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Have you noticed an increase in political fighting?

I travel a lot, and talk to a lot of different people. I’ve noticed that while people certainly do have differing opinions, it’s not as extreme as what I see online. I’m starting to feel like all this hate and division is manufactured. Has anyone else noticed, that when you actually talk to real people things are far less divided than various media would have you believe?

SomeGuy69 ,
@SomeGuy69@lemmy.world avatar

Your local opinion, even in a neighboring country, barely differs from another, but internationally via the internet, you are confronted with many more people. Also the internet is mostly bots by now with an agenda.

SendMePhotos ,

Not really. Seems to be a firm split in my area. IRL seems just as divided as online.

pr06lefs ,

I talk to people who are against corruption, against racism, believe the medical industry is broken, monopolies are bad, etc. Seems we agree on a lot of basic principles yet they are still voting trump tho. WTF?

LarkinDePark , (edited )

The other choice is another genocidal Zionist. I don’t get the confusion.

EDIT: The correct choice is not to take part in the charade and not be complicit in America’s crimes against humanity.

ToucheGoodSir ,

Netanyahu wants Trump to be the next president for some reason though?

LarkinDePark ,

Probably feels like he’s squeezed all he can out of the other party. Time for some fresh meat.

YeetPics ,
@YeetPics@mander.xyz avatar

Doubt.

He wants a real ally, not some asshole with a conscience who is informed via a functioning cabinet.

YeetPics ,
@YeetPics@mander.xyz avatar

Weird how that is LMAO.

It’s almost like you’ve caught a stoog in their false concern for Palestine or something. WEIRD!

StaySquared ,

It doesn’t matter who is president. The U.S. has been hijacked. Eliminate dual citizenship politicians, AIPAC, and ADL… and we will start to see actual changes that benefit the U.S.

Until then, every single politician that goes to the Western/Wailing Wall is an enemy of the people, of the world, essentially.

Talmudists, Kabbalists, Khazars, and Frankists.

pr06lefs ,

Don’t worry bro, you can write in Putin

LarkinDePark ,

Good. A less mass murdering president would be a better option for America.

YeetPics ,
@YeetPics@mander.xyz avatar

Good. A less mass murdering president would be a better option for America.

You’ll be happy to hear Harris is running! Much less mass murdering.

arefx ,

Trump supports Israel you buffoon.

LarkinDePark ,

Yes I know. So does Holocaust Harris.

arefx ,

Yeah man they all do that’s the fucking point. You are a moron

LarkinDePark ,

Well it was my point, thanks for stating it again for me. Nobody can justify supporting a genocidal candidate.

YeetPics ,
@YeetPics@mander.xyz avatar

I feel the same about Xi, maduro, Putin and Kim of the north.

You send yours to prison and we’ll send ours.

arefx ,

it’s all gone over your head.

YeetPics ,
@YeetPics@mander.xyz avatar

So glad you cuks have settled on a nice rhyming scheme 🤡

tallricefarmer ,
@tallricefarmer@sopuli.xyz avatar

Yes appears most people have a lot more common ground than it they would expect, but everyone is convinced their candidate is the way to best fix things. I believe this is why there is so much focus on social issues like what bathroom people should use instead harder things to fix like monopolies.

The biggest difference btwn the parties is one is still down playing climate change caused by global warming, and that is objectively wrong.

comfy ,
@comfy@lemmy.ml avatar

I’m starting to feel like all this hate and division is manufactured

Even putting aside biases or conspiracies, mass media and (for-profit) social media has an economic incentive to get people passionate and interested and viewing more ads. So there are systematic factors at play, which I’d say are enhanced by digital technology.

StaySquared ,

Part of the reason I don’t identify with a party. Both sides are full of fkin psycho derangement - mainly found on social media, even random people that are approached and recorded.

