I was curious how common it is to be, say, a leftist in a very conservative area.
My county, family, and school are all very conservative. It makes it a bit intimidating to engage in any political discussion. I also rarely get to hear leftist opinion anywhere in person, which means i need to devote a lot of time to considering and thinking about arguments that are probably already solved.
Are you, or have you been, in a similar situation?
I’m in a blue pinprick in a red state and all my family and all the surrounding towns are deep red even after Trump 2.0. I’m not sure they actually support the policies and positions but it’s what they THINK their position is and it’s what their “identity position” is (my dad was a Republican and his dad was a Republican and I’m a Republican). It’s tough. I would love to move but it’s easier to move TO something than from it.
We have had more than a few family battles to say the least.
I’m in a red region of a blue state. There’s a good amount of Trumpism around. Most people I talk to made it through school without learning history or civics. They don’t understand the economic issues and mostly vote red because they believe that the Democrats want to take their guns away, turn their sons into daughters, or give their money to brown people both at home and abroad.
Socialist living a rural town, 30 minutes from a large city. I found some awesome like-minded people when I joined the local small community theater, but for the most part, everyone around me is super duper red. Birthplace of the KKK is like, a 10 min drive from me, so kinda figures.
After the Black Lives Matters riots in the city, I’ve been doing my own solo protests every Juneteenth, holding a big “Black Lives Matter” and “Happy Juneteenth!” sign by the main road through town. The first year I did it, had 3 separate people drive by shouting “white power!” and had the cops called on me, they told the cops I had a gun, presumably hoping that I’d be shot. I wasn’t carrying, I was not shot.
I’ve been doing it every year, and the “white power!” yells have ceased, now just people flicking me off or yelling “All Lives Matter!” which is progress, I guess! But the vast majority of the interactions are thumbs up and friendly honks from like minded people, in a 75-25 ratio.
Maybe it’s making a difference, maybe not, but I DO love yelling at racists. So far they’ve all been too cowardly to take me up on my offer to whoop their ass, but I’m hoping that will change 😊
I’m in a very red part of a purple-trending-blue state. The people immediately around me are mostly conservative. I’m much closer to an anarchist in my personal beliefs than anything else.
The people at the church I attend–Unitarian Universalist, because there aren’t any Satanists near me–are mostly old hippies. The people I work directly with are mostly marginalized people. So the people I have the most contact with are definitely on the left side of the political spectrum. OTOH, I’m spoken with someone in another dept. at my work place that’s a genuine Nazi apologist, and claims that they only murdered Jews because the Allies waged war against them.
report the nazi to HR please
Nothing has made me more right wing than left wing propaganda and vica versa
Of course “left/right wing” is a ridiculously over simplified perspective in the first place but if nuance is a political stance, I suppose I’m heavily outnumbered
Same. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am…
Nowadays the real rebels are centrists. Everyone else is just repeating talking points they’ve consumed from algorithms that only give them part of the story. My conversations with leftists and MAGAs are basically the same conversations, they’re the same kind of people.
one one side, literal nazis, on the other, people that want Universal healthcare.
Wow, how do you tell them apart??
what left wing propaganda have you encountered?
It’s an open secret the fedi is swimming in it, especially the ml instances but there are several categories of varying severity used by people of all political persuasions:
- Simple political ads
- “Memes” designed to skew one’s perception of the world
- Misleading headlines or posting articles from unreliable or uncorroborated sources
- “Bumper sticker” logic
- What aboutisms
- Calls for politically motivated violence
I won’t give specific examples because (even when I agree with their end goals) people get defensive but if you look, you’ll find them
I think most of what you’re encountering and labeling as propaganda is more likely tongue in cheek skewering of the right. If you look at the motivations behind these posts, it’s usually to bring attention and awareness to real issues. The right lies about stolen elections and voter fraud because they seek to disenfranchise voters and gain power. The left appeals to emotion sometimes too much, but their end goals are things like universal healthcare, less government spying, and more education.
The right similarly stokes fear and panic by demonizing vulnerable minority and immigrant populations, with the end goal of further entrenching their political power, so they can lower taxes on the rich, and raise them for the poor.
The right and left may both engage in sensationalized headlines and appeals to emotion, but they are not the same, you can tell by their end goals.
