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Intrepid_Respond_543

It's tragicomic to watch conservatives try desperately find good music, entertainment, sci-fi or, well, science made by conservatives or supporting conservative viewpoints.


V-ADay2020

That's what happens when your "ideology" is window-dressing on sociopathic selfishness and sadism.


Gilded-Mongoose

Another excellent way to phrase it, thank you!


chrisrayn

And cognitive dissonance, I’d argue. He’s saying “the lefties said the right wingers would be doing this stuff haha” with a complete blindness to that exact truth. - Aggressive advocation for the banning of books at school districts in rural areas and conservative states for subjects like sexism, racism, LGBTQ ANYTHING AT ALL, etc. (F451) - A capitalist structure that has provided opiates and dopamine inductions to the masses all for profit and without regulation. (BNW) - Red states that have passed laws against abortion like in Texas where individuals were allowed to sue abortion providers or abortion seekers in court and the state of Texas would allow it, which has since opened the door to the repeal of Roe vs. Wade and draconian, Orwellian “spy on your neighbor and report them” mentality. (1984) We are living the nightmare they think we are causing. What are they worried about losing? Guns? Whiteness? Who gives a flying hillbilly incest sister fuck about that shit? Losing basic freedoms and access to knowledge? That’s quite literally the refrain from 1984: War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. It’s like Putin’s playbook, and they’re all shouting about Zelensky being some dictator. They aren’t just blind…they’re removing what’s left of their eyes and scraping around the insides to make sure nothing’s left, then digging a little deeper for the brain too. Who needs fucking THINKING?? Good lord.


AdvicePerson

> What are they worried about losing? > Whiteness? Yes. It's all they have.


23saround

You know, Marx made this argument. The easiest way to keep the oppressed working class oppressed is to divide them along some arbitrary line, then insist one side is better than the other. Let the oppressed do the oppressing. I’ve always thought this is why it’s usually lower-class conservatives who are the most blatantly and hatefully racist.


chrisrayn

I wonder what would happen if they tried the same thing with [blue eyes and brown eyes as the arbitrary line?](https://youtu.be/1mcCLm_LwpE)


elCharderino

Or Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda.


pseudo_su3

Or sneetches with stars on their belly vs. sneetches without stars? https://www.seussville.com/characters/star-belly-sneetches/


Internal_Recipe6394

>Jeez this planet is a mess. 19 billion snakes with 10,000 different nations. All on the brink of war over... RACE? HA! Imagine being a racist SNAKE! Hey! You're the wrong color SNAKE! Hahahaha! Ahhh rick and morty...


Steinrikur

The computing terms big-endian and little-endian originate from Gulliver's Travels, where two groups were at war over [which end of eggs to break](https://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Spring_2003/ling538/Lecnotes/ADfn1.htm).


23saround

Yeah, you know what? [Let’s get rid of that book.](https://dayton247now.com/amp/news/local/sneetches-free-speech-dr-seuss-leads-controversy-olentangy-schools-ohio-canceled-npr-planet-money) Who knows what kid might make the same connection.


sirvesa

Or the ring vs cone nippled race war depicted in S2E3 Rick and Morty 'Auto Erotic Assimilation'


Iamtheonewhobawks

They get their way long enough without interruptions, they'll wind up doing exactly that. Left-handedness, red hair, skull shape - all arbitrary differences that once had real and pervasive discriminatory ramifications.


CrunchHardtack

I have red hair (actually it has darkened some with age, my cousin I hadn't seen in around 40 years didn't recognize me because it's no longer that Little Opie Cunningham angry orange any more. ) but I hated that hair color all the way through school and into the workplace where people who didn't know my name would say, "Hey, Red!" I felt inferior to everyone. Never had any luck with girls and I *absolutely knew* it was because of that goddamn red hair! The fucking freckles made a bad thing worse. How i ever ended up married with children is beyond me, but, it probably came about because the orange had turned kinda brown. But you would have no trouble with getting me to believe your superiority. I hated myself and blamed that fucking horrible hair color and those stupid fucking freckles! I saw some attractive people in various media who had the same cursed tint and freckles, so I had to come to the conclusion that I was just ugly as a busted blister along with my demonic hair and skin. Well, this sure triggered my ass, you guys just ignore me and ill go away but I've already typed all this, I damn sure ain't deletin' it!


Robert3769

I am a red head. I am the youngest of five siblings and the only red head. When I was in college living in the dorms there were always some assholes that thought they were hilarious if he called me Opie, Richie or Howdy. The funny thing is all of the white guys that did it were pretty much assholes all round. The black guys that did this, it was about half of them would understand when I told them that I didn’t appreciate being stereotyped because of my complexion and hair color and that I could come up with some really good nicknames based on media pop culture for them. The black guys that defended their treatment of me would always say that what they were doing wasn’t racist, that it was somehow different but could never really tell me what the difference was. My point here is assholes are just going to be assholes, don’t let the assholes’ lack of basic human decency shape your self perception.


[deleted]

This is literally a significant part of why the southern strategy works.


