You’re talking to people that want to continue rationalizing their tacit, frequently racist support for genocide, and their easiest out has always been to say, “but Trump is worse”. They have never done the introspection required to look at their own personal role as a political being beyond what they’re told to do by the Democratic Party and their donors: slacktivist vote shaming, always presuming the high ground for themselves (even while tolerating genocide!), and doing as little as possible on the ground outside of minor exercises in false catharsis like a cop-escorted, permitted march or an ignored letter writing campaign.
When challenged on this by people on the left that do read and do self-reflect, these are the folks that responded in bad faith, even when the context is genocide, because they have made politics into an extension of their egos rather than a project to which to subordinate yourself and devote real work to.
Whining about .ml is their way of pretending to be vindicated every time Trump does something bad, as they cannot actually argue against what the people in .ml say, they must rely on inventions and emotional implications.
In short, many on .ml vocally opposed supporting genociding Democrats. None that I’m aware of expected Trump to be better. At best, a roll of the dice.
Edit:
Sorry, folks. I failed to consider that this is the home instance of the people being target by this comment.
Just to be clear, I’m not a big .ml fan, I’m just an anarchist who’s never seen this particular gripe of mine worded so nicely.
I think it’s easy not to realize how profound an impact this has. I tried looking at the same comment threads, on Hexbear and then on some other instances, and it’s really remarkable how distorted a picture you’ll see of reality and consensus when it’s being artificially manipulated to look some particular way. I was surprised by how compelling an alternate reality was created by banning everyone who disagrees.
I’m not surprised to hear someone say “you cannot actually argue against” it, because if you spend all your time in .ml spaces, you may never have heard the counterarguments or had a chance to see a sustained conversation about it. Or maybe a handful of times, with each one being met with ten angry counterpoints which meld into an overall picture of the first thing having no merit at all. I think a lot of times, they form their picture of the counterarguments based on what other .ml people say the counterarguments are. Which is usually pretty different.
When people talk about needing to “protect” their spaces against invasion from some kind of outside force which is going to comment them to death, which is tedious and “debatebro” and they don’t need it, that’s the outcome they are bending things towards. I have no idea if it’s on purpose or just an accidental product of trying to make a friendly space for people with some particular belief. But that’s the outcome. It’s why they have so much trouble talking with people from “outside” and so little frame of reference as to what the people “outside” actually think and say and believe.