Who was in power when epstien “killed himself”? Why is ghislaine maxwell in a cushy minimum security prison? I’ll give you a hint, the answer ain’t the left.
I live in Madison and everyone seems to have the same liberal political views, I almost never meet someone who opposes liberal/leftist ideals. All my friends are trans and some of my friends/coworkers even like Linux. we rarely encounter hostility, though I’d like to venture out more. It gets tiring when everyone agrees yet we can’t even solve the housing crisis.
I’m in Missouri, but in a major city here, so there’s a big mix.
The inner-city is strongly liberal, as in we support our own taxation because we like the services liberal and even have a free commuter train line. The suburbs are deep, deep red, and they think they should dictate policy to us because they commute into the city often.
I live in America in a deep blue state. The divide is about as classically pronounced as the railroad tracks here when the trailer parks grow numerous. Representation is deeply gerrymandered.
It’s also extremely militarized out here, with most people being attached to the military bases in some way.
I spent 10 years working on the county level. For a time in a rural red area and for a time in the bluer area. Blue areas tend to be corporate owned and worship police. Red areas are desperately poor and distrust government.
Out here the first point of wealth is to insulate and isolate from politics. So it has always been much easier to discuss politics with the rural poor folks. Free breakfast and childcare is a service that’s appreciated and used.
I don’t even know how to reach the deep blue folks living beyond their gates. Maybe the delivery workers can try to leave fliers.
Am in Scotland. Frequently overhear people talking about how Trump has a plan to save us. Never tried to engage with any of these people, but they dont sound like theyre joking.
My friend group consists of a mix of people on the “far-right” wing and the “far-left” wing. Some of them are political active, some are active politicians. None of them are racists. My experience is that they all want the same for our society, they just disagree on how to get there. All discussions are civil and we don’t think less of them on the opposite wing.
Disclaimer: I’m not in the US. Obviously.
I bet at least one of your “far right” friends is a racist.
I would probably actually put money on it.
I’m curious what makes them “far right,” but not enough for you to think less of them. Do you have any ideals whatsoever, or do you just think they’re all created equal?
I cannot think of a single “far right” concept that would not make me think less of a person for believing.
I’m pretty sure they aren’t.
For the longest time in Denmark the most racist party was a left wing party. Their followers are often those who have the least resources, so they don’t vote on the suits on the far-right wing. I don’t get why it seems to be the opposite in the US.
The most far-right party we currently have don’t spend too much time on emigrational issues, but they still have this stance:
Over the past 40 years, Denmark has undergone the largest population change ever. Immigration has had major consequences for Denmark, not only in terms of terrorist risk, social tensions, economic challenges, crime and religious requirements, but also culturally. Liberal Alliance believes that the influence of cultures that are contrary to the values and fundamental freedoms on which Danish society is based should be countered. Free and liberal societies do not arise by themselves. They must be defended in order to be preserved.
Asylum
Therefore, the Liberal Alliance wants to put an end to spontaneous asylum, which is given to asylum seekers standing at the Danish border. Asylum should be given to those people who are most in need. That is why we want to abolish spontaneous asylum, as it is primarily given to people who are relatively resourceful and therefore need less asylum compared to other groups such as f.ex. quota refugees. If you have managed to get all the way to the Danish border and are not a refugee, you have less need for asylum than people who are outright refugees and seek protection from war, conflict and destruction.
Nationality
Obtaining citizenship in Denmark is a gift. It is not a right. The Liberal Alliance wants to tighten the requirements for citizenship, because we believe that there are a number of requirements and expectations attached to the privilege of becoming a citizen in a liberal democracy. We want to have greater certainty that nye citizens have understood what it takes to be a democratic citizen than is the case today.
We want citizens who apply for citizenship to be subjected to a profiling that analyzes their behavior ift. some defined requirements and expectations. If a citizen f.ex. ad has repeatedly hailed terrorist acts, threatening other citizens ifm. apostasy from a religion, acted hostile or threatening towards homosexuals or has acted as informants towards authorities in countries Denmark does not cooperate with, this will count down in the assessment of whether there is reason to believe that they will comply with applicable law and respect the spirit of the basic law.
