It's hardly an exaggeration of enemy faults when the enemies self-identify as fascists or are a bunch of transphobes who can't even handle the existence of pronoun tags. And yes, transphobes and fascists are my enemies, these people literally want to kill me or want to deny my right to exist as myself in public and live a dignified life. I won't have that here, or anywhere we can extend our influence. As somebody else said, go to the bottom of the page and check our modlog. We're open and transparent about our moderation policy, everybody can see which mod actions were taken and why. For context, we normally have a person like that show up every other day at most, now we have to purge bigots all the time. Maybe your standards are too low to get this, maybe you think "nonbinary people don't exist" or "stop using pronouns" isn't hate speech, but it is. These are reactionary talking points and idgaf if you're fine with such people infiltrating your instance, we will keep our community safe from harm as we've done before when such issues came up. Being an inclusive, safer space takes active work and it includes stepping on people's toes and kicking people out who can't behave.
Nope, I'm with you on all that. That's also not what the comic is highlighting. Trans people exist and deserve all the rights everyone else has. Transphobes are pieces of shit and should be dealt with accordingly.
"I think Western institutions and media are not being entirely honest about their geopolitical opinions" is not like the phrasing I see from hexbear users out in the wild.
"I think Western institutions and media are not being entirely honest about their geopolitical opinions" is not like the phrasing I see from hexbear users out in the wild.
What you see is the logical conclusion of when you step back and realize that people are always supporting this year's war drive and claiming last year's war drive is ancient history and all in the past.
You say that like a whole lot of us didn't have that realization decades ago.
No experience is universal and your logical conclusion won't be the same for everyone.
Even if it were by throwing something aggressive in the face of someone who isn't even on the same road you're just going to come off as an ass. You drive others deeper into their position rather than getting anywhere productive. Which you may not care about on the surface, but then I'd argue you're just pushing a different war drive.
You say that like they haven't held that position through multiple farcical wars.
I'm not the one driving them deeper into their position. They have chosen to do so themselves. Which is why they are more concerned about my civility than the millions starved and killed in the name of the rules based international order.
they are more concerned about my civility than the millions starved and killed in the name of the rules based international order.
You say that like your know their level of concern or activity in regards to those.
Consider someone starting to consider view points beyond how they were raised. Are they more or less likely to go toward someone with inflammatory rhetoric? The concept of a pipeline is hardly a new one.
Believe it or not the world isn't divisible into two camps. Why would you not encourage people to flow towards a direction that should be inviting?
Consider someone starting to consider view points beyond how they were raised.
unironically, the bullying takes work. many of the people on this website are here because they got pressured for bad takes, got shocked and confused, and stuck around to learn more. others went wow those commies are funny and ended up doing the reading. civility only protects the status quo. we live in a fucked up world and pretending it's not by masking how fucked up it is that people defend that status quo serves absolutely no one but the powerful. any tool that breaks people away from that reflexive defensive posture towards extant power is only an immeasurable good.
So if it breaks one person away but twenty more say they knew they were right about all them and refuse to ever attempt to engage in discussion again, that's good?
Yeah, it's fucked. We have people insisting that trans people are grooming kids while preachers keep getting arrested for actually doing far more than the trans folks are even accused of. But if you throw a whole lot of the country into the deep end of the pool they'll just drown while they take all the lifeguards down with them. But if you can let them dip their toes in the shallow end then you may find them swimming laps before you realize.
queer people started getting rights and acceptance after they started throwing bricks, not before. rights are taken, never granted. the genocidal policies will succeed in their project if they are not met forcefully. as a trans person, you can fuck all the way off - I will not be polite and civil with people who think my right to exist is open to debate. to accept the premise and engage in debate denies my own humanity. I exist, the people I love exist, and we will fight to the grave anyone who denies it. and I abso-fucking-lutely do not give a shit about the feelings of debatelords.
There's a huge gap between people who think your right to exist is open to debate and a random person on the internet who doesn't know what the position of the instance is.
I pointed out that the overly polite statement in the comic is not reflective of reality and plenty of you are doing a great job of demonstrating that.
Plenty of my patience has been met with thrown vitriol and asshole behavior in here too. I've tried to respond in the way I've been met. I'm not perfect and I'm sure I've failed in places but I'm also out here by myself.
I think the vast majority here are also responding to you in the way they feel they've been met as well. I can empathize with the frustration and defensiveness of being alone.
