I know most people that were on reddit at the time are fully aware of this and won’t be surprised but don’t dismiss the findings out of hand. It’s important that studies are being conducted and the fact that the finding match our lived experience is still noteworthy.

  • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works
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    This won’t make Spez any more uncomfortable when he wants to sleep at night. According to him, that subreddit was “valuable discussion”.

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    If you ever want to observe or engage (be ready for the pile-up) with these same folks, r/ShitPoliticsSays contains the exact same user-base of extremists. These are dyed-in-the-wool folks because they use this as a launching-point for brigading other subs comment threads. Lots of Canadian righties there, too. The only credit I’ll give is unlike r/conservative that they never censored so you could pretty much discuss and test argumentative points to your heart’s content.

    Just read the thread covering this very article about T_D lol

    Of course I still think a sizable chunk of these folks operate in discord channels and astroturfed Sanders subs (especially the 2020 election), ChapoTrapHouse, etc.

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    No. Fucking. Shit.

    Any and I do mean, any conservative based subreddit all now function the same. r/conservatives have turned into a shithole. Hell, even TrueUnpopularOpinion has turned into it’s own shithole because it’s just a foundation for right-wingers to express their radicalized thought processes for all to see.

    • BakerBagel@midwest.social
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      r/unpopularopinion was a shithole. Any sub called “realXYZ” “QRS2” or “TrueABC” is just the “free speech” version started by someone pissed that they got banned for using slurs, so I’m not surprised r/TrueUnpopularOpinion went to shit. I’m surprised you think it was decent at any point tbh.

      • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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        There were a couple “trues” that actually had a purpose and were actively less shitty than the original one. The games and gaming subs were mostly memes and fan boys being assholes, but truegaming was for longer form discussion and memes weren’t allowed.

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          I remember TrueGaming having such a stingy requirement, like they wouldn’t have allowed you to post for a month. It was dumb but I understood. It’s no longer there.

          Yeah r/gaming is a shitfest, you can’t have an honest engaging conversation about games. It’s always about sensationalist takes, cosplayer females dressing sexually to appeal to the lonely losers who frequent there, rage porn for like 2 weeks, unfunny memes and junk posts like “REMAKE THIS ONE GAME ONLY I REMEMBURH! COME ON, I PRETEND TO UNDERSTAND BUSINESS! THIS WILL RAKE IN SO MUCH MONEY!”

          And the same person will pull a two-face and condemn the industry for practicing what they think is bad business, while simultaneously STILL PAYING FOR THE SHIT THEY THINK IS THE PROBLEM!

          Hypocritical pieces of shit are what that community is.

    • ZeroCool@vger.socialOP
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      Yeah, I’ve always described r/Conservative as The_Donald dressed up in their dad’s suit and tie. But once The_Donald was finally banned (after they already left for their own website - thanks for nothing spez) r/Conservative dropped all pretenses.

      • Maple Engineer@lemmy.world
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        R/republican was a right wing echo bunker, too. I got banned for pointing out that the letter in the “article” that someone posted that claimed that the DOJ had found massive voter fraud in Georgia and asking the state to reject Biden’s win was actually written by a Trumpist shill and contradicted the Republican AG, the DOJ, the Republican Governor, the Republican Secretary of State, and Republican election officials.

        I asked them a couple of times when major events in the prosecution of John Eastman occurred if they would reconsider. They blocked me for 30 days each time. When he was finally disbarred I asked again and they told me that if I didn’t stop asking they would report me to the admins.

        Delicate little snowflakes in their echo bunker.

  • masquenox@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    r/The_Donald helped radicalize extremify users into far-right identities and discourse – Active users on r/The_Donald increasingly used white nationalist vocabularies in their comments within three months.

    FTFT. I so hate it when people who should know better ignore the actual meaning of terms.

  • someguy3@lemmy.ca
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    Did it actually radicalize, or just take the mask off? They may have used vocabularies they always wanted to.

    Using an original dataset of Reddit user posting histories from 2015–2017, I test for increases in the frequency of this far-right vocabulary.

    I think there’s a lot to be discussed on the topic but I wouldn’t put much on this methodology.

    • kakes@sh.itjust.works
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      Honestly, before now, this is what I had implicitly assumed was going on. I’m not American, and I had blocked most of this trash when it was happening, but my impression was that these ignorant people were just “coming out of the woodwork” so to speak.

