I want to draw attention to the elephant in the room.
Leading up to the election, and perhaps even more prominently now, we’ve been seeing droves of people on the internet displaying a series of traits in common.
- Claiming to be leftists
- Dedicating most of their posting to dismantling any power possessed by the left
- Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
- Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
- Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is “to the left of them”
- Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system
- Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism
When you look at an aerial view of these behaviors in conjunction with one another, what they’re accomplishing is pretty plain to see, in my opinion. It’s a way of utilizing the moral scrupulousness of the left to cut our teeth out politically. We get so caught up in giving these arguments the benefit of the doubt and of making sure people who claim to be leftists have a platform that we’re missing ideological parasites in our midst.
This is not a good-faith discourse. This is not friendly disagreement. This is, largely, not even internal disagreement. It is infiltration, and it’s extremely effective.
Before attacking this argument as lacking proof, just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn’t take advantage of it?
By refusing to ever consider that those who do nothing with their time in our spaces but try to drive a wedge between us, to take away our power and make us feel helpless and hopeless, we’re giving them exactly that vector. I am telling you, they are using it.
We need to stop letting them. We need to see it for what it is, get the word out, and remember, as the political left, how to use the tools that we have to change society. It starts with us between one another. It starts with what we do in the spaces that we inhabit. They know this, and it’s why they’re targeting us here.
Stop being an easy target. Stop feeding the cuckoo.
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And to add to all that I’ll just repeat myself: https://lemm.ee/comment/20099873
Ah, yet another long post by a white democrat who thinks they’re a leftist and shouldn’t be questioned.
Ah, yet another comment by a doomer wannabe Marxist that thinks giving up and letting the fascists kill everybody is preferable to working with people who only share 90% of your ideals
First of all, Marxist is only an insult if you’re MAGA or right-wing, so way to tell on yourself. Second, I’m an anarchist, notice the instance. Third, democrats are a right-of-center party, you share at best maybe a third of my ideals. And forth, I don’t vote for people who sit at the table with literal nazis. That’s what your party is doing right now. So save the self-righteousness for when you lot aren’t actively working with fascists to end democracy.
You and many other people not voting or voting for clown candidates with zero chance of winning directly helped the fascists gain power. You’re literally part of the problem because all you do is cry that democrats don’t do every single thing that you want a party to do. I’m not a Democrat and definitely not right wing, just endlessly annoyed by privileged children that sit on their high horses. You actively helped the fascists take over the country and now you just whine and cry to scratch your complaining addiction.
I voted for Harris, dipshit, because you numbnuts didn’t give us any other choice. But you’re good at that, aren’t you?
And now that 20 million of you liberal shits sat at home and handed the election to Trump because you couldn’t be bothered to get off your white, fat asses to vote, you’re blaming it on everyone else. That’s the democrat playbook. Be absolute shit, blame everyone else for your failings, and eternally play the victim. Oh, and let’s not forget selling merch while profiting off the abuse minorities face every day.
So you can fuck right off with that attitude. You put us here, so you can take the blame for it.
Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
These two things drive me fucking crazy, and you are absolutely spot on with all of this. Obviously, the Democrats aren’t perfect. But the argument that X makes them complicit in Y issue is a null point when the alternative is unbridled, unchecked fascism.
WHATEVER POINT YOU WERE TRYING TO MAKE, IT WILL NOT BE SOLVED BY ELECTING FASCISTS. It doesn’t matter if it’s corruption, wars, homophobia, trade, the economy, taxes, it could even be people shitting in litter boxes.
