#I hate online leftists

[myopicry]

lurking in radfem spaces has really changed my entire view of most mainstream internet spaces because once you realize just how censored women's voices and feminist thought are on these sites, and how much porn and misogynistic values are defended, you can't unsee it.

how anyone can bear to participate in an online space where porn, of all things, is lauded as the bastion of "self-expression" and yet any woman slightly critical of popular cultural opinions is demonized is wild, especially when a lot of that porn is a) violent and misogynistic b) often accessible by minors c) gross and shallow d) myriad of other reasons far better writers have probably described

fuck I'm just so tired. seeking rationality online is just opening a pandora's box of garbage and seeing the reflection of how bleak the social hegemony has become.

[pjharvey-moved]

it’s absurdly easy also for abusive and predatory men to be accepted and platformed within contemporary leftist spaces bc saying the right things is treated as more important than doing the right things and misogyny against women you don’t like is encouraged even by people who call themselves feminists.

[throwawayblog-thrwaway]

not voting isn’t “burning the system down” you absolute dipshits. if you actually wanted to burn the system down you’d literally be burning down the homes of congressmen, but most of y’all don’t actually want that, you just want to roleplay as a radical online for cookie points from the other members of your self-righteous hypocritical circlejerk.

your glorious revolution isn’t coming because you’re too goddamn chickenshit to actually revolt. go and actually fucking do something or just shut the fuck up

[edenfenixblogs]

hi, i wanted to give you an update on that post of mine you reblogged. heritageposts has informed me that they were using the red triangle in this context: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231123-one-small-red-triangle-palestine-we-are-finally-looking/

i was wrong about what they meant with the 🔻 emoji and i am officially rescinding my previous statement

I am all for fact checking and I would love to believe that Heritage Posts did not mean this particular horrible thing they did.

However, Middle East Monitor (MEMO) is not a reliable source for information in this conflict. If HP is actually using MEMO for news, they should focus on more reliable ones going forward.

There are plenty of other left-leaning sources with more reliability, credibility, sourcing, and transparency.

They have failed several fact checks for misleading and occasionally false information. The publication is explicitly and repeatedly pro-Hamas, and they often omit vital information to skew their stories.

While they are not rated as an outright propaganda publication or as a source of conspiracy theories, they do often cite sources which do and are.

Finally, they are funded by donations. Of course these donations largely come from people who support the kind of reporting that people who donate to them support. They are a nonprofit organization, which is not inherently a bad thing. But this means their interests are not based in journalistic ideals but in political ideology. This is not a reason to completely discount a source, but it is something to keep in mind.

In general, with a topic this intense and with such profound consequences for so many people, I’m only engaging with sources who receive a “reporting” rating of “high” or better and a “credibility” rating of “high credibility.”

I would POSSIBLY consider a “reporting” rating of “Mostly factual” if it had a “high credibility” rating and several extenuating circumstances and reduced media bias to compensate for its lower score in another area.

Leftist sources worth referencing instead:

Forward Progressives

Haaretz

International Policy Digest

Current Affairs

And many others

Personally, though, (for this particular conflict especially) I tend to prefer sources that fall into the central three categories: left-center biased, least biased, and right-center biased.

No news source is perfect or without bias. But this conflict is so fraught that I frankly don’t trust anyone reporting with extreme ideological intentions. And I also don’t want to only read sources that make me comfortable. I am personally very leftist in all of my personal politics and voting. However, I also know that the far left has been more hostile to me based solely on my Jewish ethnicity than anyone else in these past months. Furthermore, I think politicians should be more left, but journalism should always prioritize facts and a full scope of a situation over any one viewpoint. I am the daughter of a journalist. I am deeply in favor of journalistic freedom. And I absolutely do NOT believe in “both sidesism.” Sometimes, there really aren’t two sides to a situation that are both equally worth listening to. There is no alternative viewpoint to “Black Lives Matter” for example that is not deeply racist.

There are not “two sides worth teaching” when it comes to The Holocaust.

But the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not so simple. Israel should stop its bombing of Palestine. Palestinians should have full and equal rights. Jewish people in Israel and around the world should not have to live in constant fear or attack, harassment, or murder. There are a lot of extremely valid perspectives from Palestinians, Muslims, Israelis, Arabs, and Jews. And right now, the far left and the far right are weaponizing their ideologies to reduce all of the aforementioned groups to their worst actors. That is not something that will help anyone with regard to this conflict.

Left Leaning Sources

ABC News

Associated Press

Atlantic Media

Boston Globe

The Forward (This is a Jewish source. They had one failed fact check in the last five years, but issued an official correction.)