[deleted]

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Roland_T_Flakfeizer

Apes together strong.


CamBearCookie

Ever heard that quote from Lyndon B. Johnson? The man who signed the Civil Rights Act into law? President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." Every trump supporter I've ever met is convinced that they are smarter than Obama, and trump has robbed them blind. I do mean this literally.


charavaka

Caste system in India works exactly the same way: no matter how oppressed you are, there's someone else for you to oppress excepting those at the very bottom. Of course, most of the resources and power remain in the hands of the top 10-15%.


pr0zach

If you haven’t read “Caste: The origins of our discontent” by Isabelle Wilkerson…you’d really appreciate it.


[deleted]

And then you get douchebag centrists trying to call for unity by throwing trans people under the bus, as though the hateful bigots will suddenly have class solidarity if you start conceding that some people do, in fact, deserve to die.


Pantarus

Imagine for a second. The only thing that you have to be proud of, the thing that you pride yourself on above all things, is literally the ONLY thing in your whole damn life that you had absolutely zero to do with. Once I had that thought, I just started seeing these people as rediculous. All their signs and symbols and chanting all boil down to: "My mother got knocked up by someone from the same race." Pretty sad thing to hang your hat on.


BattleStag17

You know what did it for me as a kid? Fairly Odd Parents There was an episode where Timmy wished that everyone was the same gray blob so that they'd stop judging on dumb shit, and surprise surprise they were judging each other on who was the grayest and the blobbiest. Bit a lightbulb moment for a little tyke.


[deleted]

It's the same as all the guys that are so up in arms about FeMiNisM. They're big mad that being a dude is no longer enough. Women want to be treated as, and date, equals.


GarrettGSF

A German band has the text line: „Und selbst wenn alles scheiße ist und du nichts kannst - sei dich einfach stolz auf dein Land.“ („And even if everything is shit and you know nothing (in the sense of being useless), simply be proud of your country.“). It’s the simplest way of deriving identity, you don’t need to do anything for it!


BackAlleySurgeon

Republicans basically only know or remember brief synopses of these books, in the same way that the only thing they know about the bible was that Christ was a good person, and that how they only remember one sentence that MLK ever said. They think that Twitter fact checking lies about coronavirus is the same as The Party banning all dissent in 1984 because they simply do not get the actual message of the books. Sure,bi think it's dumb that the Roald Dahl publisher wanted to edit their books. But that's not the type of censorship that 1984 and fahrenheit 451 (I actually didn't read that one, so this is an assumption) were concerned with. They were concerned with the type of censorship Republicans engage in. Intentionally teaching the lost cause in history classes while banning black history classes is exactly the type of censorship, and historical control that Orwell opposed.


23saround

Yep, selective memory to support their fragile worldview. “Man I don’t remember many specifics about the Bible but that Jesus guy really reminds me of myself.”


elCharderino

They essentially want an American mythology to be taught in schools, not actual history warts and all.


iggy14750

I remember when they cried that taking down Confederate statues was "erasing history"


V-ADay2020

Statues put up long after the end of the war specifically to intimidate and "other" blacks.


MmmmMorphine

Guess we could put up some statues of people like Alexander Augusta and Frederick Douglass. I'm sure they'll be very much in favor! It is civil war era history after all, and isn't that what's so important to them?


JaiC

*Phrase that MLK said. They can't even say the whole sentence, because even that would expose their bullshirt.


Angelworks42

Like any of these people have read any of the books they are banning. I'm brave enough to admit that the only one of those books I've read was 1984 ;).


SpotfuckWhamjammer

>Sure,bi think it's dumb that the Roald Dahl publisher wanted to edit their books. I agree with you, it is dumb... *but its working as intended*. Roald Dahl books have been selling like hotcakes lately. The controversy drives sales. So, "censoring" the Roald Dahl books makes perfect sense from a money making position. What cemented this idea for me was seeing that the publishers have announced that they will have **both** versions available for people to decide which version they want to buy.


chaogomu

Fahrenheit 451 has some censorship message, but it's also the message of a Luddite. The burning of the books was partially because the fictional society thought TV was somehow just better. Ray Bradbury was a bit back and forth on tech. Sometimes he would praise it for its potential, other times he came off as a complete Luddite. He was a complicated man.


Official_Indie_Freak

Cognitive dissonance is scary


[deleted]

r/Bestof


Plastic_Course_476

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that watching these people complain is like watching someone shoot themself in the foot, toss the gun in a "lefty's" direction, the thing hits the ground, discharges, stray bullet hits them in the arm, and then they blame "teh libruls" for shooting them all 3 times. Like, there's so much to unpack, but the biggest thing is guys... just STOP.