Whatever it is, having the entire country taken down to the studs is not going to help your issue, in fact, it’s probably going to make your problem significantly worse. The economy? Look up the tariff war that caused the great depression. Homophobia? Read up on the lavender scare and how it tanked our astronomy and weapons research, notably ICBM research. Wars? Need I say anything more? We’ve had insane wars due to Republican war hawks for decades. Whoever you were trying to protect, they are 100% B O N E D now. And now we are sending innocent people off to literal concentration camps, so don’t give me any of that “the Dems don’t respect human rights” crap. It’s beyond the pale now and all this was warned of in advance by those morons who published P2025 before the election. And yet, people still fell for it. It’s absolutely infuriating that we are gonna have to dig the country (and the economy) out of a massive pit once again, if it’s even possible at this point. We will be extremely lucky to prize it back out of the hands of dictators before they run it into the ground like they did with Venezuela.
I suppose it must make the world a lot simpler if you assume the US Democratic and Republican parties represent the full range of beliefs that exist in the world, and anyone who doesn’t neatly fit into those categories is simply lying.
Take that, you strawman! And that!
Voluntarily disenfranchising yourself is complying in advance.
A broken tool still has its uses. A bent screwdriver can still be a prybar. A rusty sword can still kill, so don’t ask people to drop it before have something better. It is possible to explore and acknowledge the failures and limitations of a system – and to reduce overreliance on it – without abdicating all influence over it.
The Democratic Party is a disappointment. They follow popular (polled) opinion rather than sticking to principles, and that makes them vulnerable to Overton shifts. As public opinion towards trans people has been poisoned by the Jugendverderber libel, Democrats have largely thrown trans people under the bus instead of fighting back. Likewise, Democrats stick closely to corporate interests because money is power. These issues may never be fixable.
The solution to this is not to capitulate and discard what political influence we still hold.
The first half of the solution is to primary the hell out of Democrats. A left-wing caucus within the party could easily tilt things in our favor, just like the Freedom Caucus tilted the RNC in the opposite direction once before. Bernie Sanders (link) and David Hogg (link) are now spearheading multiple campaigns to do exactly that. Even if you have no faith in your ability to change the norms of the party, just think how much impact your resistance could have if you held an office, even a low one, even for just a week. Do you have any idea how much trouble a county clerk can make?
The second half of the solution is to build solidarity-based power structures outside government to reduce overreliance on a broken system. Economic desperation, social isolation, and cultural “other”-ing make people easy to exploit and oppress regardless of the type of government, so attack those problems directly. Unions, mutual aid networks, churches, you know the drill. Put in the legwork to find them in your area or your profession.
Embrace nuance. Embrace diversity – even political diversity. Political beliefs are not sacred, but the lives under those political systems are. Don’t try to reduce the vast complexity of politics to 120 characters. Don’t treat the ongoing wellbeing of human beings flippantly. If you think the problem is the existence of a state, then say so, but make your case for why making the state worse makes conditions for its subjects better. If you think voting third-party will teach the Democrats a lesson and drag them leftwards, then make your case and acknowledge the risks of what happens if you’re wrong.
Don’t just ridicule every positive effort you see. Doomer trolls (or cuckoos, if we’re going with that) are pithy, but reductive, and their criticism is never constructive.
This all day.
I think one if the big things that people miss is that while it may be the most prominent fights in the headlines, there are countless little fights going on all the time and they have a huge impact. They don’t make national news or sometimes even local news, but they still matter. It’s easy to dismiss them, but they still move the overton window and they still have a substantial impact on the day to day lives of people across the country. Every union steward in some small retail chain standing up to management makes an impact. Every judge who stands up for the rights of marginalized people makes an impact. Every city councilor who votes to fund programs for people in need. Every volunteer who shows up day after day to soup kitchens and food banks. Everybody who stops to give a few bucks to a person on the street. Everyone who sees someone struggling and takes the time to try to lift them up. Every advocate who spends their time helping people who are trying to find a way out of horrible situations.
The less visible stuff is much more wide-spread and makes a huge difference, maybe even more of a difference in many cases, than the big visible stuff.
It honestly drives me up a wall when people who seem like they never go out and connect with the real world around them spend so much time ranting about how everyone’s screwed and nobody’s doing anything about it. All they have to do is look outside or step outside themselves and lend someone, anyone a hand.
