• dasgoat@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    8chan and 4chan were instrumental in creating the disease that is gamergate and the subsequent online shitheaps it produced. Including but not limited to Trump’s term.

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        10 months ago

        Reddit has always been democratic. Theres some offshoot subreddits that are a cesspool for republicans. But they isolate themselves.

        • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          I meant as part of creating and fostering gamergate. The GG subreddit was pretty big. And talking about Trump, /r/TheDonald was pretty big and fairly influential, as far as subreddits go.

          • Igloojoe@lemm.ee
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            10 months ago

            Im unfamiliar with gamergate. The internet says it was 4chan and other trolls. And like i said those subreddits were isolated in my viewpoint. /trump and all other conservative communities would commonly ban anyone with a different opinion than the hive mind. No room for discussion. /news was always posting stories of republicans being shitheads. And people wouldnt get banned for just having an opinion, theyd just get downvoted into oblivion.

            Atleast this was all how i tailored my reddit feed when i used. I had no desire to see bullshit lies from republican news sites. So maybe my viewpoint was mostly democratic…

            • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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              10 months ago

              I didn’t mean they represented a common sentiment or viewpoint, rather that Reddit was an important platform for them

    • Sorgan71@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      gamergate was a meaningless troll movement. To imply that they got trump elected is moronic.

      • BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        It was a watershed moment for the alt-right’s propaganda machine. It’s defined fascist recruiting tactics ever since and it absolutely played a role in Trump’s election. Gamergate was a dramatic shift of the status quo, as ridiculous as it was, to diminish it’s role in shaping the last few years is just ignorant

      • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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        10 months ago

        Companies pay millions per year to put just their name on stadiums, etc. Advertising works, even if you believe it doesn’t.

    • _number8_@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      i spent too much time on 4chan growing up; it’s the most in depth and fascinating and insane glimpse into the human psyche we have available. you see someone post the worst evils imaginable then people replying to that post with better and more cutting humor than anything aired on TV

      • banneryear1868@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Yeah I was on there a lot in the mid 00s and stopped going on it after the scientology protests. The site basically created internet humor as we know it and I was enough of a loser at the time to be highly online. There was something very accepting about the site in a weird way, and I’m not the sort of person you’d expect would have been a b-slur.

        Met a friend’s partner recently and she said something funny in this oddly familiar way… the type of person I’d least suspect, but yup, a fellow mid 00s b-slur.

      • IndiBrony@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Just be grateful you weren’t there in the early days like I was.

        Scrolling /b/ was a Russian roulette of shock porn, gore, snuff and CP. How I managed to see what I did back in the day and turn out as “normal” as I have, I have no idea.

        On the plus side, I remember being around for that guy fucking the human skull he smuggled from the catacombs 🤷🏼‍♂️

        • 🗑️😸@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          Yeah. I was on around that time too. I have no idea why I spent so much time there but I’m honestly surprised I turned out okay. Not even a little desensitized… I don’t think.

    • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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      10 months ago

      I accidentally clicked on a monkey rekt thread and it was just monkeys getting tortured. There was a funny gif of a monkey getting hit in the balls though.

      • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        monkey rekt thread

        monkey getting tortured

        I mean yeah, it sorta says it on the tin

  • Stubb@lemmy.sdf.org
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    10 months ago

    Why is there so much fearmongering around 4chan? Everyone that doesn’t use it seems to think of it as an anomaly; when it is nothing but a somewhat “radical” (that too only some boards) social site. Also banning & doing something along those lines to the users of 4chan is the shittiest idea of all time.

    • Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Because it and 8chan are racist shitholes that have produced numerous mass murderers, most notably the Christchurch murderer that killed 51 people at a mosque.

      • Stubb@lemmy.sdf.org
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        10 months ago

        I don’t think such sites “produce” mass murderers; they certainly contribute to the accleeration of their extremity–I don’t deny that–but no site can “produce” mass murderers, there has to be some preeminent malignity present in the person.

        • Guntrigger@feddit.ch
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          10 months ago

          It’s interesting that your more nuanced take is barely breaking even compared to the “video games cause violence” type inflammatory take you replied to.

          We all came here to make fun of the dumb twitter post and then comments with the same energy are being applauded.

        • Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          I think you’re arguing for a distinction without a difference. If the seed of malignancy would not have grown without finding fertile soil, how can you prove it existed? Why is it more fitting to blame this metaphysical and unknowable thing rather than these very real cesspits?

