Does NS Have a left wing bias?

[Greater Hunnia]

Recently, a dispatch has been getting a lot of upvotes, which caught my eye
https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1197112

Left-wing bias
NationStates, along with most media right now is suffering from overwhelming left-wing bias. Libertarian views are called far-right because the left is so ridiculously off the scale. The World Assembly votes down every General Assembly proposal made by a non-left member. We all know this is true. Just look at the passed resolutions. The Assembly is looking to, by force, turn dissidents into their own by passing badly designed, lackluster proposals full of loopholes. The best example of this is Imperium Anglorum’s resolution #454, consisting of a single sentence. (page=WA_past_resolution/id=454/council=1)
Why was it even passed in the first place? Voting blocks, about which I will speak in another point. Another good example of this is Antifa, an IRL terrorist organization that focuses on striking people they deem as fascists, that is, people who disagree with them. What is funny is that some people consider them to be a positive force. Antifa is a far left anarcho-communist violent terror group, and their NS counterpart is not any better.

So NSG, do you think NS has a left wing bias?

If you’ve seen me on NSG, my opinion on this may surprise you, but I DON’T think NS has a left wing bias. Yes, you read that right, you’re not going blind. I, Aureumterra, the “fascist xenophobic conservative christian white guy” DOES NOT think NS has a left wing bias, here’s why: Rughzhenhaide does make some fair points when he talks about the WA, but he then counters his own point by blaming it on voting blocks. While the powerful voting blocks he’s talking about have a left wing bias, I think NS itself is pretty balanced. I’ll also expand the argument to the forum itself, because I’ve seen quite a few people offsite saying the mods censor right wing views and whatnot. They don’t. I’m pretty critical of certain mods on NS offsite, but one thing that is relatively consistent with all of our mods is they never censor people on politics. It’s hard to do, and I applaud the mods for doing so. There are certain online forums out there that completely fail at this, I think we all know which ones I’m referring to, but NS is, in my opinion, in good hands (for now…)

Dude...(or whatever). The game was made to popularize a book written by a crypto-Marxist. I'm fairly sure that a good portion of the site staff are furries, bronies, homosexuals, etc (not exactly right-wing types, no offense), and I assume the head staff was hand-picked by Max to begin with. Left wing players outnumber everyone else to about a 3:2 ratio at least, if you look at the major regions and WA votes, it should be obvious. Most issues are blatantly anti-religious, and the game's principle of parodying somehow rarely applies itself to social democrats, and even communist options are represented somewhat fairly at least sometimes, while anything to the right of those is not only parodied but also strawmanned to no end. Look at the most basic game mechanics and economic simulation. 100% tax rate is viable. Birth rates are not influenced by anything. Ethnic and religious cohesion cannot be influenced, even if it is the subject of some issues. Not having an army has no ill consequences whatsoever. This game encourages socialism economically and liberalism socially on every level, and NSG will make Tumblr look like /pol/ in comparison sometimes.

[Zizou]

Recently, a dispatch has been getting a lot of upvotes, which caught my eye
https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1197112

So NSG, do you think NS has a left wing bias?

If you’ve seen me on NSG, my opinion on this may surprise you, but I DON’T think NS has a left wing bias. Yes, you read that right, you’re not going blind. I, Aureumterra, the “fascist xenophobic conservative christian white guy” DOES NOT think NS has a left wing bias, here’s why: Rughzhenhaide does make some fair points when he talks about the WA, but he then counters his own point by blaming it on voting blocks. While the powerful voting blocks he’s talking about have a left wing bias, I think NS itself is pretty balanced. I’ll also expand the argument to the forum itself, because I’ve seen quite a few people offsite saying the mods censor right wing views and whatnot. They don’t. I’m pretty critical of certain mods on NS offsite, but one thing that is relatively consistent with all of our mods is they never censor people on politics. It’s hard to do, and I applaud the mods for doing so. There are certain online forums out there that completely fail at this, I think we all know which ones I’m referring to, but NS is, in my opinion, in good hands (for now…)

