- cross-posted to:
- 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- cross-posted to:
- 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/13958637
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You can’t debate someone that isn’t arguing in good faith, and these people never ever are. Yeet and move on, save your energy for the people that have just been mislead by the altright and may actually change their opinions.
All you can do is force them to face their convictions. What happens after that is up to them. Just do what Tim Walz did to JD Vance when he asked about the election results, and bluntly ask the root question.
“Do you think migrants are less important than citizens? What about men vs. women? Or gay people vs. straight people? Or trans people vs. cisgender people?”
“Do you think that the government should force people to follow your religion? If the government picked a different religion than yours, would you just agree to follow it?”
To everyone pearl clutching in response to this correct meme with one of the following phrases:
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“That’s how you create an echo chamber”
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“paradox of intolerance doesn’t say how to fight fascism”
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“This is about silencing opposing thought”
I would like to take this moment to remind you that the paradox of intolerance isn’t about exiling those who disagree on economic policy; it’s about recognizing and directly opposing those who are trying to harm or disadvantage others and doing so in a meaningful way that will actually change the outcome. You can’t debate Hitler out of doing a genocide, but you could have jailed him before he gained power.
Being too spineless to call out and fight intolerance enables fascism. The longer you live wrapped up in your civility politics, the overton window shifts further right, and it strengthens the fascist support. It happened in pre-WW2 Germany, and it’s being repeated in dozens of countries worldwide. If you feel the urge to block me, go ahead…
…but know that this is your fault
Edit: spelling
The paradox of intolerance is not a paradox. Tolerance is a social contract, folks who demand us tolerate intolerance are violating the social contract and should be ignored.
I’d argue it’s not a paradox because it relies on two different definitions of tolerance.
- Tolerance 1: Intolerant opinions should be allowed to exist without criminal punishment.
- Tolerance 2: Everyone should treat intolerant opinions like other opinions for the purposes of platforming, how you feel about the speaker, etc.
Tolerance 1 is basically the kind of free speech principles adopted by most democratic societies and is probably necessary for such societies to remain free. Tolerance 2 is just silly. If you’re in a forum specifically for debating deplorable opinions, fine. But there’s no reason that a politics forum needs to cater to deplorable opinions.
Sorry, tone doesn’t come across well. I can’t tell if you’re trying to correct me on a point, because I agree with you.
I read it as continuing your train of thought.
You do indeed agree.
Thank you!
Big aside:Maaaaaan, I catch myself doing this all the time. Posting what I think is :yes, and… But people don’t realize that and think I’m disagreeing… and then much confusion ensues.
Tldr, I gotta stop assuming shit and be better at setting context…
I’ve just realized that my tendency to start comments irl and online with “Yeah…” might in part be a defense mechanism to avoid being misunderstood as disagreeing.
“Paradox” doesn’t mean it’s impossible to resolve. Mathematical paradoxes, such as Gabriel’s Horn (a horn that takes up finite volume, yet you would not be able to paint it) or the Banach–Tarski paradox (where you can take a sphere, break it apart, and reassemble it into two spheres identical to the original), do have resolutions. They’re just not obvious and can be hard to get your head around.
The original Greek word directly translates to “against belief”, and basically means something unexpected. It doesn’t mean it’s logically contradictory, just that it might seem to.
So yes, the Paradox of Tolerance is a paradox. It’s not obvious to all people what the resolution is, but explaining it as a peace treaty rather than an unchangeable moral imperative tends to work.
THANK YOU. In a Post about banning Germany’s far-right Party AFD, some people wrote such delusional nonsense! It’s unbelievable how far some People go to defend POS like the AFD.
I was recently reminded about the caveats that Germany has on the “no Nazi parties” rule. It’s truly insane that it’s essentially (this is hyperbole, but less than you’d think) “you can ban a party from running if they’re Nazis… As long as they call themselves Nazis, and they’ve won an election, and the leader is called Hitler, and the leader went to art school. All other parties must be allowed to run”
Yeah it’s quite a challenge to pass that threshold. But it is even more insane that there is a Party which passes this with flying colours and it is STILL a huge debate .__.
The people who came out against banning afd are the same ones who absolutely will not have the balls to do what you need to do to a nazi party you don’t ban in time as well.