Its so funny how you guys became so used to being able to live in an echo chamber of western capitalist propaganda on reddit, then moved here, then had that bubble popped by us and lemmygrad, then became INCREDIBLY DESPERATE to get away from opinions you previously were sheltered from. Its just a funny reaction to witness.
Probably not the most extreme example but it was relatively easy to find
So because some people are so much worse it's ok to be crappy? That doesn't really jive with me. We should all always be trying to be better than we have been before.
Those "crappy" people prove the point the op you quoted was making, people in other instances ARE hyper sensitive to critiques of western capitalism, that's just an easily observable fact, and it's not rude or out of order to point it out
People in this instance including me are more than willing to engage in good faith with those curious about our politics, but there will be no toleration of bigotry or blind faith in a vicious ideology that is cooking the earth
If we're defedrated because of those principles, so be it
Some are, yeah. I'm happy to be involved in similar discussions and I'm fine parting without agreement. You don't even need to leave the comments below my original one here to see that it isn't a universal position though. We are more often judged by our worst than not but that doesn't seem to fly with at least a few people here.
work backwards from their conclusions. They engineer reasons for their prejudices and are unable and unwilling to overcome cognitive dissonance, reject all counterarguments
From what I've seen this is not unique to people outside hexbear
agree to disagree
Happy to. Hopefully we can agree on other things in the future
is aesthetically different or semantically different? because that's pretty much what I see. people get aggro about it sometimes but the semantic content of what they're saying is still what's in the image.
aesthetics can still matter. If I say I disagree with you or I say I think you're a stupid piece of trash there are people who would consider that to be aesthetically different but they convey a different message that will be received different.
tone policing sucks ass. I will not be polite and civil with people who callously disregard human lives. civility is the false peace, a white, middle class sensibility that I refuse to adopt. civility masks the underlying tensions that mark our fucked up world, pretending everything is hunky dory. fuck that. bring the tensions into the light. it's only then that we stand any chance of resolving them. I'm not afraid of conflict. bring it on.
Where did I say to pretend that everything is hunky dory? Where have I callously disregarded human lives?
I neither can nor have the energy to try and make you do anything different than you will. But until it comes to violent revolution you're not going to change many minds with aggression.
Where did I say to pretend that everything is hunky dory? Where have I callously disregarded human lives?
You commented in an instance you never have before to specifically ignore the issues of and then go on to undermine perfectly valid and verifiable instances of bigotry - specifically transphobia - in both the post and the comments. Instead jumping to take offense at vague criticisms of "Western instutions and media" and both sides bigots and fash with a harmless anti-bigot comic. You did this for 9 hours.
You tell me what we should assume about your intentions.
I commented a criticism about the behavior of members of the instance after they had made a showing on my own. The criticism was relevant to the comic.
go on to undermine perfectly valid and verifiable instances of bigotry - specifically transphobia - in both the post and the comments
Where?
Instead jumping to take offense at vague criticisms of "Western instutions and media"
This is a big part of my criticism, so yeah, I focused on it where applicable.
and both sides bigots and fash with a harmless anti-bigot comic.
Where?
You did this for 9 hours.
I did this periodically as my day allowed. I responded to people who responded to me. Would it have been received better or worse if I just ignored responses?
You tell me what we should assume about your intentions.
I have, yes. Based on your only ever comments here being pearl-clutching about an inoffensive silly webcomic of a user expressing the amount of (verifiable) bigotry, bile, and hate they've seen and recieved. In response you mostly seem to have decided that the real issue you're going to spend your time on is repeatedly saying some variation of 'fascists are bad but you guys were just as rude in my instance' without ever providing any evidence.
So yes, I doubt your authenticity, your motives, and you've given me and others little to no reason not too.
On the off-chance that you really did just trip over yourself throughout this entire thread let me say this - Hexbear is a community of often marginalised groups, with often marginalised politics, who undergo a constant onslaught of bad faith arguements, abuse, and online and offline attacks. Federation here has opened up more traffic in both directions, and while we're pleased and happy to welcome people here who make an effort to engage in good faith and ask questions, we get a much high proportion of hostile people ranging from concen trolls to outright abusive fascists. If you find the messages you recieve overhwelmingly treating you more like the latter than the former, then maybe you should also look at how your posts come across in that context.
I'd like to point at that at no point have I suggested "just as rude" and on at least a few occasions have specifically said there's there's a hefty difference.
