If by “conservative/right wing opinions” you mean the current extremist fascist opinionated MAGA-‘my way or the highway’ brand of Republicanism, then I sure as hell hope it’s unwelcome on Lemmy instances.

If you wish to bring back reason and logic into conservative/right-wing opinions (such as limited government, which means NOT legislating their brand of morality), then I’m all for those viewpoints (not that I would agree with them wholesale, but it’s a discussion I’d be willing to take part in).

The real problem with this discourse is that current climate of conservatism is completely closed to reason and logic, completely embraces lies and conspiracy theories as factual, and basically wishes to see all liberals either dead or suffering in some way.

So yeah, keep that shit off Lemmy instances.

I think you’re seeing backlash against being involuntarily exposed to (and often pushed to see) unbridled and deranged hatred and fear on traditional socmedia.

A conservative opinion like “I’m not sure communism is practical” is something that can be engaged with pretty cordially, “I think that education should focus on marketable skills” is an opinion I think is pretty misinformed but it’s not something that exhausts me.

Unfortunately a lot of online conservatism is stuff like “I think there’s a conspiracy by $minority to mind control us with vaccines” or “Should we be trying to make queer people afraid?” which aren’t positions you can engage with.

is Conservative/Right Wing opinions completely unwelcome on Lemmy?

Yes.

I just don’t understand what politics conservatives do other then push for laws that oppress people they don’t feel comfortable sharing a space with? I think the real political discussions are just happening within the left. Conservative party kinda needs to just go away, and the left split into socialists, democrats, and maybe independents. American politics and media have driven it’s two party system so opposed to each other, there is no mutual agreement anymore, you either take the blue side or the red side to any and all issues, and I’m sorry the red side is just so cartoonishly evil they just stand in the way of progress, or push to go backwards in history.

If by conservative you mean “you and your friends don’t deserve human rights because I don’t like you” then hopefully you’re not welcome.

The problem with these discussions is that we seldomly use common definitions, which creates more heat than light. There was a strain of late 20th Century American conservatism that was rooted in fiscal restraint, loosely regulated free markets, and a privileged place for the nuclear family, civic duty, and the church as the glue holding (small) communities together. I’d vehemently disagree with most of these as policy anchors, but none of them are beyond civil discussion per se.

But here’s the problem: this late 20th-Century old school conservative thinking has been thoroughly hollowed out and co-opted to the point it is now completely meaningless. (The last administration was neither fiscally restrained, family oriented, nor in any way tied to any recognizable New Testament ‘love thy neighbor’ teaching. Yet, modern ‘conservatives’ can’t get enough).

Into these conceptual containers has been smuggled a toxic strain of (white) (Christian) (popular) nationalism … some may use the ‘F’ word … that is fundamentally anti-democratic, anti-science, intolerant, and is now emerging as violent - not just to vulnerable groups, which is a show stopper in itself - but to the whole damn country and democratic process. You don’t debate people like that. You crush them at the ballot box (or at Gettysburg or the beaches of Normandy if it comes to it).

So (pardon the TED talk), I think if someone wants to show up and debate whether we should be running budget deficits in excess of 3% of GDP, or whether we are regulating nuclear power too tightly, or whether industry X should be privatized/nationalized, they are probably good (at least by me - I can’t speak for others). But there is an understandable level of suspicion around the whole ‘conservative’ discourse, and if someone tries to smuggle ethno-nationalism, economic Darwinism, or bigotry toward vulnerable groups into the discussion under the guise of ‘traditional family values’ and ‘fiscal restraint’ … they are going to have a tough time.

Conservatives I can deal with, but modern right wingers have lost their goddamn minds.

And the entire issue is that a lot of people who view themselves as moderate conservatives are enabling this ideological brain rot by not vocally disassociating it with more reasonable conservative positions. Because of that, I am way more comfortable saying that conservative voices should be viewed with suspicion than I used to be.

Honestly, my big thing with right-wingers is that they come with no proof, and get mad when you start asking for facts and figures. Right now, I can see the effects of 40 years of trickle-down economic theory: it means that you need a degree to get just about any decent job in this country, and also unions should not exist because reasons. It really kind of biases me against right-wing talking points, to the point that I need to see proof. Treat it like a math problem and show your work or gtfo.

I guess it depends on which conservative or right wing opinions you’re talking about.

The traditional conservative opinion of smaller government hasn’t existed now for 50 years. Reagan, Bush, and Trump all grew the size of government.

The conservative talking point of “states rights!” flies in the face of states who want safe and legal abortions, or equal access to marriage rights, or the ability to acknowledge that LGBTQ+ kids actually exist.

Similarly if you’re talking about the conservative push to make it harder for black and brown people to vote, and make no mistake about it, they are specifically targeting black and brown people.

Let’s not even open the door to the fringe anti-vax or “election was stolen” movements.