          • Stubb@lemmy.sdf.org
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            6 months ago

            I don’t think the disposition to evil needs a “fertile soil”. For instance, there are evil men in convents–and in quite a high degree too–that harm others in order to break the monotonicity of their life; now, would you say a convent is a “fertile soil” for growth of evil–should be the contrary. The artificial spite is a product of, as I’ve mentioned, a boring and monotonous life, and it so happens the easiest mode available to break this is harm towards others.

            In case of natural malignity, the influence on the actions lies not in something mundane as boredom but other natural causes–be it from parental abuse, &c. but I concur that I’ve no scientific knowledge in this field. And, thus I believe that the ones that hold malignity through nature (in contrast with the artificial one) are able to create an environment that accomplishes, or perhaps, breaks, as I’ve said above, their disorder’s whims. And the chans happen to be a pre-existing place with like minded people that nurture each other’s “seeds”, but even in the lack of these imaginary soils, the seeds will grow without any problem.

    • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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      10 months ago

      4chan is so full of teenage racists, incels and general dipshits that I can’t help but think anyone who defends it is also a racist, incel, or generally a dipshit who hasn’t graduated high school yet. Posts like the OP here are the exception, not the rule.

      • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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        10 months ago

        Yep, 4chan is the Nazi bar of the Internet, and cherry picking an example of innocent shitposting means nothing.

        It had its moments, twenty years ago, but all the worthwhile anons left ages ago.

        There’s even a fairly famous quote from a 4channer about it.

        “Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe they’re in good company.” -Descartes né Anon

        Of course, Anon still missed the real lesson.

        There are always far, far, fewer people “just joking around” than the good people in the room want to assume.

        • Crack0n7uesday@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Tell me you think /pol/ is the only board on 4chan without telling me you think /pol/ is the only board on 4chan…

          • Soulg@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            All those racist fascists on -checks notes - /ck/ really piss me off eh

            This entire thread is full of people who see nothing but the worst posts and just decide that those represent the entire site

            • Crack0n7uesday@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              It’s kinda funny because even all the other boards on 4chan make fun of /pol/. The people that use 4chan outside of /pol/ are very aware of what goes on in that board.

          • UnrepententProcrastinator@lemmy.ca
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            10 months ago

            Last time I went there, a while back I admit (before it became mainstream knowledge), it wasn’t moderated out at all. It wasnt nudes (although didn’t look very deep) but they were posting little girl and salivating.

    • SchizoDenji@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      Some of the boards are legit helpful and good too. You can stay away from /r9k/ or /b/ or /pol/ and be fine.

      • EmergMemeHologram@startrek.website
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        10 months ago

        Oof I used to be a regular on r9k and now I cringe so hard about it. Thank God it was anonymous.

        I was going through a tough time and the people there accepted me and engaged with my posts. In hindsight I think people just connected with my anger, but the venting was helpful.

        At some point a friend saw my laptop and said “holy shit you’re asking 4chan for advice, hahaha what the fuck is wrong with you” and she laughed until she was wheezing, and I never went back on again.

      • Thomrade@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        The /tg/ board was the source of some of the greatest tabletop RPG content I ever saw in the 2010s, really great discussions and whole homebrew systems born out of threads that just pitch cool ideas. Of course it came with the same veneer of snark and shock comments as the rest of 4chan but that was on every site in the 2010s. I haven’t been back there in a long while so I can’t speak to it these days.

        • Captain Howdy@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          /tg/ is the same as it always was. That type of nerd never changes much. I still go there on occasion to see what’s up in indie RPG and wargames.

    • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      I still remember that story about how someone’s boyfriend was radicalized by 4chan and they noticed by “checking his 4chan account” and I think talked about PMs lol

    • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      10 months ago

      There isn’t any fear mongering. For every innocuous greentext, there’s 10 wildly racist or antisocial posts.

    • riodoro1@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      People are dumbass normies who fear anyone slightly different than the mould. You don’t have facebook and instagram? Fucking weird. You don’t know the latest influencer trend? Outcast. You think capitalism is evil and the normalcy is harmful to society? Terrorist.

  • Rob Bos@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    It is true that when I see something from 4chan that I don’t understand, I have to approach it with the well earned assumption that it is somehow racist or fascist. This snake thing… I can’t just assume it’s shitposting. With 4chan it could be anything.

  • cum@lemmy.cafe
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    10 months ago

    let’s play spot the 4channers in the comments!

  • Got_Bent@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Can somebody explain what I’m looking at in that post?

    All I can make out is that the snake connects between the pictures.

