Has social media made the UK more right wing?

[Palerider]

The point is that they've got no way of knowing how "we" think, because there's no opportunity for 99.99% of people to actually express what they think. What he means by "we" is the handful of people who control the country.

I've seen the PM of Singapore giving a similar answer, but it's less of an issue when the person saying it isn't a murderous dictator, and to my knowledge Lee Hsien Loong isn't killing people and subjugating his people.

I agree with your point and I am fully onboard with democracy but many, many people are not interested in other people's choices and want to demonise them for those choices. i.e Daily Mail readers! Now many people call Daily Mail readers because they see them as demonising certain sectors. So they demonise Daily Mail readers for demonising others. Vicious circle of oneupmanship.

I don't really want to engage in murderous dictator top trumps, but let's be honest, death tolls are often more a measure of how many people you happened to be in charge of rather than how evil you are. Mao is at the top because China's a big country, but the reality is that most of his deaths were caused by failed economic policies leading to famine (not that he wasn't also a murderous dictator, of course). Is that worse that Cromwell (is he technically a lefty too?), who killed 40% of the Irish population? Or Pol Pot, who was in charge of a smaller country, but managed a genocide of over 20% of the people? Or Bagosora, who deliberate killed 75% of the Tutsi population? Does it even matter whether the deaths were deliberate genocide, incompetence, or callousness and negligence?

I'm not interested in murderous dictators top trumps either but it does show that neither the right or the left are particularly fond of opposition and quite open to killing their own if it achieves their political objectives. My point is there is no moral high ground where the left or right sit unchallenged.

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

The irony meter is off the scale the last couple of pages.

I like the idea that someone posting dictator top trumps doesn't use social media. It's a classic hallmark of someone who does.

Unless he shares an extremism reading list with Steve Bannon, the guy is obviously lying.

 

[Alvin-blue-qhd]

Mao is still the person we respect the most.
His era, Chinese history between 1921-1976, that period of history is not a mysterious ancient history. Every family has some elderly who once lived in that period of history.
No, we will never call him a murderous dictator.
Some people don't even know how to say “你好”, but they have full confidence and feel that they understand Chinese history better than Chinese.
Perhaps it's too aggressive, but I don't think that's a good idea. Good night, everyone.

 

[SebastianBlue]

The point is that they've got no way of knowing how "we" think, because there's no opportunity for 99.99% of people to actually express what they think. What he means by "we" is the handful of people who control the country.

I've seen the PM of Singapore giving a similar answer, but it's less of an issue when the person saying it isn't a murderous dictator, and to my knowledge Lee Hsien Loong isn't killing people and subjugating his people.


I don't really want to engage in murderous dictator top trumps, but let's be honest, death tolls are often more a measure of how many people you happened to be in charge of rather than how evil you are. Mao is at the top because China's a big country, but the reality is that most of his deaths were caused by failed economic policies leading to famine (not that he wasn't also a murderous dictator, of course). Is that worse that Cromwell (is he technically a lefty too?), who killed 40% of the Irish population? Or Pol Pot, who was in charge of a smaller country, but managed a genocide of over 20% of the people? Or Bagosora, who deliberate killed 75% of the Tutsi population? Does it even matter whether the deaths were deliberate genocide, incompetence, or callousness and negligence?

It’s worth pointing out that the user to which you are responding has proven himself to be a bad faith poster across quite a few threads in this forum and, judging by their post in this one—“I don’t use social media, and I am centrist and think both sides are bad, but here’s a list of supposedly “leftist” dictators to show the left is the worst—they’re probably following down that same path on this subject.

 

[Palerider]

I like the idea that someone posting dictator top trumps doesn't use social media. It's a classic hallmark of someone who does.

Unless he shares an extremism reading list with Steve Bannon, the guy is obviously lying.

Troll I presume.

 

[Palerider]

It’s worth pointing out that the user to which you are responding has proven himself to be a bad faith poster across quite a few threads in this forum and, judging by their post in this one—“I don’t use social media, and I am centrist and think both sides are bad, but here’s a list of supposedly “leftist” dictators to show the left is the worst—they’re probably following down that same path on this subject.

