I just don’t wanna see lemmy turn into an echo chamber.

If everyone is being cool to everyone, is that an actual problem?

I'm not sure how effective that'll be in the long-term though, if the less politically aware instances don't block them, or don't realise in time. They'll attempt to chip bit by bit away.

It's reactionary, not conservative. If they'd been conservative, they'd not actively try to revert the US back to the colonial age.

They're not the same.

Yeah I guess I failed to distinguish between maga and conservatives

To be fair, the entire Republican party seems to be all about blurring that line right now. I think the big challenge is Trump awakened something in folks who haven't been politically active in a very long time, and because they haven't been politically active, they aren't coming into politics with a clear ideology or set of policies they want to see passed other than "I like trump!" Which is probably a big part of why we just have a bunch of attempts at turning his presidency into a dictatorship and state-sponsored racism as the only clear policy trump actually cares about, and any policies that are directly enriching large businesses are just a case of those with deep pockets cozying up to folks in power with loose morals.

But let's be real, the Republican party hasn't been about conservatism for quite a while. They've definitely been coasting off of pure brand recognition with occasional injections of christofascism and state sponsored violence against minorities to help maintain their old jim crow roots. They've successfully cultivated a culture of being Republican, so they can do what they want policy-wise and still reliably win around a third of the elections in the country without resorting to voter suppression, and they can reliably win about half of the elections in the country with voter suppression

I used to be one of those oldschool conservatives. I'm much more progressive now, but what I do think helps, is the following.

Fascists won't listen to progressives. So what will pull them out of that black hole, is having them listen to more 'boring' people, but without the opportunity to overtalk them. Let fascists listen to normal views and don't let fascists take over the discussion. Youtube videos with comments disabled, PDFs by anonymous authors, and so on, that can help.

The common man's best ally is reaching out to the milquetoasts, and having the fascists listen to them and you while also not listening to them. Never yield to their beliefs; have a red line beyond which you won't discuss with them. Use their own tactics against them.

I used to know one. Whenever they still wanted to discuss their batshit crazy views, I told them I declined discussing that stuff with them, and wouldn't interact with them unless if they could shut up about that.

It usually worked (though not 100%), so I consider that a general-ish success.