That thinking might work for a crazy guy on a street. Unfortunately, that is not what this is even remotely. It is harder to be “outright uninterested” when you are dealing with a large, organized and financed movement spreading this rhetoric and in many cases coordinating to enforce their vile stances to be exclusively taught in schools.
Taking that into account, being uninterested makes you part of the problem. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
The man shouting his denial regarding the holocaust is someone who has decided to take upon himself the judgement and cruelty of the public because he believes that they are being deceived and wants to give them information he thinks the people should have. In my experience, these people are sound in their logic, and it has been enlightening discussing these things with them. That’s going into a conversation, not an argument, especially when you’re not actually trying to do anything but be right. Keep in mind that group consensus is not the same thing as truth. Even if that group is the majority. even if that group includes the official narrative. Truth exists indifferent to majority and government support.
After all, this is the policy: “The one who wants to be deceived, let him be deceived.”
The truth is out there, and the man standing on his soapbox feels that he has uncovered ‘one of truth’s protective layers’ and he feels compelled to bring the truth to the people as he is aware that no one else is in any hurry to do so. That deserves respect, if you have noting nice to say, then say nothing. If you are able to challenge your previously held beliefs and biases, then hear him out with an open mind, then it comes down to logic, reason, and science. Hear a hypothesis, listen to the argument, and evaluate the evidence or lack thereof. If the hypothesis can be tested, test it. If an argument is logical, consider it. If evidence supports the logical argument, judge accordingly.
Ultimately, declaring that anyone is a “psycho” because they are saying something that you disagree with, makes you the “psycho”. As a Psychopath is in capable of empathy and is disinterested, even disgusted, in the opinions and beliefs of others and will dismiss them without a second thought. whereas, the man on the street cares about the truth, cares whether or not people know the truth, believes that people deserve the truth and is willing to deal with “psychos” who will be disgusted with him and treat him like garbage for attempting to speak the truth, all for the benefit of others.
Regardless of what the subject may be, though the Holocaust is a prime example. A solid argument has been made against it. it’s worth considering with an open mind, if for no reason other than to form a solid counter argument whenever the topic comes up. you can only form a counter argument by listening to the initial argument tho.
It’s nice to see people actually being reasonable and well-thought out. Too many peoples’ knee-jerk reaction these days is to immediately cut off and cut out anyone they don’t agree with, which is reprehensible. The reason these people are allowed to keep thinking the way that they do is because they are given zero opposition and are treated like monsters the moment they say something wrong or harmful. This is an instant recipe for tribalism and “us vs them,” building of social barriers and echo chambers. Your approach on the other hand bolsters community and helps steer people towards the actual facts, as they are going to be more receptive to someone willing to listen to them and treat them as a human being despite thinking they’re wrong.
As a brown person who lived in the south, my life wasn’t better because nobody talked about racism in the south, or covered it up in a flowery way.
People have to live through this, it’s horrible, and pretending everything is fine is the excuse those people are looking for to make it worse because clearly nobody cared.
Slaves weren’t freed because northern liberals stopped talking about it, they were freed because someone said “no” and made it stick.
Conservatism in the US is just a white supremacy movement these days. People need to realize that.
I disagree, there are plenty of POC among conservatives. Some very vocal minorities within the larger conservative camp are essentially a white supremacy movement though.
What helps identify them to me is whether they’re more focused on social or fiscal issues. This doesn’t work for politicians since politicians rarely care about either, they care about whatever they think will get them the votes they want to get elected, but it works pretty well for average voters.
For example, if someone wants immigration control, figure out the root of it and attack that. If they think brown people are taking our jobs, show them that immigration is generally beneficial because it means companies can expand the “good” jobs if they have sufficient labor pool to fill the less desirable jobs (there are plenty of statistics to back this up). If they think women shouldn’t get abortions, show how long it takes women who have been attacked to report to the police (if they ever do). And so on. Take their concerns seriously and show them how an alternative perspective improves things without regressing on their concerns.
The same goes for people on the opposite end of the spectrum. Figure out what their concerns are and show how the policy you’d like to support doesn’t make this concerns worse, or how the policy could be amended to address their concerns.
Some people can’t be reasoned with because their root concern is unreasonable (e.g. block immigration because they hate foreigners), but that’s a very small subset of the population. Realize that most people have been lied to and aren’t basing their policy preferences on hate.
There were Jewish Nazis too. Specifically Hitler’s personal driver was Jewish. So no, a minority In a group does not make that group not against similar minorities. For all the log cabin Republicans or female Republicans that should therefore mean that the Republican party could never be anti-gay or anti-woman. Yet that is one of the only consistent things they are.
I’m just saying the white supremacists make up a small part of the overall conservative movement in the US.
The majority are against expansion of gay rights. That one makes no sense to me because the main premise at least used to be reducing government involvement in our lives, and gay people getting married has zero impact on anyone else’s life, so it should be allowed.
I wouldn’t classify conservatives as anti-woman though, they’re just in favor of protecting the rights of the unborn. If you believed that fetuses had human rights, you’d hold a similar position on abortion. So being anti-abortion doesn’t make you anti-woman. It’s a similar thing as being anti-assisted suicide.
We should be calling out actual white supremacists and fascists, not just using labels as a political tool.
I disagree, there are plenty of POC among conservatives. Some very vocal minorities within the larger conservative camp are essentially a white supremacy movement though.
They got a state education curriculum to whitewash slavery. That’s a big enough minority to be downright afraid for the future.
I read through the curriculum, and from what I could tell, there was one statement out of over a hundred pages of black history that people took issue with.