    I thought maybe that created some offensive bigger picture, but I don’t see it.

    • hswolf@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      that’s exactly the point of that thread, there’s no need for a reason in everything, sometimes people are silly and enjoy being silly just for the snake of being silly

      • GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk
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        10 months ago

        80% of 4chan is shitposts with no hidden meaning.
        The remaining 10% is people dog-whistling to each other through shit-posts, hoping one will slide into the 80% undetected.
        And 10% horrible things that the janitors have to clean up.

        • 100_percent_a_bot@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          No offense but if you think there’s any kind of subtlety on 4chan I dare you to browse /b for two minutes. No dogwhistles, just regular, very racist and antisemitic whistles.

      • PopcornTin@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Nope. I must believe all of X is bad. Since I am in the not-X group, I am therefore a good person. Please approve of me.

        • Soulg@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          That’s idiotic.

          Maybe on current /pol/, I would understand, but there’s a lot more there than just that place.

  • JustUseMint@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Scary how many people in here are anti free speech. Yes, they’re stupid, cancerous, lot of white supremacists, and all the scum and villany etc , but like, the point of free speech is that you’re allowed to say that shit.

    Make a threat? Absolutely, track IPs and investgate logs, lawful actions against unlawful acts. But to flat out ban every one you disagree with? Disgusting. And you should be ashamed of it.

    • LoudWaterHombre@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      10 months ago

      Any kind of freedom ends were you are violating the freedom of someone else. Spitting hatred against women and minorities has nothing to do with freedom of speech.

      • ArmokGoB@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        10 months ago

        Saying hateful, dumbass shit doesn’t violate anyone’s freedom. Denying them their right to congregate, get equal service in business, have bodily autonomy, etc. does. However, speech alone is not enough to equate to action, in most cases.

        • geissi@feddit.de
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          10 months ago

          Saying hateful, dumbass shit doesn’t violate anyone’s freedom

          That depends entirely on your definition of freedom.

          If someone were to punch me, it would violate my freedom from being punched/ bodily harm.
          This is illegal in the US.

          If someone were to insult me, it would violate my freedom from being insulted (maybe psychological harm).
          This is legal in the US but illegal elsewhere.

          speech alone is not enough to equate to action

          Speech is not something that happens to you, it’s something you actively do. It is always an action.

      • licherally@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        As much as I dislike people spitting hatred at women, LGBTQIA+ folks, and POCs, this is still freedom of speech. You don’t have to enjoy it, you don’t have to listen to it, and you’re certainly free to remove these people from your personally owned spaces. But it doesn’t change the fact that people should be allowed to say whatever the fuck they want, otherwise we literally are punishing people for thought crimes and edgy jokes.

        People should be judged for their actions, not their words. Words don’t actually mean anything without action behind them.

        I’m a gay man, and I’ve definitely given out the occasional f slur pass. Why? Because I honestly think it’s funny as fuck when my best friend of 20 years calls me that. He doesn’t hate me, he knows and loves my partner like a sibling, and he is my brother. It would be so fucked if he got in some kind of actual trouble for that…

        • Nahdahar@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          The dangerous thing with speech is the ability to radicalize people. I mostly agree with your comment but it’s a more complex topic than “until you don’t do something bad you’re fine”.

        • mugthol@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          10 months ago

          So if someone says “let’s kill all women, gays and jews” that’s totally fine for you?

          • smeg@feddit.uk
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            10 months ago

            I think their point is that you don’t throw them in prison just for saying it. If they actually do it or influence others to do it then that’s very different. I always try to think how a law could be twisted or abused, and once you make simply saying something illegal that opens the door to a lot of authoritarianism.

            • mugthol@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              10 months ago

              Something being illegal does not automatically mean prison. In most developed countries prison is a last resort

          • licherally@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            That’s fundamentally not the same thing, don’t be obtuse for the sake of debate points.

            Insults and general demeaning comments should not be punished in the court of law. Saying offensive things should not be punished in the court of law.

            As I said before, the action/intent is the part that should be punished. Providing private information about someone who you disagree with or want to incur harm upon is an action with malicious intent.

            As a leftist, I fail to understand why we always jump to tone policing and purity politics? We can identify the material conditions that cause radicalization and general bigotry and act upon these things, but we always just jump to punishing people for being radical bigots, which only further galvanizes those positions.

            We’re not making these spaces smaller, we’re making them more volatile by doing this. They see these conversations and think “this is why we have to remove leftism, because they will punish us for crimes we have yet to do” and that’s precisely what this argument is.

