It’s one thing to have differing views, but I’ve seen enough attempted reddit migrations to be relieved that the popular communities in the fediverse so far haven’t been about crazy racist stuff or other extreme right bullshit.

I am also glad that I’m getting away from reddit’s general political shitposting, which was more left leaning. You couldn’t have any proper discourse on there, and even I with my generally more left leaning views recognized that.

  • chaogomu@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    What OP doesn’t seem to want to understand is that Left vs Right is Up vs Down.

    The origins of Left vs Right as terms come from the days of the French Revolution. There was a vote called to ascertain the power of the King. Those who wanted to grant the King an Absolute Veto were asked to sit on the right side of the speaker’s podium, those who were against, or wanted no king at all, were asked to sit on the left. There were many such votes.

    Thus left vs right was born, the left represented the power of the people, and the right represented the power of the nobility.

    Then conservatism was created, replacing birthright nobility for those who were merely rich and powerful.

    Right and Left then became shorthand in the press for Conservatism vs those with more Democratic ideals, be it communist, socialists, or merely those who believed in taxing the rich and using that money to improve the lives of everyone. The press in Europe used the terms from almost the beginning, but it took a while for those terms to reach America.

    Sadly, the Right figured out pretty quickly how to suppress and demonize the Left. They also figured out how to turn hatred to their advantage, to expand the ranks of the Right Wing supporters at the expense of the Left. Because you don’t personally need to be super rich if the people you’re taught to hate are super poor.

    The thing is, the Left cannot abide attacks on those people. Which is why minority and lgbt+ rights are such a big part of the platform. Because those people are in fact part of The People, and the Left is the Power of the People. The goal is to lift everyone up, to protect everyone equally under the law.

    After all, as Frank Wilhoit said;

    “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect”