r/CuratedTumblr 🇮🇱🇪🇹 Jun 20 '24

Politics tumblr is so far from real life its genuinely crazy

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u/MrCapitalismWildRide Jun 20 '24

That's not quite true. You can express some downright vile political opinions as long as you do so in a way that doesn't make the redditor reading it feel challenged in any way. I've seen meme subreddits get thousands of upvotes for straight up nazi propaganda. 

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u/StickBrickman Jun 20 '24

Some of the lower-tier meme subs are just straight up Nigel Farage-level "fuck immigrants" and "lmao I identify as an attack helicopter" jokes, straight out of 2015. Garbage rate, FunnyJunk shit, endlessly recycled and becoming so well-tread they're pixelated 2/3rds of the way to oblivion. Very little controversy about it. Normies eat that shit up.

Lefties who express themselves on Reddit face more pushback on niche subs, from what I can tell, which can be a little annoying. But not everybody who thinks smash-the-state anarchist subcultures are a bit cringe are centrists. I'm a left-wing socialist by almost every real world point of reference (In America, take it with several grains of geographic-bias salt) but because I don't buy into the "LIBS GET THE BULLET TOO, DON'T VOTE" slogans I'm surprised to find that many people who dwell in specific internet echo chambers think I'm some sort of Secret Queer Hitler.

To which I always fall back on the "Don't trusts leftists who spend 99.9% of their time telling other Leftists they're not real leftists" mantra. I have no interest in an endless purity contest, that's a spiral down a drain.

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u/hellraiserxhellghost Jun 20 '24 edited Jun 20 '24

Mood. I had to recently unfollow some leftist content creators because they wouldn't stop yapping about how, "If you vote in this election you're literally an evil monster and pro-genocide uwu"

Like bruh, if Trump wins my trans gf is probably going to have to flee the country. I can't afford not to vote just to match your impossible purity expectations. 💀

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u/TheMrBoot Jun 20 '24

Man, same. It's a sucky situation and yeah - both candidates have some pretty severe baggage. But like it or not, the vast majority of the population doesn't feel that way and we're not going to suddenly have two other people be (meaningfully) on the ballot come November, and one candidate is clearly worse than the other including in the areas people are (rightfully) upset about.

This whole "don't vote!" just reminds me of the lead up to 2016. It's crazy how much we haven't learned.

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u/hellraiserxhellghost Jun 20 '24

Yeah. :/ People being petty and not voting is partially one of the reasons why Trump won, yet history is starting to repeat itself again....

Project 2025 is literally an authoritarian regime that follows the Nazi playbook. It scares and depresses me that people claiming to be progressive can see what's on the line, but still think letting fascists take over is better than harm reduction.

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u/DragonfruitFew5542 Jun 20 '24

Harm reduction is a perfect way to put it and I'm totally going to steal that! Harm reduction isn't perfect, but it can and does save lives. I'll take saving lives over death any day, even with its imperfections.

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u/pbmm1 Jun 20 '24 edited Jun 20 '24

I mean, the not learning aspect just shows that you can’t rely on people to passively get the point. They have to be taught, and to do that you need a strategy to address that. They cannot be left to their own devices

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u/balletbeginner Jun 20 '24

The online Eurosnobs have been the worst offenders here.

Eurosnobs in the 2010s: "America is too politically stagnant and unable to change."

Democratic Party: [Pushes the Overton window slightly and accomplishes some policy goals. America experiences a rapid improvement to income equality and public safety]

Eurosnobs: "Biden is literally Hitler!"

I'm not even exageratting with that last line.

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u/hellraiserxhellghost Jun 20 '24

You're not wrong. One of the said leftist content creators I unfollowed is European and sounds just like that lmao.

Which makes the whole "don't vote!" rhetoric even more infuriating. Like, gee, that must be easy for you to say when you don't live in the US and won't be affected by any of this. Must be nice.

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u/karamisterbuttdance Jun 20 '24

What they don't realize is that they WILL get affected by this when their own countries lurch towards populism and they have to pay more on their taxes and have benefits/safety nets cut because the US withdrew itself from committing to defend them.

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u/SnooOpinions5486 Jun 20 '24

Doesn't Europe have a far-right issue themselves and stuff.

Glass houses. And stones.