That statement had nothing to do with white-washing, it was pretty much the “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade” analogy. Former slaves were dealt a terrible hand, yet many of them were able to build a decent life for themselves despite the racism they definitely experienced after emancipation.
It’s amazing to me that less than 100 years after the Civil Rights movement, we had a black US President, and 100 years before the Civil Rights movement we were finally freeing slaves. We went from black people being legally considered less than a person, to being second class citizens, to running the country. We still have a ways to go, but we’ve made huge strides.
Agreed!
… But also, does every community need to just be righteously indignant screenshots of tweets? Like… Can’t a community called USA be something… else?
No. When half the politicians in a world superpower are losing their goddamn minds it affects us all. Uncomfortable world events are not going to be nearly contained where anyone can choose to – or accidentally – ignore them.
Oh, I thought the USA news and politics community might be about news and politics in the USA, but it’s good that it’s the same sort of snappy tweet screenshots that are in the hundred other meme communities that come up with the “Everything” filter on. What a relief.
Question, is it OK to post Calvin and Hobbes and “yiff” porn here too? It just feels like those are too uncomfortable and important to contain in several other Lemmy communities too.
Do you genuinely think furry bullshit and polotical news events are equally impactful in the world?
TIL that Florida is not part of the USA, and that indoctrinating children in the “virtues” of slavery is not politics.
The ‘useful’ comments from Gut-whatever were in line with a common Republican point they want to hammer into people, which is that everyone must be useful by providing labor. Consistency of ideology and manipulation about it is common across conservative messaging, and not by accident. The theme here is that everyone, whether someone is a 12 year old kid, elderly, disabled, if they are not providing labor for the ruling class and/or receive more physical/monetary resources than they create, to the wealthy they are useless and might as well be dead.
Does it really? This is largely a meme AFAIK, most conservatives don’t believe in that nonsense, at least not in the way the poster is making it out to be. Essentially, this is a strawman-type argument to get attention.
Instead of this, how about we discuss actual policy proposals and reveal any latent racism?
Bro the “blacks benefitted from slavery” thing is literally being made into the new standard for teaching in Florida by the board of education, something that was made possible by Desantis’s stupid “stop woke act”, you know, actual policy and legislation. This clearly isn’t just a meme to conservatives, and it’s not a strawman if it’s based on real things people are saying and teaching and putting into law. Idk about the holocaust thing since I haven’t heard about whatever that’s referencing yet, but the “black people benefiting from slavery thing” is very much a real issue born from actual policies, and not just a meme.
Do you have a link to the proposed changes? I’d like something a bit less sensationalized than a SM post.
These aren’t proposed changes, these are already enacted changes. Do you have a preferred source? Nvm, I’ll just provide several for you to choose from.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/07/20/us/florida-black-history-education-standards-reaj/index.html
https://amp.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article277539723.html
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/rcna95358
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna95418
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/20/florida-black-history-teaching-standards-00107067
That last one is a copy of the standards from the Florida department of education itself. You can check page 6 to verify it yourself.
Hope that provides enough info.
It absolutely does. Florida is currently implementing curriculum from the (non-educationally certified) PragerU YouTube channel that explicitly teaches exactly these 2 things. If we just stick our heads in the sand and ignore it then those kids are going to grow up indoctrinated.
“X supports Y which has component Z” and “X is part of group A” does not mean “A supports Z” and it doesn’t necessarily mean “X supports Z.”
I understand attacking Ron DeSantis over the PragerU position, but even then, there’s still a lot of nuance being missed (i.e. does the proposed curriculum in question include that content, or are they selecting other parts of the content from PragerU?).
I’m all for bashing conservatives, especially DeSantis in particular, but this is so much of a stretch that it seems more like an ad hominem than an actual criticism.
It is explicitly laid out in the accepted curriculum. This isn’t some niche thing, or some fringe school. This is the curriculum of the entire state of Florida that’s already been agreed on.
When all (and yes, I mean all) of group A shows that they regularly engage in racist, homophobic, transphobic and sexist rhetoric it’s safe to assume that X supports Z.
most conservatives don’t believe in that nonsense
Yeah it’s mostly just Florida’s Rob Desantis going off the deep end for whatever reason, but it’s not a meme.
Agreed. No clue where this came from.
Oh, maybe these? IDK.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/20/us/florida-black-history-education-standards-reaj/index.html
https://news.yahoo.com/other-place-career-over-fox-160425273.html
I reviewed this document, which seems to be the curriculum for the coming year. In it I saw 65 pages about slavery before I came to a quote that many seem to have issue with (the one about former slaves using skills they learned in slavery once freed), and there were at least 10 pages of other discussion on black history afterward.
History is messy, and I think it’s important to show history that’s not one-sided. We should teach Malcolm X alongside MLK Jr. We should show atrocities Americans committed in WW2 alongside the heroics of D-Day. We should show how close we were to nuclear winter during the cold war due to mistakes made by politicians, as well as successes of diplomacy in the same era.
The curriculum here seems to unambiguously communicate that slavery was absolutely atrocious and that the road to gaining civil rights was messy and hard fought, and I think there’s enough background for students to understand why the black community continues to push for equality. I still see racism today, so we’re obviously not done.
But to completely ignore any other valid narrative shortchanges our kids. They need to understand how each party in such a pivotal time saw things, and how the weaker party was able to succeed in the face of immense obstacles.
That said, the second link is absolutely atrocious. The only way Jewish people were able to rebuild was because of their ability to network after the war, not because they were forced to labor while malnutritioned. The Florida curriculum change is quite different, it doesn’t attempt to downplay anything, it merely provides additional context to help students understand the success stories after emancipation.