So with all that conservative messaging off the table, what are you left with, honestly?

It’s kind of a loaded question, and I’m not saying you intended it that way, but people have become increasingly more aware of how slanted the frame around the political spectrum has become – there’s an unwillingness to engage with discussion within that frame because to do so is to accept ideological and rhetorical handicaps that have been purposefully constructed to put non-right wing ideas at a disadvantage (not constructed by you, but more as a systematic result of right-wing media and politicians).

The question of “are conservative ideas welcome” is a discussion that requires a lot of unpacking due to implicit ideas that are buried deep under layers of history and lots of incremental changes to what we accept as normal in political discussion.

To give an example of what I mean by “framing”, consider two people have agreed to debate about public healthcare. We’ll say this has been a very publicized event, people have been watching a lot of pre-debate media coverage. Suppose the person with the anti-public healthcare position has been using this publicity not to outline their position for private healthcare, but has spent a lot of time recounting crimes and atrocities committed under communist regimes, and repeatedly substituting “socialism” for communism as if they were synonymous words. They perhaps even get their interviewer to accept and use that language, further legitimizing it.

Now the day of the debate comes and when the anti-public healthcare figure says “Public healthcare is socialist” his audience will hear “Public healthcare is communist, and communism leads to atrocities”. He doesn’t have to state that explicitly or make an argument because he has primed his audience and created a frame in which his opponent now has to either derail into a debate about the differences between socialized medicine and communism and risk losing the audience, or they let the implication go unaddressed and work within the frame created for them even though it’s fabricated from misinformation that puts them at a rhetorical disadvantage.

So what does this have to do with conservative ideas being welcome or not welcome? Right-wing media have been the absolute masters of this tactic for decades. Here in the US it was shortly after Nixon was impeached that they really leaned into it. Up to that point the government had more or less a deference to academia and experts to inform their policy creation. When Nixon was impeached, people like Roger Ailes immediately began constructing a parallel political infrastructure to that academic institution (which tended by its very nature to lean towards progress), from which they could frame things not from a scientific and academic basis, but from a corporate and conservative one.

So people have begun waking up to the consequences of allowing that machine to run rough-shod all over our society, and now they’ve started rejecting the entire notion that they should have to engage with the products of that dishonest right-wing political machine or to accept it as equally legitimate to academic and scientific institutions. Some people may express that unwillingness in a more hostile, impatient way than others.

I saw you mention some British public figures – I don’t know if you’re from the UK or US, but Jon Stewart had an interesting discussion with Ian Hislop comparing the effects of the Murdoch media empire on both the US and Britain. They touch on some of the stuff I’m talking about. Some food for thought maybe.

Modern conservative politics and “polite discussion” are like oil and water.

I hope you’re enjoying the discussion, and I hope you are understanding a lot of the excellent points made here, because I have not seen you engaging with anyone so far, at least not in the Hot replies. I was hoping to see that engagement. I don’t have much to add that has not already been added. It’s hard to unwrap the hate and bigotry from conservative ideology nowadays. Even so-called mainstream conservative ideas like “tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy will create more money and prosperity for everyone” rings pretty hollow after over 40 years of that sort of ideology having been very thoroughly put into practice with very little benefit one could name. It’s hard to engage when you can just sort of gesture to the current state of things and the lives of people who have grown up in the last 4 decades as being self-evident of the failure of that idea.

Basically, I ask, what does conservatism have to offer, really? I am completely open-minded and would listen, but you would have to do better than just repeating the same tired things I have heard my whole life, having grown up in a conservative catholic household and over 43 years slowly but surely drifting to the socialist atheist person I am now. Better believe I’ve heard a lot and am well-read. And there are a lot of people out there just like me.

As far as I know Beehaw is not explicitly political. On the other hand I personally think common practices of some parties which can include spreading miss-information, fabrication, denialism, intimidation, trolling, and generally planning to disruptive are out of bounds. Just saying that can be considered as being unwelcoming to some people that call themselves conservatives.

My personal line is crossed if that user has a hateful stance that actively harms other users. I joined this instance for the hardline rules against hate and I do not think it is unfair to say that conservatives havent done themselves any favours in that regard. The general impression is that conservatives want people like me to not exist so it will always make me cautious.

What opinions do you mean specifically? The question you asked is too vague to help us sort out the welcome from the unwelcome.

Remember: “lower taxes for businesses” is a mainstream conservative opinion, but so are “children should not be allowed to know of the existence of gay people” and also “Breonna Taylor probably deserved to die” and also “Dr. Fauci is a mass murderer” and also “Trump won in 2020” and also “more brown children should be put in cages”, etc., etc., etc.

If the conservative mainstream is so hateful and bigoted that most of their opinions would not be allowed on a well-regulated platform, that is not the fault of the platform and it does not suggest that the platform has to change just to accommodate conservatives.