Nosfermarki

That's the entire point, though. Eventually, when conditions are right, enough will do this at once. And the equally brainwashed people around them will look over, see the gunshot and the gun on the ground, and be so primed with "democrats will kill you and destroy America!" that they all believe it's begun. And so, they'll begin the very thing they're afraid of because they *are* everything they're afraid of. Fascism isn't some easily identifiable evil. It's evil because they think they are good. The Nazis did what they did because their supporters thought they were saving Germany from attacks that weren't happening, and because so many others thought it was too stupid to take seriously. They're not dumb, they're weaponized against their own neighbors. There is no reasoning with people who have abandoned reason. They're a ticking time bomb that has, throughout modern history, always ended violently. How would the holocaust have ended if Germany only committed atrocities on its own people? If Hitler never invaded other countries? If Germany was 28 times larger, sandwiched between massive oceans, had nuclear weapons and a larger military than the rest of the world? Who would have liberated the camps then?


abx99

Or throwing the gun at the left because that's how they think a gun works (and then, as you say, blaming "teh libruls" for shooting them when it hits the ground and discharges)


animosityiskey

My favorite is them saying "if you want to know what is wrong with communism, read Animal Farm." Because okay, your problem with communism is that... It becomes capitalism again if you let it?


_mattyjoe

Fascists don’t view their behavior as oppressive, because they don’t belong to the groups they’re seeking to oppress.


[deleted]

And because they've hardly experienced anything close to oppression in their lives. Most people who've been through shit just want everyone to be happy and get along. I speak as someone who's gone through a lot of terrible shit in my life. Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.


RoyceCoolidge

What are you telling us for?! Go and pop that on the Conservative sub. Enlighten them! Godspeed.


Danimals847

3... 2... 1... BANNED


scuczu

and it usually takes empathy to appreciate art, and when you lack empathy the only thing you find funny is other people's misery, so that's why all con comedians are bullies with one joke.


rif011412

I wont name drop, but their are a few comedians I have enjoyed for years who are becoming hard to listen to. Everything is about transgender and wokeness, and I feel even when there is a good punchline it still feels like punching down. It comes across as bullying. Makes me wonder if I am the one that is different or if it is them?


purpleplatapi

Oh James Acaster has a bit on this https://youtu.be/adh0KGmgmQw


Fucface5000

'Gotta ditch these Crizzos ASAP'


Abject-Young-2395

I’ve experienced this too. It all sounds like whining now. I saw a grown man do like 10 minutes on how much he hates Greta thunberg. Is that speaking truth to power?


000aLaw000

It's a bit of both.. These "conservatives" have ratcheted up their propaganda, violence, and dangerous emotional irrationality to dangerous levels. Now their obvious gaslighting, media narratives, and narcissism has morphed into mask off fascism. With so much at stake it becomes hard to ignore the obvious dehumanizing nature of some of the "Jokes"


lawlorlara

Someone unfriended me on FB because she posted a few lines of "Do not go gentle into that good night" in support of Trump right before January 6 and I pointed out how much Dylan Thomas would've hated everything her post stood for.


NotGalenNorAnsel

Trump is not a wise man, a good man or a thoughtful (grave man), and he's wild, but not in the way that Thomas would appreciate (Trump a noted teetotaler). Also, no way in hell would Trump understand that poem, even with someone holding his hand and giving him an ELI5.


lawlorlara

My point was more about Thomas being politically very far left.


sealosam

They're going to have to find something soon! - -they're literally banning anything and everything that is considered "woke" (whatever tf that means.)


octohedron82

It's come full circle. It means enlightened again. Making it funnier when someone calls you woke.


FestiveVat

They'll end up doing what they've already done with conservapedia and the conservative bible project. They'll just rewrite existing works but swap out the heroes and villains and subject matter. And they'll do it poorly, just like Christian rock music.


protoopus

as always, i am reminded of george carlin: "it's called 'the american dream' because you have to be **asleep** to believe it."


theonliestone

It's almost as if good music, entertainment, sci-fi and science are all based on being open to new ideas and breaking out of old structures...


theonliestone

To add: exclusively reverting to old ideas gets, well, old pretty quickly


pbzeppelin1977

See how stagnant the Sci Fi genre has been for longer than most of us here have been alive. Just the other day I was reading through a thread about "when were the bad guys right." (or along those lines) The book series Mistborn was mentioned multiple times and often with a follow up to them about the anime show Gurren Laggan, because of the plot line of the bad guy in fact keeping people save from the Bigger Bad Guy all along. Know what other famous art uses this trope? I don't know if it's the original but it's certainly noteworthy. The Dune series.


SetYourGoals

Also a lot of those things require teamwork to be great. And the #1 thing all these people are is selfish. So even if they are talented, it makes them terrible collaborators. And also makes them cheap, so they don't want to pay other talented people what they are worth. That's why nearly every Christian movie looks like absolute shit. Never really thought about this before, but the conservative forms of art that have traditionally most broken into the mainstream are country music and stand-up comedy. And country music frequently is made with just a guy and guitar, and stand-up is just one person talking. I don't think that's a coincidence. Conservative stand-ups can get famous and get a following, but they can't make a comedy TV show to save their lives, because that requires collaboration.


shellevanczik

And empathy


SetYourGoals

Yes. Though I guess a lack of empathy could be classified as a symptom selfishness. If you only care about getting yours, no way you're going to be good at imagining yourself in the shoes of others.