Definite Troll.

 

[Palerider]

Just to be clear on this I just put something like 'who has killed the most people in history' into google. I posted the response I got. I suspected Stalin was top but was proven wrong. My point is that both right and left are very, very similar in their brutality when challenged.

For the benefit of my trolls, I do not control the internet and therefore have no control over the answers the internet returns.

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

Troll I presume.

Didn't someone mention irony earlier?

Projection is also off the scale.

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

Just to be clear on this I just put something like 'who has killed the most people in history' into google. I posted the response I got. I suspected Stalin was top but was proven wrong. My point is that both right and left are very, very similar in their brutality when challenged.

For the benefit of my trolls, I do not control the internet and therefore have no control over the answers the internet returns.

Isn't this the Pete Townshend defence?

 

[domalino]

The point is that they've got no way of knowing how "we" think, because there's no opportunity for 99.99% of people to actually express what they think. What he means by "we" is the handful of people who control the country.

I've seen the PM of Singapore giving a similar answer, but it's less of an issue when the person saying it isn't a murderous dictator, and to my knowledge Lee Hsien Loong isn't killing people and subjugating his people.


I don't really want to engage in murderous dictator top trumps, but let's be honest, death tolls are often more a measure of how many people you happened to be in charge of rather than how evil you are. Mao is at the top because China's a big country, but the reality is that most of his deaths were caused by failed economic policies leading to famine (not that he wasn't also a murderous dictator, of course). Is that worse that Cromwell (is he technically a lefty too?), who killed 40% of the Irish population? Or Pol Pot, who was in charge of a smaller country, but managed a genocide of over 20% of the people? Or Bagosora, who deliberate killed 75% of the Tutsi population? Does it even matter whether the deaths were deliberate genocide, incompetence, or callousness and negligence?

The numbers are all bollocks anyway.

Think of a conflict like the Russian civil war where you have about 4 sides, 20 countries involved and 15 million dead.

Are the communists to blame for all of those? Or does everyone get allocated their individual shares of death, or is it the allies White Russians fault for turning the October revolution into civil war instead of accepting the new regime? What about when the newly formed ussr took back the lands japan seized during the civil war, is that blood on Russias hands or japans? What about the famines that all sides helped create and made worse? What about the casualties in the mini civil wars that followed in countries the bolsheviks got defeated in?

Maybe it’s just me but it seems very childish trying to go back 100 years and divvy it up like a restaurant bill.

 

[Postman Pep]

Didn't someone mention irony earlier?

Projection is also off the scale.

Unsurprisingly posters who project downwards from a non biased moral high ground of common sense seem to struggle with irony.

Anybody who disagrees with my opinion is some sort of extremist ;-)

 

[meltonblue]

i think it’s just made everything more political due to everyone having an amplified platform and we’re far less intelligent as a society than we used to be as a consequence. I don’t really see it too much as a left/right wing thing aside from people going more binary with their thought processes, it’s more that loss of intelligence.

We need to get back to trusting experts in their field and people remembering it’s absolutely fine to say “I have no idea”, they don’t need to have an opinion on everything or always pretend it’s a well formed one.

 

[hcblue95]

I actually think that social media targets everybody in a way that is far more inclusive than you think. Nothing sums it up more than the title of this thread because I know that Rascal sits on the far left. His views mean that quite literally anything will sit to the right of him so of course the perception will be that social media is dominated by the right.

The majority of this forum similarly sits on the left and sometimes far left so of course many people are going to be concerned on here about this 'rise' of the right. However, the reality is it couldn't be further from the truth, it's just that normal, common opinions appear to be on the right. I mean look at the polling for the next election, if we're all being influenced to the true right then how are Labour set to win a landslide election this year?

What many people on here hate is the fact that most average and relatively apolitical people do not sit on the left, instead they mostly sit in the centre and centrist votes are often not decided by ideological lines. The reason why there is concern over the picture painted to centrists above all else is because it is this group that will decide any election.

