Reading through the Project 2025 PDF is insane

Same as r/conservatives was.

Projection is the game. You see these wackos all over YouTube bemoaning “my comments keep getting deleted” (which doesn’t seem true), yet go on their turf and they’ll happily silence you as that’s different.

Reminds me of “the only moral abortion is mine”. The only people being silenced is us, what we’re doing might look the same but trust me bro it’s not.

Oh you hear that whining non-stop on r/TrueUnpopularOpinion.
Wah this and wah that about being censored. But as soon as someone not them posts, then it's a downvote party including a bombardment of insults.

So much for free speech

Free speech is what I want to say, not what you want to say. Duh, loser!
Free speech gets lip service over there. I don't know why the admin tolerates that community.
- Especially with how poor their moderation is. Wintermute regularly deletes comments they disagree with, Momo is left to insult people and rage with near impunity, and it regularly spouts misinformation/disinformation. It's an example of how NOT to run a community.
  
  Don't forget their founder is banned from .world for promoting pedophilia.
  
  What the fuck? Do you have a link or anything to when this happened?
  
  Check the mod log.
- You're free to say anything I agree with, unlike in those liberal channels where I'm censored for speaking my personal truth.
  But you're not free to violate the terms of service of the contract you signed when you walked in. In very plain bold text I wrote "Don't say anything I don't like". And you agreed to it by being here.
  So agree with me or GTFO.

Holy shit. That place is a cesspit. Every post is downvoted to hell. What the fuck?

Lemmy is pretty liberal. I downvote their posts when they end up on my feed but it's apparent I'm not the only one.
- Ironically the actual don't tread on me people are on the left.
  Turns out we don't have to live under Reddit.
  
  Turns out I don’t want anyone treading on anyone. I just happen to be a subset of the people I won’t stand for people treading on

Wait, what? Why would they even deny it? It’s all of the issues they love to scream about. How is that something they would possibly think they could or should hide?

What are the odds that place is run by a Russian...?

I always felt that lemm.ee was more conservative (and capilistic). They seem less progressive, more modernist. The issue is it's hard to tell since it federates with other instances, so I mostly have to go by usernames made off that instance.
- I joined this instance because .world made joining harder during the migration, I mean I'm not HARD left, but I doubt I count as conservative
  
  I see what you mean now. I meant I see many of the lemm.ee accounts as conservative compared to other instances (more Democrat than progressive). Of course I haven't done a scientific aanalysis, it's just an observation I made as I post and look at usernames. Obviously, it's not going to be everyone as Lemmy leans toward the progressive left.
  
  I mean, I dont hate Landlords, so I guess I count as MORE conservative than the average lemmite... Lemming? Still not conservative enough to not take that as slightly insulting though xD
  
  I joined lemm.ee during the migration and picked it because they didn't defederate too much with other instances. When they refused to federate with Threads, my choice to use lemm.ee was reaffirmed.
  That's as political as my choice ever got. I personally lean fairly left.
- As a Radical Democrat (the philosophy not the party, although I am registered and vote dem) I am offended
  
  Searching for radical democrat brings up Republican propaganda. Would you be able to explain what you mean by being philosophically "radical Democrat?"
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_democracy?wprov=sfla1
  To me it boils down to the great quote, of John Dewey, "The solution to the ills of democracy is more democracy."
  I want the institution of mass multi-seat electoral offices and the mass expansion of elected offices and the election of those offices via Multi-Seat STAR voting (rate your enthusiasm for all the candidates, the two highest average candidates go to a runoff that seats whoever is rated higher on more ballots, repeat with the two highest rated remaining candidates until all seats are filled)

It's not like anywhere else, here or any other place, isn't an echo chamber... they're just generally more so. It's a really disturbing place but let's not pretend any other place is objective and fully accepting of different views.

Bro, there are echo chambers and there are fascist hangouts, and while a fascist hangout (project2025 favoring forums) is a subset of echo chambers, not all echo chambers are Fascist Hangouts.