Assholes are everywhere and they like to target the marginalized. Believe me I understand. But does being treated like shit mean someone is given license to be crappy to others? Isn't that what the whole "an eye for an eye makes the world blind" phrase about?
Since I've been here I've had a variety of words put in my mouth so I could be judged for them. I'll admit that there's sure to be things I could've communicated better.
The "real issue" is also reading in more than intended. I didn't expect I needed to say "I agree with all of this except...". Maybe that's on me but I'm not in the habit of qualifying everything I say beforehand. I don't think a big part of the internet is either.
This style of comic always does this, though, it reduces the arguments down to the basics to demonstrate why the other side is wrong. I've definitely seen many a Hexbear user get called a bot for implying that NATO countries are being dishonest about their geopolitical opponents, that's all the comic is trying to say really.
I don't doubt it. It seems like a large swath of the Internet has a hard time understanding that their own thoughts and experiences aren't universal.
I'll absolutely agree that NATO countries are dishonest about their geopolitical opponents. I would also say those opponents are dishonest about NATO countries. I don't think that's at all far fetched. It bothers me that it seems to come off controversial around here.
Well, yeah, but as westerners we can't do anything about how Russian or Chinese people react to their governments' messaging, we can only make sure to defeat imperialist narratives in our own spheres. Sometimes downplaying the negative aspects about other countries, especially the negative aspects that our own nations use for propaganda, is a good rhetorical tactic to keep the focus on what we can do to make positive change happen and not fall for the narratives that are directed at us.
What about when we get first hand accounts from trusted sources in regards to the state of life in those countries. Would you ignore them to continue keeping focus or acknowledge them?
Well, how can acknowledging them help foster an internationalist working class? If there's a way to promote solidarity based on first hand accounts, sure why not, but if there isn't it's neither here nor there.
For example let's say we get some accounts from China. If the people of China are prospering, I can agitate and say that a better world is possible, just look at China, and at the same time it's a good argument against intervening in China. If things are bad in China, depending on the reasons, I could either analyze how their policies could have been different and save that criticism for when it's time to build a new socialist experiment, so we can learn from the mistakes of history. If the reasons stem from Western economic policies, then I can agitate by saying that our outdated system is harming millions of people. What I would never do, is shout from the rooftops that life in China is horrible, or worse than here, because that drives down morale and it makes people more likely to be complacent and fall for false consciousness or end-of-historyism. The main point is, as socialists, we should agree on supporting no war but the class war, and as proles we should be agitating, educating, and organizing; we should not be imperialist lap dogs and do the State Department's job for them.
Maybe the source of the disagreement here is that you could see discourse and political discussion as an endeavor that should be illuminating and pursue truth. I think there's value to that, but not in discourse, I save the truth seeking for when I read calmly and have the time to look for definitions/relevant historical facts. To me, the point of public discourse and political discussion is to exert class power and advance the position of the working class, heighten the contradictions when reasonable, and in even the smallest way to set the stage for a progressive change toward the next stage of history i.e. revolution. That can also involve dispelling some of the fictions of capitalist ideology, it can involve rhetoric, appealing to people's material situation, etc.
I can agree with your assessment. I absolutely understand the value of, shall we call it directed truth?
Maybe some of it is hope that people will be willing and able to see and accept the whole truth of a situation. Some things are better for group a and some for group b. If we work together we can find the best of both.
I suspect you don't have that same hope. I could absolutely understand that and maybe even consider you the better off of the two of us for that specific circumstance.
If I didn't recognize the fascists I was standing next to (or their narratives) then the people getting mad at them would probably seem unreasonable to me too.
By somehow getting them to question their old dogma and think maybe they might have been wrong. Then they might open their mind up and seek/absorb new information.
Not for me it wasn't. I was a comfortable (but disgruntled) liberal before stumbling on CTH years and years ago (this is a new handle I made early this year). Maybe I was further along in my journey and was already primed for it but I connected with the vibe immediately. That was when I actually started my leftist academic journey in earnest and started participating/contributing to local groups/orgs.
The shitposts got me to read more books and do more stuff than being disappointed by the democratic party for years by myself ever did.
