For those in here that take offense to this distinction:
2 party political systems function to collapse diverse political perspectives into one of two camps and normalize an ‘average’ view for both parties. Leftists take issue with this collapse because it erases dissenting views within each party in service of defeating an ‘other’ at the expense of pursuing our real political goals.
The label matters to those of us who want to make the point that the US democratic party does not really represent our interests; at-best they represent a less-objectionable flavor of the same ideological framework, but one that needs to be dismantled all the same.
“Stop trying to divide us!” is a refrain spoken by those who are better served by the party than we are.
Put another way: “We are not the same”
How’s the saying go?
I know, I have three of them and I still can’t pay rent.
I think the current best demonstration on this is how hard people are pushing Mark Kelly as VP.
They push a center-right president onto the stage and then dangle another “centrist” to try and, what? Appeal to Never Trumper Republicans? Racists?
How about you offer actual progressives some goddamn enticement for once and offer it to Jamaal Bowman, who the Dems primaried in favor of a genocidal AIPAC stooge?
If he was that popular and progressives that numerous he wouldn’t have lost his primary, especially as the incumbent. Simple as.
You are clueless as far as actual policies supported by actual Americans. Policy wise, there is pretty much a super majority of Americans that support actual progressive policies
If that was the case then maybe they should get off their asses and vote then huh?
As soon as there’s a candidate that actually represents them… Imagine if the 2 candidates were Trump and Romney, both running as Republicans… Would libs be crying that everyone needs to vote Republican or the Republicans will win? Replace Republican with conservative in that last sentence, and maybe it will clear up why progressives don’t bother voting… There is no one to vote for
(I’m voting for Kamala, so should everyone)
You really do have the solution for everything maybe you should run for office
Don’t be mad at me that he either sucks or progressives can’t be assed to go vote.
Im just pointing out your suggestion is laughable because he can’t even win his primary as an incumbent.
Yes because Israel lobby spent the most money in history for any primary seat of congress. One district rep for congress is a little different than the whole country, but yes, money needs to be taken out of politics.
In other news the capital of Israel is about to get bombed by Iran, which is too bad I guess
Policy wise, there is pretty much a super majority of Americans that support actual progressive policies
There’s a huge trust gap in implementation. That’s why Donald Trump threaten a national victory via votes from dying Boomers convinced he’s going to unleash fantasy free health care technology while Bernie Sanders can’t squeak through a primary on the promise of increasing Medicaid enrollments.
People may want the same things, but they are deeply cynical in who they trust to deliver those policies.
Health care is a fantasy in the United States don’t get sick here it would be cheaper to fly to a hotel in Paris if you are sick I suppose
If he was that popular and progressives that numerous he wouldn’t have lost his primary
Propaganda works. You can bombard people with media attacks on a progressive politician to trick people into thinking he’s reactionary. In this case, a heavily Jewish district was flooded with “Jamaal Bowman is antisemetic” messaging for months straight and it cost him the election.
This has nothing to do with his popularity or his progressive bonafides and everything to do with his cash on hand to run counter-programming.
Again, he was down a ton before the AIPAC money came in.
That PAC bullshit is just that but it doesn’t explain his loss.
he was down a ton before the AIPAC money came in
George Latimer was recruited and sponsored by AIPAC on day one.
That you’re being downvoted for this totally reasonable comment only inches away from a top level comment lamenting a system that silences dissenting views is nice.
Lol because he’s citing the system being critiqued as evidence to make the case that progressive politics aren’t popular
“This system disadvantages dissenting views”
“Dissenting views just arent popular, just look at the outcome of this system”
They push a center-right president onto the stage
Like, 90% of the US Senate is center-right or worse. You’re in a country that is governed overwhelmingly to the right of the popular political view. I don’t think the VP pick is going to meaningfully shift any of that. Running Walz as your VP isn’t going to turn the US Senate into the Minnesota Governor’s Mansion.
How about you offer actual progressives some goddamn enticement for once and offer it to Jamaal Bowman, who the Dems primaried in favor of a genocidal AIPAC stooge?
Because the US has a huge geopolitical strategic interest in staying friendly with Israel and a vanishingly small interest in cultivating support among progressive New Yorkers.