Side note: As for democracy in the U.S.? LMAO if this is democracy, fk democracy. If you need to gaslight yourself about your party NOT shitting on this so-called democracy, you’re also to blame, you are the problem.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

As Capitalism continues to decay, and disparity continues to rise, both progressive and reactionary groups enlargen as the unsustainability of the status quo becomes more apparent. This is represented by a rise in fascism and Socialism.

CanadaPlus ,

Most people don’t care enough about politics to comment online. Those that do, generally have opinions.

Nothing is manufactured. Hanlon’s razor applies really hard here.

YeetPics ,
@YeetPics@mander.xyz avatar

Nothing is manufactured.

If you can prove every lemmy user is a genuine individual and not a sockpuppet account or an LLM with posting privileges you could make MILLIONS in tech.

But you can’t and that’s all bull.

CanadaPlus , (edited )

It’s one of those unfalsifiable and unnecessarily complicated/malicious things, like other conspiracy theories.

In case you’re unfamiliar with Hanlon’s razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be attributed to stupidity”

Edit: To be clear, I didn’t mean literally, exactly nothing. Some things are manufactured, like the reviews on my dentist’s office, but the general online discourse isn’t.

YeetPics ,
@YeetPics@mander.xyz avatar

You typed all those words and yet only made the same point.

I’m not attributing your choice to do so on malice, no.

EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted ,
@EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I feel like people online are just more honest. Easier to do that looking at a computer screen than if you’re interacting with a flesh-and-blood person.

comfy ,
@comfy@lemmy.ml avatar

This is a good point. The pseudonymous internet is like a confessional booth. I can bluntly say all my political beliefs here with little-to-no consequence that I can’t solve by registering a new account. There’s no risk of alienating a friend or family member who disagrees. As an extreme case, I’ve met a couple of people online who can be legally killed for their political views (e.g. not following the state religion). So the internet can provide more comfort in free expression and therefore more people arguing over differences.

YeetPics ,
@YeetPics@mander.xyz avatar

Lmao, my kind sir, dozens of fine Russian folks are here to make a living with such lame agitprop.

Don’t take their words to heart, they represent the heroine fueled fever-dreams of Kim jong un. Delusions of grandeur and nothing more.

Also, they’re TERRIFIED of the real world. They deny much.

TheBigBrother ,

Have you heard of the horseshoe theory?

At the end of the day far-left and far-right are not so different.

j4k3 ,
@j4k3@lemmy.world avatar

One is trying to steal fundamental human rights, pull off a revolution of medievalism, has the worst performing sitting president by every metric as its populist mascot, is hellbent on a christojihad, causes a recession by failing to do its primary job of passing a budget, performs wonderfully as a Russian military proxy unit that completely sabotages Ukraine, fights for criminal gerrymandering because they are hated by any educated sane person or any halfwit that can disconnect from tainted billionaire corporate media garbage and think for themselves; there is nothing remotely close to these two, unless you are or are massively diluted by psyops.

Hell, if anyone gives a damn about women and unalienable human rights, they should punch any Republican in the face at every opportunity.

TheBigBrother , (edited )

At the end of the day both parties work for the same owners, and the only thing they want it’s power and money, politicians are just making a living from the budget while the real owners rule…

j4k3 ,
@j4k3@lemmy.world avatar

You are psyops.

TheBigBrother , (edited )

What you mean by psyops?

JohnDClay ,

I usually think of tankies as the horseshoe branch of liberalism. They have a lot more in common.

Thespiralsong OP ,

You are exactly the guy a don’t encounter in real life. But I think lemme is right. The reason I don’t hear you, is because if you advocated for punching conservatives at a bar, you would get hit by a conservative. So you don’t say it out loud when that’s possible. You give permission to others when there are no consequences to yourself.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

You’re not even using horseshoe theory correctly, not that it especially matters because it’s a horseshit theory.

Horseshoe theory is a liberal theory that equivalates socialism and fascism. But socialism is outside the Overton window of contemporary Western politics, so the theory doesn’t even apply.