I 100% agree with this post. I do believe many of these attackers are sincere, but that it’s time to recognize it doesn’t matter and the end effect is the same as if they had acted in bad faith.
They give permission to be cynical to the less informed who might otherwise feel guilt to support one candidate or the other. They create an argument that no one needs to pick a side, which a lot of people take comfort in because our politics are so divisive and polarizing that many don’t want to wade into them if they can stay above the fray.
The message in the 2024 election should have been “Biden has been great, if you think he was bad you don’t realize what he’s had to deal with caused by Trump and the pandemic and the not-entirely real Democratic majority in the Senate which includes two turn-coats. His only issue is he’s old so let’s go with Harris.” That’s all. But that kind of messaging was never possible because most of the left wanted to always frame things by starting with their laundry-list of all the things they didn’t like about Biden to prove their independent thinker bona-fides, and then circle around and say “BUT here’s the thing-” which is lousy messaging.
Even today, when it’s clear Biden fixed the economy and passed a ton of great legislation we can’t frame the discussion as “Biden was great and now Trump has ruined the economy and defunded all these programs that were working” because people still want to start by crapping on the Democrats and sabotaging their own case. It’s a great plan if the goal is to have the left perform weaker than they should have in all future debates and elections.
There are an awful lot of unsubstantiated claims being made in this thread, especially wrt what these supposed maga-bot/trolls all claim or do.
If the post contained any actual examples of comments that OP believes are either bots or trolls, it might be possible to actually analyze whether their assumptions and claims have validity.
As it stands, however, making broad insinuations about the ill intentions of anyone who disagrees with you is not very Nice, and is certainly not Assuming Good Faith.
The mods here are very active, and very capable. We don’t need people starting witch hunts here to “root out the fake Leftists”, and based on OP and some others’ reactions in this thread, that’s clearly what’s happening here.
I’m specifically talking about an exploitable vector that can be taken advantage by any number of people or organizations, so it’s not really about particular users. There are examples, to be sure, but pointing them out or accusing them of working for anyone in particular would be counter-productive. Not only would it distract from the subject at hand, but they can literally make an infinite number of sock-puppets so it doesn’t really matter unless you feel like playing an absolutely exhausting and fruitless game of whack-a-mole.
I’m seeking to illustrate the behavioral pattern, the weakness that it exploits, and the damage it can do, which I expect to have much more efficacious results.
If the post contained any actual examples of comments that OP believes are either bots or trolls, it might be possible to actually analyze whether their assumptions and claims have validity.
We don’t need people starting witch hunts here to “root out the fake Leftists”
These are contradictory statements.
I won’t identify anyone who is claimed to be an example, specifically because of the valid concern raised in the second quote. I will say that the two examples that come most clearly to mind for the proof requested in the first quote are two people who are in that category of “talks CONSTANTLY about how voting for Democrats would be a terrible thing that no self-respecting leftist would EVER do for any reason”, who also claimed to be American, who also made mistakes that no American would make. One of them used non-American characters to punctuate a number, and then when it was pointed out they got confused and didn’t understand what people were pointing out that was weird about their number. Another claimed that they employed a bunch of people and paid them all $250k per year (and, again, seemed not to understand that this was a wild thing to claim when people pointed it out ).
Is that proof positive that those people are working for the Russians? No, not really. Is it “beyond a reasonable doubt” that they are working for someone? Yes, to me. Certainly in conjunction with all the other circumstantial evidence about the way they behave. You use the standard straw man of “anyone who disagrees with you” being put in this category, but that is not at all what’s happening here. I disagree with people on Lemmy constantly and I very rarely think that this is what’s going on. However when I run into a very particular confluence of factors and ways of behaving, I start to think that the person might be a paid propaganda account.
