Do any of them know what the word “liberal” actually means?
Republicans are also liberals. At least in the true sense of the word. So it’s low-key funny when they use the term liberal as an insult.
I myself am not a liberal. Fiscally at least. Socially I’m a progressive.
In American political terminology, “liberal” means a different thing than in Europe. It implies being left-wing on social issues. Republicans by definition cannot be liberals (in the American sense of the term).
I’m on the left, but I’m far from a communist, much less an authoritarian one, and I 100% use lib or liberal as an insult. I think to most people younger than 50, Liberal refers to a certain type of Democratic voter. They’ll hang a BLM sign in their window but support NIMBY policies that keep people of color out of their neighborhoods. They’ll talk a good game about labor rights and unions, but still go to Starbucks and throw a shit-fit if their order is wrong. They cared very deeply about Iraq and Guantanamo when Bush was President, but stopped bringing it up once Obama was in office.
The Third Way Democrats of the 90s basically turned American Liberals into Neo-Liberals. I will still support them when I have to, since they hold all the levers of power over the only ostensibly progressive party in America, and not siding with them at this point basically ensures the rise of fascism, but I have no love for Liberals.
Yes, leftists absolutely know what the word “liberal” means. It refers to a pro-Capitalist ideology centered around the idea of individual freedoms via private property rights.
Leftists disagree that allowing private property creates a freer population, and understand that Liberalism is the dominant ideology in developed Capitalist nations.
Software developers are staying silent on this one.
Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleed…
Authoritarian Communist
I see this term used so often from the lofty reaches of some national news rag or echoing out of a Senate star chamber. The CEO is stamping it into an EULA, as an irrevocable term of service. The corporate union-buster is putting it up in 120 point font in a company wide mandatory power point presentation. The evangelical minister is denouncing it from the pulpit as part of a catechism call-and-response. The nosey neighbor is whispering it into the phone, hoping a SWAT team will remove someone from the block. The police holding you face down in a bucket of water are screaming it in your ears.
Beware the authoritarian communist. Beware the tankies. Beware the Chinese / Russian / Venezuelan social terrorists, fifth columnists, and outside agitators. Beware the college kid in the Che Guevera t-shirt. Beware the Anti-American. Whatever you think we might be doing to you now, they’ll be ten times worse.
It’s just a more politically correct way to say tankie.
I’ve never heard a cop called a Tankie.
But they’re always the ones in the large militant unions demanding more public money while driving around in actual tanks.
To be fair, Chinese cops would probably be tankies.
Few carry guns. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Chinese police equivalent to the NYPD Police Tank that was used to raid the Columbia campus.
Meaningless distinction. Whether it’s military or whatever. Whichever state supported group is shooting and beating and arresting protestors in China, they’re tankies.
Whichever state supported group is shooting and beating and arresting protestors in
ChinaAmerica, they’re tankies.FTFY
Whichever state supported group is shooting and beating and arresting protestors in China
I’m more concerned with the police lashing out at protesters closer to home
Usually because it’s a fascist doing the scratching, so the liberal punches him
What an absolutely childish and moronic way or rewriting history. Typical lib.
That’s all Cryophillia does, lol. Attempt to rewrite definitions and history.
Also call out tankies and fash pretending to be tankies.
Hello!
Nah, you just call anyone left of Social Democrats “tankie,” lol.
Most of em are
It’s an infestation
Everything is scary when you’re scared of everything.
Punching Nazis into dust since 1941. Commies too.
You’re just salty because our superior ideology beat yours into dust (this applies if you’re an actual communist or just a right wing agitator pretending to be one).
“Liberalism is the ideology of capitalism, free markets, representative democracy, legal rights and state monopoly on violence. It includes a large portion of the present day political spectrum, from the centre-left social democrats to the far-right conservatives and American libertarians.”
That is… a lot of people
Yes. Liberalism is the dominant ideology in the World today.
Do you know what the word ‘liberal’ actually means
This discussion is funny from a German pov, as our main local liberal party (the FDP) is pretty right wing and has been so since the 1940s. “Liberalism” always had a quite neative connotation to me therefore. They are also the party most open to working together with the far right (the AFD).
Liberalism can be right wing or left wing. It makes more sense to structure the political specrum like this. But even that is far from prefect.
Liberalism can be right wing or left wing.
Eh. Its traditionally in that “economically conservative, socially liberal” pocket, wherein you can do whatever you want so long as you’ve got enough passive income.
Fascists tend toward a more rigid social caste system (ideologically) wherein being rich isn’t enough to save you from state violence. That’s a big part of its popular appeal, particularly when liberal institutions decay into kleptocracies.
Traditional Marxism tends toward the social egalitarianism that fascists can’t stomach (race mixing, gender equality, and worker internationalism) while advocating full public ownership that liberal rent-seekers can’t stomach.