At the end of the day you cannot have a socialist utopia or a far right empire unless the centrists agree to it. This is why both the right and left hate the way in which social media operates, it's because social media generates profit from participation from all corners of the spectrum.

I'm not sure I agree that the majority of this forum sit on the left. A forum with 90% middle aged men is quite unlikely to be left leaning.

It's also the case that often right wingers aren't keen to admit that they're rw whereas left wingers are usually more happy to say they are. There's clearly quite a few on this forum (maybe you're one I've not seen many of your posts) that claim they are centrists and are very clearly not.

 

[SebastianBlue]

i think it’s just made everything more political due to everyone having an amplified platform and we’re far less intelligent as a society than we used to be as a consequence. I don’t really see it too much as a left/right wing thing aside from people going more binary with their thought processes, it’s more that loss of intelligence.

We need to get back to trusting experts in their field and people remembering it’s absolutely fine to say “I have no idea”, they don’t need to have an opinion on everything or always pretend it’s a well formed one.

There is some emerging evidence that social media lends itself to more effective far-right radicalisation and recruitment than it does far-left because of the differences in how each usually approaches those efforts (intentional or not).

The far-right tends to appeal to (oft false) nostalgia, emotional amplification and validation, religious moralism and dogmatic tradition, and “other” blaming, which is better suited to the nature of engagement on social media than the far-left’s tendency to appeal to (oft false) sense of reason and logic, ideas of progress, notions of attainable equality, and individual commitment to social justice.

Far-left recruitment frequently devolves in to belligerent debates between factions with slightly differing interpretations of the rational and logical tenets of the cause and/or the clearest path to progress, resulting in implosions of coalitions under the weight of their own righteousness.

Whereas far-right recruitment more regularly results in a unified, emotionally-exploited cohort of converts, fully invested in to the narrative that their problems will be solved if the “other” group is dealt with and filled with the nostalgia for an ideal time past (that usually never actually occurred).

These are merely the extremes, though, and there is far more to political radicalisation than simply what is described above, particularly that it is not really a continuum but more of a spherical position among many different ideological stances.

I agree all people, regardless of political affinity, can be manipulated via social media and that binary thinking is a plague on humankind.

I also hold that is partly the fault of the users, partly the fault of the platforms (or, more accurately, the organizations running them), partly the fault of governments not providing adequate oversight and regulation, and partly the fault of external entities attempting to manipulate the platforms for their own nefarious purposes.

It has never been as simple as “the social media platforms are bad” or “the users are bad”.

 

[meltonblue]

There is some emerging evidence that social media lends itself to more effective far-right radicalisation and recruitment than it does far-left because of the differences in how each usually approaches those efforts (intentional or not).

The far-right tends to appeal to (oft false) nostalgia, emotional amplification and validation, religious moralism and dogmatic tradition, and “other” blaming, which is better suited to the nature of engagement on social media than the far-left’s tendency to appeal to (oft false) sense of reason and logic, ideas of progress, notions of attainable equality, and individual commitment to social justice.

Far-left recruitment frequently devolves in to belligerent debates between factions with slightly differing interpretations of the rational and logical tenets of the cause and/or the clearest path to progress, resulting in implosions of coalitions under the weight of their own righteousness.

Whereas far-right recruitment more regularly results in a unified, emotionally-exploited cohort of converts, fully invested in to the narrative that their problems will be solved if the “other” group is dealt with and filled with the nostalgia for an ideal time past (that usually never actually occurred).

These are merely the extremes, though, and there is far more to political radicalisation that simply what is described above, particularly that it is not really a continuum but more of a spherical position among many different ideological stances.

I agree all people, regardless of political affinity, can be manipulated via social media and that binary thinking is a plague on humankind.

I also hold that is partly the fault of the users, partly the fault of the platforms (or, more accurately, the organizations running them), partly the fault of governments not providing adequate oversight and regulation, and partly the fault of external entities attempting to manipulate the platforms for their own nefarious purposes.

It has never been as simple as “the social media platforms are bad” or “the users are bad”.