In any case, liberalism and fascism have more in common with each other than with socialism. Socialism is about abolishing private ownership of the means of production, while liberalism and fascism are about the state protecting private ownership through its monopoly on violence.

CaptainKickass ,

Sounds like bullshit to me

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory

The horseshoe theory does not enjoy wide support within academic circles; peer-reviewed research by political scientists on the subject is scarce, and existing studies and comprehensive reviews have often contradicted its central premises, or found only limited support for the theory under certain conditions.

Anonymouse ,

I’ve always been fascinated with the Holocaust and so when there was an interview with a Holocaust survivor on 60 minutes, I had to watch it. The woman said a bunch of stuff, but what stuck with me is that she said that, “people need to be given permission” to act badly. The episode showed previously undiscovered notes and pictures from one camp, showing officers having a picnic and enjoying themselves after a hard day of???

Her point was that these people were given permission. I now see it everywhere. Food fight in the school cafeteria? There were a few instigators who gave permission to the rest. A city protest that turns violent? Again, a few vocal minority of the group started the violence and then the rest joined in. I see it at work and I also see it on-line. Anonymity and lack of accountability also enhances the effect.

Whether the instigators are real or bots doesn’t really matter because they “gave permission” to the rest to misbehave.

Found the episode: cbsnews.com/…/pictures-show-nazi-life-at-auschwit…

Thespiralsong OP ,

This is the comment that gave me the most to think about. I don’t have anything to add, I just wanted to let you know I appreciate it.

ganymede ,

as someone who was among those early to point out the incoming dangers of bots manipulating discussion,

i’ve recently begun to think i’ve massively underestimated the extent and breadth of bot manipulation of public perception

Fizz ,
@Fizz@lemmy.nz avatar

There is a lot of people manipulating internet discussions. It doesn’t take much to detail and entire thread. Idon’t see it much on Lemmy but it’s common on Twitter and reddit.

NauticalNoodle ,

It can be seen throughout the lemmyworld politics sub if one wants to find an example.

bouh ,

It depends. There are riots in England currently because some racists don’t want anymore immigration. I’m pretty sure you can easily have a very heated debate with these guys. You may talk with a jew about Israel these days too.

If you avoid hit topic with the wrong person, you won’t find strong opinions. But Internet bring people together, especially when they want to fight eachother.

RBWells ,

There’s a couple of different ways to think about this. When I was younger, I thought it so unfair that gay people couldn’t get married, and I didn’t know any mixed race marriages in my parents friends or my friends parents; women were still sort of oppressed, there wasn’t great birth control even.

So I guess conservatives didn’t have much to complain about; there were still scary rednecks around but that didn’t feel political.

A lot of these things have been fixed now, but the people who saw the discrimination of the past as some sort of natural order are complaining about it.

So there were protests and all throughout my life but until recently they were people wanting progress, to fix inequality and discrimination.

Now that a lot of these things are mainstream accepted A-OK, the conservatives think it’s time for the pendulum to swing back, but that doesn’t make sense to most of us. I do have plenty of friends who are like that but we can’t debate politics, it’s not any nicer than online. Outside of the wacko beliefs they are fine, we connect in other ways around things we agree on and all of the kids are progressive so I think it’s a limited time problem.

lukecooperatus ,
@lukecooperatus@lemmy.ml avatar

all of the kids are progressive

I’m not so sure that’s entirely true, there are plenty of angry social regressives among the young too.

RBWells ,

Well, all of ours are. And at least there isn’t the tacit acceptance of ‘how it is’ so much anymore. I just always take comfort in the fact that the 3 men over 50 and 1 grandma may be voting regressive but me and 13 more offset them, between our kids and their partners. Plus one other grandma.

Randomgal ,

puts on tinfoil hat I honestly think it’s because most of the hateful stuff you see online is posted by bots.

Tolookah ,

That’s completely untrue, you piece of beep beep boop!

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