A civil war is breaking out in the r/Conservative Reddit forum, as President Donald Trump’s hardcore supporters fear that the subreddit has been “infiltrated” by liberals, while other actual right-wing subscribers worry they are being targeted for good-faith criticism of the president.
The conflict came to a head this weekend after a top commenter in the subreddit, which has 2.1 million subscribers, called on moderators to take action against “fake accounts.”
“This sub has been infiltrated by fake conservatives,” the user wrote in a post that generated roughly 3,500 replies. “These are NOT people with conservative values who simply do not like Trump.”
Thousands of users upvoted the post, seemingly agreeing that rogue liberals were swarming the forum.
Others thought their fellow subscribers were either paranoid or intolerant of dissent, perhaps reflecting a rift among online right-wingers at a time when Trump is changing the ideological contours of the conservative movement.
Some took the post as a demand to get on board with Trump’s agenda, which didn’t sit well with them.
“Example?” one user asked. “Conservative isn’t a specific set of policies and it’s also not blind loyalty to any administration.”
“In the past week I have been accused multiple times of being a liberal, a fake conservative, and even permanently banned from one of the big right leaning subs,” wrote another user. “Why? Because I disagree with what Trump is doing. I actually think blindly supporting him even when he is blatantly doing the wrong things is not adhering to conservative values at all.”
Moderators tried to assuage the concerns, noting they would review posters who misrepresent themselves.
“If you see flaired accounts making leftist talking points please report them and the mods will review their flair,” one moderator replied. “However, please be aware that we do allow conservatives to disagree on a few topics and still keep their flair. Afterall, we’re not leftists.”
On r/Conservative, regular users can request a “flair” from moderators which displays a summary of their ideology or identity—think “Pro-Life” or “Moderate Conservative.”
Just days after the post complaining of a supposed infiltration, one self-professed “Trump supporter” dared to disagree with the Trump administration’s decision to fire some National Park Service employees in a separate r/Conservative thread.
Enough users reported the post that it triggered an automatic announcement from the moderators noting they were aware of the concerns around the post.
The original poster, meanwhile, felt compelled to respond to critics from across the political spectrum.
“To the conservatives in this sub calling me a liberal because I don’t blindly agree with every single thing the Trump administration does—get real,” they wrote. “And to the liberals who think this is some sort of ‘gotcha’ moment—don’t flatter yourselves. This isn’t your talking point to hijack.”
While it’s unclear whether any redditors have made a systematic effort to undermine r/Conservative, thousands have at least been watching with amusement as right-wing users argue among themselves.
The National Park Service post and the infiltration accusation are the top two threads this week in r/SubredditDrama, a subreddit with nearly a million members that chronicles the platform’s messiest battles.
“I think we all know the sub is a little unhinged but this is next level funny,” wrote one user about the paranoia engulfing r/Conservative.
Another user pointed out that attracting debate from non-conservatives may just be the price of r/Conservative’s popularity.
Reddit banned the popular pro-Trump channel r/The_Donald in 2020 due to a high volume of content that broke Reddit policies and incited violence. Today, r/Conservative is almost 15 times larger than the r/trump subreddit, and by far the largest meeting place for right-wingers on the site, which may explain why every post isn’t in lockstep with the MAGA movement.
“It’s not really getting brigaded if it’s just the average dude coming across your comment, on a social media site, deciding it’s stupid (and that’s putting it nicely) and downvoting it,” the poster wrote. “Not because they’re part of a secret leftist agenda, it’s because your dumbass ideas are in reality, unpopular.”
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