to the rest of the modern world, so going further than that is just... not great. You can hope for the "ENLIGHTENED_CENTRISTS" to try to keep a somewhat moderated instance but I wouldn't hold my breath.
I don’t think that lemmy’s principles are left leaning at all… Sure they’re anti-authoritarian but being anti-authoritarian doesn’t mean you’re a leftist - George Orwell characterises this really well (mb)
Right wingers are inherently authoritarian. Their ideology rests upon the belief that some people are just naturally better, and more suited to lead. Leftists have the capability for authoritarianism of course, but you’re not gonna find a single view that coherently critiques power while also having hierarchy.
Society is inherently authoritarian leaning. If you put people in an environment where they aren’t on first name terms with everyone they interact with you’re going to end up with an authority not caring about people they don’t know personally. If you wanna go back to living in a single village with minimal outside contact except with traders you are familiar with anyway then go for it, but I can’t see many people actually wanting that. To find the minimal levels of authoritarianism that work with a society where there is a centralised power you’d probably have to look at the centre-left, with it getting more authoritarian the more right or left you go from there
I don’t claim that anarchism is authoritarian, just that when it isn’t it’s incompatible with a globalised or even national level society. Communism is a different thing as you can have authoritarian (heavily or slightly) communism in a globalised or national society but it isn’t inherently authoritarian - you can also have non authoritarian communism as a structure that doesn’t work in a globalised or national society
You said the further you move left or right, the more authoritarian you get. Communism and anarchism exist as the most left you can get, and both advocate a complete dismantling and removal of state, and government.
Did you not know that?
Thanks for admitting your ignorance.
when it isn’t it’s incompatible with a globalised or even national level society.
[citation needed]
If anything, global statelessness is the best and most likely path to it succeeding. Also:
you can have authoritarian (heavily or slightly) communism
If there is any state whatsoever, it isn’t communism OR anarchism. Neither have any authority.
I think by very nature of the Fediverse having somewhat leftist ideas baked into the design philosophy (decentralized, transparent, FOSS, and communal in design), that it gives the Fediverse an intrinsically left-leaning audience, so it may be harder to find a right-leaning community that isn't extreme right like some others have mentioned. In general, I'd say that the needle points significantly left-of-center on the Fediverse as a result.
With Threads possibly federating soon, it's possible that that may attract more conservative users to the Fediverse as a whole, which may foster the development of more conservative corners of the platform for those who want to venture outside of Meta's bounds. Though that mostly applies to the Mastodon/microblogging side of things, not so much the Lemmy/Kbin stuff. Though technically Mastodon and Lemmy are compatible, as well, so that may still bring more conservative spaces, as well. Time will tell on that.
One could argue that decentralized, bottom up organization is essentially the structure of the modern evangelical movement… It’s also kinda the playbook for modern terrorism though… ISIS, Timothy McVeigh, etc…
It would be nice to have moderate conservative voices in the mix but unfortunately that world just seems to be filled with mostly batshit crazy ideas that do more harm than good.
There are conservatives on Mastodon, but the rest of the Fediverse defederates the explicitly conservative instances. The big ones are Gab, Parler, and TruthSocial, which don't seem to federate with anybody at all. (I would advise against looking them up, because they have a rather high concentration of Nazis).
Oh I'm fully aware of Gab. I stumbled upon on one of their instances that was blocked from lemmy.world. Wasn't sure if it was actually a Gab instance but it sure as shit was.
Personally, I quite enjoy perusing the memes on the myriad of conspiracy theories they like to peddle. The whole website is a guilty pleasure of mine.
I thought gab pulled the plug on federation because their goal wasn’t to be federated in the first place, it was just a force themselves on others and be accessible from the Play store.
Do you actually believe you don’t deserve health care? That others don’t deserve health care? Seriously? Work on yourself.
Are you super wealthy (low percentage chance)? I’m saying uncomfortable things to you. But you can easily afford those taxes so maybe work on yourself.
Also, to add to this: Leftist ideologies does not have to be authoritarian or have to involve genocides like some regimes have did some in the past. Leftist ideologies is compatible with democracy, and some might argue that Leftist ideologies require a democratic system.
Example: North Korea currently is called “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” but I doubt most people would actually consider that democratic.
Now imagine someone just started shouting “Democracy is bad because North Korea is a Democracy. This is why Monarchy is better!”
See how idiotic that sounds. Same thing with claiming all Leftist ideologies are bad because of a few failed “Marxist-Leninist” societal experiments. Some socialist policies have been successfully implemented. In Norway, although it’s still a capitalist country, has implemented some socialist policies under the “Nordic Model”. This is sometimes referred to as Social Democracy. See how democracy still exists in Norway?