      Of course, fear and hate are learned behaviors, but it’s interesting to me to see that these people were actually being quantifiably radicalized by that website in particular, and they weren’t simply bringing views to the platform that were being established elsewhere.

      • lath@lemmy.world
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        People are emotional creatures. And in a place where a type of view is being actively promoted, it’s very easy to align those emotions in that specific direction.

        An example here on Lemmy is ACAB. It’s anti-police and it posts the bad stuff that’s meant to show ACAB. They might say it shows the truth and people going through All, watching the videos and reading the articles might start thinking, huh cops seem bad. They keep going, read statistics and articles posted by other commenters and driven by this information, they eventually end up saying ACAB. Suddenly, anyone not saying ACAB is complicit, an enemy, a troll, part of the problem etc.

        It’s the same for any politically charged social hub. It’s not just people who had the views but lacked a place to vent them, but people who are ignorant on the subject and are radicalized through emotional outrage. Emotional opinions are the hardest to change because the investment in them is the greatest.

      • someguy3@lemmy.ca
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        Radicalization happens yes, it’s a question of The Donald specifically doing it. It’s not so big that many people will just randomly stumble into it like Fox (which is passive and 24/7). People have to kinda seek the sub out and engage. At that point they were probably quietly, let’s just say, racist. So I put that in the category of mask off. I know people they could do that.

    • ZeroCool@vger.socialOP
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      Did it actually radicalize, or just take the mask off?

      When a community allows you to feel comfortable “taking the mask off” and embracing your inner bigot that is radicalization. So yes, The_Donald did radicalize people. Your comment is an attempt to highlight a distinction without a functional difference.

      • someguy3@lemmy.ca
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        I guess you could define radicalization like that, but I’d define it as taking regular Joe with no hate and you know radicalizing them.

        Radicalization (or radicalisation) is the process by which an individual or a group comes to adopt increasingly radical views in opposition to a political, social, or religious status quo.

        Yeah I think there’s a difference between radicalization and mask off.

  • glimse@lemmy.world
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    To all the people rushing to sarcastically comment how surprised they are: Yes, we all saw it happen. But…

    It’s important that studies are being conducted and the fact that the finding match our lived experience is still noteworthy.

    This is why OP posted it. Science isn’t feelings, you need data.

  • Th4tGuyII@kbin.social
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    6 months ago

    While it certainly is a bit of a captain obvious moment that exposure to far-right echo chambers helped radicalise vulnerable people into the far-right, but I can see the merit in having empirical evidence supporting what we see (as OP said) - it is a lot easier to dismiss an andecdote than statistical evidence

    • PoliticalAgitator@lemmy.world
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      If you were familiar with far-right extremists before Reddit gave them a comfy little platform, it was painfully obvious.

      Sticking to vocabulary only, terms like “cuck” becoming their favourite insult was straight from neo-nazi circles, where it very deliberately meant “race traitor” – someone who would let a black man fuck their wife.

      Since it had the most plausible deniability behind it, “cuck” survived about as long as “alt-right” did, before it became obvious to even the dullest of fucks that it was all just neo-nazis.

      But scattered around that, you had terms like “Zionists” and “ethnostate” that aren’t inherently Nazi terms but are neo-nazis go-to problem and solution. You had outright dogwhistles like (((Soros))) and 1488. You had preferred slurs for women and minorities that came straight from places that were openly far-right, Holocaust advocates.

      You also had various versions of the same old Protocols/Mein Kamph conspiracy theories, custom built for internet reactionaries. Hell, the anti-Hillary frenzy escalated to accused the Democrats of blood libel for fucks sake – one of the oldest antisemitic conspiracy theories there is.

      Most of these came and went as they carefully balanced remaining “mask on”. If it became too much of a give away, it was retired and replaced. These days, they know to not even name their movement, because it makes it harder to attack. The “alt-right” is now just “Republicans” so they can hide their extremism behind moderates.

      Anyway, fuck the lot of them. Reddit providing a platform for groups like neo-nazis and anti-vaxxers has likely caused more social damage than anything on the internet to date.

      • Tregetour@lemdro.id
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        These days, they know to not even name their movement, because it makes it harder to attack.

        Sounds like they learned well from the progressive left :D

        There’s no such thing as ‘woke’!

      • Wow that’s a lot of text with a lot of opinion I don’t really care for. I was more looking for a list but all I got was cuck, zionist, ethnostate, soros, and 1488. The rest is ideas and concepts and Dumas’s conspiracy theories not vocaulary.