You all should see the shit going on in a post about Gisèle Pelicot where they are literally saying that the tiny fraction of women who commit sexual assault is an excuse for decrying the (absolutely understandably angry) women holding signs that say “NOT ALL MEN BUT ALWAYS A MAN”.
I really fucking despise these false equivalencies.
I mean…it’s literally not always a man. I get the point but that’s a terrible slogan.
I agree but i also got to say that it depends on the goal. A sign like this is polarizing and will garner more attention to the topic, get people discussing etc…
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Not a paradox. Tolerance is a social contract and need not be given to those who don’t tolerate others.
The paradox of intolerance demonstrates how fascism comes to power, not how to stop it.
Found the apologist.
Why does everybody online insist on misusing “centrist” and “moderate” when they’re talking about spineless, bitch-ass accomplices? An actual centrist in America in 2024 would be very progressive relative to most of the country. It’s a good place to be.
The comic specifically calls out apologists. The kind that say “both sides equally bad” when both sides are most assuredly not equally bad. Or that try to suggest there can be anything meaningful gained from discussion with hateful intolerant people. They paint themselves as centrist. It’s not really misusing it.
i’ve actually been thinking this recently. what actually is a centrist? i feel most who claim themselves to be centrist are actually conservatives…
There’s an old joke. The parties change but the message stays the same.
A group of Nazis have cornered a group socialists when a centrist comes along. The centrist listens to both sides, how the Nazis want to kill all the socialists and how the socialists don’t want to die. Thinking long and hard on it, the centrist says that there’s a compromise to be had, just kill half.
I would say a true centrist is nothing. No beliefs on whether the means of production should be held by private companies or the people. Aka, they either cannot exist or have not formed an opinion on it making it so that their opinion wouldn’t matter.
The problem therein lies that we try to tie other things into it that aren’t about government, and instead about human rights, and it clearly diverts from being a line to a multi dimensional graph that all means next to nothing when it comes to claims like left right.
Both someone on the left and the right can want to subjugate parts of the populous without having to leave their belief on who owns the means of production.
They attack centrists to maintain the two party divide. If you don’t agree with one side, you are seen as an ally of the other.
I am mostly euro-centrist. In America, I would be far left.
Unfortunately, large sections of the Fediverse are slowly turning into bubbled echo chambers, each enforcing their own purist “correctness”.
They’re throwing anybody with remotely different opinions out the window whilst slowly shifting their overton window off into fantasy land.
Most of the “centrists” if come across tend to regurgitate hard right talking points.
They only say they’re centrist because they’re slightly left of the GOP, which puts them right of the DNC. But if you zoom out, they’re all authoritarian right.
So in a local context, they’re centrist. But in a global context, they’re definitely not.
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Hypothetically there could be bigots you could have a rational debate with, but they tend to not remain bigots for long.
I knew one. Nazi-tatted dude. White separatist (he was careful in specifying separatist, not supremacist). He believed racial conflict was inevitable (not a full on race war just ongoing low scale conflict) and he’d decided he’s white, he’s gonna be on the white side of the conflict. He was moderately respectful of other races as long as they didn’t come into what he considered white territory.
He sounds like if a sundown town was a human being.
Aka the bigot to UwU pipeline.
"Faschisten hören niemals auf, Faschisten zu sein
Man diskutiert mit ihnen nicht, hat die Geschichte gezeigt"
“Fascists won’t ever stop being fascists. You don’t argue with them, history has shown that”
Wenn du friedlich gegen die Gewalt nicht ankommen kannst, ist das letzte Mittel das uns allen bleibt Militanz
Wenn du friedlich gegen die Gewalt nicht ankommen kannst, ist das letzte Mittel das uns allen bleibt Militanz
Ich denke exakt diese Worte werden von beiden/allen Seiten verwendet, die sich im Recht währen. Das macht sie am Ende alle moralisch gleich.
English:
If you cannot peacefully combat violence, the last resort that remains for all of us is militancy
I think these exact words are used by both/all sides who claim to be in the right. That makes them all morally equal in the end.
Ich finde da machst du es dir zu einfach.