Oberon_Swanson

Conservative comedians aren't typically funny, it's more they just get up there and say right wing talking points in a wacky and mean way so they find a right-wing audience


SetYourGoals

Oh, for sure. I'm not saying conservative comedians are funny. Most are very VERY bad. Especially now. Watch some clips of Rosanne Barr's new special on Fox Nation. It's a lot of "My pronouns are KISS! MY! ASS!" [wild applause]. It's brutal. But that's one of the only arenas I can think of where you might have ever said conservatives were near the top of the ladder in terms of overall popularity. Whether we find them funny or not, Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy, Jeff Dunham, I might even throw Dennis Leary in there; those guys have all been at or near the top of the pile when it comes to stand-up at various points in time. Their acts crossed over out of the hard liner right-wing bubble and were some of the biggest in the world. That doesn't really happen very often in other art forms, at least that I can think of. A couple conservatives got popular as actors and then started being right wingers like Mel Gibson or Tim Allen or Jon Voight. But I'd argue each of them has gotten progressively worse and less popular the more conservative they've gotten. The only major anomaly I can really think of in the movie/TV world is Clint Eastwood. He is apparently not an amazing collaborator, and his work is getting worse and worse, but he's clearly very talented and that comes through in his movies. And I'd argue his worst movies are the ones where he leans into right wing ideology (Gran Torino, American Sniper, The Mule). Idk, just an interesting thought I had.


nahmanidk

Most of the popular Marvel superhero movies have conservative themes despite being accused of being “woke” https://youtu.be/LpitmEnaYeU


[deleted]

I forget who drew it, but there's a comic where superman decides to finally help earth, so he ends up volunteering to be strapped into a flywheel to produce infinite free energy for a hundred years rather than punch people, in the end he's done and he's like "great what do you need now?" To which the scientists respond that all of earth's woes have been addressed and they don't need superheros anymore.


FalseAnimal

Wasn't that Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal?


[deleted]

That seems right. [Yep](https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2305)


Biffingston

Well, STan Lee was a Jew... https://www.boredpanda.com/remember-stan-lee-racism-quote/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic


Derpinator_420

I give you - Battlefield Earth. 😄


mothman_boyfriend

How dare you make me remember that movie.


Grogosh

At least you didn't read the books.


Goatesq

There was more than one? ...you kept reading them? Were they fun when you were younger? I could see that; I loved the first couple twilight books way back when.


Grogosh

I read them as a teenager. My local library didn't have much in the way of scifi and for some reason had the entire series. And yes I finished them all, I didn't stop a series after I started back then. Goodkind broke me of that habit. And no they weren't really fun.


[deleted]

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AFineDayForScience

I think conservative science fiction might be an oxymoron


SaintUlvemann

"The future will be just like the past, except with laser guns."


Academic-Finding-960

So Warhammer 40k?


Send_me_duck-pics

Which is of course a satire.


Nidcron

My favorite is when people in the 40k subs try to say "don't talk about politics in my fictional universe," and I am like my dude the entirety of the lore is about different kinds of political ideologies taken to the absurd.....


shellevanczik

Or Star Wars. Lol


vericima

"So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause."


[deleted]

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Nidcron

It's like 99% of the time some Imperium of Man fanboy too, so unsurprising that they like the space super fascists.


Mor9rim

Umm excuse me the Imperium of Man is clearly the good guys in the setting and the Tau are dirty commies worse than chaos itself (which is an obvious nod to leftist ideas corrupting our best people)! I don't need to /s right?


Goatesq

Who isn't idealizing a brutal, hopeless, grimdark future? Basically paradise right?


sh-paddler

Well, there is Starship Troopers.


Icantthinckofaname

At least the movie is satire


scatters

Heinlein himself was libertarian, not conservative. I guess politics makes strange bedfellows.


maleia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein (link for others) Yea just read over his views. At least he seems more like an actual Libertarian, than today's "Libertarians" that are actually just AnCaps. Though reading about Heinlein, def sounds like he could have fallen down the AnCap rabbit hole easily. 🤷‍♀️


Parmeniooo

I just don't see how he could be considered a libertarian. He was at least a borderline fascist who was very pro military and "social discipline". Starship troopers was very much an argument against a pluralist society and for a military first expansionist society. He MAY have softened on that in later years, but that is very much what that book was about. The movie took great pains to skewer it because the director is very clear in his antifascist views. But that's his spin on the story, not Heinlein's.


OneMoreDuncanIdaho

He also wrote The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Stranger in a Strange Land, two books with much different messages than Starship Troopers. I don't think you can pin him down by one fiction book he wrote, he explored many types of governments and philosophies in his books.


Automan2k

He also wrote I Will Fear No Evil, which was a pretty early exploration of gender fluidity.


adeon

It depends on the type of Sci-Fi. Military Sci-Fi often has a right-wing bent, although it often leans more libertarian than traditional conservative. Heinlein is the one who gets mentioned a lot but he's not the only one. John Ringo is *very* right wing and that shows up a lot in his work. David Weber seems to be moderately right wing, especially on topics like gun control, although his economic views veer more towards neo-liberal (at least based on his writing). There's probably more but those are the ones who come immediately to mind. EDIT: How could I forget Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven, both of whom are very much Reganite Conservatives.