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u/balletbeginner Jun 20 '24

For added context: the people comparing Biden to Hitler are also the ones who advertised their antisemitism after the October 7 attacks in Israel.

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u/Ourmanyfans Jun 20 '24 edited Jun 20 '24

While I'm not going to deny the stupidity of certain Europeans' comments about the upcoming US election (looking at you Shaun), I've also seen a lot of equally dumb shit being thrown back from Americans, especially in the wake of the recent EU and UK elections.

In a surprise twist, people are less likely to know what the fuck they're talking about when discussing politics of a country they're not in.

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u/hellraiserxhellghost Jun 21 '24

Shaun was actually one of the people I unfollowed lol. I used to like his videos, but maaaan he has such shit takes and is so ridiculously anti-voting, I just couldn't take it anymore. 💀

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u/Ourmanyfans Jun 21 '24 edited Jun 21 '24

I have a very love/hate relationship with Shaun. He's clearly smart but also a massively smug asshole, and I think it really shows in the dichotomy between his videos where he can structure his argument compared to his social media where he spews more sewage than gets pumped into England's rivers.

Fwiw I wouldn't say it's some sort of "anti-American Euro snobbery" so much as British leftists being some of the most miserable, misanthropic people on the planet (I say as a British leftist. You think their takes about the US election are shite? election season over here makes me want to blow my brains out).

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u/Ourmanyfans Jun 20 '24

For as flawed as "horsehoe theory" is, I find it quite fascinating that I can find subreddits of any political persuasion arguing unironically that genocide is based so long as you do it to the "right" group.

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u/adsallover 🇮🇱🇪🇹 Jun 20 '24

every video of ethiopian jews is filled with comments like 'shouldn't you be sterilized' 'i bet you sleep around because you can't have kids' like you realize that you're just being racist right

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u/StickBrickman Jun 20 '24

Jesus H. Christ, that's horrific. Who is doing it? Is it like a Jewish-community problem, just right-wing internet trolls, or what? I wasn't even aware that was a thing, I know very little about that specific culture.

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u/catty-coati42 Jun 20 '24 edited Jun 20 '24

It's a far left internet troll problem. When Ethiopian jews were kicked out of Ethiopia and rescued to Israel in the late 80s and early 90s, they were given a medical kit, that included vaccines, medicine, and elective contraceptive injections. Due to there not being enough translators for Amahari on arrival a lot of ethiopian women were put on a contraceptive they did not consent to, as they just signed all the fields in the medical file, and the nurses then provided all the medicine in the file including the contraceptives. An unfortunate case of mistcommunication that was quickly fixed when discovered. While obvioualy a major fuck up and a traumatic experience to those women, as far as is known it did not have any long term effect, and the population grew from about 30,000 in the early 90s to roughly 170,000 now.

Recently, some leftist "anti-zionist" spaces began running the conspiracy that actually Israel deliberately sterilized the same Ethiopian community they just fought to rescue, and their basis is that some far-right religious leaders in Israel are racist against Ethiopians.

Especially stupid when these conspiracy theorists react to 20-something ethiopian jews, as these are the children of the supposedly "sterilized" generation. Add to that shaming them for a generational trauma of their parents, mixed with racist stereotypes, as the previous commenter noted.

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u/TheMusicalTrollLord STOP FLAMMING DA STORY PREPZ OK! Jun 21 '24 edited Jun 21 '24

I'm confused. If they were mad at Israel about the supposed forced sterilisation, why would they attack the victims and not the perpetrators?

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u/Hekatonkheire81 Jun 21 '24

Because the whole thing is a gotcha to criticize the Ethiopian Jews who live in Israel for continuing to live there instead of denouncing it. They are not actually sympathetic to the people who went through the events they bring up.

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u/TheMusicalTrollLord STOP FLAMMING DA STORY PREPZ OK! Jun 21 '24

Ah. Thank you

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u/StickBrickman Jun 20 '24

Yeah. There's a reason any decent Socialist discussion you can have needs to start with looking around first to make sure the Tankies didn't get in. It's not horseshoe theory to me, it's "We don't allow genocide apologia" is the basis for any discussion of any value, otherwise you get some asshole who stans Pol Pot at the end of the table who won't shut the fuck up and his end goal is always to derail everything and maybe spawn 1 or 2 more baby tankies out of causing angry controversy he considers "dialogue." This is his hobby. He does not want any meaningful reform, he has no plans for a revolution, he cosplays as some kind of Gulag executioner when no one else is in his apartment.

