• Dr. Moose
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      1 year ago

      I’m just perplexed how kids are still religious in 2024 with vast amount of free information out there. I thought this cult bullshit was about to end with my generation when we got free, unrestricted information exchange invented.

      I guess you can’t fix irrationality with rationality huh

      • @FractalsInfinite@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        From my perspective its because people won’t change their beliefs unless they stop benefiting the believer. For people who live in a religious community, there church’s sunday social event is enjoyable, there friends are all religious, there denomination provides a entire moral framework and worldview they don’t even need to think about. Confirmation bias plays a major role in preventing alternate thought to block out other worldviews.

        Only when someone does not gain much benefit from there religion or has a important part of there religion proven wrong, can they process alternative ideologies and either switch to a more useful denomination or stop believing entirely.

        • @Resonosity@lemmy.world
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          41 year ago

          Yep I have a friend who joined a church after not going to one for years because of the social aspects of it. Lots of people their age to relate to.

          We just need better secular groups to join with those benefits that aren’t tied to religion. It’s one of the reasons I’m always apprehensive about volunteering because I don’t want the connection to religion. I know it doesn’t matter my intent for those who benefit/what benefits from the volunteering, but it affects my long term commitment to the cause.

          • @FractalsInfinite@sh.itjust.works
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            41 year ago

            Its a shame as well because many of the old social places such as rotary club and the masonic lodges have died out, and the new “third places” are online and/or expensive to access (vrchat comes to mind). Its no wonder so many people use social media these days.

        • Dr. Moose
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          11 year ago

          But being closer to more “true” metaphysics and rationality is benefiting, though I guess that’s probably not obviously apparent to everyone.

          • prole
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            91 year ago

            But being closer to more “true” metaphysics and rationality is benefiting,

            What does this even mean. What are “true” metaphysics? Please tell me you’re not just going to spew pseudoscientific nonsense at me.

            • @FractalsInfinite@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              The funny thing is that those words somehow have actual meaning. Metaphysics is the philosophy of existance. I believe the “true” metaphysics he refers to is the fact that it is unknowable if anything other then you exists, because there is no guarantee you are not a bozmian brain or living in a simulation along other things.

              This ability combined with rationality can allow you to adapt to changes in your perception of reality, while other frameworks can’t (for example there are still people who don’t believe in evolution because there interpretation of god is dependent on god creating all species at the start)

            • Dr. Moose
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              11 year ago

              I put it in quotes because truth in this context is likely not binary. Here, “true” as in something that can be researched and argumented for rather than something that requires pure faith.

          • @FractalsInfinite@sh.itjust.works
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            11 year ago

            Agreed, though for most believing in irrational things is “fine” (in that it doesn’t harm them) until someone shows up to take advantage of it (I’m guessing at least one person is using ai to make it look like they can perform holy miracles on Facebook).

            • Dr. Moose
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              21 year ago

              But isn’t that harm them? maybe indirectly but restricting your world view will restrict your agency. i.e. people will take advantage of you.

              • @FractalsInfinite@sh.itjust.works
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                21 year ago

                Exactly, its fine until it isn’t. Unfortunately most people don’t seem to realize just because there beliefs work in the present doesn’t mean they will continue to be beneficial in the future (e.g. a christian being recruited to work for free at the pastors business because “it is gods will”)

      • @Kalysta@lemmy.world
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        61 year ago

        A lot of them need to be actively exposed to other views and opinions to break free. So usually when they go to college.

        • Dr. Moose
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          11 year ago

          but internet does all that too. Especially more immersive social media like Youtube or podcasts. I’m generally very optimistic but the progress of our information network as someone who lived through it turned out much weaker than we thought it’d be. Maybe that human exposure of college is much more powerful thant basically infinite knowledge at your fingertips.

      • @Lemming6969@lemmy.world
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        61 year ago

        Most people are not actually people, they are people-like imposter automatons and they are dumb as hell and can be manipulated like clay.

        • @FilterItOut@thelemmy.club
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          81 year ago

          My friend got sucked into it because of a girl. His parents weren’t religious. I don’t think he had gone to church more than twice in his life by high school, and he, just like the rest of us, trash talked our school’s requirements to have a ‘chapel’ hour once a week. He was as blasé as they come about religion, perhaps an agnostic in the christian hemisphere at best, but when he started dating a christian girl, he went to church with her, made friends with her friends at church, etc. Now 15 years later he’s indoctrinating his kids with her, and a deacon at his church. The power of social influence is enormous. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to break free, or even just consider information that is contradictory, if you have the combination of early influence and the later social influence from family, friends, and the wider social circle that is part and parcel of a church.