Because the US has a huge geopolitical strategic interest in staying friendly with Israel and a vanishingly small interest in cultivating support among progressive New Yorkers.
This is an excellent explanation for the way things are but a really terrible reason to keep them that way
Am I the only one who thinks we need to pick someone no older than ~50 for VP? Based on the idea that VP is an understudy position?
It’s not an understudy position. The role of VP has historically been a way to “balance the ticket” between factions in the party. So, a Kennedy from Massachusetts and Johnson from Texas. Or California’s Reagan with a Connecticut Bush.
More recently, the VP has been a means of whipping votes in the House (Cheney and Ford) or the Senate (Gore, Biden, Pence) and raising money from affiliate donor networks (all of the above, but Harris and Vance more than ever).
If you want a Presidential job training program, look to the governor’s mansion or the State Department. But by the time you’re VP, you’re not training. You’re in the game.
It’s absolutely been used as an under study position in the past. It can be all those things too.
It’s absolutely been used as an under study position in the past.
Name one VP who was a practical understudy for the job of President and I’ll name you ten that were equally if not more qualified for the job.
Very well put
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They didn’t like John McCain, so they lumped him in with the rest of us.
The upside of that is it works against their overton window dragging, if you are going to be called a commie leftist no matter what might as well lean into it
How does it work against overton window dragging if saying “maybe people should stop dying of preventable disease in the wealthiest country on earth” gets you labelled a communist? It’s precisely the sign that the overton window is shifted to the far right
Sure wish the libs would get this
i think it works against leftist’s goals we they lean into the straw man description of a tankie; it’s turns off liberals a lot
Meh, though the meme is true, most Americans would say liberals are EVERYONE left of center, and conservatives are EVERYONE right of center.
Yeah, but that ‘center’ is a relative term and people move ‘center’ to fit their opinion. Every American I know thinks they are close to center, but I know people that are far left and far right, as well as people that lean left and right from a mostly central position.
No one wants to consider themselves radicalized, but there are a lot of people out there that are.
Most of American politics is right wing. Democrats lean right and Republicans run right. You could change the slant of your statement with a left-bias, instead of the right, by saying everyone left of center is progressive and everyone right of center is regressive.
Correct, I invoked an unnamed speaker in my statement.
Rephrased: each asked American would describe liberal or conservative as capturing the entire spectrum, (left or right respectively) of what they consider center.
All I mean is that the terms are most commonly used (in America) to capture damn near half of the spectrum.
No one wants to consider themselves radicalized
Speak for yourself buddy, proud owner of the “radical leftist” label here.
What most Americans think of as ‘center’ is way fucking right compared to most of the world.
Here Bernie Sanders is a radically dangerous communist.
In other parts of the world he is just considered a bit progressive.
Bernie is barely left of center on the world stage
The center is now also conservative, unfortunately.
Doesn’t matter to my explanation
It does, really, if you understand what an Overton Window is…
They only say that because they’ve been trained to by conservative media. Just because education is bad doesn’t mean reality is different.
No, it’s a matter of colloquial semantics.
Yep, many people complaining about semantics here don’t realize that when the US calls something “the left” they aren’t referring to “leftism”, they are referring to a metaphorical graduated chart where democrats are on the left hand and republicans are on the right.
“The left” on this chart is anyone leaning towards the Democratic Party, where “the right” is anyone leaning towards the Republican Party.
It’s frustrating that we let this become a dividing topic, because it is pedantic at best.
And what’s annoying is conservatives certainly bicker, but are generally very unified.
True leftists seem so hellbent on distancing themselves from “liberals”. All they are doing is sowing division, in what conservatives consider a binary landscape.
Close; true leftists are hellbent on disillusioning liberals of the notion that they’re contributing anything by simply voting every 4 years for the democrat du jour.
The political goals of leftists involve a lot more than simply defeating republican opponents, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the majority of casual democrats. What’s more; leftists have an understanding that reactionary political movements don’t simply go away when you vote them out; they are created by real material conditions that need to be addressed, else they will return the next cycle having gained more momentum.
Liberals are either comatose leftists who are dragging progress to a halt, or reactionaries in denial who would rather a reactionary movement take over than see the hierarchical structure of their country change, even marginally.
