this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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[–] Red_October@lemmy.world 376 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Remember back when Elon kept calling himself a Free Speech Absolutist? That just gets funnier every day.

[–] TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 165 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Right-wingers only seem to care about free speech when it applies to themselves. Anyone else and they'll get talking of "defeating the woke mind virus" or whatever ridiculous way they decide to demonize others.

Reminds me of that Sartre quote

[–] Daft_ish@lemmy.world 88 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (7 children)

The_donald was the only lesson I needed to learn what conservatives thought of free speech.

It would be interesting to know what conservatives actually believe. By this point we've broken down each and everyone of their professed beliefs and found nothing of substance.

Here is a list of things I remember conservatives use to say their ideology was based on:

*Christian morals - You can even look back at their warped version of Christian morality from 1970s forward and still say today that Trump has fully exposed them to be baseless

*Small government - Trump and Co are actively trying to expand government authority and have successfully taken away the rights of woman all over the US

*Democracy - Trump told democracy to go fuck itself Jan. 6 2021

*Capitalism - Capitilism for the serfs socialism for the capitilists

*American Exceptionalism - At some point America was great but I'm not going to say when.

*No Child Left Behind - jk jk we knew that was bullshit from the get go

*Free speech - ahem I mean free 'hate' speech. all other speech is negotiable.

The list goes on my dudes. Would love to know what these people really believe. My guess is nothing. They are just mad and acting out. We've all seen it growing up. The people who just refuse to help themselves no matter what you do and you're constantly picking up the pieces for them.

[–] CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world 34 points 10 months ago

"Conservatives don't care about free speech. Conservatives cares about power. Faithfulness, old-time values, homemade bread, that’s the just means to the end. It’s a distraction. I thought you would have figured that out by now."

  • slightly altered quote from Handmaid's Tale
[–] GnomeKat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Copied this from another post I made.. things make more sense when you realize what their true core principle is.

There is a good Adam Conover podcast episode where he interviews Corey Robin. In the episode Robin states the main premise of his book, which is that the central underlying ideology of the right is the belief that some people are better than others and deserve to be in power. A lot of the rights' beliefs and ideas evolve over time but they evolve in service of that core idea. It's the one thing that stays consistent over time going back to the french revolutions.

Multiracial, multiethnic, international cooperation, helping the homeless, helping the poor. No matter how you spin it by trying to convince them of the benefits ect, the right will never be on board. They don't believe those groups deserve help or should be helped. They fundamentally believe it is morally good to depower certain groups and empower other groups.

That one idea explains so much of the rights blatant hypocrisy. Welfare disproportionality going to red states is good because it's going to the good people. Rich people getting richer is good because it's going to the good people. Hurting minorities is good because they are the bad people, helping them is bad. Some people are innately worthy and some people are not. Anything the good people do is good, anything the bad people do is bad. The same action can be good or bad depending on who is doing it.

[–] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 5 points 10 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

episode

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] JustZ@lemmy.world -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Why do you/the book propose they need to look down on someone else?

[–] TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id 3 points 10 months ago

"Need" probably isn't the best word. It's not a "need" so much as it is a belief. They "believe" themselves to be better and more deserving. Everything else follows from that. Start plugging it into what you know about conservatives and you will immediately see that it's by far the best and simplest explanation.

Also bear in mind that people are often, and in fact quite usually, unaware of why they hold certain opinions and far from using reason to arrive at their opinions, tend to arrive at an opinion and then use reason to rationalize why it's correct.

The SCOTUS is a great example; we already know how the justices will rule because we already know their underlying opinions about the world. What we don't know is how they will justify their rulings. If this weren't true, then neither party would care about SCOTUS nominations. The fact that we care very much tells you that we all privately know that I am right.

You and I do it too. We all do. Some of us are more aware of it than others.

[–] JustZ@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Conservatism is an excuse for your instant, emotional reactions.

If you formed your beliefs in schools over many years, that's why you're probably a liberal now.

They literally want to shoot people for simple larceny or for blocking the sidewalk in protest. It's an ideology for people whose lizard brains make all their "decisions." You know these people, how they just go through life reacting to things. You can trick them into believing anything. I'm not saying that if you're a conservative you're going to kill someone for blocking your sidewalk, I'm saying that if you lean into the ideology enough is literally deforms your amygdala and you lose touch with your ability to be rational.

One thing I enjoy is to get conservatives going about protests and police use of force especially with regard to public protests, civil disobedience, rioting, theft or destruction of private property.

Get them all fired up. You know, tell them the protesters threw snowballs and maybe ice at the cops first, and that they came into a private shipping yard, broke into private storage, stole whatever they could carry, and set a bunch of it on fire. You know, get them talking about how they'd empty the clip. Then you can reveal casually that you were talking about the Boston Massacre and Boston Tea Party. They remember from grade school how they are supposed to feel about these events, and they are unable to reconcile with their repressed and curious inner children. There defense mechanisms literally cannot process why they are advocating for the British in the revolutionary war.

You know, "what if these thieves and vandals burned your country's flags from all government buildings, shot all the police, and said they were forming their own government with a new Constitution and to fuck off?" I like to say they are just dumb but really they are just emotionally immature and regressing.

[–] TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id 1 points 10 months ago

No, conservatism is ultimately about some people being naturally more deserving than others. It really is that simple. Everything else follows from that proposition. There's no reason to further complicate it by looking for more proximate explanations.

[–] JustZ@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

The Donald? Where you from you don't know:

  • Hustler Magazine;
  • Mad Magazine;
  • Dungeons & Dragons;
  • Porn;
  • Mortal Combat for Sega.
  • The Simpsons;
  • Rap music;
  • South Park;
  • Kneel down during song;
  • Saying "gay."

I'm sure I'm forgetting twenty other things conservative literally tried to ban me from doing in my lifetime. Conservatives have zero credibility on free speech.

In Russia it's illegal to talk about it's invasion of Ukraine. It's called an anti-sedition law. Despite the First Amendment, anti sedition laws and seditious libel were illegal and punishable by long terms of imprisonment until lefty Supreme Court Justices decides so in 1964.

These Justices on there now will flip us right back to prosecuting people for saying Israel is doing a genocide, or for saying "fuck the draft," or for saying "fuck Donald Trump," but not for saying "fuck Joe Biden." Conservatives right now in America want laws that ban Americans from participating or even talking about "BDS." Our Supreme Court in America just recently upheld such laws, without really reaching the issue, but keeping the laws alive. They also push ag-gag laws. They have zero credibility on free speech.

[–] Linkerbaan@lemmy.world -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's not just conservatives pushing BDS laws though. Democrats are just as complicit.

[–] JustZ@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago

If you classify all the established democrats actually leading the DNC as "a few" I guess.

[–] Hackerman_uwu@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

It is abundantly clear that they do not believe in anything and operate on the basis of reacting in spite to anything they are told to. It’s basically one whole hemisphere of the political spectrum hijacked by propaganda. We genx folk thought that the free access to information on the internet would set people free but this what we got instead.

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 3 points 10 months ago

Care to elaborate that bit about capitalism?

As a non-American, I’ve been struggling to understand how Americans use these terms. Sure, I’ve seen plenty of “capitalism good, socialism bad” rhetoric, but what do people actually mean when they use them? Your example was particularly interesting, because it sounds like you’re implying that Trump promised capitalism, but failed to deliver.

[–] Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world 48 points 10 months ago

Free speech absolutist means "I am absolutely free from the consequences of my speech"

[–] moitoi@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 10 months ago

I also remember a bunch of people saying Elon will preserve free speech. It looked like a cult.