              • licherally@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                Well I’m holding you in contempt in court for making a joke that I didn’t agree with. I hope you’re ready to pay a huge fine, because this is an open and shut case.

        • LoudWaterHombre@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          10 months ago

          Why does your freedom of speech cover insulting me? It doesn’t make any sense? Instead of me having to remove myself from public spaces to not get insulted, the people insulting in public spaces should be removed???

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      the point of free speech is that you’re allowed to say that shit.

      No, it isn’t

    • pop@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      Freedom of speech works out when everyone’s speech is equal. But in the real world, it isn’t. if it were, the minority wouldn’t have to fight for their rights and the laws would apply the same to the majority.

      “free speech” is clickbait for the racists, created by racists to drown out the opposing voices of minority while calling it equality.

      Your “freedom of speech” was added in the constitution on December 15, 1791. It took almost 200 years for the cilvil rights movement in 1950s for the black people to have equal rights.

      Don’t flaunt it like it has any shred of importance beyond what the majority of the US population uses it for. And it’s to be racist bigots.

      Keep concern trolling though

      • tjsauce@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Didn’t freedom of speech protect the civil rights movement more than if it weren’t in the constitution? Just because bad people make use of this right, doesn’t make it inherently bad. It’s not concern trolling because we think you’re overcorrecting, and any attempt to censor 4chan will lead to either “angering the wasps” or censorship of benign ideas.

        Just know that I am arguing in good faith because I know that the people who decide what to censor will overcorrect, and I think that causes more harm than good.

      • JustUseMint@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Only thing I feel like responding to:. This might be hard for you to understand but people can have differing opinions than you and not be trolling. It’s not healthy to have that belief.

      • pop@lemmy.ml
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        10 months ago

        Hey guys, he said the secret phrase, All other opinions are invalidated. everyone please clap. 👏👏👏

      • sour@kbin.social
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        10 months ago

        how is

        kicking bigot off platform is violation of free speech

        reasonable

        • Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works
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          10 months ago

          Because otherwise you run the risk of being bigoted about bigots. Ironic. Keep them in the open, learn what they think, be prepared to shut them down at every available opportunity - show them the error of their beliefs again and again and again. History suggests that banning things doesn’t make the problem go away. It just drives it underground, out of sight, where they can mutate and coalesce without anybody from the outside knowing or realising… then we all be fucked.

            • Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works
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              10 months ago

              I’m passingly familiar with Popper’s work and it probably goes some way to explaining why I advocate for public intolerance, rather than tolerance, of these sad, lost and potentially dangerous individuals. The second video was age locked - I’m sure it is full of good points - but I can’t comment on it directly. I meant a more vernacular meaning to “shut them down” - I.e. telling them firmly that they are mistaken and offering them a different insight. As for logic I’m not sure it’s much use as most extremism tends to come from the heart rather than the head, so to speak. All I hope is that I can plant a seed of doubt… whether it grows or not is beyond my control. People generally have a bit of a herd mentality - hence the growth of echo chambers online and in popular legacy media. If you spend all your time surrounded by only your own views you’ll never expand your outlook and will, in all probability, become even more entrenched. I’d hate to think what kind of a c*** I could be now if 35 years ago some people hadn’t called me out and made me reassess myself and my views towards certain sections of humanity.

  • Emerald@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Image Transcription: Twitter Post


    Emma Kennedy, @EmmaKennedy

    You know what? Everyone on 4chan and 8chan should be on a terror list. Every single incel. I couldn’t give a single shit about their “freedom of speech”

    [A screenshot of a messageboard thread is shown. There are 3 images in the screenshot, all of crudely drawn green snakes. The images of the snakes connect together, despite being posted in separate posts by separate users. The second image of a snake has a caption of “sssssnek” and a comment after all three snake images states “Whoa, watch out, you scared me there for a bit.”]

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    10 months ago

    Actually a cold blooded snake might well be the best emblem to represent the users of 4chan and/or 8 chan. Well known for their publishing of pedophilic content and love for showing kids getting gored to death.

        • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          TIL fascism and authoritarianism mean “to judge a shitty thing as shitty”

          • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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            10 months ago

            Friend…

            Everyone should be on a terror list

            I couldn’t give a single shit about their “freedom of speech”

            They might be talking about this part…

            • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              Yeah find me a single response where anyone is agreeing with that sentiment.

              “Lemmy is advocating for full on fascism!!!” When I think OP actually was advocating in favor of FrEe SpEeCh in reality