Dir Gewalt anzutun um dich zu unterdrücken ist verwerflicher als dieser Person Gewalt anzutun damit sie damit aufhört.
Spoken like a true centrist.
If you say so, thanks for letting me know
I 100% believe the lemmy developers’ firm belief in this policy is why the platform was able to take off eventually. In the early days we would frequently have people join and then stomp their feet about free speech and the slur filter and then fuck off to whatever variant of voat was en vogue (…that was wolfballs for a little while). It was a small community, discussions were heavily (but not exclusively) tech and communism, but I don’t think it would have been an appealing landing spot if that kind of toxicity had been allowed to grow.
Absolutely no question there’s more hostility in the conversations here after redditors came here, but more users will do that. The exodus has made it a lot easier for me to abandon some of the smaller subreddits I was still active on.
But I like seeing the rational debate!
So I can practice spotting fallacies and facepalm when people completely miss the point and counter with something that might be logically sound but is practically terrible.
There’s no reasoning with dishonest bad faith actors
The fastest way to an echo chamber is to ignore everyone who disagrees with you.
You should be intelligent enough and convicted in your understanding of any point you argue strongly, that you will be able to identify an irrational or false argument.
Otherwise when someone you disagree with has a good point that improves your view point, you will miss it.
Take the show always sunny in philadelphia. The characters are all examples of absolutely terrible people. We use their idiocy, bigotry, racism and general prejudice to further confirm our beliefs and views on any topic.
It is healthy to listen to bad takes.
The fastest way to an echo chamber is to ignore everyone who disagrees with you.
This isn’t about the entire set of people who disagree.
It is a waste of time to engage some kinds of people. They are not acting in good faith.
There’s a Sartre quote about it
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
I believe it helps to be able to identify bad faith actors. If you have never heard their arguments before then you run the risk of not realising its a bad faith argument. This could mean you end up taking them seriously.
Let me help you out:
There are NO sound arguments for racism, fascism etc.
None.
There is no point in listening to racists and fascists.
Ever.
Cool. Great. Now define whether something is racist or not.
Easy. Something is racist if it essentializes characteristics of a person or group, based on their skin colour or ethnic group; or if it makes derogatory assumptions about a cultural item/act/thing.
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“Jews are greedy” = Racist statement
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“Immigrants are violent” = Racist statement
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“Asians are better at math” = Racist statement
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“White people don’t season their food” = I don’t give a fuck personally (am white) but yes there is some level of racism in the statement
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“Dreadlocks are dirty” = racist statement
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“Israel is an genocidal state” = not a racist statement
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“People native to Tibet, the Andese, and the Ethiopian highlands are better adapted to high altitudes” = not a racist statement
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“white people have historically been more responsible for subjugating other races” = not a racist statement
Some things are worse than others, but the point isn’t to just shun anyone who says something bigoted. It’s to shun anyone who is bigoted and truly believes that they are correct so they won’t engage with arguments that they are presented. Or to shun centrists who argue for “finding a middle ground” between the bigoted position and the correct one.
I fell down the alt-right pipeline in highschool, and now I’m a nonbinary leftist landing somewhere between social democracy and anarcho-communism. I of all people have to believe in not just sending bigoted people to the gulag… But the trick is that no matter what, democratic platforms shouldn’t be given to those ideals. You shouldn’t be able to run on a platform of blocking trans healthcare, deporting a made up number of ““illegal immigrants”” (undocumented migrants), or fucking “being a dictator on day one”. And defending those acts also should be heavily looked down upon.
That’s a pretty good definition, but it’s definitely not easy.
How about this sentence: “Chinese tourists are loud, obnoxious, have no respect for the places they visit, and are harming our city.”
Obviously, that’s an opinion but is the opinion racist?
Another example: “Whenever I read a story about an elderly Asian being attacked in my city, it’s always by a black man.”
Racist? Or just an observation?
The point I’m getting at is you really shouldn’t use absolutes. “Never engage” sounds nice but in practice that philosophy tends to lead to ever-narrower echo chambers. Because over time, the scope of what is “racist” or not tends to increase. Because anyone who argues for something being not racist is seen as a suspected racist.