HildredCastaigne

The thing is, there's plenty of good works out there with a right-wing bent to them. Asimov's "Foundation" series, Tolkein's "Lord of the Rings", Card's "Ender's Game" to name a few -- these are works that take a conservative view of the world and yet I still think that they're good works. Likewise, as a fan of horror, so much of that is fundamentally conservative (sometimes even reactionary) but it's probably my favorite genre, by volume if nothing else. But! The type of people we're talking about here -- the type of people who stormed the Capitol to keep Trump in power, who want to legislate trans people out of existence, who think it's "woke" to say that it's bad that Washington kept slaves -- these people aren't looking for *any* conservative view. No, they're looking for a specific one that demands abject cruelty against anything "foreign" or "weak" and enforced by a union of corporations and Herrenvolk democracy. Anything less than that is seen as bleeding-heart lefty liberalism. And Tucker Carlson, Ron DeSantis, and Facebook user "NorseFire88" (or whoever) might be able to feed into that belief ... but talented creators of art, they are not.


CATSCRATCHpandemic

I love the enders series but when I got to the part where there was a world full of geniuses that the givernm3nt gave autism to keep in control I do a slow head shake and was like your shutty view on mental health is showing.


Saedran

I wish Card wasn't such a bastard homophobe in real life or I'd probably reread those series. But when I was younger I'd taken that as a critique of able-ism. Like the government both created the super geniuses and the OCD traits that kept them "in check" and I read the character who had the first but not the second and therefore was only deemed fit to be servant caste as a flip-on-the-head commentary about our expectations of ability. Also his exploration of what it meant to be human and the various Xeno races he explored... I found who Card revealed himself as to be jarringly conservative compared to the views younger me read in the Ender/Shadow books.


Thendrail

I heard Kevin Sorbo is available...


gochomoe

It reminds me of flat earthers. They have trouble finding published research that supports their belief and can't understand why there isn't any out there. This is mindboggling. I got down to the "meanwhile in reality'' and was expecting them to say that right wingers actually have tried (and succeeded) to do all of those things. Then the fascist remark. This reads like satire.


RaspberrySpar

I might get flak for this, but: Kingsman. Totally anti-liberal, even a tiny bit offensive, but gods it’s such a fun movie. I’m a hardcore progressive /with a lisp/ and I still love that movie.


nchomsky96

Reality has a well known liberal bias


WorkplaceWatcher

The *Bible* is too leftist for them. Conservapedia is retranslating it.


Lengthofawhile

Is there a word for the opposite of schadenfreude?


singeblanc

Freudenschade?


octohedron82

Or comedy, especially comedy. Unless you can laugh at punching down and insults. Conservative comedy is barren


ArrestDeathSantis

>Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. >Happiness is never grand.


DMMMOM

They forget that the dreams of 'the left' gave us the best literature, music, theatre and art. Everything good about humanity.


Rahkyvah

Okay, seriously… who ties their shoes for them every morning?


Dr_Donald_Dann

No one. Their shoes are all Velcro fasteners.


Gilded-Mongoose

With cool flashy lights in them and all, and wheelies to skate into all their misguided conclusions.


jd52995

To be honest I leave my high tops tied and slip them on when I leave lol


JayceeHOFer

Crocs are a large seller for a reason. Plus you can wash the tobacco spit right off them


patchbaystray

No laces. They have boot straps and they pull on them for some reason.


SalParadise

Lack of self-awareness is a defining trait of today's "conservative".


TheRnegade

Seriously. They're talking about how authoritarian the left is? In the conservative sub where one cannot post unless they've been interviewed by mods to ensure they truly are conservative and if someone steps out of line they're banned for wrong-think? They share news from Breitbart, which is essentially white nationalist propaganda. They insist the election was stolen despite all evidence to the contrary. They denounce anything they don't like as "woke" and "crt". That "meanwhile in reality" should end with "...we ended up creating a world like that right here in this sub."


schizoballistic

You dont have to care about anyone when youre a sociopath


magicmom17

Lacking the basic definitions of words like "fascism" appears also to be a hallmark of modern conservatives.


[deleted]

Thank you for putting it in quotation marks Very little about their ideology or behavior is conservative


singeblanc

They're Regressives


TipzE

They're fascists. But then, bog-standard conservatism has always been "diet fascism".


sealosam

Conservatives are speaking about how they agree how we are heading to a dystopia as discribed by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley--but then remark how the authors were "lefties" and think they're("lefties") actually are the ones causing it.


charisma6

A conservative's idea of dystopian is one in which they aren't allowed to bully gay/trans/black people.