      • @Adi2121@lemmy.ml
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        21 year ago

        I’m a Zoomer, and one of my best friends is very religious precisely because of the internet. He reads the Bible online a lot, and is in a bunch of Christian Discord servers, and often reads up theology. To be fair, he is very progressive on pretty much all issues except birth control, he isn’t a blind authority-obeyer, and is totally fine with me being agnostic.

      • TFO Winder
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        -211 year ago

        Religion is not always a cult. All religions are not like Christianity.

        See Hinduism, Buddhism, confussionism

        • @JimboDHimbo@lemmy.ca
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          201 year ago

          If I didn’t know about the Hindus and Muslims “beefing” (pun intended) in India, I’d be inclined to believe you.

        • @AuroraZzz@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Religions are cults that have grown bigger than normal cult size. Just because a religion isn’t a Western religion, doesn’t mean it’s any better than a big cult

        • Dr. Moose
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          81 year ago

          Nah they’re still cults. People have this morphed view that religion is not a cult when it is by the very definition of it:

          cult n: followers of an exclusive system of religious beliefs and practices

          Not to say that cults can’t be net good in some form but once they grow past local community I think it’s just impossible to not lose the mission to bad actors.

          • DrQuickbeam
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            -21 year ago

            I prefer this view. Limiting the definition of cults to “small” or “based around a person” is missing the point that all religions are self-preserving in-groups that offer “truths” that will limit your worldview by excluding others, and practices that differentiate followers behaviorally.

            But also beliefs can be useful. For example, the idea of an afterlife or reincarnation can help reduce the fear of death. The belief of forgiveness for sins, can offer redemption. That random events have meaning. That we are not alone when we are alone. All cognitively useful and therapeutic.

            Opposing beliefs can be held at the same time. I can know that probabilistically, or based on personal experience, or empirical evidence, that death is either an ending or an unknowable, and still choose to believe in reincarnation because it does give more meaning to my actions and reduce fear of death.

            And cult practices are often as good for the individual as the beliefs. Having community and regular social interaction is critical to human health. Conducting rituals and ceremonies give structure, meaning and comfort to the parts of our days and lives. Praying and meditating. Charity and service and on and on. These are all useful, healthy to the individual and to society.

            When we can learn to adopt these things without closing our minds to other worldviews and possibilities, without in-group fear and defensiveness, without superiority and proselytization we’ll be in a better world that’s still full of cults

            • @Soggy@lemmy.world
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              21 year ago

              I disagree that irrational beliefs can be net good. Belief in the afterlife isn’t the only way to make peace with death, but the normalization of magical thinking makes people easier to deceive and more likely to try alternative-solutions (as opposed to vaccination or chemotherapy).

              • DrQuickbeam
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                11 year ago

                I understand your point, but I think that magical and mythical thinking are fully part of how our minds evolved and still work, and if we fully develop our faculties of rationalization, almost everyone still thinks magically. Think about ideas like luck, or a fear of something improbable, or most of our expectations in life. Or why many masters of logic still believe in mythical beings and afterlives.

                If you talk to someone from an animistic culture, they don’t need to question or have a structure of reasoning in place to explain why the waterfall has a spirit. It just does, it always has and it’s obvious. However, if a person who lives in a wealthy country today, had public education and believes that vaccines are dangerous. They will believe it rationally, not irrationally, and have a slew of rationalizations for the belief. These are two types of magical thinking, but the former has a magical worldview and the latter does not.

                Rationality is weak against many types of thinking and motivation, and there are many more steps in the maturation of a mind. I do personally agree that a solid foundation in rational thinking should underlie whatever beliefs, morals, ethics, and insights a person adopts. But it is also highly likely that in my examples the former person is healthier and happier than the latter person, and both could be just as gullible.

            • @Stovetop@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              It still pushes the “us vs them” mentality that any religion does, which in my opinion makes it no better than others. And truth be told, scripture and dogma has nothing to do with it either, it’s all just tribalism.

              The Indian government under Modi pushes a nationalist Hindu agenda which encourages violence against religious minorities like Muslims and Sikhs. This causes religious extremism, directed towards establishing a national Hindu religion in India like you see with Islam and Judaism in the Middle East.