        Also imo its incredibly nieve to lump anyone who identifies with republican as an alt-right Nazi. That is literally the same generalisation group think blame game that Hitler used to blame and prosecute the Jews.

        I guess my only other question is why are the Palestinian protesters using at least 2 of these ideas/words?

        • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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          Wow that’s a lot of text with a lot of opinion I don’t really care for. I was more looking for a list but all I got was cuck, zionist, ethnostate, soros, and 1488. The rest is ideas and concepts and Dumas’s conspiracy theories not vocaulary.

          I mean, you asked a bunch of random strangers instead of going to google, so ya gets what ya gets, I guess.

        • Fidel_Cashflow@lemmy.ml
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          I guess my only other question is why are the Palestinian protesters using at least 2 of these ideas/words?

          My guess would be because they are protesting a Zionist ethnostate.

        • masquenox@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          That is literally the same generalisation group think blame game that Hitler used to blame and prosecute the Jews.

          Riiiight… becasue right-wingers are born right-wingers, correct? Is that why you want to equate right-wingers playing the victim card to people who were actually murdered simply for existing?

          Also imo its incredibly nieve to lump anyone who identifies with republican as an alt-right Nazi.

          As you yourself have just proven - all right-wingers walk the same path.

          Good job outing yourself, fascist.

          • Is that why you want to equate right-wingers playing the victim card to people who were actually murdered simply for existing?

            If u could read u would realise that’s not what I said at all. If I really wanted to equate the left with Hitler I would point out he gained most of his public support from promising everyone land a fammilly and job. Sounds like the same thing socialism is promising.

            Have u ever gone and spoken to a republican in person? have u ever gone and had a legitimate conversation with one? Have u even left the world greatest 3rd world country?

            And since it seems to be your culture to call me a facist as an Aussie its culturaly insensitive for you to stop me calling you a cunt.

            • masquenox@lemmy.world
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              I would point out he gained most of his public support from promising everyone Aryan enough land a fammilly and job.

              FTFY… but I guess it doesn’t sound very socialist any more now, does it?

              Have u ever gone and spoken to a republican in person?

              Why? I grew up in a fascist regime, genius - I have been hearing the garbage fascists peddle since birth.

              Newsflash - you all sound the same.

              • but I guess it doesn’t sound very socialist any more now, does it?

                I don’t see how which group ur pandering to matters?

                in person?

                Why? I grew up in a fascist regime, genius - I have been hearing the garbage fascists peddle since birth.

                So that’s a no? Get off the fucking internet and go civilly speak to the goddamn people especially the ones u disagree with.

                • masquenox@lemmy.world
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                  I don’t see how which group ur pandering to matters?

                  Of course you don’t, fascist.

                  Get off the fucking internet and go civilly speak

                  Which part of…

                  I have been hearing the garbage fascists peddle since birth.

                  …didn’t you understand the first time around, fascist?

        • PoliticalAgitator@lemmy.world
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          What a shock, you didn’t want an answer, you wanted the foundation of apologist talking points to bail out your friends.

          Wow that’s a lot of text with a lot of opinion I don’t really care for. I was more looking for a list but all I got was cuck, zionist, ethnostate, soros, and 1488

          Damn, you wanted a list and all you got was a list. If you want something more specific, buy the paper instead of insisting people spoon feed you answers. My money would be on you being perfectly aware what that list contains but hoping nobody wanted to write you out a giant list of racist, sexist and antisemitic slurs.

          The rest is ideas and concepts and Dumas’s conspiracy theories not vocaulary.

          Yes, as I clearly stated.

          Also imo its incredibly nieve to lump anyone who identifies with republican as an alt-right Nazi

          Not a thing I did, but if you’re upset that your friends and family are being labeled as scumbags just because they vote, bankroll and repeat the talking points of scumbags, maybe you should direct your tantrum at the alt-right Nazis and the Republicans that tolerate them, if not openly support them.

          That is literally the same generalisation group think blame game that Hitler used to blame and prosecute the Jews.

          Fuck off with your “the left are the real Nazis”. I’m not shipping people off to death camps, I’m pointing out the undeniable fact that the Republican party is riddled with far-right fuckstains, an idea that apparently hurts your feelings.

          They’re not remotely comparable acts on any level and I’m not going to fall for the awkward manipulation tactics you learned on 4chan.

          I guess my only other question is why are the Palestinian protesters using at least 2 of these ideas/words?