Lemmy as a whole is an echo chamber too. Look at how things blew up in this post. This is an extreme scenario, not every conservative cares about project 2025. I have conservative family and coworkers who are conservative because they hate change and want to live in the “good old days”, not because they worship trump or are nazis… And yet everyone here thinks “all conservatives are evil”.

They don't care about it, but they'll happily vote for the people trying to implement it.
- Exactly. And they'll feel its effects and while they suffer they'll only say "Well, at least it's hurting my enemies worse!"
the good old days
So they want slavery back? Or was it something else?
- Nah, that's ancient. Racial segregation, like with the Jim Crow laws, will probably do fine for a start. Maybe also take back women's voting rights. Needless to say that homosexuality gets banned as well again. I mean, it's a rather modern phenomenon that it has been legalized at all. /s
  
  You guys are thinking way too extreme once again. My grandfather voted conservative his entire life and yet was friends with the blacks and columbians next door. He was the first in his town to let his wife drive a car.
  Why was he conservative then you ask? Because he was raised religious and he felt like liberals were attacking his religion. That’s it. Now granted this was in Canada, before Trump and project 2025, but conservatism is an idea, not a party in one country.
  
  Your grandfather is a useful idiot who will be all surprised Pikachu face when they start packing the undesirables into trains
  
  I don't think Poilievre is about to round up people and send them to camps. He's only out for the money.
  
  No, but the American conservatives he supports will definitely round people up.
  
  I don't say that each and every single conservative is an evil asshole who wants to let certain groups of people suffer. But even if the individual reasons for voting conservatives seems innocent, it's not as innocent what such a party could ultimately do (or actually did in the past).
  Even though his only motivation might have been that he saw his religion threatened, voting conservatives still shows a lack of critical thought in my opinion. What about the other goals the conservatives pursued back then and today? Voting them will give them the power to achieve those. Sure, maybe his religion will be protected that way. But what about all of the suffering the other goals will (or did) cause?
  It's a decision to make of what's worse on the greater scale. Picking a party just because of one point on their agenda with which someone can identify, but ignoring the rest, seems like a short-sighted and potentially very harmful idea to me, which might – in the long run – even be detrimental to the one who voted for such a party.
  It feels like voting for a party which will bring doom and damnation over the whole world, but at least you get to pet a puppy once a week.
  
  It’s not a lack or critical thinking. He was working all day, then cooking for the family, then barely had an hour or two to himself. In a primarly conservative town, without internet, and about 3 channels on TV, how do you expect him to learn or care about politics? He voted conservative like everyone else and moved on.
  Also keep in mind that most conservative parties in the world aren’t like the US, they don’t want to “bring doom and damnation over the world”.
  
  So it's not a lack of critical thinking, but not being able to take the time to critically think about one's decision is not a lack of critical thinking?
  I don't think it's responsible to vote for a party if one is not able to critically think about their choice. Then he maybe shouldn't have voted at all, if there was really no time to think a bit about it. And it really doesn't take that much. However, the limiting the available information is indeed a problem to form such critical thoughts. Still, making a choice despite knowing one is not able to form a well-informed opinion, is again a sign of a lack of critical thinking to me.
  No, of course they don't want to. They just do.
  My wording was a figure of speech of course, but still, in my experience and from what I can tell, conservative parties have been more detrimental to the progress and benefit of a society as a whole than being beneficial.
  
  Didn’t take the time to educate himself, thinks his religion is more important than helping others, voted like a lemming.
  Yea a lack of critical thinking went into these actions and into your defence of them.
  