Dude...(or whatever). The game was made to popularize a book written by a crypto-Marxist. I'm fairly sure that a good portion of the site staff are furries, bronies, homosexuals, etc (not exactly right-wing types, no offense), and I assume the head staff was hand-picked by Max to begin with. Left wing players outnumber everyone else to about a 3:2 ratio at least, if you look at the major regions and WA votes, it should be obvious. Most issues are blatantly anti-religious, and the game's principle of parodying somehow rarely applies itself to social democrats, and even communist options are represented somewhat fairly at least sometimes, while anything to the right of those is not only parodied but also strawmanned to no end. Look at the most basic game mechanics and economic simulation. 100% tax rate is viable. Birth rates are not influenced by anything. Ethnic and religious cohesion cannot be influenced, even if it is the subject of some issues. Not having an army has no ill consequences whatsoever. This game encourages socialism economically and liberalism socially on every level, and NSG will make Tumblr look like /pol/ in comparison sometimes.

NSG most certainly does not make Tumblr look like /pol/ at any time.

[Greater Hunnia]

Dude...(or whatever). The game was made to popularize a book written by a crypto-Marxist. I'm fairly sure that a good portion of the site staff are furries, bronies, homosexuals, etc (not exactly right-wing types, no offense), and I assume the head staff was hand-picked by Max to begin with. Left wing players outnumber everyone else to about a 3:2 ratio at least, if you look at the major regions and WA votes, it should be obvious. Most issues are blatantly anti-religious, and the game's principle of parodying somehow rarely applies itself to social democrats, and even communist options are represented somewhat fairly at least sometimes, while anything to the right of those is not only parodied but also strawmanned to no end. Look at the most basic game mechanics and economic simulation. 100% tax rate is viable. Birth rates are not influenced by anything. Ethnic and religious cohesion cannot be influenced, even if it is the subject of some issues. Not having an army has no ill consequences whatsoever. This game encourages socialism economically and liberalism socially on every level, and NSG will make Tumblr look like /pol/ in comparison sometimes.

NSG most certainly does not make Tumblr look like /pol/ at any time.

That was obviously a hyperbole.

[Nakena]

Dude...(or whatever). The game was made to popularize a book written by a crypto-Marxist. I'm fairly sure that a good portion of the site staff are furries, bronies, homosexuals, etc (not exactly right-wing types, no offense), and I assume the head staff was hand-picked by Max to begin with. Left wing players outnumber everyone else to about a 3:2 ratio at least, if you look at the major regions and WA votes, it should be obvious. Most issues are blatantly anti-religious, and the game's principle of parodying somehow rarely applies itself to social democrats, and even communist options are represented somewhat fairly at least sometimes, while anything to the right of those is not only parodied but also strawmanned to no end. Look at the most basic game mechanics and economic simulation. 100% tax rate is viable. Birth rates are not influenced by anything. Ethnic and religious cohesion cannot be influenced, even if it is the subject of some issues. Not having an army has no ill consequences whatsoever. This game encourages socialism economically and liberalism socially on every level, and NSG will make Tumblr look like /pol/ in comparison sometimes.

NS game mechanics strongly favor libertarian and liberal decision making. It is strongly biased negatively towards communism, religion and dictatorship however.

Not having an army gets you some bad issues. Introducing fascism or strict anti-immigration policies gets you not much negative results.

Birth rates arent influenced because the total nations populations is directly related to how old/long a nation was in use.

[El-Amin Caliphate]

NationStates is far too tolerant of a sizable far-right population to have a real left-wing bias.

Only real left-wingers silence others am I right?

Nope, you're not right.

[Greater Hunnia]

Dude...(or whatever). The game was made to popularize a book written by a crypto-Marxist. I'm fairly sure that a good portion of the site staff are furries, bronies, homosexuals, etc (not exactly right-wing types, no offense), and I assume the head staff was hand-picked by Max to begin with. Left wing players outnumber everyone else to about a 3:2 ratio at least, if you look at the major regions and WA votes, it should be obvious. Most issues are blatantly anti-religious, and the game's principle of parodying somehow rarely applies itself to social democrats, and even communist options are represented somewhat fairly at least sometimes, while anything to the right of those is not only parodied but also strawmanned to no end. Look at the most basic game mechanics and economic simulation. 100% tax rate is viable. Birth rates are not influenced by anything. Ethnic and religious cohesion cannot be influenced, even if it is the subject of some issues. Not having an army has no ill consequences whatsoever. This game encourages socialism economically and liberalism socially on every level, and NSG will make Tumblr look like /pol/ in comparison sometimes.