But regardless of that, talking about the problem in general is surely okay. Your implicit threat to have the mods shut us all down is a waste of time. Talk to the mods (I am sure that some people have), tell them about the post, let them do what they’re doing to do. This is 100% an active and important problem on the Fediverse and talking about it is no kind of bad faith. I do actually, halfway, agree that singling out any particular user to accuse, could be a problem even if you’re extremely sure. But that’s not what this is.
I’m not an american (but anti-electoral nonetheless), and I do get the critique and think it is perfectly valid if one views things through liberal framework - vote for the lesser evil, minimize suffering, not voting is letting the bad candidate on getting the upper hand, etc.
However, this isn’t an objective position but an ideological one, as it operates within lesser-evilism, coalitionism within capitalist institutions and having a definition of “the left” that generalizes them to essentially having to be “pro-democracy somewhat progressive liberals”, and any deviation makes them into a troll or a right winger or something like that.
What is important to realize is that most leftists aren’t liberals - in fact, many leftists, particularly Marxists, view elections as:
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A way to legitimize the class rule that leads into passivity among the working class who are being ruled over, essentially recognizing that this “tool that we are given” is just an illusion and leads to neutralization of worker power,
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Enabling of ‘capitalist-tribalism’ in the form of “which capitalist manager do you support” which is seen in US through party loyalty and basically disarming the working class from realizing their own interests.
Essentially, their goal isn’t to just “vote for the lesser evil” or “achieve the maximum good through the means we’re given” but to abolish the system entirely, and electorialism/voting is counter-productive in that regard due to legitimizing effect that it has that I mentioned previously. This does go against the “liberal left” and their goals, and being on the same political wing does not automatically mean there’s an alliance or shared goals, nor does it mean that two positions aren’t going to have antagonistic goals.
Besides, why blame the left for the electoral failure who abstained from voting? Why not blame MAGA for voting in an enemy that goes against your interests (as in, people who have actually voted)?
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I came back to the post, and boy, did you get them riled up lol
Hopefully it serves to further demonstrate my point. It certainly has solidified its legitimacy for me.
It’s also very helpful of them all to come draw attention to themselves so those who wish to identify and block them have an easy opportunity.
They all speak sort of similarly to each other, too.
A lot of them are probably literally the same person.
I am highly curious to know what’s really going on there. Maybe it’s like 3 really influential accounts that are all very confident in themselves, and 50 other people who are looking for that all started imitating them, and at this point it’s mostly self-sustaining just from confused leftists. Maybe it’s a little team of 5 people all assigned to Lemmy, and they take shifts but only 1-2 of them are active at a time. Maybe it’s just one guy. Maybe it’s two whole separate teams, one for China and one for Russia, and they coexist with each other without being bothered or trying to coordinate all that much. Maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe some of them are American? That seems unlikely, I don’t think any GOP operation is this in-depth at this stage and some of them periodically make slip-ups that reveal that they’re not from the US even though they’re claiming to be, but who knows.
I really would like to know the answer. I think I never will find out, but it would be fascinating.
It could also be AI generated responses with similar prompts. Or a call center with specific guidelines for tone and content. Or some sort of remote platform with guidelines for posting. I know there are call centers full of scammers and the same was true of bot-farm employees at some point, probably still.
It is pretty fascinating. But yeah, the odds of ever getting a real answer are pretty low unless there’s some sort of whistleblower.
But hey, I bet said whistleblower could start a pretty profitable career in independent investigative journalism if they did provide that information to the right people, or if they self-published successfully. Just a thought, if such a person happens to be reading this!
Welcome to propaganda and people affected by it. You’re not safe from the stuff online.
Happy International Worker’s Day. Every single leader of emancipatory movements in the history of labor rights would disagree with you, having fought and been very vocal against the different flavors of oppression in order to get the liberal concessions that you seem to cherish today. Hopefully if you participate, you might find some leftists celebrating in the crowd. Please don’t get too angry at them for not defending genociders, I’m sure a lot of them ended up voting for Kamala anyway, but at least they got the confirmation that even opposing genocide is too great a hurdle for them.
