Lemmy has a strong tendency to criticize the US, and a lot of the critiques of certain issue with the US are valid. However, I started getting really tired of opening comment sections in innocuous and non-political posts only to see that someone somehow found a way to criticize the US in it. At first, I started thinking that maybe some Lemmy users are really unhappy and find criticizing a something stronger helped them feel better as if standing up to injustice was a passion of theirs. But, we don’t see them do that with other targets, just the US. The more I notice and think about it, I’m starting be suspicious that some of those users and comments aren’t authentic, but made to create divisiveness in the West and reject the US entirely. In other words, they may be Russian, Chinese, et al. agents working to feed a stream of propaganda in order to further cause chaos and lack of unity in the West as we have seen them do before.

Anyone else think about this?

This is what I’m thinking the game plan is:

  1. Criticize something obviously unjust that the US has done. Ignore that all other major powers have also committed atrocities.
  2. Link and liken it to other US matters & behaviors
  3. Paint the US entirely as evil so that nothing the US can do is just
  4. Attack anyone that supports anything out of the US (we are between here and #3 above)
  5. Create a black-and-white model of geopolitics: US vs everyone else. EU and Russia on the same team lol
  6. West fragments as US and EU relationship dwindle from pseudo-populist movements (e.g. MAGA)
  7. Pick specific countries in the EU to start alienating and repeat the cycle
  8. ???
  9. Profit in special economic zones
  • Bear@lemmynsfw.com
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    3 days ago

    Doesn’t matter to me what their reasons are. The pattern is clear. The pervasive sentiment is unrealistic, delusional, harmful for everyone involved, and misrepresentative of every real world population.

  • Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
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    3 days ago

    I would add that a lot of what Americans read as “criticism” can be explained by a heady combination of incredibly poor reading comprehension and a lifetime of being spoon-fed humour with a laugh-track.

    The amount of angry, abusive reactions to posts that are clearly a joke is hilarious in itself and just makes us wind them up even more

  • OceanSoap@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    I honestly think there are definitely, if not bots, agents/feds that come on here and really push to radicalize people.

    As someone who is generally pro-America, pro- capitalism and pro-liberalism (as in, classical, not today’s fucked version), it’s really interesting to converse with people who are just as crazy as the “God is King” types, just flipped on the modern versions of conspiracies and bad takes.

  • JoeKrogan@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    A corporate owned platform is not going to expose you to viewpoints that are against its interests. Lemmy is more inline with the actual state of the world as you are talking to other humans.

    Sure at times we many not like what we hear but that is ok. We all need to hear other viewpoints, it is how we grow. Its not a personal attack and if you think about it being critical of a government is good, people should want their government held accountable and working for the people.

    It is also not about red vs blue or any of the other bullshit labels . None of that matters, you are more like the average Russian than your leaders. Most people just want to get on with their lives with as little bullshit as possible. As for loyalty to the nation, I like Einstein’s answer here.

    Viereck: “Do you look upon yourself as a German or as a Jew?”

    Einstein: “It is quite possible, to be both. I look upon myself as a man. Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.”

    I am from Europe and I am highly critical of the US as they are a bully, They are not some moral do-gooders that the movies paint them as. They have military bases all over the place and have meddled with so many countries. They are an empire.

    “The U.S. has engaged in nearly 400 military interventions between 1776 and 2023”

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_United_States

    As for the platform aspect, do you think Twitter or facebook and the rest have been a net positive for humanity ?

    Sure there have been positives but there have been massive negatives such as

    • the undermining of Democratic elections, brexit and trumps campaigns.
    • things like xkeyscore where these companies in some cases collaborated with the NSA or if not the greed facilitated the collection of data.
    • the algorithms that promote hate because it drives engagement, thus further driving a wedge in the fabric of society.
    • we have seen governments pressure these companies to hand over data and they then arrest, torture or kill the users.
    • things promoting US Interests are pushed such as the Arab spring but things against it such as occupy wall street or criticism of Israeli genocide is silenced or shadow banned.
    • suicides from bullying

    For the record I am critical of my own government too where it makes sense but they do not invade other countries.

  • kuato@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    HALP: This social media platform that isn’t owned by a US corporation is not suppressing criticism of the US enough!

    You can always go back to your safe space on Reddit or Facebook or whichever corpo US social media site.