So, in the modern political spectrum, liberals tend to be “centrists” who use their economic influence to rent out social egalitarianism. Fascists tend to be “right wing”, advocating for those same private entities to purge themselves of unpopular social groups. And Marxists tend to be “left wing”, advocating for an abolition of rents and a full egalitarian economy.
But if you go back a century (or move over to a country that’s more left or right leaning) the colonial era monarchies and theocracies end up forming the right-wing pole, while fascists join liberals at the social center, and Marxists join a much more lively native anarchist community that’s in its last-gasp efforts to resist colonial occupation.
If you are saying gender equality is Marxist then I am guessing you haven’t read much Marx friend. Marx was very about women being relegated to traditional gender roles and was more about whole “seperate spheres of excellence” thing. You are thinking more of the likes of Saint Simone and Robert Owen’s Owenites.
Feminist scholarship has tried to adapt Marx by stripping out the veiws about women and applying his rhetoric more unilaterally but that’s not his text and quite frankly there are other contemporary philosophers and movement leaders which did it better.
There is this habit to slap the name Marxist on a the most idealized reads of the work and call it his because he’s the name people know and the few well known political labels on the far left or because people who have claimed the label of his movement after his death decided to non-canonically add to his work- but I personally wish that people could normalize other schools of leftist philosophy and not treat Marx particularly as the magnet that all of us will inevitably be drawn to or attribute stuff to him that he doesn’t particularly deserve. Marxism as a sort of brand name philosophy is misleading and disappointing to those who read his work and find that their ideals aren’t actually well represented there.
If you are saying gender equality is Marxist then I am guessing you haven’t read much Marx friend. Marx was very about women being relegated to traditional gender roles
Marxism does not end with Marx any more than Newtonian Physics ends with Newton.
That said, I’ve seen plenty of liberal writers approach the original works with cynical and dishonest takes. So it helps to cite your reference if you want to be taken seriously.
that’s not his text and quite frankly there are other contemporary philosophers and movement leaders which did it better.
Sure. Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, Chavez, etc, etc.
but I personally wish that people could normalize other schools of leftist philosophy and not treat Marx particularly as the magnet that all of us will inevitably be drawn to
It’s hard to escape Marx’s gravitational pull without abandoning 19th century modes of industrial economics.
So long as colonial powers continue to apply old liberal economic theories of endless expansion and consolidated ownership in the face of diminishing returns, Marx’s insights into failing rate of profit fueling economic contradictions will remain relevant.
I believe what you are referring to is Communism. Let us divorce at least the name of a singular man from a body of work that by your own admission is made up of a number of different writers on the subject just as the elaborations on Newtonian Physics is considered also a part but not whole of Classical Mechanics.
The reductions of bodies of political thought to singular authors is often used to exclude others. Very often on this platform I am told that I am not a Socialist because I am not a Marxist simply because he simply coined a term to a body of thought that predated him and extended far beyond him so why should I extend to Marx the authorial intent by the political realm of thought baring his name? If you said you were a Maoist or a Leninist or a Chavezist would I not conclude that you are in agreement with their very specific realms of their personal philosophy?
Let us divorce at least the name of a singular man from a body of work
If we had a collection of competing working applications of communism, that would be easier. But trying to divorce it from Marx is a bit like trying to divorce capitalism from Adam Smith or the more modern Anarcho-Capitalist attitude from Rothbard and Rand. Like talking about Protestantism without mentioning Martin Luther.
Show me a fully realized anarchist state and we might be able to talk about Peter Kropotkin or Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. But anarchists from Republican Spain to the Bodo League of Korea to American Native Tribes were wiped out by fascist militarism.
You could draw sharper lines between Leninism, Maoism, and Chauvism, but you’d still start from their common Marxist heritage.
The reductions of bodies of political thought to singular authors is often used to exclude others.
They’re influential for a reason.
I am told that I am not a Socialist because I am not a Marxist
I mean, you can call yourself whatever you want. But I see the term “Socialist” pitched around to describe everything from corporate liberalism to primativist anarchism. If you want to talk about AES states, you’re talking about countries that rooted themselves in Marxist philosophy.
If you said you were a Maoist or a Leninist or a Chavezist would I not conclude that you are in agreement with their very specific realms of their personal philosophy?
If I said I was a Maoist, I just didn’t agree with anything in Mao’s Little Red Book, I would not blame you for calling me a bullshitter.
It has 2 common definitions:
- Neo-liberal: a political approach that favors free-market capitalism, deregulation, and reduction in government spending
- Leftism in general.
You’re almost never going to hear the right-wing use #1. Authoritarian communists will use #1 as a catch-all for modern capitalism.
The US is such a right wing country that liberals are the mainstream left. In Europe, liberals are centrists and they aren’t further to the right than American libs.
The meme says “American Republicans” so I thought we were considering this from an American pov. Definitions are going to change going to other countries and doubly so when talking about politics.
But the definition doesn’t really change. Take universal healthcare. A liberal idea that’s considered common sense in Europe and left wing in the US. Obamacare would be something you expect from a center right European and a left American. Both are called liberal.