You’re already contributing to a balanced discussion. keep at it and be the change you want to see. I feel the whole “belonging to a camp” thing in terms of opinions and politics is too simplistic thinking. Some people like myself happen to have opinions that will range across the political spectrum. Let’s say a very political person starts a conversation, but is swapped out for someone else from their “camp”; Isn’t it boring to know all of their talking points and opinions before they even start talking? Imo that’s detrimental to free thinking and learning to accept other viewpoints. The thought in politics is that we must all agree on all of our camps points or be chastised for not complying, also we must make the other side see that our side was correct all along otherwise our side will loose. Nah fuck that, let’s just learn to have conversations with a variety of opinions first.
I find it very weird how certain specific issues are assigned to a certain political leaning or more correct correct, how you are expected to believe a certain way in all topics depending on your voting history.
A couple examples are religion and abortion. What do these have to do with any political leaning in the US or any country for that matter? Our maybe the better question to ask is why do people think there is some universal law that dictates what side of the political spectrum you lie on based on certain beliefs that have nothing to do with politics?
The connection between conservatism and religion/abortion exists because of a well documented effort by Reagan era republicans to culturally connect them. Imo there is no underlying rationale besides “we will create and maintain moral wedge issues to keep religious voters on the hook”, while they work on their true goals- the consolidation of wealth and power further into the oligarchy.
Exactly what I am saying. Religion was never a left or right thing. That is not even the definition of left or right politics. For some reason it for attached to one but that is a human construct and a US construct. Most other countries don’t portray religion to a certain political leaning.
That’s the point. This liberal vs conservative isn’t even working for the US. In an international community like Lemmy it’s even worse, as what people from the US define as left and right does not work for western Europe for example. In Germany liberal in a modern sense is seen equal to neoliberal, what is democrats for US is right conservative for us, what is left in Europe is communism for the US and so on, you get it.
It may work for parties on a regional level, but for individuals, forget it.
This is so important. In essence, politics should be about our view, and critically searching for those who best represent it (or the most important part of it at the current moment), not about a ‘team we root for’ and get our views from. I think too many people forget that.
I think it’ll be tough to find that corner of it… I think I saw a conservative community on lemmy.world but the platforms original purpose was to get away from the big, controlling, capitalist social media platforms the likes of Twitter, Instagram, reddit, etc. Like mastodon, the largest part of the fediverse (I’m pretty sure), grew alot when twitter was brought by Elon, and more moved after he messed up the platform enough, saying they’ll create their own platform where hate won’t be allowed. It’s kinda against it’s nature to have much conservative-ness.
Not trying to be rude as based on how this sounds, you seem nice enough and not crazy, but places like mastodon are basically the left’s version of “Truth social” where people are pretty ok with saying “I don’t want those thoughts spread here” those thoughts they don’t want are usually things like homophobia or transphobia, but those are fairly common on the right even if you don’t share them.
It’s an interesting thought and would probably be alittle healthier, but hey you’re still here being able to provide that counter point of view
If you have only two choices and both are bad, you have to choose the lesser evil. The OP probably doesn’t like the racism and stuff, but they dislike certain policies of the other party even more.
Also, “trying to make it harder for people to vote” is an interesting way to say “requiring people to bring their citizen ID when voting, like in any civilized country”.
There's far more to making voting more difficult than just requiring an ID. For example, I believe it was Texas that relatively recently lowered its number of voting stations in left-leaning areas and made it illegal to give people water that were waiting in line to vote.
I would say that the dismantling of human rights would be a greater evil than the things the democrats could cook up, but if you are not affected and have no empathy for others it could be better to vote for the republicans.
And werent the conditions to be able to vote pretty restrictive to a lot of people?
I live in a country where identification is required for voting and it doesn’t feel restrictive. On the contrary, I’m glad someone can’t just vote in my name.
IDs cost money, require visits to DMVs (which conservatives work hard to shut down in poor areas, or other fuckery with their hours or such), and if you want the federal level one cost more and require more paperwork
We use the garbage and not-designed-for-this social security number for major IDing
If you got an ID sent to you when you turned $AGE I’d support requiring it to vote. But any proposal of free/automatic IDs gets shouted down by fanatics who think it’s the mark of the beast from Revelations. It’s a non-starter.
Every black person has an ID, you have to otherwise you can’t do anything anyways. I have never met anyone in my community who doesn’t have some form of ID that’s valid in elections.
There’s nothing that makes it harder for them to get IDs though.
No one should be allowed to vote without an ID, anywhere, ever. If you can’t prove who you are and where you live why should you be able to vote? This is how you get voter fraud.
Here in Australia you’ve always required a government ID to be able to vote, and you need to provide it when you vote. It’s a great system. Anyone arguing against it needs to be asked why.