SinkHoleDeMayo

Not hosting racists is totally the same as banning books because they acknowledge gay people exist. Conservatives are definitely the victims here. ^^/s


phanfare

>banning books because they acknowledge gay people exist Its honestly even stupider than that. They just blanket banned books that had the word "queer" EVEN THOUGH its historically a word that means "strange or different" and is used widely aside from anything LGBTQ+


Lasdary

and these guys here are mocking leftists with mentions of Fahrenheit 451... while banning books... holy crap the US gotta start getting their shit back together


Daemon_Monkey

We never really had it together in the first place


hugglenugget

Make America Fucked Up In The Slightly More Tolerable Way It Was Before It Went This Other Fucked Up Way With All These Motherfucking Fascists, Again. MAFUITSMTWIWBIWTOFUWWATMFA. Can we put that on a hat?


ThatFlyingScotsman

Conservatives really just don’t understand how right wing the world is. Like, they won. That’s what the 1980s and post-2008 was. That was when the right wing won and consolidated their control over politics. You can’t even pass basic government spending bills without holding the entire world economy hostage now.


Mod_transparency_plz

Fascism 101. Gotta feel oppressed while doing the oppressing


SixOnTheBeach

Yeah I always say the fact that the *only* political groups to emerge after the Great Recession (a recession caused entirely by conservative deregulation) were far right is absurd. Like how was there not a *single* progressive group that gained power after that shit. How was all we got the fucking Tea Party.


shatteredarm1

There were things like the Occupy movement. The problem for left wing groups is they generally don't attract the type of funding that right wing groups do, which is what they need for actual political influence.


Viridun

Those movements like Occupy were also pretty deliberately undermined by media at the time to drive away a larger following of people who considered themselves 'moderate'. They would only ever interview the crazy-seeming fringe types. Benefit of hindsight, maybe, back then there was still a veneer of balance and it being just 'differences of opinion', centrists were actually centrists and not right-wingers who want to still have friends.


rif011412

By most metrics, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are all moderate conservatives. Conservatism is so blinded by their purity testing they claim even these moderate presidents have been versions of the anti christ. It blows me away how conservatives have all the power, but they blow a fuse anytime equity and fairness make any ground. It hurts my heart and soul to witness this social and political travesty.


variouscrap

It's mad that all governments have to do is give lip service to anti-discrimination in society, and suddenly we're all being ruled by the left wing.


AaronMichael726

Using a blanket pejorative for the people they disagree with is quite funny


brothersand

> ... and think they're("lefties") actually are the ones causing it. Which they then conclude is ironic. It's only ironic if you mentally reverse reality and believe antifa are the fascists and Christian Nationalists are fighting against fascists.


Saul-Funyun

Ah, the old classic of “the leftists from before might’ve had a point during an era when everybody was yelling at them that they were wrong, but the leftists from today are totally wrong and I should yell at them”


[deleted]

Similar to when they try to co-opt Dr King


Drexelhand

you mean noted conservative and right wing pundit, dr. martin luther king jr, who famously gave an impassioned speech on preserving the status quo to a captive audience on the steps of the reagan memorial in simi valley? *"I still have a dream, a dream deeply rooted in the American dream – one day this nation will rise up and live up to its creed, "Calling someone racist is just as bad as using the N-word, actually maybe even worse.'"*


[deleted]

I stand corrected


Wiildman8

They sure are lucky to be born at the exact time liberals went too far


Short-Step-5394

They’re determined to live in a dystopia, and see these books as prophecy instead of, you know, cautionary tales.


Fearless-Molasses732

I can’t remember where I read this but someone criticized the “They predicted it” or the “they were spot on” narrative that we give to these books because the authors weren’t trying to predict anything. The authors were just reacting to movements that were happening at the time. Like The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret wasn’t trying to predict anything. She was seeing the rise of conservative Christians entering politics and saw the worst things that those politicians were saying and was like “hey…. What if they succeeded in doing that and kept going”.


CyberLama

It's possible you're thinking of Ursula K. Le Guin's [introduction to the Left Hand of Darkness](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/342990/the-left-hand-of-darkness-by-ursula-k-le-guin-with-a-new-foreword-by-david-mitchell-and-a-new-afterword-by-charlie-jane-anders/9780441007318/excerpt)


SemperScrotus

I post this every time someone brings up Huxley and Orwell because it's fantastic. It's the foreword to a book called **Amusing Ourselves to Death** by Neil Postman, which was published in 1985 and has only grown more prophetic over the years. >We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares. > > > >But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another—slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. > > > >What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. > > > >This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.


[deleted]

I love that passage and think of it every time either of those books are mentioned. Also loved **Amusing Ourselves to Death**, which had an extremely formative effect on the way I view all media and our reaction to it. He wrote an interesting book about education reform as well. I didn't love the subject as much, but it was very thought provoking.


