this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023
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I would really rather that these were actual examples, and not conspiracy theories. We all have our own unsubstantiated ideas about what shadowy no-gooders are doing, but I'd rather hear about things that are actually happening.

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[–] EonNShadow@pawb.social 141 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Anyone that says J6 was a "peaceful protest" that "got out of hand"

We all saw the footage of that day. There were gallows and calls to hang a sitting vice president.

It was an insurrection, fomented and encouraged by Donald Trump's speech and actions leading up to that day. Plain and simple.

The right-wingers who say it wasn't as serious as it was are gaslighting their base.

Edit: Victims of gaslighting in my replies

[–] PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 9 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Conversely, anyone who says January 6th was a coup or anything approaching more then a wet fart. We should be so lucky that a fascist police state could be overthrown by 200 disorganized unarmed people walking into the capitol.

[–] TheEntity@kbin.social 65 points 11 months ago

Whether it was a successful coup is a separate matter.

[–] ulkesh 26 points 11 months ago (1 children)

200? What planet do you live on? Watch a video of it. Read the January 6th Commission report.

[–] Piers 11 points 11 months ago

On the day it happend I watched the videos being shared by the people participating amongst each other. There were tremendously more than 200 people.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 106 points 11 months ago

A KGB spy and a CIA agent meet up in a bar for a friendly drink.

β€œI have to admit, I'm always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up,” the CIA agent says.

β€œThank you,” the KGB says. β€œWe do our best but truly, it's nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them.”

The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. β€œThank you friend, but you must be confused... There's no propaganda in America.”

[–] pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml 87 points 11 months ago (3 children)

β€œDemocrats are liberal/progressive”

In reality, they’re pretty conservative.

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 31 points 11 months ago

The Overton Window

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

A concept where political discourse is slowly shifted to one side or another over time. For example conservatism.

Politics are talked about the right who move even further right, the centralists are moved to old right and the leftists are moved to the center .... the old leftists are now seen as extreme and unacceptable while the far right are also unacceptable but gain some ground ... everyone shifts one step to the right and now everything is more conservative.

The right shift is what is happening now ... but it can happen and shift towards the left as well.

[–] IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social 28 points 11 months ago (3 children)

They are still liberal though but not progressives. Liberalism isn’t necessarily a left wing ideology.

[–] squiblet@kbin.social 18 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

A lot of leftists (and I hardly ever saw it before coming on Lemmy) use 'Liberal' to mean Classic or Neo Liberal - basically a synonym of capitalist.. That's not at all what it means in American politics, where it means the opposite of Conservative. If we used that definition, Conservatives would be called Liberals as well as Liberals being Liberals, which obviously makes no sense for US lingo. However, they both are Liberals in the neo/classic sense as most US Liberals aren't calling for communism.

[–] IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

The conservatives are only liberal in the economic sense. They are the party of book banning, anti-abortion and anti-lgbtq. Liberalism is also about human rights and freedoms. But just because you think gays should be allowed to marry and acces to have an abortion should be a right that doesn’t put you left on the political spectrum or even make you a progressive. Since that is pretty much a centrist political position in the rest of the world. Most Democrats are liberal in the economic sense but also in the human liberty sense. But only a few Democrats in the house and senate can be truly called progressives. Since most Democrats are fine with the status quo and aren’t pushing society forward. They are just fighting of the attacks of the GOP

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[–] PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com 55 points 11 months ago

Republican talking points. All of them. Pick literally anything they say about guns or economics. Literally anything.

[–] Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone 52 points 11 months ago

Israel is defending itself against an antisemitic terrorist group which attacked it for no reason

[–] tegs_terry@feddit.uk 50 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Americans with their 'greatest nation on earth' charade.

[–] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 24 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It has a name: American exceptionalism. It's used both by people who know it's a lie and by people who believe it.

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[–] Rooskie91@discuss.online 8 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Most of what people believe about America's history is post WWII mythmaking and revision. It's a shame because the labor movement in America has a fascinating history, and we're about to relive it.

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[–] DavidDoesLemmy@aussie.zone 47 points 11 months ago (2 children)

America is the greatest country in the world. Only those who haven't travelled much would believe that.

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[–] dutchkimble@lemy.lol 46 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That you catch a cold because you're cold

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[–] RandomVideos@programming.dev 43 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Communism=Authoritarianism

I was taught in school the characteristics of authoritarianism and a couple weeks later, when i was being taught about communism, the same characteristics were said

[–] OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml 13 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Going a step further, the idea of authoritarian. Every ideology with a state relies on some type of authority to function, as a term it is an attempt at equating fascism and communism and serves as holocaust trivialization.

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[–] abuttandahalf@lemmy.ml 40 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

That Israel is not a colonial state. All it's founders defined it as a European colonial project. It was and is allied with all the colonial powers and projects like Britain, the US, apartheid south Africa, and Rhodesia. Its funding association was called the Palestine Jewish colonization association. It's bank was called the Jewish colonial trust. The Jewish national fund and the Zionist project at large was from the beginning concerned with building segregated colonies.

First, lands were bought with foreign funding from feudal land lords, and their inhabitants were entirely dispossessed, kicked out. Then when awareness of the ultimate goals of the Zionist project crystalized and resistance against Palestinian dispossession mounted, the lands were ethnically cleansed by force and the people massacred. 700 to 800 thousand Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in one continuous military operation that spanned two years from 1947 to 1948.

Zionist leaders fully acknowledged that Palestinian demographics were a core issue to the Zionist project, that the Palestinian population had to be removed at any cost, which is exactly what Israel did. What lead to the Palestinians being defenseless in this situation? Colonial Britain abetted the formation of heavily armed Zionist militias with soldiers numbering in the tens of thousands. The arms of Britain's colonial military presence were inherited by the Zionist forces that it supported. All this while Britain summarily excecuted any Palestinian found in possession of a firearm.