Agree with all of that and I wasn’t particularly thinking of the extremes in saying that everything has become political, at least not more than those extremes amplify that debate to anyone wherever they are on the political spectrum. They view others’ opinions as they do their own I terms of being based on a political mindset and project their own thought processes onto others. It turns everything into a perceived political opinion and ignores any foundation or rational thought for it.

 

[hilts]

Statistically this is just very unlikely.

What's more likely is that you're a lot further right than you think, and are viewing the majority in the middle as left.

Oh the irony

 

[domalino]

Oh the irony

This is an embarrassing way to tell everyone your understanding of irony is as bad as Alanis Morrisette’s

 

[hilts]

This is an embarrassing way to tell everyone your understanding of irony is as bad as Alanis Morrisette’s

No and it's not a pop at you particularly. Posters on the political forum have one thing in common and its not their views. Excluding wums everyone on here thinks they are the the voice of reason , the sane one, not extreme but totally balanced.

So when anyone you or me say to anyone else your bias is affecting your judgement its quite funny. The amount of times i have heard posters say oh this forum is full of the right wing or the left wing without even contemplating its their views that make it appear that way.

The comment you made was true from your point of view and that is the irony because it could also be made to you and it woukd be correct from the view of the person person making it.

Social media is a mine field because people always think they are right. And if they are right logically it must mean someone who doesn't agree is wrong.

 

[domalino]

No and it's not a pop at you particularly. Posters on the political forum have one thing in common and its not their views. Excluding wums everyone on here thinks they are the the voice of reason , the sane one, not extreme but totally balanced.

So when anyone you or me say to anyone else your bias is affecting your judgement its quite funny. The amount of times i have heard posters say oh this forum is full of the right wing or the left wing without even contemplating its their views that make it appear that way.

The comment you made was true from your point of view and that is the irony because it could also be made to you and it woukd be correct from the view of the person person making it.

Social media is a mine field because people always think they are right. And if they are right logically it must mean someone who doesn't agree is wrong.

I know I’m left of centre, although objectively speaking based on desired policies etc not by much. So when I go into the politics thread I know I’m in a minority.

A forum that’s primarily based around 40-60 year old men from Manchester is not going to be overwhelming dominated by left wingers, which is why I made that comment (and knowing the poster) but you’re right if people are going to the politics forum and thinking everyone is far right then it’s because they’re further left than they imagine.

 

[hilts]

I know I’m left of centre, although objectively speaking based on desired policies etc not by much. So when I go into the politics thread I know I’m in a minority.

A forum that’s primarily based around 40-60 year old men from Manchester is not going to be overwhelming dominated by left wingers, which is why I made that comment (and knowing the poster) but you’re right if people are going to the politics forum and thinking everyone is far right then it’s because they’re further left than they imagine.

Who decides centre? I will give you a good example of how this left right and class view in Manchester for example really makes no sense.

A close friend of mine through the pub and work was a stalwart Labour supporter. As a rule I avoid political discussions with mates but the election was coming up and he said he was voting Labour again. This is going back 15 years or so.

I said I was surprised he was a Labour supporter and his answer was well I'm working class.

Okay I said what's your view on people on long term benefits? They should get a bloody job I have to work and I ain't working for them to sit on their arses.

Okay what about immigration? I'm not racist but etc...

You proud of being English? Queen and Country etc...

I said dont your views not align with tories? Well they are posh fuckers.

Even last week I was talking to a girl at work about care workers(my father recently died through cancer mother in care home) which is a gripe of mine. I said they are grossly underpaid and after covid I'm disappointed that people still don't realise how important some roles are. Getting close to minimum wage for what they do. She said don't believe the stories they come over here work for agencies and get good money.

Good money?

Yeah the agency gets 15 quid. Yeah maybe but the the worker doesn't but they wipe arses look after the vulnerable and see people they care for die. Do you think they should earn less than you? You do none of that. Her answer?

Well if we weren't paying for asylum seekers then maybe we could pay more.

Labour voter btw, in her head she's a caring socialist. She will think her views are balanced. She is not even voting for the right fucking party based on her fuckwittery.

This is why left right poor rich upper class working class makes no sense any more.