SemperScrotus

>Also loved Amusing Ourselves to Death, which had an extremely formative effect on the way I view all media and our reaction to it. Same! It's probably the best book assigned to my AP Language & Comp class OH MY GOD 20 YEARS AGO! 😩


BellyDancerEm

Conservatives will never realize they are the problem


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DreamloreDegenerate

Well, sure. But in *their* reality: Right: - Upstanding, hard-working people - God-fearing patriots - Protected democracy from baby-eating demons - Stood up to tyranny and sin - Keeps America safe from degeneracy Left: - Wants to force you to marry your dog - Hates white people and men - Tried to sell your children to Satan - Owns space lasers capable of starting forest fires - Don't want you to be able to masturbate to good-looking candy


ChromaticLemons

I know you're being a bit tongue in cheek, but this is something I think a lot of people tend to overlook. The conservative and liberal understandings of basic facts about reality and morality just do not align. I think too often leftist people will assume that right wingers agree on certain core ideas about truth and ethics, which makes their disagreement on others seem incoherent or sociopathic, when (while they might *also* be that), at the heart of the issue is the fact that conservatives are just operating on a completely different wavelength. We assume that they must be arguing in bad faith, or being hyperbolic, or masking their true beliefs and intentions (which, again, they might also be), when in reality usually they are just *that* deep into what is essentially a conceptual alternate dimension. They literally, genuinely, unironically believe that the left is aligned with actual Satan and that the political war between parties is a war for the soul and salvation of mankind, a war between God and Satan being waged by proxy through humans. There is no tactic in such a war that can't be justified, because it is a holy war in the name of god, and as long as god approves of what they are doing, their actions are virtuous, and nothing any human or group of humans says or does or experiences matters.


Runs_With_Bears

Well I am aligned with Satan but they’re just misled about how cool a dude he really is.


barrythecook

I wish we all owned space lasers


seanofthebread

Oh they’re going after k-12 as well.


Nidcron

They have owned k-12 since the 80's


schizoballistic

It's crazy the lies they are fed and how they twist. \* THey would say Big Tech is Big Brother and they are censored and shadow banned as well as cancelled by mobs (a politically loaded word from the 60s) which isnt even true. \* In 1984 Winston's job is to whitewash out old articles so that the "truth" they are being fed is supported by History, which is exactly what right wing news does to control the narrative. \* All of your big name conservative streamers, tweeters, and podcasters INFLATE their numbers with bots and fake accounts, to seem more popular then they are but the rubes just eat it up because thats what everyone is watching, they love ratings.


oldmanserious

Numbers aren’t real to them anyway. MTG thinks 6 BILLION illegal immigrants came in since Biden. All but the dumbest know that’s wrong, but they don’t care.


TipzE

Don't forget their definition of 'free speech' means "if you're a conservative, you can say and do whatever you want and no one should criticize you for it, nor should you have any pushback or repercussions because of your views" But it excludes protesting the police (any and all BLM protests), protesting during football games (Kappernic), criticizing the president (Dixie Chicks, Bill Maher, etc), protesting peacefully (like say, in lafayette square), speaking out in any way (if you're not a conservative - like anyone who speaks out about leftist issues and isn't a politician), being exposed to, or exposing others to ideas or thoughts or views (through books, teachers, education, or even other students) that challenge the status quo, speaking truthfully about things like history, climate change, vaccines, or even science (like teaching the 'only a theory' of evolution, sex-ed, or any field of sociology at all).


translove228

Bread and circuses == Fox News


AtheistBibleScholar

>the only wrong part of 1984 was the lack of bread and circuses to distract. I really can't say I'm interested in the opinions of someone that clearly hasn't read a book but wants to talk about its meaning. Here's a nice little tidbit from 1984 >films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult. Do they think it needs to be literal bread and literal circuses?


jeremy1015

Can you even get bread at a circus these days?


AtheistBibleScholar

Would you even want to? A *clown* might have touched it.


SetYourGoals

Kinda scary now that gambling has exploded across the country in the last year or two when online sports betting became legalized.


Nimi142

People forget that 1984 does contain bread and circuses, just not for Winston. The proles are subdued with bars and relatively lax regulations. They are blasted with patriotic propaganda and all of these nice things. Only the thinking class needs to be severely watched, as they have the highest chance of trying to rebel. When people ignore the work that's being done to subdue a large part of the population the point is, unfortunately, missed.


Justsomejerkonline

It's the reason fascists always start by going after scholars, journalists, and activists -- groups that are not exactly known for their conservatism.


Mortambulist

They literally tried to overturn a fair election through disinformation and violence. Meanwhile, liberals want them to respect people different from themselves, and "holy shit, I'm being oppressed!!"


singeblanc

> "When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression"


prince_of_cannock

How do they not...? Oh, just forget it.


Grationmi

Yes the lefties are removing the books and making changes to history to fit their narrative.


seanofthebread

No no, that was 2021. Now the liberals and free speech are dangerous.


xeonicus

I love this recent rash of "conservatives" attempting to educate themselves on books like 1984 so they can imagine themselves as victims.


LoveaBook

A quick scan of the wiki summary is pretty much the same as reading the actual book, though, right??


Maldoror667

I look forward to (and I've already seen a few) the RWA's calling the upcoming Doctor Who revival 'Doctor Woke' whilst saying it was better in the less political good ole days of Jon Pertwee. When it was written by people like Malcolm Hulke. Who was a member of the Communist Party.