This is not to mention the enthusiastic support of european antisemites for the Zionist project, or its strict early opposition by antifascist jews.

The idea that Israel has any right to exist on Palestinian land is a lie that has been so heavily proliferated, it has to be debunked when it should be paid no consideration at all.

[–] Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone 32 points 11 months ago (4 children)

communism has killed 100 million people

[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 17 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Stems from the black book of Communism which counts nazis killed by the Soviets, everyone killed by the nazis in the USSR, unborn children and even more absurd shit like that just to get to that number lmao.

If we count shit like that, Capitalism has killed billions.

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[–] ArtieShaw@kbin.social 24 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Off the top of my head:

-Anything involving babies and incubators is immediately suspect. (Or babies and bayonets, for that matter).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

-And this one is pure conspiracy, and I know it's not what you asked for... but it's ridiculous and 'tis the season. My mother in law is convinced that the lyrics to "Oh Christmas Tree" (O Tannenbaum) were changed by people who wanted to erase the true and original lyrics. By who? Big Tree financiers? Communists who are stealing Christmas and replacing it with trees?

Anyway...

The original lyrics, according to this conspiracy, praise God and never mention trees at all. It's completely ridiculous and always ends with the whole family singing along with the "true lyrics" from a badly photocopied paper that she hands out. I hope this doesn't come up again this year because it really makes me want to fight. Which would make me the bad person, because who initiates fights on Christmas? The next couple of days are going to be tough.

[–] Birdie@thelemmy.club 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Wait, the lyrics of a song with a title that literally translates to "Oh, Christmas tree" originally had absolutely nothing to do with trees?? I'd ask how she wraps her mind around that dichotomy, but I know people who believe in conspiracies do not need proof nor logic to believe.

Good luck. I'll be entertaining my Trumpster QMIL, so I'll be fighting along with you to control myself.

[–] Maestro@kbin.social 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Now I'm really curious. Can you post those supposedly original lyrics?

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[–] maynarkh@feddit.nl 23 points 11 months ago

The wage price spiral.

[–] rwhitisissle@lemmy.ml 23 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

"Once all the boomers are dead everything will be better!" Yeah, corporations will still rule your life, inflation will still outstrip income, you won't be able to afford a house, and your politicians will represent whichever special interest pays them the most. Also you won't ever be able to vote in progressive candidates because every year there's going to be some vile ghoul like Donald Trump, but somehow worse, and the Democrats just need you to close ranks and vote in whatever corporate liberal whose turn it is to sit in the Big House this time so a literal fascist doesn't get his finger on the button and attempts to dismantle what little democracy our republic has over night.

Grandma and grandpa being six feet under doesn't change these things. And, guess what...you probably won't change them either because you're too lazy and apathetic to do anything other than shitpost on the internet about how badly your life sucks.

[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.ml 11 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Future generations will blame you for everything also.

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[–] taanegl 22 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Liberalism.. that is classical and neo-liberalism, as they were invented by a bunch of lords and sir's who were angry that the monarchy was getting a cut. It's the preferred ideology of the finance industry, as they can't have liberationism or lazze fair capitalism because the guillotines would roll out much too quickly. But they sure can define global markets and the value of currencies.

Watch US pundits harp on and on about the monarch's of Europe, but not a squeak about the aristocracy or the barons. It's also funny to note that because of goal post moving, liberalism which technically is slightly right from center, has become "left wing". So when you tell Americans that technically they have two right wing parties, they lose their absolute shit.

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[–] moon@lemmy.cafe 21 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The entire conservative party

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[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 11 months ago (2 children)

That global poverty has declined because of the spread of liberal economies

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[–] pistachio@lemmy.ml 19 points 11 months ago (4 children)
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[–] a_fan_of_privacy@lemmy.ml 19 points 11 months ago (4 children)

I came into the comment section hoping for interesting things, but knowing it would be almost all political. Why do I keep doing this to myself, I know better.

[–] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 24 points 11 months ago

Most lies of that nature are political.

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[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)
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[–] oriond@lemmy.ml 12 points 11 months ago

The US military is there to protect their country's "Freedom"

[–] metaStatic@kbin.social 12 points 11 months ago

Capitalist realism

[–] pruwybn@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 11 months ago

That the 2020 election was stolen.

[–] TylerDurdenJunior@lemmy.ml 12 points 11 months ago

"we are free"

[–] moosetwin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

There's a TVTropes page for things like this, of course.

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[–] shiveyarbles 10 points 11 months ago

Trickle down theory

[–] Dio9sys@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 11 months ago

The council of nicea verifiably, empirically did NOT collect the gospels to make the new testament as we know it. The gospels were already being bound together, seen as a whole, etc before the council, and after the council there was still a bunch of what's now considered apocrypha.

[–] NutWrench@lemmy.ml 9 points 11 months ago

News ownership has consolidated over the last 40 years from around 40 companies in the 1980s to 6 today. This is that "liberal news media" conservatives keep yammering on about. The one that's owned by 6 corporations.

[–] Sebeck012@feddit.nl 8 points 11 months ago

People, no matter the inteligence or schooling, are more likely to believe what they hear more often. (If 10 people you know swear that eating mint will keep you from going bald it might just be true)

This makes sense and is normal, at least until the modern world.

Now add social media and an algorithm that its only purpose is to increase clicks/likes/interactions. Suddenly everything everyone is talking about is whatever you clicked on last time. A positive feedback loop occurs. The more videos you look at on the same topic, the more those get served, the more you view them, the more you believe them.

Experiment : Try creating a brand new Google account and watching 3 videos on YouTube on a single topic. Refresh YouTube page, or check back tomorrow.

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