NS game mechanics strongly favor libertarian and liberal decision making. It is strongly biased negatively towards communism, religion and dictatorship however.

Not having an army gets you some bad issues. Introducing fascism or strict anti-immigration policies gets you not much negative results.

Birth rates arent influenced because the total nations populations is directly related to how old/long a nation was in use.

Bad issues don't count at all, because you can dismiss them with a click (ie: it has no measurable effect in the game if you don't agree to it). A bit harder to do that IRL when some other countries' tanks decide to take a field trip in your capital. Not to mention that at the end of the day, gunboat diplomacy is still the cornerstone of modern negotiations. A country's military might is important to enforce deals, push political goals, and in general, stay relevant. USA comes to mind.

[Bombadil]

NSG always used to.

Most of the new posters who stick around these days whom I have noticed do not appear to be. And there's a good chance by new I mean anyone I don't remember from when I was most active (i.e. 2012-13).

Similarly after Neo Art and his sycophants all left (the minority banned), the feminist threads lost pretty much all their leftwing gender views and I have repeatedly told most of the people who remain that they've self-radicalised in the intervening 6/7 years, i.e. it's fair to say that NSG's non-feminists now take more rightwing views than they used to purely in terms of gender politics.

What people think they can get away with has also changed. NSG remains somewhere that people are able to post reasonably long posts with an expectation that they'll be read. It's similarly a place where the truth doesn't matter... and it never has been... but there are two changes in this category. In the old days you needed sycophants to get away with ignoring and/or misrepresenting the truth and this is probably still the same.

What I've noticed though is that where NSG used to love informal fallacies this no longer seems to be the case. In other words, NSG's average poster no-longer rewards people... or no longer gets a sense of being rewarded... for pointing out arguments that cannot substantiate the cases they're used to support (fallacious reasoning can accidentally be right, but a fallacious argument cannot substantiate its case all the same). Secondly, NSG's right wingers post as though they'll get people who (a) can be relied upon to interpret their points, snark and what have you and (b) no-one attributes this to sycophants any more. Previously, I would argue (and, of course, that I believe this is rather my starting point) that this used to only be true of NSG's leftists.

Obviously in the period I'm talking about people have begun to talk about a post-truth world. Trump may have helped encourage NSG's young-skewing population into right-wing positions or into the quasi-activism that posting on politics forums represent. Sure. I'll say that. But these changes in NSG are more the result of moderation's ongoing and detrimental fascination with megathreads.

Where we used to occasionally have months long bouts of feminist threads NSG now has a singular thread. Consequently, the only people who use it are the people who have been in it the entire time... and they're pretty much all non-feminists (see: paragraph three). So... anyone new who wanders into it is mostly exposed to the views that Trump's amenable too. Since younger people have much more malleable political opinions... I see NSG as much as a place of political building as discussion... this thread at least helps churn out pseudo-Trumpists. Fortuitously not many go into megathreads as new posters since the barriers to entry are very high. It's just that if they do get into the megathread format basically shut down what used to be a thriving exchange of views. There are no casual feminism posters on NSG any more because there are no longer casual threads on the subject... there's only the megathread and that's just for the hardcore.

The other major megathread I want to talk about is the Right Wing Discussion Thread. Now, I don't look at that anywhere as much as I do Feminist Megathread but it does appear to have a reasonably prominent non-right wing presence in it. The problem is that this is a nice draw thread. So, if you're a right winger on NSG this is the place you want to be. It's an area where you can gain a sense that there are people in NSG who broadly support your positions. And you get to engage with them in a much less focussed manner than you do in the old format of individual threads.