The profiling is submitted to the Committee on citizenship, which makes a decision on whether the citizen should be set to receive citizenship by law. Read more about our immigration policy here.
Integration
The best way to integrate foreigners in Denmark is to ensure that they enter the labour market. Bl.a. know that it pays better to be at work, rather than on transfer income.
By coming out to a workplace, people get a better knowledge of Danish culture and Danish norms. It also provides an individual responsibility for one’s own existence when one gets out of passive support and starts earning one’s own money. This is the path to good integration.
In addition, the Liberal Alliance will fight parallel societies by taking a stand against social control on, among other things.a. our educational institutions. We will do this specifically by banning the so-called prayer rooms, which are largely used to retain Muslim students in religious dogmas.
On my island generally people are very close-knit (at the village level) and unfortunately give too much credit to right-aligned politicians, especially when it comes to immigration. The place is a migration crossroads, and there’s always vultures ready to rile people up for political gain. Otherwise very community-minded, kind people who are abundantly helpful and welcoming. Make it make sense
My personal, close social circle is pretty much only leftists, both egg and hatched
I’m in a blue state, so not very. But I work in an interesting environment where people hold a lot of conspiratorial and junk-science views (recently there was a rumor about an upcoming seven-second loss of gravity.) I navigate it with shutting down any sense that I would ever humor it. I don’t maintain any sort of connection beyond general courtesy otherwise. Worst case was “we have to agree on reality to discuss it” and that was that.
Im in a technically far-right town, but most of the people i know about are either left-wing, either right or far-right, but in that case never militants : they’re just too stupid, too lazy or too mistaken to get over their reactionaries prejudices, and most of the time they end up agreeing with progressive views when there’s a political discussion. But those are quite rare tbf, people dont talk that much about partisan politics.
My whole life has been a weird back and forth of this. I grew up in a hyper conservative household and lived in a hyper conservative town, but I wanted to go to art school. So I moved to Seattle.
Fast forward I was a conservative in Seattle of all places, and racist af to boot. Being 18 coming off the heels of my family meant I had no original thoughts and just repeated everything my mom taught me.
I quickly learned better, both through college education but also meeting the people I’d been brought up racist against. Being in a multicultural hub like Seattle means having to see the charicatures my mom had painted for me live, breathe, and talk to me, and it’s hard for anyone with 2 braincells to run together to keep thinking those things when you interact with the people daily.
I stayed in the area after college and became increasingly more leftist. Then at a point I ended up moving to a small conservative town again due to financial issues.
Here I faced the flip side of what I’d experienced in Seattle. I’m white so everyone would try to pull me into conversation about immgrants or people on welfare or LGBT people and I was the sole voice against those views. I tried to reason with them, provide an alternative perspective, and over the years I’ve had mixed results. But the thing I’ll say that was different was the amount of violence and threat I’ve felt being the outsider in these communities.
I said some straight up racist shit when I was younger in Seattle. I lost friends and reputation over it but I never felt afraid. In the small town though, I lost jobs, was threatened, flipped off, verbally abused… I never had anyone physically attack me but it came close a few times. And the only thing I said in those areas was things like “they aren’t bad people because they are Mexican, they’re bad people because they did X to you, Debra.”
The racism and homophobia was the biggest hurdle honestly. People in that sphere dont think the things they are thinking are wrong. Often they only know what they have somehow been slighted, and they misatteibute their frustrations to race or politics. “I can’t afford groceries because so many (insert race) people are on food stamps.” No, you can’t afford groceries because your work isn’t paying you anything but beans and Walmart is the only grocery store in town. There are so many people on food stamps because they are socio-economically disadvantaged. Perhaps if you can’t afford groceries you might also qualify for food stamps."
But that’s hard to quantify, it’s easier to blame the have-nots as being morally lacking than it is to be mad at systems that are hard to quantify.
Wildly surrounded. I’m very used to interact with people with vastly different political opinions.
I have a straight up openly francoist coworker.
But I’m also surrounded by a lot of left leaning people. It’s kind of diverse here right now.
Anyway, I think it’s better for you to have to think the arguments rather than you repeating arguments you heard somewhere else. It would make you find your own believes, and have a firmer consolidation on why you believe in what you believe.