          Rub your two braincells together and see if they spark. Zionism plays an important part in Israeli hostilities towards Gaza. That doesn’t mean far-right conspiracy theories about Jews running the world and needing genociding have any merit.

          You’re blatantly just trying to link my opinions to Hitler (hoping people will be dull enough to think “both people bad”) and racist extremists to Palestinians (hoping people will be dull enough to think “both groups good”).

          Save the awkward manipulation for whatever members of your family still speak to you.

          • I wanted a list I thought I said that? I refuse to pay hence I asked as I want to be better educated on the topic.

            Here is u lumping all republicans together with the people u call extremists Nazis, antivaxxers, and antisemites.

            The “alt-right” is now just “Republicans” so they can hide their extremism behind moderates.

            I never said the left where Nazis. I made no comment of political affiliation or assumptions about you or myself.

            The right is riddled with far right extremists same as the left is riddled with far left extremists. The reason u do that see them as extremists is because u are aligned with them (no extremist thinks they are an extremist).

            They are completely comparable acts both Hitler and the left are finding real examples of a problem, both then selected a section of these people based on a common ideology (that they happen to not like), both then attributed the bad shit committed by a small percentage no higher than the societal average to the whole group, both then used that to organise societal prosecution of the whole group based on the actions of a few. Hitler not the left then used the general disapproval of these people to relocate them which he then used as justification to murder them because out of sign out of mind. Lot of similarities here.

            Zionism plays an important part in Israeli hostilities towards Gaza.

            So its antisemitic when the right does it but acceptable to literally call for the destruction of their nation if the left does it (from the river to the sea etc)? That’s some very impressive doublethink does 2+2=5?

            I’m not trying to link u to Hitler just pointing out the similarities and ur hypocritical or idiotic refuse to a knowledge said similarities. I have literally no say power or influence over what 2 other sovereign nations choose to do. It is quite literally 2 democratic nations going to war with each other I believe that we should respect the peoples decisions on how their democratically elected government operates. I’m simply concerning myself with the actions violence and hate happing in my backyard.

            That’s two mentions of my family not speaking to me. I’m not sure what kind of a psychopathic family refused to talk to someone because of political ideology but Me thinks you doth protest to much.

            • PoliticalAgitator@lemmy.world
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              I wanted a list I thought I said that? I refuse to pay hence I asked as I want to be better educated on the topic

              Nope. You asked “So what’s the definition of white nationalist vocabulary?” and then when that was answered, you moved the goal posts.

              Here is u lumping all republicans together with the people u call extremists Nazis, antivaxxers, and antisemites

              Nope, there is me explaining that the far-right no longer give themselves labels like “alt-right” and instead insist they’re regular Repiblicans so that apologists like you can claim “you just call all Republicans Nazis”.

              You’ve tried really hard to strip that context out of your quote but since you knew cutting the sentence off half way through would be too obvious, there’s still enough context there to show you’re lying. It’s right there in the “so they can hide behind moderates” part – who are the “moderates” if I’m calling all Republicans Nazis?

              The right is riddled with far right extremists same as the left is riddled with far left extremists

              Not even remotely close. I know you’ve been trained to bleat “both sides” on command but this isn’t going to fool anyone outside your little bubble of people who will believe anything as long as it’s right wing.

              But sure, let’s play. Who are the Democrat versions of Matt Gaetz or MTG, both of whom are seeing to control what people learn by attacking teachers and banning books? Who is the Democrat version of Paul Gosar, who has shared videos depicting violence against their political rivals? Who are the Democrats promoting conspiracy theories to undermine elections, like Boebert and Trump?

              Lot of similarities here.

              Not nearly as many differences. Bullshit comparisons like this are trivial to make and I could link Hitler to 100 Republicans in 1000 ways using surface level shit that everyone does, even without lying.

              Hitler isn’t known as one of the most vile people to ever live because he made generalisations about a group of people, it’s because he was a political leader who arranged to systemically murder millions of innocent people.

              So its antisemitic when the right does it but acceptable to literally call for the destruction of their nation if the left does it (from the river to the sea etc)?

              I genuinely can’t even figure out what your point is supposed to be here.

              That’s two mentions of my family not speaking to me. I’m not sure what kind of a psychopathic family refused to talk to someone because of political ideology but Me thinks you doth protest to much.

              Nope, I just keep tabs on what extremists are up to and it’s common to see both “how do I redpill my friends and family?” and “my family doesn’t speak to me any more”.