Lol this is it
If there were no distance between us then you wouldn’t need to move to close the gap.
We’re distancing ourselves from libs because we don’t want the same things for the most part. Besides getting trump out of the picture we’re rather different.
Right, and conservatives want lots of different things, yet they generally act in a unified way when it comes down to voting day.
I always vote democrat
I wish you libs would do more than just vote a couple times a year.
People will casually remark “that’s just they way they’re using the word, no point in arguing” and then never stop to ask why and to what end.
The reason US politics operates along that dimension is explicitly because of the way their electoral politics work. It’s not simply a matter of it being the common usage, it’s also a core part of what capital L leftists are critiquing when they say ‘liberals are not left wing’. Democrats are dealing in exactly the ideological framework that is the target of leftist opposition, it isn’t sufficient to lump everyone on the democratic side into a single category.
Corporate media and cable news in general
Using neo-liberals to define liberals is like using national socialism to define socialism.
It’s authoritarian propaganda.
Libs and leftists are different
Sure, but liberals are still left wing, and saying they’re not is just making enemies out of other left wingers, with is a long standing left tradition.
You’d all get so much further if you recognised allies in one area don’t have to be allies in all areas. You can all have your own opinions and work together where it suits you towards set goals, rather than name calling, “no true Scotsman”-ing and in fighting. It honestly feels like the right have infiltrated the left at times, and just turned them on each other.
In what world are liberals left wing? Here in Europe liberals are all considered centrists. Even the ones that are for the well-fare state.
America and the rest of the Western world use liberal completely differently. We have a self enforced two party system in the US so it’s real easy to boil everything down to an either/or fallacy.
At any rate we’ve stuck all the civil rights stuff, public goods, and people based governance under the tag of liberalism. And all the pro corporate stuff, anti rights, and privatization under Conservatism.
The biggest shift in that paradigm in the last 20 years has been a collective realization that both parties believe governance should favor corporations.
And all the pro corporate stuff, anti rights, and privatization under Conservatism
I think I’d contest at least the pro corporate stuff and privatization parts of this.
At a mininum, US liberals have a codependent relationship with corporate and private entities. If not flat-out pro-capitalist relationship.
I should have been more clear. When I said “we’ve stuck…” I meant that’s the idea most people have. Not that that’s what’s actually happening.
There is a wide gulf between political history and ideologies and party politics.
I’ve never met a liberal who was left of center
No they are center left or center right essentially being capitalist populist movements.
Capitalists are not left wing.
You don’t get to gatekeep “left wing” behind your nonsense failed ideology.
I don’t think he invented dialectical materialism
Words have meaning bud
They do, and you are making them up.
Yeah…
ITT: people who are in a state of BBQ flavored confusion.
Lemmy help y’all out.
leftist: some socialist policies, universal healthcare, publicly funded education, jobs programs, ubi, abolition, etc…
liberal: voting rights, property ownership, access to banking, civil liberties
neo liberal: global access to markets, global tade, international standards bodies, world banks, world courts, trade agreements.
Not sure I agree with your categories. I think you’re conflating stances on globalisation with econonic and social issues. I’m a left wing voter and I support pretty much all the things you listed
But I can see how people end up with those ideas. Media sucks at teaching actual stuff.
Well, neoliberalism isn’t just that, it’s also “privatization, deregulation, monetarism, austerity, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society”
So you can’t really be a leftist and support neoliberalism. We’re seeing the catastrophic results now.
That was rather my point. You define neoliberalism in the way I do. And I vehemently oppose it, so defined. But the post I responsed to defined it more as an issue of globalisation which is a different topic imo
Ah sorry, I misunderstood.
Leftist - I own personal objects. Large things are owned communally. I have human rights.
Liberal - I own anything I can buy. If the law sees me as a person then I have human rights.
Conservative - I own personal objects. Large objects are owned by a predetermined elite. I do not have human rights. Even the elite only have as many rights as they have power.
This stood me well in my poli sci studies but obviously it’s hilariously top level and actual ideologies take more than a couple sentences to categorize. But this effectively covers OG Liberalism and Conservatism with Leftist ideas in their own category. Also any system of categorization is doomed to fail in the end because it’s actually a 5d shifting plane of color shades out there. Like going from leftist to totalitarian or liberal to effectively wanting a king again while still talking about liberal stuff.
