I actually understood sports fandom for the first time because of watching streamers play video games. I was like ooooohhh, this is a very challenging skill, and I'm watching someone do it very very well, and I'm fucking hyped and I want to see more.
I never in my life had that for basketball or anything. But it made sense when I saw it for video games.
“Look at this terrible tragedy” is not the same as “if we do not end our complicity in this active genocide, we risk losing everything”
True, but that first one is directly what the meme is referencing. You actually accused me specifically I think of trying to distract from the terrible tragedy.
Liberals act as if their only option is to vote or not vote,
Well, but I don't act that way. Am I a liberal? According to lots and lots of people on Lemmy, I am. Here's a comment I made earlier tonight:
Real world non-electoral politics is going to be necessary to get us out of this mess (especially now), and it also leads to a good and fulfilling life. There’s something magic and human that happens with the people around you when you are fighting for something that’s actually worth fighting for, I’ve seen it.
You'd agree with that, right?
Or no?
This is what I'm talking about. Actually some of what you're saying in this latest message, I agree with. But it has not a lot to do with the meme. My issue with the meme was this wild strawman, lumping congressional Democrats and people on Lemmy into the same ideological category "liberal" and then making a bunch of sweeping statements I guess about both, by which the whole thing can be motte-and-baileyed back around so that all of a sudden I'm an asshole who believes all these wild things and doesn't care about genocide.
And here we are again, dealing with their choice to revere and defend the life’s work of a neonazi while we are still waiting for them to acknowledge the genocide they helped commit and which continues a year later.
Let's try this. Who are some examples of who you are talking about here? Like who are 5 people who fit into this category who are revering Charlie Kirk and also won't admit Gaza is a genocide? I am sure there are plenty of them (not sarcasm, I really do believe lots of those people exist, even some number of them on the American "left.") Ideally out of government if you can, like I said I don't think anyone in the US government is all that left (and if you're only talking about congressional Democrats or something, then yes the meme makes sense.)
I can pretty much guarantee you that whoever those people are, they're (a) a small subset of the people who the Lemmy consensus would describe as "a liberal" and (b) people I also despise pretty much as much as you do.
Right? Or do you believe that everyone the Lemmy consensus would describe as "liberal" also reveres Charlie Kirk, and also wants to silence any voices of Palestinian suffering?
I absolutely agree. I would say it is much more common than not and "immunity" to it is vanishingly rare.
Tribalism is built into humans, and it had good reasons back in the small settlement days, but now it's really fucking things up for us in a bunch of different ways.
Me: "Oh, you're right, yeah most of the Democrats in Washington are complicit in genocide. Looked at in that way I agree with your meme."
You: NO NO NO I WANT TO ARGUE YOU MUST BE WRONG ABOUT SOMETHING
Here's me trying to drown out the sound of their suffering:
Here's me complaining about Democrats being criticized for enabling Israel:
Yes, I know what Palestine is like right now. I care a lot about it. I wrote my congresspeople, back when they were approving the aid, trying to tell them not to do it. I didn’t think it would do anything, and it didn’t. That’s why I didn’t want Trump to come, and make things quite a bit worse than even Biden’s already war-criminal level of performance.
Around 85% of the Palestinians in Gaza are still alive right now, as far as I know. How many once Trump is done with them?
50%?
80%? Will he solve the Middle East during his term, and bring an end to the killing? It seems unlikely.
Less than 10%, with a lot of it annexed to Israel?
That last one seems pretty probable to me. I think better than 50/50 odds. I don’t want to bet.
That was 8 months ago. I have nothing to add to it. It's mostly come true now, and if you actively pushed in any way for people not to keep Trump out of power, you helped make it happen. Even if you don't believe there is any difference between "sending weapons" and "sending even more weapons plus turning vague diplomatic complaining into excited diplomatic approval plus putting Americans on the ground to help make it happen," you still helped usher in the situation where Palestinian protest leaders in the US are getting deported instead of being out there protesting. Good job.
