I experience Lemmy as a reflection of many of the problems in the world; there seems to be little effort to understand and respect different viewpoints. Instead of being curious about opinions one disagrees with, the community often feels almost aggressive. People end up in their own trenches. What about trying to be more open and curious about our differences instead?
Apparently we believe in freedom of speech—so long as the speech is something we agree with…
I don’t think this is specific to lemmy. We generally like to hear people agree with us, and social media allows us to a) find spaces with like-minded people b) block people we don’t like from interacting with us
We put ourselves into echo chambers where our assumptions and opinions are never challenged. You might talk about people with different opinions, but rarely to them. Live in that environment long enough, and you stop to question your convictions, and become increasingly incapable of articulating why you hold them, or to consider the perspective of ‘the opponent’.
The issue though, now, is it goes even further.
We now live in an time when the very idea of of our assumptions and opinions being challenged is considered assault or violence, and thus justifies the use of force to prevent that from happening. They think any acknowledgement of the humanity or legitimacy of their opponent is also something that should be met with violence.
I hear 20 somethings now talk like my boomer parents… in that anytime their views are challenged or questioned they resort to violence and threats. I’ve also had those threats directed at me in the past few years in a way I haven’t encountered for most of my adult life until recently.
To your point, in the UK and Australia you can now literally get jail time for saying some pro-Palestinian slogans. So certainly there has a cultural and sometimes legal shift towards not tolerating opposing viewpoints and it is not healthy. That said this behaviour is not limited the right. The left is not very tolerant of opposing viewpoints either
Yeah, it’s a product of identity politics. One of the premises of identity politics is that speech in and of itself, is harmful and evil, and that we must use force, including the power of the state, to stop harmful speech.
So now we have this world where we are making laws and punishing people based on subjective perceptions of ‘harm’.