I’m tired but I guess I’ll still address some of the traits you identified:
Claiming to be leftists
I’m a leftist
Dedicating most of their posting to dismantling any power possessed by the left
Okay that doesn’t sound like leftist behavior, you’re totally right. I just hope you don’t mean that “power possessed by the left” is the democratic party, but sure, that broadly sounds like liberals or feds.
Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
There’s a point to which you can push liberal concessions for damage control or for actually gaining some more concessions. I think criticizing voting is healthy since it’s still playing the capitalist’s game and a liberal “democracy” with almost no wiggle room anymore, but considering how little effort it takes to vote I’ll always advocate to both play their game and also assume that nothing will come out of it without actual pressure.
I’ve mostly seen people advocate for withholding their vote in the favor of some concession (please don’t do genocide), I’ve never seen someone say “don’t vote and also don’t do anything else”, but I’m sure they exist, you find all kinds of confused people online.
Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
Is genocide disqualifying for a political party or not? I’m asking you, specifically, if you think that a party that commits (funds, arms, protects, justifies, excuses, does constant propaganda for) a genocide in the face of their own atrocities, while actively silencing the voices within their own ranks that speak out, is worth defending? Again, I think the idea was to hopefully change the democratic party to the radical position of “anti genocide”. That failure is on them, not the people who threatened not to vote for them.
Not highlighting that issue is frankly criminal.
Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is “to the left of them”
Yeah that’s leftism, that’s always been leftism, but again I hope to god you don’t mean that “leftist political power” here represents the democratic party, so I’m gonna assume you mean more broadly what they call “purity politics” and constant division in the left. I think it’s fair to criticize people to the right of you, I’m to the right of anarchists and I welcome their criticism, even when I don’t agree with it. If I spent my time shitting on them I think they would be completely legitimate in calling me out for someone with ulterior motives, or a reactionary shithead.
Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system
I want you to examine your own sentence just for a second. To disempower an attempt at legitimate engagement with the political system. Opposing genocide isn’t used as a moral cudgel against whatever 10 steps removed version of power this is (and I’m not criticizing the way you put it, quite the opposite), it’s used AGAINST GENOCIDE.
People are out in the streets and criticizing liberal complicity because we talk about GENOCIDE not some vague questionable US foreign policy.
Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism
So that’s the democratic party, right? That’s why I’m confused because leftists are out in the street, even the most liberal ones with their “fight oligarchy” campaign, while the democrats are still out defending genocide, doing filibusters without a cause, and generally trailing so far behind the average population that it’s mind numbing. So I don’t know what you mean when you say “leftists”, because you seem to refer to two groups at the same time.
Anyway, voting goes both way, you can’t pretend to vote in a vacuum for the lesser evil without recognizing that you empower them and their genocidal endeavors.
And I’ll be a little more incisive: If you criticize a leftist of not caring about minorities (which I’ve seen a lot and is deeply ironic considering who did and didn’t vote for the dems) you open yourself to be criticized for having proudly voted and called on everyone else to vote for a party that does genocide, and having attacked the ones that tried to actually make a difference in shifting their position or using that moment to show what their true colors are.
and generally trailing so far behind the average population
I put it to you that this is a gerontocracy problem. It’s easy to fall behind where the general public is at when Congress is a grotesque take on Weekend at Bernie’s (no, not that Bernie, and yes, I’m aware of the irony).
I think that can often be a problem in political structures, but I don’t think this is the main issue. It might explain how their messaging is so terrible, but the republicans have clearly managed just fine and the average is almost exactly the same in both.
I think it’s primarily that they see support for Israel as an absolute necessity because it would (1) be another massive loss of support and political funding, and (2) a very difficult pill to swallow. Admitting to having supported a horrible genocide in full conscience and trying to convince that they have now learned their way might still look like a steeper hill to climb than the time-tested tradition of genocide denial.