So, right here, there are two reasons for these threads to not fixate much at all on the quality of the conversation... defining quality in the curious sense of "truth-interested". Firstly, they're biased towards people who'll agree anyway... particularly because they share premises. If there's a marketplace of ideas that through an invisible hands of sorts reaches the best outcome, this submarket is simply going to settle on the most appealing rightwing view. Secondly, because it's not focussed on anything in particular it's by its nature less concrete and purposive... truth is a purpose. Furthermore, I would argue that this (and the LWDT too) are relatively chatty too... less discourse discussion and more conversation discussion. That's not a context for informal logical fallacies.

So, to recap, if you accept my premises... rooted as they are in anecdotes (as I have pointed out throughout this post)... then:

• NSG (at the very least) used to be more leftwing
• NSG's "new" structure divorces posters from both standard conceptions about how to arrive at the truth and the need to care about the truth at all
• NSG's new structure gives right-wingers confidence that they'll find a receptive audience (whereas previously this did not exist)
• The presence of particular political views encourages and creates more of those same views
• Getting away with BS is cool and attractive... and it's so much easier to get away with BS than it used to be
• Rebelling... even if it's against standard conceptions about how to arrive at the truth... is cool and attractive
• Halo effect further enhances the creation of rightwingers, leading to
• A better balance of left and right wing views in NSG but much less concern for the truth on all sides
• Corollary... NSG is now obsessed with hypocrisy

The truth has a left-wing bias.

Even if this is true, NSG is no longer a place where we can use the conceit that we'll arrive at the truth eventually... due to megathreads.

I don't know, I think much like broader society NSG has become more polarised around left and right in and of itself. Back when I started, instead of mega threads - which I also dislike vehemently - it used to be endless rounds of abortion, religion, climate change, evolution threads.

Nowadays a lot of threads are to prove a particular point, threads on some instance of immigration used to buttress an overall view.

I feel it used to be a little more fun as well, silly news stories, puns, inside jokes - few people do a good poll these days. I think the whole conception of TET/F7 stole that side away.

Does NSG have a left wing bias? Maybe it weights to more left wing posters to a degree but it's also quite hard to tell since it seems to be filled with more puppets over long term names where you could identify their politics and whether they were serious or just trolling.

Having said that, these are interesting times, which is probably more what keeps me in NSG than posting quality.

[Nakena]

Most of the "individual" threads popping up on NSG are related to domestic US issues, often in context to the culture wars.

[Page]

NationStates is far too tolerant of a sizable far-right population to have a real left-wing bias.

Pretty much. One can say "I think America should be a white ethnostate" even though that's an obvious dog whistle for ethnic cleansing and mass murder, as long as they stick to the dog whistle they can get away with it.

[The Black Forrest]

Left wing bias? I doubt it. Most people are right handed.

[LiberNovusAmericae]

This game encourages socialism economically and liberalism socially on every level,

Applying socialism to your nation usually makes your economic efficiency fall. That's hardly a bias towards socialism.

[Athonuna]

I feel like NS has a very, very slight leftist bias, either from those in actual power or those that hold much social power, or reputation, but overall has a very diverse spectrum of political views. Certainly it's not an issue.

[The Greater Low Countries]

I think NS has an extremist bias. The idea of conforming a nation to your views seems to really attract more extreme ideologies. If I was told to find 10 anarchists as quickly as possible, I would list the most frequent posters on the Anarchism thread here on the forum.
I think more left-wing superdelegates have been elected in GCRs, and part of what this person is talking about is their dissatisfaction with how the WA allows the superdelegates. After all, they have about 15 times the leverage power over small regions than California has over Wyoming in the House of Representatives.

So no, NS doesn't have a left-wing bias exclusively. Rather, it has a variety of extreme-ideology adherents.

[Dangine]

I think it does a bit in the way that it censors Nazism but does censor Communism, however it is not a big leftist bias. It also might depend on the politics of the mods.

[Russkiya Svyachena]

I sure hope not, I made my account today thinking this will be a politically diverse forum, and so far, it has been pretty good

[Republic of Turbin]

From what I see the website and its mechanics have no biases although from the point of users it seems to be have a slightly larger left wing base although it isn’t really a problem as you can find many types of views on here.

This place also helped me view more ideas and thoughts that are difficult to find in a Christian education I am very thankful for what diversity NS is. that is why I love NS!