This kind of absolutism is why Leftism always descends into a circular firing squad imo. You can list guidelines, but there will always be a large gray area of context-dependent statements. When you take a subjective, variable, or vague thing and try to apply absolute guidelines to it, bad things happen.
I still think it’s easier than you would suggest. If you’re willing, please bear with me as I have a lot to say in response (as you can see)
How about this sentence: “Chinese tourists are loud, obnoxious, have no respect for the places they visit, and are harming our city.”
If they (the person in the example) think it’s inherent to all Chinese tourists, then yes. It’s racist. That easy. In this particular scenario, saing “the’re harming our city” is particularly something i would investigate. Now you might ask “well how do you determine if the person thinks it’s inherent?” And well… you can’t. Not really. But if I respond to the person with “well, there might be things influencing youe experience. Not every Chinese tourist is rude, in fact a lot of tourists are rude worldwide”, they can either respond by reflecting on the opinion and realize over a larger disussion that maybe it’s just rich tourists in general that are rude, and the Chinese tourists that they’ve met have seemed somewhat wealthier… or they say “no, they’re all rude it’s just their culture.” The latter response of course being a refusal to engage with the discussion. You can continue trying to convince them if it’s a friend or family or you’re just really persistent, but at a certain point… Some people will not change their mind in 1, 2, 5, 10, or even 100 discussions on the topic and it’s better to say “I understand your experience, but you are factually wrong, and we won’t consider your opinion for lawmaking and social outcomes”
Another example: “Whenever I read a story about an elderly Asian being attacked in my city, it’s always by a black man.”
Still pretty easy, I might ask for clarification if I heard that, but given the wording you’ve provided, it doesnt set off any dogwhistle alarms in my head. “Whenever I see a natural disaster in Florida on the news, it’s always a hurricane” is a lot different that “Hurricanes only hit Florida” or “Florida only gets hit by hurricanes”
“Never engage” sounds nice but in practice that philosophy tends to lead to ever-narrower echo chambers.
If I gave you the impression that I was advocating for “never engage” I’m sorry but that’s not my position, and it’s seemingly not the position of many of the other people in the thread. No one reasonable is saying to exile people for disagreeing on a retirement funding policy, or whether it’s better to put your child in sciences or arts, etc.etc. What is being said per the tolerance paradox is that intolerance should not be tolerated and the people that try to compromise between “everyone should have the same rights” and “I want to ban/hurt/endanger this group” or “this group’s mere existence endangers our own” should go with them.
Because anyone who argues for something being not racist is seen as a suspected racist.
🧐
This kind of absolutism is why Leftism always descends into a circular firing squad imo.
I’m feel as thought most people in the thread have been rather nuanced. If nothing else, I feel I have been. The only “absolutist” thing being said is “bigotry shouldn’t be tolerated”. Do you mind providing an example of this that doesn’t just point at the intolerance paradox?
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Who said there was? Dont try to strawman this. You are missing the point. And your condescension is unwarranted.
No, there is no sound argument for racism, and when you hear an argument for it, you identify its nonsense and move on. But that doesn’t mean there are no sound arguments for other things you disagree with.
Frankly, anyone can point at something that is morally wrong and say it’s wrong. That doesn’t make YOU right. Thats just essentially virtue signalling.
I disagree with fascists and racists too. But im sure there is something else out there we disagree on, such as whether or not you should block people who disagree with you.
My point is that you can’t arrive at what is right without knowing what is wrong and you can’t know what is wrong if you block everyone who disagrees with you.
You also cant rule out a person having a good take just because they also have some bad takes.
I think some of the confusion here might be that this comic is specifically referencing booting out bigots and their apologists.
if someone is willing to argue in bad faith (in this case, specifically bigots), there is no reason to listen to that or anything else they have to say since they’ve shown they are willing to argue in bad faith at all. I also think anyone who is an apologist of them is also not worth listening to because they are in bad faith by proxy.
that being said, it’s perfectly okay to have people arguing in good faith while coming to different conclusions. there can be disagreement and that is healthy as you’ve said.
such as whether or not you should block people who disagree with you.
I don’t think anyone was making the argument to block everyone who disagrees with you. If someone wants to do a social intrigue game in DND I’m going to think that’s not the best tool for the job, but I’m not going to block them.