When you have only two parties you can only have one dimension.
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Do these labels really have any benefit or value in society, or are they just yet another lame excuse for us all to hate on a group of ‘others’
They referred to specific ideologies and economic and social policies before the modern corporate propaganda machine really started in the 80s. Pretty sure they’re meaningless to most Americans these days.
I hate that the left is so hell bent on creating division among itself and allies with this “nobody is left enough for me;” bullshit.
There are absolutely people who are too right leaning to be called Leftist
Kamala Harris for example is not a leftist; nor Biden or buttigieg…. They are still less evil than Trump though lol
If they’re voting against conservatives, they can be as far right as they like. I’ve seen people who vote left get called “too right leaning”. So what you would prefer they don’t vote along you? You don’t want an ally cause they’re too different from you??
They can vote however they like, but if our ideologies are different I want a way to distinguish that difference.
Voting is like the bare minimum you can do. I know lots of people who make a more material difference in their communities than voting ever has.
A liberal will turn my ass into the cops and then lick their boots clean after they kick my door in and lock me up. Don’t need that kind of “ally”.
Enjoy a second Trump presidency and more conservative wins then. Cause at least those fucks on the right accept each other’s votes and support without turning on each other like children
We do vote. I never said we don’t.
That’s a silly argument… please stop making it
My point was more that there shouldn’t even be labels such as left, right, conservative, liberal, etc. Putting everyone into these little boxes and arbitrarily pitting them against each other only serves to create problems where non existed and solves precisely nothing along the way.
There can’t be division if there are no groups for people to be divided into. There can’t be any of the “nobody is left enough for me” bullshit if there is no left or right.
The only true purpose of these labels is for those at the top to divide those at the bottom so they keep their silly little power a bit longer. I for one, fail to see a logical reason to continue playing this game.
Putting everyone into these little boxes and arbitrarily pitting them against each other
Just because you apparently don’t have any strong political opinions and the status quo works fine for you, doesn’t mean that everyone else’s opinions are “arbitrary”. What an ignorant thing to suggest.
I’m not disputing the validity people’s opinions and beliefs, only that it’s unnecessary to place a label on everyone based on those beliefs. What’s arbitrary is insisting that we are different than those people over there just because they think xyz should be zyx and deciding they are the enemy based solely on that supposed difference.
Also, the status quo is to have a left vs right and to push everyone to one of those sides. Kinda exactly what I’m arguing against.
You are wrong on so many levels.
Let’s go to the most basic one - ‘left’ and ‘right’ are ideological opposites of the one question:
Who should have more power?
Individuals (control everything through capital) or government (redistributing capital amongst the people, so no one is left behind).
That is not just some silly division, that is the real distinction between how people think the government should work, and those are not compatible at all.
The US has very luke-warm ‘leftists’ compared to other countries - even Bernie Sanders, the most known ‘radical leftist’ is considered borderline right just because the country is so far right as of now.
Perhaps once upon a time left and right simply represented two ideological extremes, but today that is not what it means. If you were to ask people on the street what the other side is, are they more likely to say “Oh that’s just my friends that happen to believe something different” or “Those evil fuckers are ruining the world and getting in my way”? In my experience, it’s overwhelming the later.
The question of who should be in power should exclusively be answered by the people as a collective whole regardless of personal opinions. It should never be answered by vaguely definable groups having a pissing match. If two siblings are fighting, you don’t lock em in a room and egg them on. You sit them down, tell them to apologize, and make them share the toys.
These labels might have a use in the field of sociology, but in the real world they only act as a wedge and an excuse to be mad at someone else. I’m not saying that they don’t exist because they very much do, only that need to stop existing if we ever want to learn to work together as a species.
So you are left leaning, and that’s great, but there is a giant push from the very wealthy to take our power away from us.
That’s all that it is.
If you think I’m either left or right leaning from all this then you’ve completely missed the point
So we are both wasting our time here, have a good one!
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TBF there are about seven mutually exclusive definitions of “liberal” in each country.
