Yep. the motto here for most 'free thinkers' is 'agree with me or you are a bad person'. They don't really want to discuss things, they just want to browbeat/bully other people into agreement. They refuse to acknowledge things are complex and that their are various legitimate viewpoints... there can only be their pure and true version of whatever ideology they believe in and anyone who questions their interpretation it is a 'false' believer.

It's idealism and egotism running into each other. So they just feel like going around labeling everything bigotry makes them some paragon of morality and truth and justice. Meanwhile they have no understanding of their own bigotry.

They’ve got the moral instinct, sure, but zero intellectual grounding.

And since we should not trust 'moral' anything without at least some understanding of it... that's not a good situation. At least, that's how I see it.

We’re seeing it happen in real time. People repeat opinions like they’re reciting scripture

Which is funny realizing how most of them are so hostile towards the Bible or anything religion-related while they're at the same time mindlessly repeating/mimicking (what I consider) the worst of all the religious traits: blind adherence to an ideology/ideal, as well as the refusal to listen to critics.

That’s exactly the kind of bullshit that got USA in the state it is right now.

Can't talk about the USA myself: the world is a tad larger and also includes a few foreign countries, including my own: France ;)

I have literally been called a fascist for telling people to think for themselves.

I have been called many names during my almost 60 years on this planet (fascist not even being the worst), and I learned to not bother: hateful believers will remain hateful believers no matter what, even those who only believe in 'social something' instead of 'god'. They won't change, or just maybe their believe switching from one to the latest trendy one. Meanwhile, I will keep on refusing to blindly adhere to any type of faith, with or without a god ;)

When people try to bully you into silence and complicity, it is very much being violated.

The vast majority of my replies on lemmy here are rarely more than name-calling and threats.

Well said. It is so frustrating when people don’t understand that people disagreeing with them does not mean their freedom of speech is being violated.

Thx.

Quite a few of them will remain incapable to understand that, no matter what we can try too encourage them, but I want to think the vast majority can't because they were not educated to understand it.

Schools (as well as many parents, I’m afraid) have failed many of the younger people/generation. Being old myself, as a teen in the early 80s I started witnessing that failure spreading like fire in the few public schools I had friends in (I was lucky enough to be in a private school, a religious one where they insisted on using a… stricter approach to teaching, a more demanding one too).

Public schools have failed so badly it's hard to realize parents have not been on the streets demanding an urgent reform. But they obviously don’t manifest much for that, like if not educating their kids was no big deal. Those kids, if they were given the opportunity to access some proper education (and to the more… radicals out there: ‘proper’ should not be understood as ‘perfect’ or ‘faultless’) they would quickly learn to accept difference of opinions, and even extremely conflicting ideas. Even more, I have little doubt many would start to value it, realizing it’s an opportunity for everyone.

Alas, we’re far from that. And, as an older person (I'm nearing my 60s), when you try to point out the issue, that catastrophic and dramatic failure of school and adults towards kids... Most will either refuse to listen, disqualifying the remark as mere nostalgia from someone too old to understand the modern world and its many new problems (which is another interesting demonstration of prejudice, btw). Entirely missing the point. Alas.

Even the banning example,

Being banned from a private space (online or IRL) is not a violation of the freedom of speech (which BTW is mostly an US-based thing, while a lot of the fediverse is not from there), it’s the right of the owner to decide who can and cannot enter in and stay to their place, and what they can do there.

The issue is when that legit right is used to silence dissent ideas and thoughts. Like it can easily be done on X or Reddit, or any other centralized platform. Hence me pointing out that the Fediverse is more resilient to that kind of abuse… even if it is not immune to it and to admins abusing their powers and behaving like miniature wannabe dictators. At least, like I said, one can always switch community or create a new one. Even a whole instance.