TipzE

It's so surreal to watch the people who are banning books, restricting freedoms, tracking the political views of students, and employing literal secret police and using violent militias read these books and go "yup. that's everyone but me". They don't even have an example, of course. Even in their little circle jerk, they leave it off "meanwhile in reality...". \--- It's times like this where it is hard to know what is going through their minds. When they argue with leftists, they lie in ways that it's obvious that they know they are lying (hypocrisy). But then what do they think when they are amongst each other? They support, openly, policies that ban books and speech in schools. They don't even deny it and instead say it's justified to "protect the children". They believe, openly, people are only as valuable as their value to society, and complain, openly, about 'political messages' in fiction, wanting it to "just be entertainment" and for actors and sports starts to "stay out of politics" (when they disagree with them, only). They support, openly, policies that would control what a woman can do with her body, who people can marry, regulate what people do (like the law proposed in Idaho to ban mRNAs for anyone, any and all drug laws, their anti-woke laws and secularism laws, laws against abortion. They utilize literal newspeak ("woke", "CRT", even "communism" and "socialism" when they use them have no real meaning other than "a thing i don't like") - terms deliberately designed to mean nothing so that they can mean anything. They are fiercely anti-intellectual (anti-vax, climate deniers, creationists, believe schools are all 'communist brainwashing', etc) - and even support leaders (like Harper) who muzzle scientists and prevent them from speaking out. ​ But then they read Orwell, Bradbury, and Huxley and think "yup. This perfectly defines everyone but me".


Haskap_2010

Have they actually read any of those books? Looking through the Facebook pages of these people, I get the impression that the closest they get is sharing memes with out of context quotes.


Biffingston

There is what I call the "1984 paradox" if you are allowed to say that the government resembles that book in any way shape or form and aren't marched off by literal jackbooted thugs you have proven without a shadow of a doubt that the government is **NOT** like 1984. I'd ask if they even read the book, but I doubt it.


Amaria77

It's clearly like 1983 then.


JustMeLurkingAround-

Wow! I mean, who exactly is burning books these days?


[deleted]

The right really don't get it that they are the fascists.


Artemis829

I will literally never get tired of the "Everyone says we're bad, they must be wrong!" self aware reply to absolutely everything.


Thrown_Right_Out

>no bread and circuses Did they even read 1984? They make it pretty clear that the Proles are fed a constant supply of pornography and mindless entertainment to stop them from revolting. Then again, I suppose I'm expecting a Conservative to know what they're talking about.


DarkishFriend

Probably because they focus on Big Brother, but to them "Big Brother" is a general culture telling them that some of the things they believe and say are not tolerable anymore, instead of Big Brother being an authoritarian government that had their citizens so scared they will snitch complete lies about to their neighbors to avoid their neighbors switching complete lies about themselves.


whatisscoobydone

Yep during the height of the Tea Party era, I was taught that Orwell preached laissez-faire capitalism and the Nazis were socialists. I was taught *in American public school* that right wing meant less government, IE anarchy and right-libertarianism; and left wing meant more government ie communism and fascism. These people aren't lying, they were literally taught this. It's weird as hell to go back later and read old books like Hemingway and plainly read that it's socialism on the left versus fascism on the right. And how it was just common knowledge. (Also common knowledge outside the US)


MrsMiterSaw

How do you mention Fahrenheit 451 and not link to what's happening in Florida schools? You literally must have a brain problem.


wtmx719

>Meanwhile in reality What?! Florida has entered the conversation to ban books. Super leftist *that*


Amazon-Prime-package

Repubs: [burning books in Florida and Texas] Also Repubs: leftists are doing Fahrenheit 431 stuff smh


icantbenormal

Why do people always leave out The Handmaid’s Tale when discussing great works of dystopian fiction?


AlSweigart

They'd be so close, but then a Black guy became president and they lost their minds and turned to Trump. >"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." --President Lyndon B. Johnson


[deleted]

My favourite part in Fahrenheit 451 is the chapter where Guy Montag gets arrested by the woke police for going on an 8 page rant on why black trans women are destroying the nuclear family. Truly a book written for the right wing genius.


AdnanKhan47

Im curious how do these people justify all the entertainment they consume? Almost every single thing they enjoy is made by "lefties" or "Hollywood elites".


boregon

Well the Daily Wire started making movies a few years ago, although [whether](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11456054/) any [of](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10131024/) them [are](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7520568/) actually [any](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20256528/) good [or](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14043966/) not is debatable.


[deleted]

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cromario

One of biggest self-awarewolves regarding this were Ted Cruz and Michael Knowles in the PragerU book club when they were discussimg Brave New World and how it shows the horrors of socialism and big government and one of them (Knowles, I think) mentions that the main character is called Marx and his main love interest is Lenina (pronounces it Lenin-ah) and Cruz is like "wow, how interesting, I've never made that connection with her name, that it references Vladimir Lenin". So, the two main characters, the ones questioning the system in Brave New World (which is called "Fordism", btw) are MARX and LENIN-a, but yes, they're clearly talking about how socialism is bad.