              And before anyone says Buddhism is different (I was raised in a Buddhist household, to clarify), see Myanmar’s conflict with the Rohingya which is perpetuated by militant Buddhists. Sri Lanka has also long been dealing with similar acts of violence against the Tamil Hindus and Arab Muslims perpetuated by the Sinhalese Buddhist majority.

              Any religion has the propensity to become “cult-like” based on social circumstances, and this is heightened all the more when nationalism is thrown into the mix.

              • @A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world
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                31 year ago

                The name of a single character from their religious stories tells me nothing about their behavior

                She’s a god, represents time, change, power, creation, preservation, destruction…she’s a mother figure… You haven’t given me any useful information. Maybe give a link or something with information about her relevance to cult behavior?

                • @owen@lemmy.ca
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                  51 year ago

                  Hmph. Maybe look up “Hinduism is a cult” and then scroll until you read a preview that fits my beliefs

        • @YeetPics@mander.xyz
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          1 year ago

          Nah, religion is always a cult.

          Imo cults have more to do with in-groups and out-groups and their relation in your mental space.

          If your in-group is worth more to you than the total sum of all out-groups; you are in a cult.

          Humanity is one race, subdividing it and labelling all the chunks is where we went wrong. The fact we have a word to describe this outcome shows we are pretty far down this tube.

          If you’re reading this and think to yourself “surely this person is misled, they’re not a part of (insert religion) so wouldn’t know anything about what they say” congratulations, you’re right (and also in a cult).

    • @ohlaph@lemmy.world
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      411 year ago

      Exactly. My nephews seem to complain about the shit their dad told them to vote for. It’s rather hilarious.

      • @TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The fuck happened to the rebelliousness of youth?

        Should kids be doing exactly not whatever their parents tell them to?

        Kids these days… GET ON MY LAWN!!

        • @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          101 year ago

          The fuck happened to the rebelliousness of youth?

          Pure propaganda. Kids are more than happy to follow behind their older peers and always have been.

          It’s “rebellion” if the kids literally anything at all. Speak up? Question anything? Show any kind of agency? Mimic what your elders are doing? You’re out of control.

      • @WeeSheep@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Well, if you question it, you are a bad person and going to hell. It’s not that God doesn’t love you, but you are forcing God to send you to hell because you are choosing to question.

      • prole
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        41 year ago

        Really? Have you not been paying attention?

        • @ALostInquirer@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Yes I’ve been paying attention, however it remains baffling to me as I see curiosity as essential as breathing or eating, so perhaps the question may be better asked as, how is inhibiting curiosity not recognized as a form of abuse?

    • @ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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      01 year ago

      See also: reactionary movements.

      I sometimes really want to show those reactionary gamers a trial version of the authoritarian society they stive for…

      • @Kalysta@lemmy.world
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        31 year ago

        So send them a documentary on what happened in NAZI Germany.

        But don’t be surprised when they tell you that’s exactly what they want because they’re white men and it puts them at the top of the heirarchy.

  • @Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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    1351 year ago

    Being born into a conservative household can be a hard hurdle to clear. I grew up with the unquestioning belief that the left was straight-up evil (shocker: that was projection) but then moved around a ton and worked alongside a huge diversity of people after highschool cuz I joined the military and didn’t have a choice: that exposure was a real shock, but since our brains don’t like being wrong, I resisted it for a good while before finally acknowledging that I was acting like a moron and started thinking more critically about politics and what political decisions meant for my community.

    Not everyone gets that healthy slap-to-their-senses. Doesn’t excuse shit, but that’s the ‘why’.

     

    It’d be interesting to see some actual political metrics on other service members. The military is always seen as being SOLID red, and while yes it does lean that way, the tiny bubble of the military that was my personal field of view seemed maybe a 60-40 split; and I personally went in red, and separated borderline radical blue. I know at least a handful of others who did the same… no idea if it’s always been that way, or if this is a developing trend. Or if I happened to be stationed in an uncharacteristically blue slice of military. /shrug.

    • @AquaTofana@lemmy.world
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      241 year ago

      This is my exact story to a “t”. I grew up in a heavily conservative household, joined the military as a conservative, and 15 years later I’m pretty fucking blue.