It’d be great if it was the main issue though, I think you’re right in that at least they would have better messaging, unfortunately I don’t think the actual policies would be much different. In Europe for example fascist parties tend to be pretty young 🤷♂️
Let’s just get a few facts out of the way:
- Genocide is the worst crime humanity is capable of
- The US has a direct hand in multiple genocides
- Record levels of homelessness in the richest nation on earth is unacceptable
- Death from preventable illnesses in the richest nation on earth is unacceptable
- Highest infant mortality in the western world in the richest nation on earth is unacceptable
- Democrats are not interested in changing the status quo
- Republicans want a return to chattel slavery
- Neither party is willing to help us, nor will they ever allow us to vote third party by adding ranked choice or anything liek that
- Therefore, our best bet to break the cycle is to collectively vote for, say, the green party
You think leftists are unrealistic for being disgusted with Democrats? The genocide was live streamed to the world. Did you not see any of it? Did it not move you?
This post is beyond delusional. It’s like the meme about everything I don’t like is woke. The liberal version basically being everything I don’t like is a Russian/MAGA bot. Is it really that hard to believe that left leaning people don’t agree with the Democratic Party platform? You’re deeper in your bubble than you realize my friend.
Oh look, someone who’s generalizing op then tries to discredit them! Way to prove their point
They didn’t make any type of platform or political argument to even debate against. Basically saying that everyone who dislikes democrats is secretly a republican. That’s all I’m calling them on. Total nonsense.
Misdirection, nice! That’s cuz this is not about platforms or any political argument, dr Troll
You’re goofy man. I don’t even know what your point is. OP said something. I said I disagreed with it. Epic troll by me I guess.
Go to a politics or platforms community if you’re looking for a politic argument or stuff about platforms
As a leftist:
- True, It’s a piece of paper. If you think that will save us, you’re a dumbass.
- Mostly True, Look up the ratchet effect.
- Mostly False, we’ve had due process. It’s been unfair to minority communities, but in general it’s existed.
- Mostly False, He was mildly better. This is faint praise given he was a demented fossil facilitating a genocide.
Mildly better. Well, if this post accomplished one thing it was self-identification of the people it is about.
Neat how you ignored the rest of the sentence there. Probably because those aren’t contestable points huh?
“Mostly False, He was mildly better.”
Does that help?
This is faint praise given he was a demented fossil facilitating a genocide.
You know what I meant. Being obtuse doesn’t help your case, it just makes you look like a debate pervert.
just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn’t take advantage of it?
This is the same kind of argument that the tankies use to dismiss anyone who disagrees with them as a CIA plant. At least they name the CIA, you seem to be pointing to an even more ambiguous “they” that are out to get us. This is a conspiracy theory, dress it up all you want but your pointing to some ambiguous “they” and blaming them for your problems with no proof.
Occams razor is that they are leftists who hate the democratic party. They critique them more then the Republicans because the liberal side of lemmy covers that pretty well already, half the front page is shitting on trump right now. That’s good but at a certain point your beating a dead horse, everyone here already hates trump and thinks he’s bad, no point in reinforcing that past a point. A lot of people on here still have loyalty to the democratic party though that far exceeds the democrats loyalty to the left, so pointing that out can be effective and help change people’s minds instead of posting/commenting trump is hitler for the millionth time.
Your interpretation of Occam’s razor is that no one ever lies? Do you really think all human beings being honest about everything they say requires the least number of assumptions?
You’ve successfully clustered a bunch of trolls, time to block a bunch?
In a sense yes, people generally tell the truth more than they lie so the default assumption should be that someone is telling the truth, otherwise you enter into paranoia. That assumption can be broken when there is a clear gain from lying. Eg. You catch a thief outside the store they robbed they have a very clear reason to lie and say they were just walking by.