  • Hanrahan@slrpnk.net
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    4 days ago

    The US bullies nearly every other nation on the planet, they also bully thier supposed friends. People have little option with a bully aside from vociferous push back.

    You’re right that the US is strong, they way you deal woth your despites is violence.

    Lemmy is more geographically diverse then many places online, so perhaps instead of taking umbrage, lisywen ?.

  • ZoDoneRightNow@kbin.earth
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    4 days ago

    Fuck the US hyper-centrism. If this place was so anti US, why are all the communities titled “News” and “Politics” exclusively for discussing seppo shit? This place is less US-centric than other platforms but is still extremely US focused. If you look for more than a second, you will find anti-russia, anti-china, anti-israel and anti-germany shit too (just to name a few). Finally, I just want to say, fuck the United States of America and everything that that hellhole represents. I am sorry that you have to live there

  • angstylittlecatboy@reddthat.com
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    4 days ago

    I honestly feel like Lemmy got considerably less vitriolic toward Americans after the election.

    I used to think Lemmy was too insignificant for Russian influents, but I’m not sure anymore.

  • FelixCress@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    find criticizing a something stronger helped them feel better

    🤦

    Are you for real? And you are surprised US and USians get criticised?

  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Your question contains hints at where you’re coming from.

    At first, I started thinking that maybe some Lemmy users are really unhappy and find criticizing a something stronger helped them feel better

    You look at the criticism and you think they’re simply people being jealous or something, that’s not it at all. To be fair I’m not sure about what criticism are you seeing constantly, but the ones I’ve encountered mostly reflect my own criticism of it, e.g. the worst health care in the world, terrible education, abismal class gap, blatant racism, police brutality, overspenditure in military, school shootings, etc, etc, etc. Let me be absolutely clear, the US is NOT stronger than any developed country in any of these, I’ve lived in places with terrible healthcare that I would not wish on my worst enemy and they’re still leaps and bounds better than what you guys have.

    But, we don’t see them do that with other targets, just the US.

    But we do, the difference is no one is making posts claiming Russia is a better country and that’s why people criticize it. And most other countries accept their shortcomings, take it from the thread a while back from what people in the US need to hear and the similar one for Europe. Every single one of the answers on the US had someone saying that it was just jealousy, or that it wasn’t all that bad, or that that was better than the alternative, or one guy even tried to tell me that his city had none of those issues. On the other hand in the EU one most of the answers were more akin to “you’re right, this is something that’s really bad here”.

    reject the US entirely. In other words, they may be Russian, Chinese, et al. agents working to feed a stream of propaganda in order to further cause chaos and lack of unity in the West as we have seen them do before.

    Let me be extremely clear here, Fuck Russia, Fuck China. For all of my criticisms of the USA it is still a (very weird and indirect) democracy. So if I had to choose between those 3 I’ll take the USA every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Luckily I don’t, and I can live in a country without any of the issues I see there and express my opinion on how poorly the USA treats their citizens (you have to keep paying taxes after moving abroad for crying out loud) in the same manner I would express myself against any other country doing the same.

    Criticize something obviously unjust that the US has done. Ignore that all other major powers have also committed atrocities.

    Most of the criticism I see re for what the US is doing NOW, not in the past.

    Paint the US entirely as evil so that nothing the US can do is just

    I don’t think that’s what the majority is doing, there could be a few people like it, but for the major part I think people recognize that the USA is a a “decent” place to live, especially when compared to Russia or China. But what you need to understand is that it’s not the greatest country of all like you think, most of us would not move there unless we were offered ludicrous amounts of money.

    EU and Russia on the same team lol

    No one in Europe believes that, in fact you can still see plenty of Ukrainian flags around.

    West fragments as US and EU relationship dwindle from pseudo-populist movements (e.g. MAGA)

    If you think MAGA is pseudo-populism I would hate to see what you consider as real populism.

    The short answer is that you’re probably not used to people telling you the US is not all that great, so you see that as an attack, and you think that because people criticize you that means they are trying to make others hate you, but I think most of us are just pointing your shortcomings because a lot of you act like very entitled narcissists who think there’s nothing wrong with the USA so obviously those who speak against it must be puppets.

    TL;DR: criticism of the USA doesn’t mean there’s nothing good there, much less is it an endorsing Russia or China. But you don’t need to tell narcissists what they’re doing well, they’ll tell you themselves.

  • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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    4 days ago

    Plus, they don’t even use the metric system, and I don’t like their version of football!