If someone’s like “women shouldn’t be allowed to vote” then that’s a whole different kind of disagreement.
My point is that you can’t arrive at what is right without knowing what is wrong and you can’t know what is wrong if you block everyone who disagrees with you.
I don’t know if that’s true? I don’t need to see every variation of racist argument to identify racism is bad. You don’t need to know the full set of possibilities to pick a good one. Like, you probably have reasonable interactions with dogs on the street and never considered going on all fours and aggressively pissing and howling before.
This only applies though if the bigot or their apologist is willing to have an honest discussion with good intentions. The problem with tolerating them is that they do not have any respect for truth, or in having an honest discussion. Engaging with that is beyond pointless as the best it serves is to show people that already understand it to be bad that it is bad. And at worst it will confuse someone who doesn’t understand or reason well into siding with bigotry.
All this discussion of “well people should know and be able to reason” falls flat when you look at examples around the world where intolerant bigots were tolerated. The US and Germany are two examples I can think of off the top of my head. The US has a felon, fascist, wannabe dictator as one option and he has an honest chance of winning. Then in Germany they are having essentially a resurgence of the Nazi party in AfD and it’s been gaining traction, particularly in eastern states from what I’ve read.
Bigotry and hatred don’t need a platform. They do fine on their own. Giving them shelter only creates issues. You don’t need to see their arguments because their arguments don’t come from reason but from spite and they have no intention of fair engagement.
The US has a felon, fascist, wannabe dictator as one option and he has an honest chance of winning. Then in Germany they are having essentially a resurgence of the Nazi party in AfD and it’s been gaining traction, particularly in eastern states from what I’ve read.
I would argue that both cases are products of echo chambers rather than insufficient moderation.
I mean, those bigots don’t silence themselves when you ban them. They are still talking, just in forums that will ban you for daring to rebut them.
Because censorship creates the echo chambers that allow bigotry to thrive, censorship is a much greater problem than bigotry.
but if you are lazy or dumb debater, it is quite easy to label anything with any negative word you pull out of your hat in order to avoid the discussion that is hard for you.
Found another one of them.
Just in case it’s not clear, there are indeed people with ideas so toxic and so dangerous they need to be removed. Otherwise they will ruin it for everyone. When you tolerate the intolerant, tolerance is eventually seized and destroyed by the intolerant.
This isn’t a case of disagreeing, this is by far the most common misrepresentation that centrist apologists use to try and vilify the banning and ostracizing of bigots and harmful ideology. There is no comparison to disagreeing about flavors of ice cream, to not wanting someone who hates trans people in your community where trans people hang out. Any attempt to do so is a bad faith comparison, because they are not equivalent.
How do you know what a toxic idea is if you never hear one. It is helpful to know what is wrong when trying to determine what is right.
I never said let people with bad takes in. I said hear them and disagree with them. Having such terrible takes in the air is a great way to strengthen your position when you are able to point out the absurdity of the bad argument.
If we close ourselves off to all the arguments we dont like then we run the risk of becoming so entrenched in our own opinion being the only right one that we never let anyone tell us we are wrong.
Finding the right path is a group effort, and it takes good and bad views to get there.
Just look at your agument, its so matter of fact. It feels like you have determined the correct position so all other views are wrong. The opening sentence “found another one” is enough to see this. You arent right automatically because you have had enough people agree with you. Especially whn you reject any opposing or even slightly different view point.
The line is where their words cross over from speech to violence. When they call for eliminating people from society, you can remove them by the same methods they advocate.
“Toxic and dangerous” are relative terms. When the moderation team closes the Overton window enough that Chocolate ice cream qualifies as “toxic”, the only dissent you can still have is between natural and artificial vanilla flavoring.
there are indeed people with ideas so toxic and so dangerous they need to be removed.
Probably. But the argument is about who gets to decide who they, not whether they exist.
Nazis are identified by their affiliation with the Nazi party. People you think are Nazis are identified by your opinion of them and absolutely nothing more.
If you could provide an objective definition of these ‘apologists’, we might have something to discuss, but clearly there can be no such definition, these are not facts like the shape of the earth or the speed of light.