I'm aware that you're trying hard to reframe me saying "Trump is worse" as if it meant I was making excuses for Biden, or that I'm saying it for any reason other than concern for the Palestinians and all the other people Trump is current fucking up. I am not. Biden was very very bad on this issue, and Trump is worse. That's what's up. You can insult me or mischaracterize that any number of types of ways, but that's what's up. Tell me I'm wrong.
This is precisely what I'm talking about in my comment. You're taking a point of view that you might or might not agree with, either of which is fine, and deciding to pretend that it is a horrifying caricature (that I'm so in love with Joe Biden of all the fucking people in the world that I am willing to overlook or downplay a genocide just to have a chance to distract people from talking about a bad thing he did). Because it's easier than grappling with what's really going on, you simply pretend that there's a whole class of people out there running around who are just constantly stupid and wrong, and you comfortably assure one another that's the explanation for why they sometimes come along and expose you to a critical viewpoint that isn't what you want to hear.
Go on, continue with it, if you want.
It's common for good propaganda posters to get translated into various languages
That one is a little more factual, but by far my favorite that I have seen is this one:
There is a big contingent on Lemmy that has constructed an enemy category called "liberals." They spend a lot of time talking to each other about what liberals believe and how liberals are, and almost all of it is just how stupid, weak, evil, and pointless liberals are. It's actually exactly the same thing that MAGA people do about... well, about liberals.
You can actually see how it operates in this meme. Pretty much none of the "liberals" on Lemmy have anything other than horror for the killing that's happening in Gaza, or are in any way upset about Charlie Kirk not being around anymore, but it's real important to their worldview that they constantly gather around and tell each other about how evil the liberals are, and so none of them will bat an eye at a post like this. Even if they don't really factually agree with it, it feels really good to experience the meme and talk to one another about how true it is.
Why they do this is deserves careful study. It's not immediately obvious but if you keep tugging on the thread and looking carefully at how they perceive the political world and why, it carries some key insights.
They don't have to scan Lemmy. They just have to have random MAGA citizens who are aware of Lemmy dox you and turn you in. It's one of the terrifying additions that's been made to the system of secret police, it's how Rümeysa Öztürk got on their radar on got snatched. They didn't have to be scanning editorials in small university papers.
So this entire narrative that AOC is pro-Israel now, is spun up from a single vote she made on an amendment MTG made that would have removed a small amount of funding for Israel including a grant which is used among other things for some of their “defensive” weapons for civilian areas, while leaving intact the waterfall of money for their offensive weaponry. AOC along with almost everyone else voted no on that amendment, and then said some dumb shit about why she did. The amendment was never going to pass. The impact on Israel or anyone else was pretty minimal. It did nothing for offensive weapons, it was just a stupid amendment during a busy day of actual work, so AOC voted against it.
Of course, later on, she voted “no” for the massive funding bill which spent $830 billion on various types of killing, including $6 billion for Israel for offensive weapons, which has been pretty consistently her stance on Israel throughout including vocal oppsition both verbal and material. At one point she was doing enough that Biden got mad at her personally and they had a meeting about it or something, because she was materially gumming up the works. Her support for Palestine is super rare in the US congress. Nonetheless these guys are still talking about how bad she betrayed Palestine. It becomes a whole narrative, where she’s now pro-genocide irrevocably forever, and if you challenge them on it, they can run and hide behind the fact that she did, in fact, vote against that amendment, and so it’s proved now. She’s bad. Don’t vote for her.
For some reason, this only happens to the left-est of left politicians. You will never heard someone randomly start cursing about how big an asshole Joe Manchin was when he did absolutely incalculable damage to the planet by blocking the first iteration of the IRA. No, you will only hear these kind of neatly-packaged reasons not to support a left politician deployed and repeated (there are only like 10-20 of them, you start to see them repeat after a while if you pay attention) against the leftest of the bunch.
Wonder why.