this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
453 points (99.3% liked)

politics

28547 readers
3288 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Once again, political violence stems from Republican ideology.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Oh no. Not whining about the openly fascist government of America, those damn euros how dare they complain!

[–] butwhyishischinabook@piefed.social 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Yeah I whine about it a lot too, the point is that there is literally no action an American can take that's correct. Do something? Rash, juvenile, doomed to fail, too violent, they should have large protests and walkouts instead. Protest in the street? Too civil, pointless, also doomed to fail, why aren't Americans taking up arms by the millions to kill the government. Every action is the wrong one.

[–] BenevolentOne@infosec.pub 2 points 15 hours ago

It's your stupid monkey brain thinking that you are talking to 'that one guy called internet' instead of thousands of tens of thousands of different people.

[–] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 4 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I'm glad I wasn't the only person to notice.

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 4 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

What you both are noticing is a tactic of propaganda called FUD. It stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

The goal of this propaganda is to promote a feeling of hopelessness, on a large scale this will decrease political participation ("why vote, it doesn't matter anyway, laws don't matter they'll just ignore them, the idea in the OP is dumb and anyone who thinks this will work is too"). By targeting the social spaces of the opposing party (or all parties in the cases of some nation-states) the adversary can attack the morale of the population, disrupting or delaying a cohesive response.

It doesn't take too much creativity (and now, with LLMs, absolutely none) to make posts that say some variation of 'that won't work and you are dumb' on every topic. This is why you have this perception of a mass amount of criticism, it's being fabricated at scale across all of social media (Fediverse spaces had a brief period of obscurity but are now part of the propaganda campaigns).

That isn't to say that there are not legit criticisms, but they are being signal boosted significantly as part of these FUD campaigns.

[–] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago

I've been calling it the "Reddit Defeatist Brigade". As your comment states it isn't confined to reddit. I wondered if it was some sort of propaganda because it's so prevalent. Now I know.

[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au -1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Maybe, just maybe that’s different people with different opinions and you’re lumping them all under one umbrella?

Hmmm, almost like that should be the approach with large, continental polities with a plethora of regional political subcultures in it.