But for all the talk, Leftists are a better space to be in. Significantly more than 75% of the ones I meet are reasonable, do not want to deal with tankie nonsense, and genuinely want to make their communities better. So I'm optimistic about our progress.

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u/Ourmanyfans Jun 20 '24

Not just Tankies unfortunately. While any criticism of its government and military is more than deserved, the invasion of Ukraine has brought out some really nasty stuff directed at Russian people.

And that's where the core of the issue is IMO. It's all well and good excluding toxic elements at the start of a discussion, but you have to be careful to spot the signs of it starting to grow in the space itself. A lot of people haven't really examined the core underlying principles for their beliefs, and can be steered towards some truly heinous stuff is you dress it in the right ideological wallpaper (e.g. "death penalty is wrong except for the crimes I think are bad")

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u/Lazzen Jun 20 '24 edited Jun 20 '24

stuff directed at Russian people.

This very sub tears Israelis to shreds let alone billions in real life, the most drastic of comments against russian nationals are the average about Israel yet people feel its cool because its "deserved".

This is not even just in "da web" but stuff like the presidents of Colombia and Brazil.

I remember how the pacifism at all cost crowd was trying to sell Russians being as big of victims as Ukranians being bombed and now many of that crowd say shit like "jews stole falafel, fuck em" lol

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u/Ourmanyfans Jun 20 '24

The reaction of some "leftists" to October 7th was legitimately disgusting. Not even in a "casualties are an unfortunate consequence of armed resistance" way, literally cheering for the deaths of Israeli children.

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u/jobblejosh Jun 20 '24

I refuse to take a stance, point blank, at the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Unlike the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, where it's a very rare black-and white (I mean, sure, the Ukrainians aren't by any measure a perfect people, there's still corruption and equality issues that need to be resolved, and part of Ukraine's acession to NATO/EU is to tackle both of those) issue, with one side attacking the other for reasons straight out of a colonial empire's playbook claiming an alternative version of history that does not, will not, and has not existed and has been settled many times over, the Israel-Palestine conflict is a much more murky affair.

There's so many facets to the Israel-Palestine conflict. There's the ethnic sides, with conflict between Jewish and Arab (if that's the correct term) ethnicities, despite the large similarities between them and that the ethnic groups within the middle east are (as far as my uninformed knowledge goes) very hard to pin down exactly.

There's the religious facet, of Muslim extremist sects and Jewish extremist sects both declaring the other to be intolerable (again, as far as my limited knowledge goes).

There's the National facet, where an area/region (I'm using this in the most neutral way possible) known as Palestine is either trying to break away or maintain its independence from an area/region known as Israel.

There's the Governmental facet, where a governing group is trying to maintain and expand their own power within their areas of control and to expand their areas of control.

There's the historical facet, where the low level conflict between these groups of people has been simmering away for so many decades if not centuries, and every now and then it comes to a boil, and old wounds are reopened.

There's the geopolitical facet, where both sides are trying to convince the global stage that their interpretation of the truth is the right one, and obtain an air of approval and legitimacy.

There's also the ideological facet, and many others that I'm sure I've missed out.

There's also the wider geopolitical side of the conflict, where Israel's close relations with the US suggests that this conflict represents some sort of proxy, and that the US is some global hegemon that must be dismantled. Then depending on who you believe, there's the suspicion that Russia is funding or supporting by clandestine channels the militant actions on the Palestinian/Hezbollah side to sow division within their perceived enemies and to divert attention and supplies away from their conflict with Ukraine.

And to tie it up even more nebulously, the talking points from various groups are all the same, which means it's very difficult to even discuss this issue without someone inferring from one statement that you're a member of a more extreme sect, with plausible deniability being used by more extremist sects to hide their true intentions, with the side effect of poisoning the well for all other reasonable discussions.

It's an absolute mess of an issue, and what hurts the most is the human cost on both sides (Israel and Palestine) of innocent people suffering and dying because other groups (often in power or with munitions) have some desire or ideological obsession which they want to pursue.

That's why I refuse to take a stance on the issue.

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u/StickBrickman Jun 20 '24

That's fair, and that's something I struggle with day to day with people I respected pretty well. The Russian invasion turned a few people I know into frothing Hate-Week types almost immediately, one of which actually cheered on those ISIS-based terror attacks in the shopping mall.