It's hardly an exaggeration of enemy faults when the enemies self-identify as fascists or are a bunch of transphobes who can't even handle the existence of pronoun tags. And yes, transphobes and fascists are my enemies, these people literally want to kill me or want to deny my right to exist as myself in public and live a dignified life. I won't have that here, or anywhere we can extend our influence. As somebody else said, go to the bottom of the page and check our modlog. We're open and transparent about our moderation policy, everybody can see which mod actions were taken and why. For context, we normally have a person like that show up every other day at most, now we have to purge bigots all the time. Maybe your standards are too low to get this, maybe you think "nonbinary people don't exist" or "stop using pronouns" isn't hate speech, but it is. These are reactionary talking points and idgaf if you're fine with such people infiltrating your instance, we will keep our community safe from harm as we've done before when such issues came up. Being an inclusive, safer space takes active work and it includes stepping on people's toes and kicking people out who can't behave.
Nope, I'm with you on all that. That's also not what the comic is highlighting. Trans people exist and deserve all the rights everyone else has. Transphobes are pieces of shit and should be dealt with accordingly.
"I think Western institutions and media are not being entirely honest about their geopolitical opinions" is not like the phrasing I see from hexbear users out in the wild.
What you see is the logical conclusion of when you step back and realize that people are always supporting this year's war drive and claiming last year's war drive is ancient history and all in the past.
You say that like a whole lot of us didn't have that realization decades ago.
No experience is universal and your logical conclusion won't be the same for everyone.
Even if it were by throwing something aggressive in the face of someone who isn't even on the same road you're just going to come off as an ass. You drive others deeper into their position rather than getting anywhere productive. Which you may not care about on the surface, but then I'd argue you're just pushing a different war drive.
You say that like they haven't held that position through multiple farcical wars.
I'm not the one driving them deeper into their position. They have chosen to do so themselves. Which is why they are more concerned about my civility than the millions starved and killed in the name of the rules based international order.
🥰
You say that like your know their level of concern or activity in regards to those.
Consider someone starting to consider view points beyond how they were raised. Are they more or less likely to go toward someone with inflammatory rhetoric? The concept of a pipeline is hardly a new one.
Believe it or not the world isn't divisible into two camps. Why would you not encourage people to flow towards a direction that should be inviting?
unironically, the bullying takes work. many of the people on this website are here because they got pressured for bad takes, got shocked and confused, and stuck around to learn more. others went wow those commies are funny and ended up doing the reading. civility only protects the status quo. we live in a fucked up world and pretending it's not by masking how fucked up it is that people defend that status quo serves absolutely no one but the powerful. any tool that breaks people away from that reflexive defensive posture towards extant power is only an immeasurable good.
So if it breaks one person away but twenty more say they knew they were right about all them and refuse to ever attempt to engage in discussion again, that's good?
Yeah, it's fucked. We have people insisting that trans people are grooming kids while preachers keep getting arrested for actually doing far more than the trans folks are even accused of. But if you throw a whole lot of the country into the deep end of the pool they'll just drown while they take all the lifeguards down with them. But if you can let them dip their toes in the shallow end then you may find them swimming laps before you realize.
queer people started getting rights and acceptance after they started throwing bricks, not before. rights are taken, never granted. the genocidal policies will succeed in their project if they are not met forcefully. as a trans person, you can fuck all the way off - I will not be polite and civil with people who think my right to exist is open to debate. to accept the premise and engage in debate denies my own humanity. I exist, the people I love exist, and we will fight to the grave anyone who denies it. and I abso-fucking-lutely do not give a shit about the feelings of debatelords.
There's a huge gap between people who think your right to exist is open to debate and a random person on the internet who doesn't know what the position of the instance is.
I pointed out that the overly polite statement in the comic is not reflective of reality and plenty of you are doing a great job of demonstrating that.
once again, fuck alllllll the way off.
👍
People have been nothing but patient with you in this thread. You're the one throwing vitriol and being an asshole here.
Plenty of my patience has been met with thrown vitriol and asshole behavior in here too. I've tried to respond in the way I've been met. I'm not perfect and I'm sure I've failed in places but I'm also out here by myself.
I think the vast majority here are also responding to you in the way they feel they've been met as well. I can empathize with the frustration and defensiveness of being alone.
I thought I prepared myself before I left the first comment but, as stated, not perfect.
Thanks for the understanding
it's self evident, given the issues they raise
Being able to tell the concerns of a person based off limited interactions over the Internet is a skill the world has never observed.
Being willing to assume you know such things, however, is incredibly common
thats a very lemmy.midwest thing to say
You're the second person to mention NATO. Where have I said anything about anything with NATO?
so you didn't connect the dots when they talk about the international community or the coalition of the willing?
thats why people don't care to be civil to supporters. that and the odds they live in one the countries being attacked.
