It’s hard to unwrap the hate and bigotry from conservative ideology nowadays.

This is the trouble I have with conservative thinking now. Even here in the UK, where our Conservatives aren’t as bad as the Republicans in the US (yet), I’m at a place where I can no longer offer the benefit of the doubt to rightwing policies, because now they only seem to exist to make life hard for marginalised people. I can’t point at a single member of our government who supports what they’re doing because it’s what they genuinely believe to be the right thing to do. They’re all interested in how it can enrich them, and they’ll worry about the morality later.

I mean, say what you like about Margaret Thatcher (and believe me, I do), at least she seemed to actually believe in the policies she pushed through. She had an ideology, and was given room to try it out. And it worked. For her and her rich buddies.

But these days it just seems to be hatred and fear for the sake of riling up the proles because it keeps them in power. The power is the goal, not the governance.

my big thing with right-wingers is that that they come with no proof, abd get mad when you start asking for facts and figures.

This post itself is a classic example of that… OP came with a “waaah there’s no place for right-wing discussion when lemmygrad gets a free pass”, disregarding the fact Beehaw has defederated with lemmygrad already. Then when many wonderful users come in to open the dialogue, saying “hey, there’s a place for you, here’s what we can discuss on this instance and here’s what you should take elsewhere”, there’s no interest in continuing discussion from OP (maybe they will reply later in the coming days).

Certain comments, like that from user @nicholas are full-on ragebait, leaving no room for discussion, and intending to antagonize each other by suggesting “everyone right of Bernie Sanders gets shit on here, just you watch the people that will reply to me”. The vibe I want in an online community is like a nice discussion at a coffee shop, the last thing I want is a direct escalation to a shouting match so I try to avoid goading people into that.

More underrated comment. This country has lost political literacy in what liberal, progressive, conservative, etc meaning. I saw a clip of Darth Cheney talking when he was in the first Bush Admin and he making solidly conservative points, talking about the consent of the governed and legitimacy. You would never see that type of conversation on any of the Sunday morning shows; you just see the culture wars. I was shocked to see this past Meet the Press had J.D. Vance making well reasoned arguments.

IMO, the labels are short hands that cause people to immediately turn off their brains. Leftist in American Politics is a meaningless slur. And most conservatives don’t realize that the current flavor is actually Neoconservative.

Also it varies depending on the variety of English you’re speaking. While we do have a few people who follow the US a bit too closely generally when a British person is talking about ‘liberals’ or ‘liberalism’ they mean something quite different to what an American would be saying with the same terminology which leads to confusion on both sides. In the UK it sometimes means ‘the Liberal Democrat party’ but usually it just means ‘the opposite of authoritarian’, for example someone might say ‘Kier Starmer’s policy on drug reform is illiberal but the Green Party’s is liberal’ and it’s descriptive rather than ideological.

To be honest conservatism is pretty different on either side of the Atlantic too, or at least it was until both countries succumbed to populism and demagoguery. One-nation conservatism in the UK for example isn’t an intrinsically broken and contradictory ideology in the same way ‘Johnsonism’ is even though being well to the left of it myself I disagree with many of its premises, and while British politics outside of a minority of nutters doesn’t really care what religion you are on the whole it’s a considerable faux pas to let it be seen as directing your policy in office whereas American conservatives play to a very religious base. Blair over here still gets shit to this day for saying God will be his judge on Iraq, presumably forgetting the British electorate are a little less patient to judge than the almighty.

I agree with this.

Fantastic reply. Also consider the dramatic and sustained rightward slide of the Overton window over the last 40 years.

Within right-wing media spaces that window has slid in so far to the right that mentioning vaccines, public housing, or a living wage is seen as outrageous or absurd or communist, and outright white supremacy is a major plank of prominent politicians’ platforms.

So when someone says “there’s no room to talk about right-wing ideas,” they’re saying “why don’t you all accept an equivalence between radical Christian nationalism and moderate democratic conservatism as they two poles of political debate?”

And the reality is that “right-wing ideas” in America are mostly fabricated or deeply bigoted. And outside of conservative media environments, they are accurately perceived that way and so are not talked about much.

Conversation with right, left, middle, whatever are only productive if based on a principalled ideology. I disagree with the NeoCons of Bush and Cheney, but at least there is an ideology to work with. MAGA, on the other hand is defined by no principals other than authoritarian aims of “winning” where “winning” is making the other side mad.

The post truth world we live in makes this hard, though. Right now there is no shared truth, and with varied truthinesses out there, it makes the conversation hard. Using flat earthers as an example, the sheer rejection of math and science is astounding; having a principalled conversation is hard when the foundations are different.

And with 24hr news, breaking news, and global news, and only so much news worthy content, there is an incentive to come with with differentiation and that creates eco chambers. News Max isn’t going to bring on a CNN contributor (and vice versa) to challenge their views.

Gentle reminder to try to assume best intention of others and provide nuance where appropriate. If by ‘conservative/right wing’ this person means they’re all about what these things have morphed into lately in the US (transphobia, homophobia, and otherwise thinly-veiled hateful notions), then I completely agree. Fascists aren’t welcome here. Nazis aren’t welcome here. Beehaw is explicitly intolerant of the intolerant. But there can be honest perspectives that fall ‘to the right’ of the liberal perspective that can and should deserve consideration (they just seem to be rare these days, as political discourse has become so polarized).

No, there are communities and instances dedicated for them.

Edit: speaking in a general sense, “conservative” is a broad term.

My brother is conservative. Small C. He recognises that the Tories are a shower of pricks and wants them to actually do conservative things, rather than focus on race baiting and hatred. I can talk politics with him, and enjoy doing so even though I’m getting more and more commie as every year passes.

He’s not a right wing shithead.

I don’t personally align with either political party but the fact that you didn’t see the irony in this before posting it is really something spectacular.