      I think it’s a combination of a few things that does it to us more often than not:

      1 - Exposure to people from all walks of life/escaping your “bubble” 2 - Access to tax payer funded social programs that the rest of America desperately fucking needs and going “Why can’t taxes do this for EVERYONE!?” 3 - If you’ve been deployed to certain sections of the world, you see first-hand what unfettered religious extremism can potentially do to a country.

      I’m happy to say, that at least for the Air Force, I’ve run into far, far more Active Duty Dems/Libs than I have any Repubs. Now, when the retired veteran GS employees come in, it’s a completely different story. My whole circle save one is fairly left-leaning, and the one who isnt is…fucking weird/all over the place on his stances.

    • @TexasDrunk@lemmy.world
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      81 year ago

      In my experience 20 years ago, it was mostly split between people who didn’t care or at least didn’t talk politics (the majority) and people who were very loud in thinking a Democrat would reduce the pay of enlisted service members.

    • prole
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      21 year ago

      I’m sure conservatives would love this, but we should be using the military in this way as a de-radicalizing force. We should be leaning into it.

    • Colonel Panic
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      11 year ago

      Well put.

      I think a lot of your political beliefs start with your parents and people around you, but then are shaped by what happens to you. If you get hit with the hard reality of life in some way (debt, health, etc) it tends to push you to be more progressive/empathetic toward others because you see just how truly cold and cruel the bottom of our society gets treated. If you have coasted through life and have parents and friends supporting you financially and we’re lucky enough to get a good job and have relatively good health and such then you may not know the horrors of what can happen if you hit a few rough patches.

      Similarly in military service, if you get injured and now have to go to the VA and fight to receive the most basic of medical care you were promised and denied it tends to push you left/progressive because you want things to be better. If you are still in the service or left it relatively undamaged then you could easily still see things from a conservative and right leaning perspective.

      When you or people close to you get (denied medical care, denied housing, denied work, pushed into poverty and/or homelessness, used by the system and then discarded like trash) you tend to see things more progressive and want to provide some basic levels of support and humanity and empathy toward others as opposed to exploiting them for profit.

    • @credo@lemmy.world
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      11 year ago

      30% of your time being red. 30% of your time coming to your senses. 40% of your time trending towards borderline radical blue.

      There is your 60/40 split.

      Anecdotally, this was somewhat my experience as well, except my parents didn’t talk politics much and they certainly didn’t show the extreme hate towards the left that fox and rush have since incited. I went more from voting on surface level attributes (speaking ability, apparent warmth, etc) and social pressure, to actually [eventually] looking at policy. I was a registered independent when I joined, but I didn’t know enough about actual politics to understand the details of what I was voting for. I.e., I was going with the flow. It has the same effect at the ballot box though.

    • HubertManne
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      11 year ago

      what was the red/blue percent (in your opinion) if you only included officers and above?

      • @Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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        11 year ago

        No clue. I was enlisted - talking politics at all was taboo, but rules like that are only ever followed while in management’s field of view.

        I’d assume officers behaved similarly - tending to keep certain topics locked up around enlisted, but talking more openly when it’s just them.

  • @heavyboots@lemmy.ml
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    651 year ago

    To be fair if you’re anything past Boomer, at this point you should be too embarrassed to vote for any GOP candidate. When the party decided to support Trump—a guy with proven sexual assault charges, pending fraud charges, pending classified document charges, a penchant for insurrection that he happily acknowledges, and more and more video surfacing of him unable to be coherent, hopefully most everyone with any connection to reality has realized it’s time to kick him and the GOP to the curb.

    • @ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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      301 year ago

      The Boomers should be mortified. Their parents were the one who sacrificed their young adulthood to eliminate the Nazis 80 years ago. They’re spitting on their parents’ graves by supporting Trump.

      • @flerp@lemm.ee
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        131 year ago

        The problem is, boomers are the most selfish generation. The other name for their generation is the Me Generation, because after the war, after the depression, their parents had done all the hard work, been through all the hard times, and started to get money and financial security and so they gave their children everything they wanted creating the absolute selfishness we see today. They don’t care a lick about their parents sacrifices because they had everything they ever wanted and for them it’s all about “me, me , me!”

      • @heavyboots@lemmy.ml
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        31 year ago

        You’re absolutely right on that one! Hadn’t thought of it from that perspective, but hell yes.

  • @gibmiser@lemmy.world
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    531 year ago

    A lot of our current brand of conservatism appeals to people’s notion of unfairness. People taking things from them. They have been told over and over that liberals are lazy and want to take things from them.