Where have I discussed NATO's wars? Seriously
It's been all day and my complaint is still misrepresentation.
Are you saying you are not aware of "concern trolling"?
I'm very aware that it, like any form of trolling, is utilized as an excuse when it's not what's happened.
Which is not to say that it doesn't happen. False positives and false negatives are as much a reality as the thing itself.
What's the phrasing, show an example or two, don't just assert back your shit up bro
Probably not the most extreme example but it was relatively easy to find
uh, am I supposed to see an issue with that statement?
Dougee we've gotten transphobes, pedos, racists and incels coming into our instance, if that's the worst you got from us, consider yourself lucky
So because some people are so much worse it's ok to be crappy? That doesn't really jive with me. We should all always be trying to be better than we have been before.
Those "crappy" people prove the point the op you quoted was making, people in other instances ARE hyper sensitive to critiques of western capitalism, that's just an easily observable fact, and it's not rude or out of order to point it out
People in this instance including me are more than willing to engage in good faith with those curious about our politics, but there will be no toleration of bigotry or blind faith in a vicious ideology that is cooking the earth
If we're defedrated because of those principles, so be it
Some are, yeah. I'm happy to be involved in similar discussions and I'm fine parting without agreement. You don't even need to leave the comments below my original one here to see that it isn't a universal position though. We are more often judged by our worst than not but that doesn't seem to fly with at least a few people here.
deleted by creator
From what I've seen this is not unique to people outside hexbear
Happy to. Hopefully we can agree on other things in the future
is aesthetically different or semantically different? because that's pretty much what I see. people get aggro about it sometimes but the semantic content of what they're saying is still what's in the image.
aesthetics can still matter. If I say I disagree with you or I say I think you're a stupid piece of trash there are people who would consider that to be aesthetically different but they convey a different message that will be received different.
tone policing sucks ass. I will not be polite and civil with people who callously disregard human lives. civility is the false peace, a white, middle class sensibility that I refuse to adopt. civility masks the underlying tensions that mark our fucked up world, pretending everything is hunky dory. fuck that. bring the tensions into the light. it's only then that we stand any chance of resolving them. I'm not afraid of conflict. bring it on.
Where did I say to pretend that everything is hunky dory? Where have I callously disregarded human lives?
I neither can nor have the energy to try and make you do anything different than you will. But until it comes to violent revolution you're not going to change many minds with aggression.
You commented in an instance you never have before to specifically ignore the issues of and then go on to undermine perfectly valid and verifiable instances of bigotry - specifically transphobia - in both the post and the comments. Instead jumping to take offense at vague criticisms of "Western instutions and media" and both sides bigots and fash with a harmless anti-bigot comic. You did this for 9 hours.
You tell me what we should assume about your intentions.
I commented a criticism about the behavior of members of the instance after they had made a showing on my own. The criticism was relevant to the comic.
Where?
This is a big part of my criticism, so yeah, I focused on it where applicable.
Where?
I did this periodically as my day allowed. I responded to people who responded to me. Would it have been received better or worse if I just ignored responses?
It looks like you've already decided
I have, yes. Based on your only ever comments here being pearl-clutching about an inoffensive silly webcomic of a user expressing the amount of (verifiable) bigotry, bile, and hate they've seen and recieved. In response you mostly seem to have decided that the real issue you're going to spend your time on is repeatedly saying some variation of 'fascists are bad but you guys were just as rude in my instance' without ever providing any evidence.
So yes, I doubt your authenticity, your motives, and you've given me and others little to no reason not too.
On the off-chance that you really did just trip over yourself throughout this entire thread let me say this - Hexbear is a community of often marginalised groups, with often marginalised politics, who undergo a constant onslaught of bad faith arguements, abuse, and online and offline attacks. Federation here has opened up more traffic in both directions, and while we're pleased and happy to welcome people here who make an effort to engage in good faith and ask questions, we get a much high proportion of hostile people ranging from concen trolls to outright abusive fascists. If you find the messages you recieve overhwelmingly treating you more like the latter than the former, then maybe you should also look at how your posts come across in that context.
I'd like to point at that at no point have I suggested "just as rude" and on at least a few occasions have specifically said there's there's a hefty difference.
Assholes are everywhere and they like to target the marginalized. Believe me I understand. But does being treated like shit mean someone is given license to be crappy to others? Isn't that what the whole "an eye for an eye makes the world blind" phrase about?
