Collaborateur! 📣

If you’re looking to have a public forum, you need a representative sample from all sides of the political spectrum. Look at parliamentary systems as an example of that, where you have literal fascists and communists sitting alongside one another as a very vocal, but incredibly small minority. If that’s your goal, you need to take the good with the bad.

That is what Musk has stated as his goal, so what you’re seeing makes absolute sense with that stated goal.

That said, I don’t like Musk or what he claims to believe in politically, I just think the idea of an open town square is desirable. I hope someone can pull it off (doesn’t seem like Musk is doing it), which is part of why I’m working on a Reddit/Lemmy alternative that discourages echo chambers and encourages high quality discourse. Doing that is incredibly hard, because people like to group up into tribes, and I think Musk absolutely does that as well (hence why I don’t like him). However, I don’t think Musk is a “Nazi” because he allows Nazis on his platform, I think he’s just incapable of running the type of social media platform he wants to see exist.

What are you talking about? Who has he kicked out for that?

I don’t, but there seems to be a very strong correlation between leftist political views and calling people who tolerate Trump “Nazis.”

That said, I’m not a leftist or a conservative, I dislike Trump, Musk, and what they stand for. I’m libertarian, and not in the “I’m a conservative who likes weed” way (I have no desire to use weed, but it should 100% be legal), but in a “We should work toward open borders” way. I respect Musk’s statement that he wants Twitter/X to be a free speech platform and understand him allowing Trump et al back on, but I think he has really lost what made Twitter interesting. I don’t think he actually wants free speech, he wants people to agree with him to be heard, and “free speech” is the excuse to get them platformed again.

My issue here has nothing to do with Musk, but with the liberal (pun intended) use of the term “Nazi” to label people you don’t like. There are actual Nazi movements that could apply to, such as the Proud Boys, and abusing the term just cheapens the meaning of the term.

Of course they don’t, the Nazi card is a far-right concept. The far-left analog is communist, and they did plenty of that during the “red scare.” They still use “communist” or “socialist” terminology to write off opponents.

And no, the Republican party isn’t actively courting neo-nazis, it’s neo-nazis that are using Republican talking points to appeal to a broader audience. There’s certainly a venn diagram overlap there, so Republicans can appear to be supporting neo-nazis, but that’s really just neo-nazis trying to appeal to more of the mainstream.

Don’t get caught up in the partisan name-calling, it sucks when Republican do it, and it sucks when Democrats do it, it’s just a really stupid version of a strawman. Democrats don’t want to seize the means of product but Republicans want you to think they do, and Repbulicans don’t want to kill minorities but Democrats want you to think they do. Don’t buy in to the divisiveness BS, look at the facts and make your own decisions from there.

I personally hate both parties since neither actually deliver on the parts I like from their platforms, and they tend to behave similarly on the issues I care about (e.g. both largely support Israel, both seem happy to continue undeclared wars, both seem happy to run up deficit spending with little to show for it, etc). Screw the two party system and “pundits” in general.

Yup, and that’s more than a feeling, there’s a lot of evidence for it. Here’s a PDF research paper about polarization in social media, here’s an article, and here’s a related poll of people in emerging markets.

Then again, politics has always been divisive and resorting to name-calling isn’t anything new. The research, however, seems to indicate that it has gotten much worse with social media.

No, I disagree with each of your definitions. Here’s how I see them:

• leftist - anyone left of center; this is a big tent with both capitalists and communists
• progressives - leftists who want significant, but moderate political change (e.g. universal healthcare, high minimum wage, etc)
• liberals - anyone who believes in individual rights and private property, so basically the capitalist wing of leftist ideology; originally, liberals were more synonymous w/ modern libertarians, but now they tend to prefer larger government

So in terms of size of the groups: leftists > liberals > progressives. The communist part of the left is largely mutually exclusive from progressives and liberals, though some progressives are in favor of some elements from socialism.

At least that’s how I see it. I’m neither leftist or conservative, I’m a pretty centrist libertarian. I’m left of many leftists and right of many conservatives, depending on the issue.