this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2025
119 points (97.6% liked)
chat
8463 readers
361 users here now
Chat is a text only community for casual conversation, please keep shitposting to the absolute minimum. This is intended to be a separate space from c/chapotraphouse or the daily megathread. Chat does this by being a long-form community where topics will remain from day to day unlike the megathread, and it is distinct from c/chapotraphouse in that we ask you to engage in this community in a genuine way. Please keep shitposting, bits, and irony to a minimum.
As with all communities posts need to abide by the code of conduct, additionally moderators will remove any posts or comments deemed to be inappropriate.
Thank you and happy chatting!
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It is the intersection of two factors. First, Lemmy is a niche social media platform. The only people who know about it, let alone use it, are extremely online to begin with. Second, most Liberals are genuine idealists who believe rhetoric is the primary arena of struggle. They believe that the reason Liberal Democracy is crumbling all around the world because people are being misinformed (not because of the underlying economic failures).
Combine these two factors and you end up with the type of radlib fundamentalists we see on Lemmy, who believe rhetoric on social media is the primary arena of struggle, and that people like us are either a social contagion spreading among ignorant dupes, or malicious foreign state operatives.
Oooh I like this thought. That certainly is a current among people who have never been on the recieving end of the extraordinary political power of pepper spray and batons.
GOOD POST
The focus on rhetoric might have a modicum of positive impact if it had any grounding. Most political rhetoric is rooted in personal cynicism anyway and is meant to express identity instead of impact the world. Rhetoric doesn't actually need to be consistent or effective with this purpose, it just needs to perform the desired identity.
People routinely have positive emotions about negative events, and vice versa, because it validates their identity while violating their claimed principles. Consider a trans person arming themselves in the US in a "liberal" space, people will be confused how to respond because they can compromise the (often online) identity they have curated with virtually any reaction they choose.
And imagine what would happen if the US actually got gun control and shootings still occured at a high rate. Liberal gun control activists would likely double down on gun control as Republicans have doubled down on NRA dogma. We will never address the obvious nature of settler imperial occupation because most libs and even lefties are only trying to perform neo christian non-christianity.
Rhetoric is just a tool of persuasion. It is useless if all we are doing is lying to ourselves to own the (other) libs.