    Remember that these are young people who don’t have a lot of experiences in adult life, but have experienced basic, uncomplicated unfairness. Fighting against that simple, unnuanced unfairness appeals to them.

    • @Ultraviolet@lemmy.world
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      211 year ago

      Conservatives tell you a whole list of people who are supposedly stealing from you to distract from the fact that they’re currently picking your pocket.

    • @workerONE@lemmy.world
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      71 year ago

      If your values can only be justified by shock news and lies then you’re going to want more of that type of news.

  • @buddascrayon@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Indoctrination, propaganda, alt-right playbook recruitment through targeting the disaffected… these aren’t young people who’ve turned to conservatism, they’ve been actively targeted by right wing factions in order to bolster their position.

    Edit: Oh, and also Reagan era neo-liberals are the fucking worst and when they shit on progressives and their ideas, they basically push away people who would otherwise be politically left leaning.

  • Obinice
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    341 year ago

    If they’re wealthy they usually vote Tory, that’s one reason for sure.

    We’ll get the conservatives out of government soon, but I don’t think Labour are much better, just two sides of the same coin, unfortunately.

    • @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      151 year ago

      We’ll get the conservatives out of government soon

      You’ll still be stuck with Keir “I agree with my friends across the aisle but wish they’d go further” Starmer. Labor was completely hollowed out after Corbyn. It’s just careerist flaks and corporate shills, with anyone who defies the leadership getting punted off the ticket.

      • @SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works
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        101 year ago

        Who could have guessed that if the party systematically annihilates anyone and anything who dislikes the status quo you’d be left with Tories with red paint.

      • @hanekam@lemmy.world
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        -31 year ago

        Corbyn was the worst thing that could’ve happened to Labour. The man just did not understand the role of Party Leader and could not prioritise party or country over his own nostaligia-tinged ideological pet causes

        • @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          11 year ago

          Corbyn was the worst thing that could’ve happened to Labour.

          Oh Jeremy Corbyn! Why did Labour Party membership soar after the 2015 general election?

          Using both British Election Study and Party Members Project data, we explain the surge by focussing on the attitudinal, ideological and demographic characteristics of the members themselves. Findings suggest that, along with support for the leader and yearning for a new style of politics, feelings of relative deprivation played a significant part: many ‘left-behind’ voters (some well-educated, some less so) joined Labour for the first time when a candidate with a clearly radical profile appeared on the leadership ballot. Anti-capitalist and left-wing values mattered too, particularly for those former members who decided to return to the party.

    • @eatCasserole@lemmy.world
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      31 year ago

      This is a really big part of the problem, I think. Politicians on the “left” tend to be actually just more moderate right wingers, or unable to accomplish much of anything meaningful.

      It’s much the same in Canada too, our Liberal party is supposed to be the mainstream “left” option but they’re just doing moderate right politics with pride flags.

      Then there’s the NDP which actually has some leftist elements, and I’m grateful to have a meaningful 3rd party, but they’ve still never formed government at the federal level.

      And we’ve ingested so much cold war propaganda that if you just say “socialist” people start getting freaked out.

  • @gmtom@lemmy.world
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    311 year ago

    As progressive values become more mainstream being an edgy conservative becomes a form of counter culture.

    This shows in those god awful conservative memes people make that say shit like “Im not like other girls, I dress modestly, dont drink or do drugs and the only man I get on my knees for is JEsus” type shit. or the male equivalent where they talk about how theyre the only real man left in a world where people drink soy lattes and dont beat their kids.

    • @Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.works
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      61 year ago

      As progressive values become more mainstream being an edgy conservative becomes a form of counter culture.

      This. There’s this idea that ‘the counterculture’ is inherently progressive. It ain’t.

    • @Psythik@lemmy.world
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      41 year ago

      80s millennial here; I grew up with heavy religious indoctrinate and that’s a lame excuse. I went from extreme conservative to woke leftist in my 20s, because that’s when I started caring about being informed and began reading the news. Anyone who uses social news websites should have a natural inclination towards the left once they start to pay attention to what’s going on in the world. (For me it started with browsing digg, and then reddit.)

      If you can’t see how blatantly evil conservatives are after spending many years on the internet then you’re willfully choosing to ignore what you don’t want to see. I know I did for most of my teens. I would “blame the liberal media” and then go in with my day.