  My dude educating yourself about politics in a tiny town in the 60s isn’t as easy as it sounds. “Taking the time to educate ourselves” nowadays might take a 15m google search, but back then I don’t even know how they’d do it. There was one news channel on TV which was obviously biased one way, so that wouldn’t be enough and we had no library. And as I said people had more important things to do.
  You might disagree, but I think he was right in prioritizing bringing food to the table, helping the town and getting the money to put my father through college. In the end, he did way more good for way more people than his one vote would have.
- There was no slavery in this part of the world, there wasn’t a single person of color in my hometown until the early 2010s.
  They want religion to get its power back and/or they want to keep their wealth. There is probably more, but none of them want immigrants out, guns or that project 2025 shit.
  A lot of people here turned conservative due to the covid measures, which were more extreme than pretty much anywhere else in North America.
Yeah, well, they're not the ones running for office right now I assume. So for now, they're pushing Trump and the Nazis to the top. In the end, their motivation won't matter.
- This is Canada though, so no Trump. You say their motivation won’t matter, but while for the end result you are right, keep in mind that a lot of people don’t care about politics. There are many things to care about in life and we can’t care about everything with the limited time we have. They were however told to never waste a vote. So they vote, with their somewhat limited knowledge, and this is what happens.
What "good old days" exactly are you describing? I expect it wasn't as good as they think, and was especially bad for many who weren't white, hetero, and male.
- Well yes, the people I’m describing were white cis christian males. Of course it wasn’t as good as they remember, but the human brain tends to exagerate memories over time. A lot of conservatives are getting old and most of their life is behind them. Can you blame them for looking back rather than looking forward? Most people don’t care about politics and will vote for the side they slightly lean towards without a second thought.
  
  I can blame them, yes. Because they want their comfort and well being at the expense of, and without regard for others. If they get their way they’ll drive our country back to a dark age for a short bit of expected (and likely not received) comfort, then die, leaving all of us still around to suffer the consequences.
  I won’t hate them because the reality is they are just fools being taken advantage of by those in power. But that doesn’t remove their culpability. The old are meant to plant trees, not burn them down.
  
  See this is what I’m talking about. They aren’t fools for having a different opinion. MAGA followers that do it because of trickle down economics might be fools, but most conservatives in most non-US countries aren’t this extreme.
  They just happen to have different priorities. Believe that a strong army is more important than education. Place themselves and their families and friends before others.
  I swear the amount of people that think their side is 100% right and the other is just idiots is too damm high.
- You know, the good old days when you could own people and cutting edge medicine involved literally blowing smoke up someone's ass.
Getting banned for different views (assuming they were presented in a civilized manner) creates echo chambers. Surpressing other opinions will uniform thinking and perception. That enforces echo chambers.
Sure, Lemmy leans a lot more to the left due to it's user base. That doesn't necessarily mean it's an echo chamber as a whole. You can easily evade snowballing effects here by sorting your posts differently, e.g., scaled. There is no algorithm which tries to keep you on the platform by serving you stuff you like and hiding stuff you don't like. Thereby again, defying what's typical for echo chambers.
You can voice your views and opinions and sometimes surely get downvoted to hell for that. But as long as it doesn't break any "be nice" rules it's usually going to be still visible and seen by others. People might disagree, but you are not surpressed. Thereby again, not an echo chamber.
It becomes problematic though if specific instances or communities ban you for having a different (harmless and civilised expressed) opinion. That will indeed create echo chambers as only that is allowed which is similar to the common tone.
And admittedly, having a user base which is dominated by politically left leaning users, seems not to be helpful in terms of diverse political discussions (although I don't see how conservatives have ever been objectively or ethically right about something :p ), but from my experience this hasn't become a problem here, since even left folks love to shoot each other in the feet and have diverse and deep (often fruitful) discussions.
- It isn’t as big as some other places, yes, but to say it isn’t one doesn’t really sound true either.
  an echo chamber is an environment or ecosystem in which participants encounter beliefs that amplify or reinforce their preexisting beliefs
  In the months I’ve been on lemmy, not once have I encountered a right-wing post, yet I see left-wing posts multiple times a day. By definition, how is it not an echo chamber? I suppose lemmy as a whole might not be, but the resulting lemmy I browse sure is.
  
  That may depend on the instance you're on and the communities others from your instance susbscribed to as well those you subscribed to.
  Also, sorting matters a lot. If you go by popular post, i.e. hot or top, it's not surprising to see many rather left-leaning posts as it's the result of a majority of like-minded people. In that case you're absolutely right and make a good point. If you then change to scaled for example you may encounter more diverse posts. I saw a bunch of pro-NRA posts just yesterday by changing the sorting.
  But that are the posts. In the comments that picture may become different. It's not as rare to me to encounter opposing views and sometimes clearly stuff which I wouldn't categorise as politically left.