You’re explanation on why they’re lying isn’t very clear. First off, you fail to name who these people are and leave it ambiguous to let the person reading fill it in with their enemy (maga, nazis, russians etc.) just like every other conspiracy theory. Since the subject isn’t clear neither is the motive, you just sort of fill that in with "they hate the left, why do they hate the left? What are they gaining from convincing maybe a couple dozen liberals that the democrats suck on a very marginal social media? This isn’t the politburo for the comintern, there is barely any power on here to diffuse, so why put effort into doing so when there are far larger platforms to influence.
I’d like to draw a parallel to data security. Why make a strong password if nobody’s out there trying to break into accounts? Why secure your server’s ports if nobody’s going to attack them? Why take precautions against malicious collection of data to sell to third parties if we’re not sure who or how that data would be used?
These are behaviors that we don’t know the specific motivations for, we don’t know the individual bad actors in question or who they’re working for or what their specific plans are. But we know that if someone calls you claiming to be Geeksquad and tells you to go buy a bunch of gift cards to read to them over the phone, you’re being scammed. We know that if someone pretends to be a representative of a company and comes asking for your password, you shouldn’t trust them. We know that if certain kinds of traffic are spamming your ports looking for vulnerabilities, they don’t mean well.
Why? Because we are aware of the threat vector and can move to protect it before knowing the details of who in particular is planning on exploiting it. I don’t need to know specifically which hacker wants to break into my server to limit open ports. I don’t need to know who wants to steal my Steam account to know setting up 2fA is worthwhile.
Assuming good faith in bad actors is a vulnerability. The exploit vector is an attack on the political power of the left. I don’t need to know specifically who is behind it. I could speculate. Maybe it’s MAGA, maybe it’s Russia, maybe it’s some foreign bot-farm being hired by some other authoritarian regime, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that allowing the threat vector to remain open disempowers the left.
Why Lemmy? Why a small niche leftist platform rather than a larger platform?
Let’s say you’re a time traveler who hates punk music. What would be more effective to stop it before it starts? Sabotaging the planning for the Warped Tour in the 90s, or burning down CBGB in 1973?
CBGB was a small club at the time, barely notable at all. The Warped Tour, on the other hand, was a massive endeavor involving dozens of bands and thousands upon thousands of punk and ska fans. But if you know your history, you know that CBGB was a small venue with a massive impact on the American punk scene. It was a place where a lot of the bands that we know today got their start and came up. The Warped Tour, on the other hand, while probably influential on 90s teenagers who got to go see 20 bands in person for 20 bucks, was mostly just riding the wave of punk’s popularity and capitalizing it.
Targeting leftist spaces, especially small leftist spaces, could potentially be much more effective than targeting more general spaces. Lemmy in particular selects not only for leftists, but for anti-corporate, anti-establishment people with enough of an interest in tech and enough social media presence to jump on the bandwagon of a relatively unknown protocol just so they don’t have to rely on corporate social media. It has a barrier for entry that most of the public find to be either too daunting to bother to surmount, or that involves enough obscurity that they’re not even aware of it to begin with.
Beehaw in particular has human-vetted signups and even has a history of defederating with instances that have open sign-ups in order to be able to deal with moderation. A lot of that moderation is literally just contending with social conservatives who show up spouting racism, queerphobia, sexism, and ablism.
In other words, we are a small space that caters to a particular crowd of people well outside the mainstream politically, socially, and technologically. Small, niche spaces have a tremendous potential for resulting in wider-spread influence.
It’s not about convincing us that democrats suck. Most of us aren’t particularly happy with the democratic establishment anyway. It’s about demotivating us and frustrating our internal communications. It’s about trying to sabotage a potential locus for resistance.
And it isn’t just Lemmy. It isn’t even just the left that’s being targeted. We know social media is being used to pollute discourse and manipulate politics. We know there’s an artificial rightward push going on, and we know that it isn’t just the United States that’s being targeted with it. But anyone who wants to advance this artificial rightward push has a strong motivation to exploit any vulnerabilities that can be found in the US because of our position globally. Now that that position is crumbling, they have a strong motivation to make sure it doesn’t recover.
We have a responsibility to address that threat vector no matter who those parties are.