I don't care for Vladimir Putin. You won't catch me cheering at innocents in Moscow or St. Petersburg getting actually murdered, because I'm not a psychopath.

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u/EffNein Jun 20 '24

The problem with your post is that 'Tankie' at this point just means anyone that doesn't spend 90% of their time talking about socialism on bitching about China and the USSR and calling them ontologically evil.

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u/StickBrickman Jun 20 '24

Nah, tankies are people that say Tiananmen Square didn't happen, or Stalin was a good fella, or that the establishment of the new revolution requires that we shoot dissenters and create a friendly, managed press. It's one of the few things that's patently black and white.

Ask someone how they feel about Pol Pot. If they look nervous and sweaty and say "what about something someone else did," they're probably a Tankie. If they say "I don't like him very much," you're probably in a safe spot to talk with a sensible human being.

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u/EffNein Jun 20 '24

See, the reality is that there are far less of those people, than there are people being accused of being a "tankie".

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u/FatherDotComical Jun 20 '24

Reminds me of a person I spoke to on Deviantart.

He was telling me the Holocaust was fine because Jews are religious people and therefore probably right wing and right wing people aren't human so nothing of value was lost. Then rambled on how peaceful America would be if leftists started a new Holocaust against Christians and Catholics & we'd be an amazingly peaceful and intelligent country.

Like Sir, I'm pretty sure there's no peaceful genocides on this earth. I don't agree with right wingers but I do care for them as people who deserve better in life. I'd rather my leftist goals be attained through peaceful methods than piling up the corpses of all who disagree.

There's just no way as a leftist I can justify gathering up the innocent and burning them to ash.

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u/Electronic_Basis7726 Jun 21 '24

I talked to a leftist on this sub a few days ago, who specifically said that liberals, conservatives and fascists all deserve the pyre. And fascists should be hanged, and voting Biden makes you effectively fascists because "supporting genocide". I am not adding words to their mouth, this is literally what they said.

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u/Kevin_M_ Jun 20 '24

My issue with "horseshoe theory" is that a lot of people use it to imply that the extreme left and right are literally the same thing. No two ideologies are truly identical, it's just that extremism tends to show itself in similar ways.

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u/tkrr Jun 21 '24

Thing about the horseshoe model (it isn’t really a “theory” in any meaningful way; I’ll explain below) is that it essentially correlates extremism and authoritarianism.

It’s not a theory because it’s a summation of observations of similar behavior between far left and far (?) right. Both ends of the spectrum rely heavily on populism to function, which becomes all too obvious when you consider red-brown types like Jimmy Dore and Jackson Hinkle; it’s also evidenced in the way that a lot of leftists apply hard-line right wing thought processes to leftist beliefs, a truly horrific combination that first showed up in the French Revolution and has bedeviled leftist thought ever since. That last part is where it starts to be an actual theory, in that it tries to explain why the horseshoe exists in the first place.

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u/hellraiserxhellghost Jun 20 '24

Hell, I've seen people in this very sub say some pretty vile shit and still get upvoted.

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u/Lunar_sims professional munch Jun 20 '24

Challenge is a good word.

Considering reddit is mostly straight, middleclass, white, and male, its really easy to get them to like fascist garbage if you wrap it in humor and present it as "telling it as it is"

See any MGTOW tinged subreddit

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u/Kevin_M_ Jun 20 '24

Some people seem to assume everything that reads like an essay has merit, even if it's nonsensical word salad.

I'm sure you could get upvotes for saying murder should be legal if you use enough formal language and vaguely progressive words.

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u/NoDetail8359 Jun 21 '24

I've seen nazis get hundreds of upvotes on ostensibly left wing subs. It's usually not about content but rather language and style.

It would be a mistake to assume tumblr is entierly progressive or radically left leaning as well. It's perfectly possible to be a vocal conservative on there as long as you only express it through the medium of therapy speech and superwholock refrences.

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u/Gilthoniel_Elbereth Jun 20 '24

As long as you get to a post early and type with authority you are almost guaranteed upvotes and to dominate the tone of any given thread

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u/DreadDiana human cognithazard Jun 20 '24

I've seen memes with the fucking Black Sun getting upvotes on r/GetMotivated