Human Rights Watch

Institute for Middle East Understanding (This is a Palestinian source and it has a completely clean fact check record)

Least Biased Sources

Jewish Telegraphic Agency (Obviously a Jewish source)

Reuters (this has a Very High reporting rating)

American Press Institute (not only have they not failed a fact check in five years; they have never failed a fact check ever)

The Conversation

Pew Research

Foreign Policy

Foreign Affairs

Sky News UK

Right Leaning

Note: As I stated numerous times, including in this post, I am a leftist. However, something important for American readers of this post to know is that, when it comes specifically to matters involving military analysis of foreign conflicts, a slight right lean in perspective is common and sometimes preferable to leftist idealism. I say this as someone who votes and holds opinions that are about as far left as one can get. However, I also say this as someone with a background in university studies of international politics. Because analysis of military conflicts is often done by those with experience in and understanding of the military, most of the most credible and detailed analyses of foreign military affairs do tend to be more right leaning than sources of equal worth focused on domestic political matters. Furthermore, a leftist tendency toward pacifism (which I share) tends to mean less leftist involvement in military-involved political matters at all. Of course, none of this means there are no quality leftist sources on the current conflict (which I obviously demonstrated by linking to such sources above). I am simply explaining the value of such sources to those who may justifiably be skeptical of anything right-leaning after the hellish past two decades of domestic policies and US-caused violence in other countries.

Note 2: There are plenty of right-leaning sources that received “high” credibility ratings and “high” reporting ratings. I found no sources that had both “very high” credibility and “high” reporting ratings in the “right-center” category.

Boston Herald

Chicago Tribune

Counter Extremism Project

Foreign Policy Research Institute

The Jewish Press (clearly a Jewish source, this publication is geared toward the Modern Orthodox Jewish community. They have no failed fact checks)

ITV News

Jewish Unpacked (this source has no failed fact checks. this source is right-leaning by necessity because of its historical examination of antisemitism in leftist spaces making those spaces inherently unsafe for Jews—not specifically in this most recent flare up in the I/p conflict, but for years).

Right Bias

Note: I don’t personally follow or read any of these sources. But I did list leftist sources with high credibility and reporting ratings, so I will do the same here in the interest of fairness. It should be noted that all other source bias ratings had results several pages long. Right Bias sources with high credibility and reporting ratings were confined to one page only. There are no Right Bias Sources with Very High reporting ratings and high credibility.

Economic Policy Journal (no failed fact checks now or ever)

Influence Watch (tends to view liberal and progressive politics as “extremist,” but has no failed fact checks.)

I am not inclined to trust HP simply because their most recent antisemitic behavior fell short of hoping for Jewish genocide. I have a higher bar for accounts than that.

[detectivehole]

if youre american; you gotta go vote and you have to vote for whoever the democratic party ends up tossing your way, this time. it takes only moments of your day and slivers of your effort, it does not impede your ability to preform additional political actions, neither does it somehow lessen the impact of those actions

it is a necessary step this election to try and reduce harm- the election will proceed with or without you, and you will live with the consequences of it regardless of your participation; are you going to lie down and take it, or exercise all avenues available to you? i will not pretend your vote is anything but a drop in leaky bucket but its something, and its free and its easy. "i could never bring myself to vote for such a monster!" you are right, hes a monster, and an idiot, and ill feel miserable checking the box, but if the only legitimate reason not to vote that you can provide for me is your own moral repulsion im afraid thats just not good enough

compromising your sense of right and wrong to a limited capacity is necessary to be both politically active and impactful, as well as to just be a functional human being, because how you feel in the face of greater issues like this is, frankly, immaterial. action is the only language that matters at this moment. moral purity is a myth and your ability to maintain any semblance of it is a privilege

the only two choices here are voting or not voting; not voting, when you know conservatives will be lining the fuck up this election is, genuinely, rolling over and conceding their victory. if you find yourself asking, "how could things get any worse!?" i very earnestly urge you think about Trump; what hes said, what hes been saying recently, how his congregation feels about him, and how he and the republicans stacked and manipulated the other branches of the government during his presidency- and research how exactly it still effects us today

things could get worse. ill admit were in for a "worse" next four years regardless, honestly, but theres no biting the bullet of crappy futures. theres no "getting it over with" here. 330 million+ people domestically (not even considering the global implications) are counting on each other. you have to choose the Better Shitty Future

you gotta do it. you dont have to like it, you dont have to be happy, you dont have to tell anyone who you voted for or even that you did it at all. but you have to go vote, and you should encourage others to do the same

i definitely understand why you feel like you just can't. that you could never do anything that might be taken as actual support for such a spineless, shitty party and genocide-mongering, incompetent man. i had come to the exact same conclusion myself, initially. honestly i'm not sure anyone with a brain could think less of you for it. but i've Thought about it, like i'm encouraging you to Think about it, and it's just not a game of support, it's about making sure one of them loses. the system is broken, but you're still inside- you can't leave, and no one's coming to save you, so you have to play. make peace with it