      • @MiDaBa@lemmy.ml
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        21 year ago

        That’s not entirely true. Social media now (and for a long while) shows people what they want to see. If you’re right wing then it will show posts that reinforce those beliefs. Social media isn’t picking sides, it’s trying to maximize view time and if that requires distributing misinformation then so be it.

        • @Psythik@lemmy.world
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          11 year ago

          These days, sure, but like I said, I’m a millennial born in the 80s, and formed most of my political beliefs during 2000s internet, before algorithms took over. So older people like me have even less of an excuse to be conservative.

  • BeautifulMind ♾️
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    231 year ago

    I can remember when being conservative meant you believed we had a calling to be stewards of creation

    LOL good times

    • @MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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      81 year ago

      Honestly, I can’t keep track of the constantly changing definition for what a conservative represents.

      Right now, I just equate conservative with capitalist and move on.

      • @Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
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        41 year ago

        It always makes me laugh how conservatism - the idea that we need to conserve and not change, radically changes more than other ideologies.

        • @Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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          31 year ago

          It really didn’t start changing until the 2010s when it was hijacked by extremists. Before that, conservativism was a pretty consistent ideology.

          • @Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
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            21 year ago

            The hijacking of the Tea Party movement and what happened afterwards was a watershed moment for us in the USA. And we failed miserably.

      • @RaoulDook@lemmy.world
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        11 year ago

        Everyone in the civilized nations of the global West is basically a capitalist in effect. If you participate in the economy at all, you have engaged in the basic functions of capitalism.

        IMO you are only not a capitalist if you lead an alternative lifestyle, like commune hippies or other groups of non-property-owning collectives. Or maybe you could perform a chant of “My personhood disavows the morality and validity of this structure requiring this transaction” whenever life needs you to buy something.

        • @MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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          31 year ago

          I may be participating in capitalism, that shouldn’t imply I believe in capitalist ideals; the same way that someone can disagree with communism living in China. They’re a part of the system, but they don’t necessarily believe in it.

          To me a capitalist is a philosophy of profit over everything. That everything and everyone only has value based on what profit they can generate. That the more wealth you obtain the more successful of a person you must be.

          Being a successful human has a lot more to it than accumulating wealth. My value as a person should not lie solely in my ability to generate revenue/earnings/profit.

          I live in a capitalist society. I am not a capitalist.

        • Selkie
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          11 year ago

          You’re not really a capitalist unless you own something that makes you money without you being there

          • @RaoulDook@lemmy.world
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            01 year ago

            I don’t agree with that opinion, but if that were true, then everyone with a savings account or retirement account would be in that category.

            I’m in the capitalist category either way and I celebrate the benefits it has brought me and the society we all live and prosper in. Life is good in America and I wouldn’t trade it to live anywhere else at this point.

    • @Thrashy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The number of people I knew in my church whose reason for denying climate change boiled down to “Humans don’t have the power to change God’s creation like that, anyway even if we did God’s gonna call us up to heaven before anything really bad can happen” was not small, and I can’t imagine it getting smaller in the intervening decades. If anything I expect there’s a vocal “gotta use up all that oil before the Rapture!” contingent these days.

      • @Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
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        21 year ago

        I heard similar notions, with an added “and if it get too bad god will fix it for us”.

        Oh, yeah. You are terrifying.

  • @FreakinSteve@lemmy.world
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    231 year ago

    I am always surprised at how little credit is given to the relentless onslaught of radical fascist propaganda over airwaves, in MSM, and online…all of which do their damnedest to reach young people, teens, and even primary school kids. Very few people have any idea how powerful AM radio and Salem Media Group are. These are all the result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

    • @dariusj18@lemmy.world
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      91 year ago

      I like to define the modern Conservatives™ with a capital C. It’s a brand, but as you point out, they are reactionaries. Modern conservatives are Democrats trying to keep all the progress made over the last 70 years. I’ve had to explain this to some boomers who used to be progressive, but don’t seem to understand that they are no longer on the progressive side of politics.

  • @UncleGrandPa@lemmy.world
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    211 year ago

    Because so many prefer a comfortable lie to an unpleasant truth. They want the world to be what they want it to be

    To hell with reality

      • @MJKee9@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s hard to describe personal politics prior to 2000. It was easy to be a sane conservative in the 80s. There was obviously shady shit going on behind the scenes. But outwardly the conservative movement mostly espoused mainstream thought at the time.