Since I've been here I've had a variety of words put in my mouth so I could be judged for them. I'll admit that there's sure to be things I could've communicated better.
The "real issue" is also reading in more than intended. I didn't expect I needed to say "I agree with all of this except...". Maybe that's on me but I'm not in the habit of qualifying everything I say beforehand. I don't think a big part of the internet is either.
😭 ✊ 🍆 💦
It’s a comic, Doug
They're words, ShareThatBread. Do you understand how both foster thoughts?
This style of comic always does this, though, it reduces the arguments down to the basics to demonstrate why the other side is wrong. I've definitely seen many a Hexbear user get called a bot for implying that NATO countries are being dishonest about their geopolitical opponents, that's all the comic is trying to say really.
I don't doubt it. It seems like a large swath of the Internet has a hard time understanding that their own thoughts and experiences aren't universal.
I'll absolutely agree that NATO countries are dishonest about their geopolitical opponents. I would also say those opponents are dishonest about NATO countries. I don't think that's at all far fetched. It bothers me that it seems to come off controversial around here.
Well, yeah, but as westerners we can't do anything about how Russian or Chinese people react to their governments' messaging, we can only make sure to defeat imperialist narratives in our own spheres. Sometimes downplaying the negative aspects about other countries, especially the negative aspects that our own nations use for propaganda, is a good rhetorical tactic to keep the focus on what we can do to make positive change happen and not fall for the narratives that are directed at us.
I don't agree but I can respect your position.
What about when we get first hand accounts from trusted sources in regards to the state of life in those countries. Would you ignore them to continue keeping focus or acknowledge them?
Well, how can acknowledging them help foster an internationalist working class? If there's a way to promote solidarity based on first hand accounts, sure why not, but if there isn't it's neither here nor there.
For example let's say we get some accounts from China. If the people of China are prospering, I can agitate and say that a better world is possible, just look at China, and at the same time it's a good argument against intervening in China. If things are bad in China, depending on the reasons, I could either analyze how their policies could have been different and save that criticism for when it's time to build a new socialist experiment, so we can learn from the mistakes of history. If the reasons stem from Western economic policies, then I can agitate by saying that our outdated system is harming millions of people. What I would never do, is shout from the rooftops that life in China is horrible, or worse than here, because that drives down morale and it makes people more likely to be complacent and fall for false consciousness or end-of-historyism. The main point is, as socialists, we should agree on supporting no war but the class war, and as proles we should be agitating, educating, and organizing; we should not be imperialist lap dogs and do the State Department's job for them.
Maybe the source of the disagreement here is that you could see discourse and political discussion as an endeavor that should be illuminating and pursue truth. I think there's value to that, but not in discourse, I save the truth seeking for when I read calmly and have the time to look for definitions/relevant historical facts. To me, the point of public discourse and political discussion is to exert class power and advance the position of the working class, heighten the contradictions when reasonable, and in even the smallest way to set the stage for a progressive change toward the next stage of history i.e. revolution. That can also involve dispelling some of the fictions of capitalist ideology, it can involve rhetoric, appealing to people's material situation, etc.
I can agree with your assessment. I absolutely understand the value of, shall we call it directed truth?
Maybe some of it is hope that people will be willing and able to see and accept the whole truth of a situation. Some things are better for group a and some for group b. If we work together we can find the best of both.
I suspect you don't have that same hope. I could absolutely understand that and maybe even consider you the better off of the two of us for that specific circumstance.
If I didn't recognize the fascists I was standing next to (or their narratives) then the people getting mad at them would probably seem unreasonable to me too.
And how would you go about getting someone to recognize the fascists they're standing next to for what they are in such a situation?
By somehow getting them to question their old dogma and think maybe they might have been wrong. Then they might open their mind up and seek/absorb new information.
Which you're less likely to be able to do with name calling and aggressive behavior, yes?
Not for me it wasn't. I was a comfortable (but disgruntled) liberal before stumbling on CTH years and years ago (this is a new handle I made early this year). Maybe I was further along in my journey and was already primed for it but I connected with the vibe immediately. That was when I actually started my leftist academic journey in earnest and started participating/contributing to local groups/orgs.
The shitposts got me to read more books and do more stuff than being disappointed by the democratic party for years by myself ever did.
I'm a big enough person to admit I'm not always right.
It is a turn off for me though. I prefer to build up and encourage and to have the same energy around me.