We (almost) all agree that some levels of intolerance should not be tolerated, what we disagree on is which opinions confer such a status on someone.
You should be intelligent enough and convicted in your understanding of any point you argue strongly, that you will be able to identify an irrational or false argument.
yeah, no.
“identifying irrational and false argument” takes time and we have only limited amount of it here on earth. also, once you have identified irrational and false argument, there is no need to do it over and over again. we are under no obligation to sort through a pile of crap just to show we are the better people (whatever that phrase means for anyone)
and i say that as someone who was recently banned for “trolling” by some kid on a power trip to protect his cult from my arguments, so i should have understanding for your line of reasoning, but i don’t.
as always in life, it is a matter of degree and it can be relative (which is the phrase that irself can be used to excuse almost anything, 😂)
Wait, because your time is limited on earth, you shouldn’t learn how to identify bad actors? I think it’s a pretty basic and vital skill. Am i misunderstanding you. Are you saying we should all be gullible fools and rely on some unknown force to sheild us from bad arguments?
you shouldn’t learn how to identify bad actors?
bad actor is not the same as bad argument. once you know someone is bad actor, you can just ignore them or kick them out and you don’t have to bother with dissecting every single one of their sentences.
for example, after reading multiple comments by you, mainly defending asshole’s right to bother others because what if they had some brilliant thought one day, i have come to conclusion that i don’t want to waste any more time on your bad trolling and i am perfectly fine risking that i will miss some brilliant thought by you. welcome to my blocklist.
you can just ignore them or kick them out
Blocking doesn’t do this at all lol. It’s just ceding the floor to someone.
I am aware. Some actions are not available to you if you are not the mod.
I know you won’t see this, but for the benefit of the tiny chance that there is someone interested in reading this, you are a perfect example of what i am describing. You didn’t like what i was saying, you wouldnt entertain the idea that i might have a point, and so you decided i am a troll and blocked me.
Im not saying that you would have ever gained some pearl of wisdom from me. Im not some philosophical genius or anything even close to it. But by blocking me (and likely anyone who disagrees with you) instead of engaging in the discussion, you are cutting yourself off from criticism of your beliefs. Beliefs that may be wrong.
So, in your world, eventually, you are surrounded by yes men who will never disagree with you, and you will become deluded into thinking you are always right.
Which is exactly what those maga nutjobs do.
Much better to spread the accepted hate than to be rational.
Oh, the bigots! OH MY GOOOOOOOD THE BIGOOOOOTS, Heaven curse the bigots! They’re invading our spaces, corrupting our children’s minds! A Senate Select Committee on Bigotry is now a national imperative. The bar for non-bigotry must be raised CONTINUALLY higher: society cannot afford anything less! And the purge must be comprehensive. Our communities MUST be kept linguistically pure. Associations must be kept PRISTINE AT ALL TIMES. Suspect the poster above you? Suspect your brother or sister? Report and unfollow and block at every opportunity! Trust-n-safety them out of existence! Interpretation is vacillation!
There is no volume level below 100 when condemning the awful terrible ungood bigot!
when memes start taking themselves seriously
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You just said nothing at all, my friend. Were you accusing the poster? Was it satirical? Was it serious? Nobody knows. Who is the clown? Is it OP? Is it yourself, the general public, some sucker who replied to you?
Which is a nice example of how the Internet is weird. Not great for making a point, tho. :-)
Might not be great, but you saw a point. So, hey if it works…
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Go ahead then. Have a nice life.
Edit: I mean, how are you going to argue against echo chambers, then turn around and hide inside one? Come on, buddy.
So brave 🤡
Honestly if you start to suck like the bigots, it’s no surprise you would start to claim that anyone who points that out is a “centrist” bigot too to be yeeted away.
Sometimes I feel like people who want to fight bitotry have become cartoons doint a black and white evil vs good. Nope sorry. The world is not so clear cut. It’s a mess. And the word “centrist” can now also be used for censorship. Congratulations. You suck just as much as the bigots now. Hope it “helped” to adopt their tactics! 🤣
Nah mate, you can’t tolerate the intolerant. That’s how you end up with a nazi pub.
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I don’t agree with you
Blocked
Lol.