        • Brave Little Hitachi Wand
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          1 year ago

          I see that, but it’s hard not to connect the dots between Reagan and Trump; what people voted for then has a direect relationship with what they’re voting for now, and it wasn’t rare to hear alarm bells being raised back then either. These progressions are not chaotic, unpredictable, or sudden, so it’s weird to hear people talk about how normal conservatives used to be just thirty years ago. The window was not so skewed then maybe, but it was being pulled right even then.

          • Boomer Humor Doomergod
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            101 year ago

            The Republican Party in the 1980s was just starting to get taken over by Evangelicals and the NRA, and was firmly behind the Southern Strategy. It was definitely getting pulled right at that time.

            • @Stovetop@lemmy.world
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              21 year ago

              On the topic of the Southern Strategy, it is also such a weird transition because you still had some lingering vestiges of the Dixiecrats who turned Republican existing within the Democratic party, while other Dems, suddenly free of the conservative members of their party, were trying to figure out what they were all about.

              A lot of Dems were all aboard the “Christian family values” train back then. I’d imagine some even still are, but you don’t see public figures from the Dems these days like Tipper Gore trying to ban rock and roll music because references to sex and the occult might corrupt the youth.

              Satanic Panic was a bipartisan movement back then, but today it really only survives in one party (the Republicans), which I would attribute less towards general sentiment changing and more towards those voters consolidating into the Republican party as they turned into elder boomers, giving better definition to the partisan politics we have today.

              This isn’t a particularly new chart but I think it illustrates the shift well.

          • @lennybird@lemmy.world
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            31 year ago

            It just seems the country was overall more conservative back then and they had a stranglehold on America. Their “boTh SiDeS” “Good Christian” antics were dominant. Republicans began shitting the bed as the direction of the nation diverged and they were no longer obviously in control. Then the veil got lifted on the power of money in politics and the rat lashed out from the corner.

          • @AA5B@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Yeah, I was also an 80s conservative, but I couldn’t tell you how much I moved left vs how much the right pulled ever farther right.

            Or maybe it was naïveté: for example it felt like “family values” meant actually valuing family, that fiscal conservativism was not spoken ironically, and science and education were worth investing in. Environmentalism seemed perfectly compatible with being an 80s conservative

            But more importantly in the 80s it was ok to work with or even vote for someone in the other party. It was an attitude how things should be run, rather than a lifestyle or an us vs them. Maybe that’s just me though

  • @mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world
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    171 year ago

    None of you want to face the fact that alt-right campaigns like Gamergate and Qanon has brought a fucktonne of youth over to the cuntservative side. It’s going to be a real problem now that they are old enough to vote.

        • Lemminary
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          181 year ago

          Idk who you think you are or what you thought I meant and I don’t really care, but you’re kind of an asshole for literally no reason. I suggest you practice what you preach and throw in a bit of therapy.

            • Lemminary
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              1 year ago

              If everyone around you seems like a problem, it’s most likely you. I can already tell. Now, earnestly, please go get therapy. Nobody wants to join your pity party or provide anger management for free on a public forum.

              And using therapy as a barb

              Ah, but using lack of education as a barb is ok. And so is using your medical condition as an excuse.

              you know literally nothing about me

              Hilarious, seeing your condescending replies.

              Edit: Brb, redirecting my bot army that I didn’t know I had to this thread 😂🤣

              • @mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world
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                -141 year ago

                It’s funny but that little pithy soundbite doesn’t actually work in real life. If it did then all the lemmy users complaining about abusive workplaces are the problem.

                Ah, but using lack of education as a barb is ok

                That wasn’t a barb, you literally responded with a one word misspelled reply for a sentence fragment. I legit thought you were semi-literate.

                Hilarious, seeing your condescending replies.

                What assumptions have I made about you that aren’t source in your ridiculously useless comments? I’d love to see you post links.

                • Lemminary
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                  1 year ago

                  Nah, I see it clearly: you’re assuming shit about people you don’t know based on a single-word reply, you have delusions of vote manipulation or sockpuppeting on an active thread, you’re using your medical condition to excuse your shitty behavior, and you’re here pretending that you have the high moral ground on anything or higher mental sharpness after all this… I’m quite sure the problem is you.

                  What assumptions have I made about you

                  Better question is, what assumptions have I made here? 😂

                  you literally responded with a one word misspelled reply for a sentence fragment

                  Again, hilarious that that’s what you thought happened but I’m the one who needs more education. It’s frankly embarrassing.