              Don’t worry, I’m sure they’re unrelated and your family are good people that know your true opinions.

          • SorryQuick@lemmy.ca
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            6 months ago

            Too be fair I too was looking for something of a list. Of the few words mentionned in the comments, I only knew about cuck and I thought it was a fetish thing.

            I’m not too sure why people on here tend to exaggerate the slightest of things. One can simply be curious, you know.

            And I don’t know why everyone is defending the paywall. I thought lemmy was leftist and leftists were agaisnt this kind of thing. Especially since most papers, if not all, are partially or fully funded by taxpayer money.

            • PoliticalAgitator@lemmy.world
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              Too be fair I too was looking for something of a list. Of the few words mentionned in the comments, I only knew about cuck and I thought it was a fetish thing.

              I’m not too sure why people on here tend to exaggerate the slightest of things. One can simply be curious, you know.

              Just because you can’t spot the bullshit doesn’t mean it’s not there. By your own admission you didn’t know any of the dogwhistles nor the extra layer of gross in their love of calling everyone “cucks”.

              You fell for their plausible deniability but many of us have seen these tricks 1000 times now. We’re not exaggerating, we’re experienced.

              And I don’t know why everyone is defending the paywall. I thought lemmy was leftist and leftists were agaisnt this kind of thing. Especially since most papers, if not all, are partially or fully funded by taxpayer money.

              I’m not defending the paywall. If someone wants to undermine the content of the paper, they can start by reading it, not crowd-sourcing excuses.

              • SorryQuick@lemmy.ca
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                Well that’s the point. I know what cuck can mean in that context now because it was mentionned and I was able to look it up. If everyone wants to hide what the other words are because “it’s so obvious you’re an idiot for not knowing them”, how am I supposed to recognize them in the wild? As it is I’ll probably just hear some fancy new term and assume they’re educated.

                As for the paywall, maybe you weren’t against it yourself but the other comments that were agaisnt it got downvoted, though perhaps it wasn’t the sole reason.

                • PoliticalAgitator@lemmy.world
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                  Nobody is hiding anything. They’re slurs and dogwhistles. If you really want to know what they are, use your initiative to look them up. Insisting people on social media to explain it to you is not only indistinguishable from sea-lioning but a great way to get manipulated.

  • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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    One cannot be an active thedonald user without already being a white nationalist.

    Any dissent gets an instant permaban.

    • instavi76@thelemmy.club
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      Any dissent gets an instant permaban.

      So just like r/conservative? I only commented there once and was instantly permabanned. It was a while ago. Deinately before Trump was president, maybe 2015. Maybe earlier.

      I kinda watched the political climate change drastically since 2015. Statring form Trumps presidency to spreading all over America, Europe and the world. And I wonder where this came from in such masses. Russian efforts and paid propagandists? They can’t be THAT powerful, can they? It is insane and it spreads everywhere. Into every corner of the world. I don’t understand it. People seem to want authoritarian leadership. Have they all lost their minds?

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        Not defending Russia, the us wrote the book on election interference. To act like it’s not possible now is insane. American exceptionalism is the biggest hoax. The GOP is now banking on the us letting Putin win. They’ve sold us down the river with fanciful delusion that they will get to rule the ashes and install their Christo-fascist bullshit.

  • paladin3494@feddit.dk
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    1 month ago

    And today the front page is still being used to push fanatical American extremism, just in a different guise. American progressives are just alternative Trumpists. It’s horrifying

    • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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      Do you do anything other than punch left? Lol. Of course Lemmy is going to have Leftists, it was made by Marxist-Leninists along Communist principles. You are the one picking Lemmy over Reddit, here.

    • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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      Literally any thread on Lemmy

      .ee user shows up to whine about .ml

      .ee users proceed to tankie for israel all over the place

        • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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          You just showed up on a thread about reddit to whine that some lemmy users aren’t far enough to the right for you.

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              I thought you said you blocked me. Guess that was another filthy lie.

              Again, this thread is about reddit bein’ fulla nazis, not about how you’re angry that people to your left exist on lemmy.

                • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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                  What this thread is about is irrelevant. Propaganda is propaganda.

                  And what propaganda have I spread on this thread? Quote it.

                  I’ll call it out every time I see it.

                  And every time you imagine it. I think there are tankies under your bed.

                  And I can block and unblock you as many times as I wish.

                  lol you wanted to leave our last conversation in a huff but couldn’t commit.