Not so much “in each country” as “between countries”, right? I’m European and in my home country “liberal” tends to mean Neoliberal
Here too, but colloquially it means something like “unburdened by tradition” or “freedom loving”, which is, well, not how our liberals roll.
Americans are actually taught in school that the entire American political spectrum is inside liberalism.
They then immediately forget that anyway and fall into the conservative/liberal false paradigm.
false paradigm
I think you mean false dichotomy
I knew it would be this brilliant piece of poli-historical analysis!
The thing I love about lemmy is instead of neoliberals and weird racists silencing Leftists like reddit, it’s Leftists and Social democrats constantly at each other’s throats.
The latter is much more amusing
The latter is much more amusing
same here; but likely for different reasons.
i like learning about viewpoints that differ from mine; i think they help me question my own beliefs and, usually, it re-enforces them.
Yeah, on reddit, if you’re not the mainstream reddit opinion you have to hide in an echo chamber, if you are the mainstream, then most of the platform is one giant echo chamber.
It doesn’t help that they’re all exceptionally rude and confrontational
wholly agreed and i find it troublesome that the reddit refugees have pushed so hard to turn some lemmyverse instances into mini reddits, complete with that mainstream reddit opinion.
lemmy.world has become my main source for finding opposing view points to learn from and, fortunately for the entire lemmyverse, the engagement is (very-very-VERY) slightly better than reddit.
As an Egyptian, I’ve had to constantly talk back against multiple people with the usual “all middle eastern countries are iran” bullshit, I thought I’d escaped it when I left reddit, but nope, apparently in Egypt Hijab is forced by law, I just didn’t know Egyptian law and needed a European
redditorlemming(?) to give us all a white-savioresque lecture on it.Many people don’t know this (surprisingly), but reddit is racist as fuck, like one of the most racist platforms I’ve ever been on, it’s really well cloaked racism (usually, r/Europe and r/Worldnews are openly racist) , but it’s everywhere, and OH GOD the white Savior Complex so many redditors have is infuriating.
But hey, at least on lemmy I can correct it, on reddit I’d be swarmed by westerners who think they know more about my country than I, a person living there, do, and will proceed to tell me I’m very wrong.
They push this so far, I’ve had them lecture me, someone FROM GIZA, on the “correct” position of the pyramids.
Even apps like Bumble don’t make a distinction, as an European I find it quite annoying
Well, the apps have other problems too…
An anarchist believes in liberty for people to live freely
A capitalist believes in liberty to freely exploit people
Unfortunately the capitalists also own the means of mass communication and have gaslit the socialists into thinking liberty only means the latter!
Resist imperialist redefinition of words!
Welcome to the No true Scotsman party.
Y’all change labels at will and then get upset when people use the “wrong one”. Where I’m from liberal means you’re not a conservative. Also can we stop with the divisions and no true Scotsman bullshit on the left? This is why the left loses to conservatives so often, cause they love to find divisions and hate among their own side and allies.
These words have meaning and there’s confusion when people mean something else in the US. American Democrats are right of center in global politics. Liberals (global definition of the word) have controlling presence in industry and politics. They literally don’t want anything significant to change because it is set up exactly the way they want it. They can lobby to get what they want. They can contribute unlimited amounts to third party campaigns.
There is absolutely a difference between leftists and people who think Democrat policy positions are exciting.
Yes for sure, I’m not sure that I indicated otherwise. I don’t know how useful my post would be to anyone, people need to read and study.
Sorry, replied to the wrong person
Liberal means "not conservative’ because our Overton window is fucked six ways to Sunday.
can we stop with the divisions and no true Scotsman bullshit on the left
No, because (A) liberals are by definition not leftists regardless of how little they know about their own right-wing political advocacy, and (B) ignoring the fact that there are differences among leftists (and liberals and leftists) is both wholly unproductive and furthers political alienation of the people whose opinions you want to be able to conveniently pretend don’t exist.
Additionally, just because you don’t understand leftists when they tell you that liberals are not leftists, doesn’t mean they are engaging in a No True Scotsman fallacy. It means you haven’t engaged enough with them to understand.
This is why Trump is going to win ffs
You can burn liberals on the same pyre as magats and cops.