[loveguts]

i’m not a transandrophobia truther in the slightest don’t get me wrong, but i think some people on here really need to realize and comprehend the fact that cis women, way WAY more often than not, hold extremely significant social and political power over trans men the vast majority of the time in our day to day lives

[philosopherking1887]

Was going to reblog a funny post about Larry the Cat being a better figurehead head of state for the UK than King Charles, then noticed that OP had an upside-down red triangle as their icon. Cool. Your whole online identity is being in favor of killing Jews.

[apostate-in-an-alcove]

Leftists sure do a shit job at encouraging people to change for the better and let go of old biases; it's almost like guilting and shaming people is an ineffective tool that doesn't accomplish anything worthwhile in the long run.

[ami-fly]

"Our solidarity comes from a place of anger at the injustice, and a place of deep pain of knowing the devastating impacts of occupation, shelling of civil infrastructure, and humanitarian blockade from experiences in our homeland. Parts of Ukraine have been occupied since 2014, and the international community failed to stop Russian aggression then, ignoring the imperial and colonial nature of the armed violence, which consequently escalated on the 24th of February 2022. Civilians in Ukraine are shelled daily, in their homes, in hospitals, on bus stops, in queues for bread. As a result of the Russian occupation, thousands of people in Ukraine live without access to water, electricity or heating, and it is the most vulnerable groups that are mostly affected by the destruction of critical infrastructure. In the months of the siege and heavy bombardment of Mariupol there was no humanitarian corridor. Watching the Israeli targeting the civilian infrastructure in Gaza, the Israeli humanitarian blockade and occupation of land resonates especially painfully with us." Ukrainian Letter of Solidarity with Palestinian people

[anotherpapercut]

I'm no longer responding to people just straight up lying in the tags of my library post but oh my god I want to strangle some people holy shit

[ffcrazy15]

Man someone needs to do a deep-dive video essay into the inappropriate and clearly nonconsensual fetishization and sexualization of nuns and their convents in terminally-online leftist spaces.

[96percentdone]

I do honestly believe that all communication ever would be vastly improved if everyone on earth internalized and understood that the the whole thing is a series of back and forth interpretation of words with a collectively understood haze of potential meanings wildly dependent on context, speaker, and audience, even for even the most basic of sentences.

Like I can say "I like cats" but the degree of intensity to which i like them is just something you're inferring based on prior context (also interpreted) and how my tone is read. I could be sincere, or totally sarcastic, or maybe cat is slang for something else—miscommunication happens because everything is up for grabs, and communication is not an objective science.

It's a fast-paced guessing game played by all.

[thebreakfastgenie]

It’s been 13 years since the ACA but the amazing thing to me is the complete ignorance/denial of just how bad it was before isn’t new. That started like immediately.

[snekdood]

Was tlaking to my bf about my issues w tumblr and he was like "yeah, ever since they got rid of porn neo nazis have been trying to take over the site" and i think that just makes everything make so much more sense on here. The puritanism, the division, the intentional misunderstanding, the fact ppl act like kiwi farmers and fucking. Record people they dont likes every fuckin action. Ppl making excuses for some of the most fucked up behavior. The fact i feel like i cant post my art lest i be hella judged for being #problematic in a way i dont know or understand, the fact ppl are so quick to call people problematic and dismiss them, the way people call you a "lib" like a conservative would and especially for things like idk. Not wanting to kill people. The fact we've somehow normalized saying "kys" to eachother, the fact everyones so fucking paranoid on here about eachother. Like Idk if i feel like i can call this a progressive site anymore or if i can even call it leftist when ppl are like speedrunning trying to prove horseshoe theory true and its like. Are they even real leftists? Probably some of them are or were and get swept up in bs secret neo nazis post. And its not like this is entirely new, neo nazis have been trying to manipulate people since forever on here. I just wish people could recognize when their morals have been compromised by a jackass whos good at wording things a certain way. Im starting to feel like the only way to interact w this site is to reblog pretty pictures and go.

[wild-at-mind]

Kind of sad that people writing about their politics are still doing the ‘any self identified leftist with opinions that are Wrong is actually a liberal’ thing.

[corvidcall]

ooouugghh frustrating to realize the thing you're mad about is just a Guy You Made Up but realizing that doesnt make you less upset