I'm thinking specifically of gerrymandering but this article covers the many voter disenfranchisement methods used by Republicans in the US in the past decades:
ETA: I see you wrote that you "live in a country where identification is required for voting" so you might not understand the American history of voter suppression. This article should give a good introduction. There are many more methods being used today, including requiring IDs. Many, many more methods.
In Florida, courts have backed Republican efforts to withhold voting rights from hundreds of thousands of felons, many of them people of color.
Maybe it’s just me but I’m ok with convicted felons not being able to vote.
Registering to vote using and then presenting a federally issued government ID is a good thing. It stops voter fraud dead in its tracks. Why are people against this? Because it supposedly disadvantages minorities? It doesn’t. They can get a federally issued ID just as easily as anyone else.
Felony disenfranchisement is a relic of the Jim Crow era. It's an incentive to arrest and convict POC on false charges of a felony so that their rights are permanently stripped away. Restoring the right to vote lessens this incentive.
-Minority voters disproportionately lack ID. Nationally, up to 25% of African-American citizens of voting age lack government-issued photo ID, compared to only 8% of whites.
-States exclude forms of ID in a discriminatory manner. Texas allows concealed weapons permits for voting, but does not accept student ID cards. Until its voter ID law was struck down, North Carolina prohibited public assistance IDs and state employee ID cards, which are disproportionately held by Black voters. And until recently, Wisconsin permitted active duty military ID cards, but prohibited Veterans Affairs ID cards for voting.
-Voter ID laws are enforced in a discriminatory manner. A Caltech/MIT study found that minority voters are more frequently questioned about ID than are white voters.
-Voter ID laws reduce turnout among minority voters. Several studies, including a 2014 GAO study, have found that photo ID laws have a particularly depressive effect on turnout among racial minorities and other vulnerable groups, worsening the participation gap
I agree with this but we aren’t talking about castings votes here and I’m assuming OP is voting as if he is a sane person, but what are they supposed to do with the values they hold that don’t align with liberalism?
but what are they supposed to do with the values they hold that don’t align with liberalism?
Grow as a person. Something we should all strive to do. There are plenty of places I diverged from all the hard right liberals. Mostly around the capitalism fetish. But I can support them at least because of their more pro social democracy stance. But I can articulate and explain the logic why when asked. As a socialist I also diverge heavily from anti social democracy socialists. And again, can general explain and point out the reasons why. Things most of my fellow Americans have little understanding of or desire too. But none of us are perfect, nor will we ever be. But that isn’t a reason to stop growing.
You can be someone that’s not inherently against capitalism and for free communications platforms. I think stuff like this is a good start for polycentric regulation, which I see as important for any type of a voluntary or anarchist future.
Being a conservative must be a discombobulating experience in the technological age. The conservative is attempting to prevent the progression of society and conserve what we currently have or even revert to a bygone era.
OP arrives at a brand new platform, a piece of technology that didn’t exist a short while ago and requests a space to assemble people who don’t like change.
My politics lean very far to the left, but I don't want to be an echo chamber and it saddens me to see how little room for political dialogue there is on lemmy. The echo chamber is a big problem with reddit, and is even worse on Lemmy.
Exploding-heads is the only instance I'm aware of with a more right leaning/conservative base. It is more troll content than any real discussion of politics though.
I’m just going to say try making an account on the unilem.org instance, from there you’ll be able to access all instances from the fediverse. It’s about as politically balanced as they get since they almost never defederate, it doesn’t have very many communities though so you’ll have to find those on other instances, by the way if a community from another instance doesn’t appear in the one that you’re in, go to the search bar in the communities tab and type ![community name]@[instance domain] and assuming that you typed it correctly it’ll usually sync it and then you can subscribe to it.
Since unilem hasn’t defederated any of the big instances you’ll very likely have access to all communities on Lemmy.
I’m confused. You are here and engaging, but you think it is an echo chamber? Echo chambers aren’t really conducive to outside opinions. I’m here and definitely not a liberal, I’m a humanitarian.
As long as you don’t see any person to the left of you as a Liberal, you’ll find a decently diverse pool here!
If you want to see where the conservatives moved to, go to scored.co. (formerly thedonald.win). The worst thing about them isn’t limited to the unhinged garbage they spew, but that they are just such bores.
It’s so awful in every way imaginable that it makes me appreciate what we have here even more.
Could you define “conservative” in terms of politics (presumably US)? For example, low taxes and small government? And/or anti abortion and pro religion? Anti gun safety legislation? Anti regulation?
Perhaps you’re looking for the more contemporary definition of “conservative” that’s come about since the Tea Party or MAGA movements started? Mostly focused on being against whatever liberals/progressive are for?
As others have mentioned I think there are a lot of spaces out there for the latter group. I’m not sure many exist for the former group.
None exist for the former group, you toe one of the other two lines completely or you can go fuck off, individual thought is sacrelige and nuance is dead.
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