And if the meme was from an exclusively American pov, it wouldn’t specify “American Republicans”
It isn’t just about it meaning something else when ‘going to another country’. ‘Liberal’ has an actual definition with a history.
I’m honestly kind of confused about american liberals digging their heals in on this definition when it has historically been taken to mean something they don’t seem to agree with anymore.
‘Liberal’ has an actual definition with a history.
The word “awful” has an actual definition with a history too. That history starts with it meaning “full of awe”
https://www.etymonline.com/word/awfulWord usage and definitions change over time. If you know people use a word differently then you need to at least explain the definition you are using or you’re just going to confuse or alienate people who understand the word differently.
I’ll happily state my case for whatever usage I’m adopting, and ask for clarification when I suspect someone is operating on a different one, but I don’t see any case to be made for the vague american label when discussing anything beyond american electoral politics - for the same reason i’m happy to jab at the usage in the same context, because it’s the assumption of neutrality it asserts that I take issue with and am calling attention to.
I’m honestly kind of confused about american liberals digging their heals in on this definition when it has historically been taken to mean something they don’t seem to agree with anymore.
Because regardless of history or whatever, the definition were giving you is how the 300 million Americans who actually use the term define liberal. Doesn’t matter what you or I think, if we want to have effective communication we need to use words as they are used. I really don’t feel like dying on that particular hill.
I made my stand with “literally”, I’m not wasting effort on holding fast to a Eurocentric definition of liberal.
Doesn’t matter what you or I think, if we want to have effective communication we need to use words as they are used.
I don’t actually disagree with you, I just find it frustrating trying to use a more precise meaning to make a point and being met with resistance. I think a part of the problem is that leftists are trying to point at a distinction that exists within the overbroad american-liberal label that separates leftism proper and center-right democratic institutions, and i feel as if some centrists don’t enjoy the discomfort of being singled out from the more progressive side of the caucus. I could be wrong, and I don’t really care if I am, but I think it’s important to acknowledge the tensions and to try not to erase the diversity of ideology that exists within the ‘liberal party’.
I think Leftists are trying to play up those tensions more than they truly exist, and some of the smarter ones are specifically exploiting the difference in terminology to do so. “Liberals”, in the US, are actually quite left wing (outside of the “anyone right of Lenin is literally Hitler” lemmy bubble). But by associating US liberals with European economic liberals, it muddies the water and allows for a ton of motte-and-bailey style arguments.
It’s extremely frustrating hearing this repeated so often here.
It’s fine if this is the colloquial definition you’re used to hearing and using, but this is certainly not the way it’s used outside of American politics and pretending like it’s the only use comes off as both ill-informed and condescending.
When used derisively from the left, rest assured it is not referring to either of your adopted generalizations but a very specific ideology.
pretending like it’s the only use comes off as both ill-informed and condescending.
That works both ways. Pretending the European usage of the word is the only use comes off just as ill-informed and condescending.
The people who are using liberal derisively are playing off the american liberal self-identity. They’re acknowledging both definitions in the jab.
ok, so among English speaking countries, how is it more often used? we’ve got multiple people in this thread aggressively telling him he’s wrong, but no other definitions.
how is it more often used?
Look up liberalism for liberals.
I wasn’t aware Americans made up their own meaning. Now I understand why upvoted comments mentioning “liberal values” receive a flurry of downvotes while I’m asleep, Americans have lost the meaning of another word, probably due to their media.
Though, just checking, the American dictionaries seem entirely correct still. Are you all confused?
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/liberal
liberal 1
[ lib-er-uhl, lib-ruhl ]
Phonetic (Standard) IPA adjective
- favorable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs. Synonyms: progressive
Antonyms: reactionary
- (often initial capital letter) noting or pertaining to a political party advocating measures of progressive political reform. of, pertaining to, based on, or advocating liberalism, especially the freedom of the individual and governmental guarantees of individual rights and liberties.
Open-minded, permissive, tolerant
Look rather than dunk on you, I’m going to recommend Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast, because it gives a fair overview of what the liberal revolutions were about, why socialism grew out of that moment, and how there came to be this irreconciliable beef between liberalism and socialism. The whole thing is great, but 1848 is the real crisis point if all you care about is the schism.
For a more succinct answer:
It’s obviously tongue-in-cheek, but it gets the point across lol
A liberal believes capitalism is broken and needs to be fixed.
A socialist believes capitalism is working as intended and needs to be destroyed.
What’s someone who believes capitalism is broken and needs to be destroyed?
Someone who doesn’t have conspiracy-brain. The people that say capitalism is working as intended seem to live by the inverse razor of “never attribute to collective stupidity of the implementors what can be attributed to deliberate malice by illuminati-like mechanisms.”
Leftism is just secular religion.
Zoomer
OK, but that’s not what the word liberal actually means to most people in my experience. Or perhaps another way of saying it is that a lot of people I see getting angry on Lemmy read the word “liberal” and assume economically liberal, whereas every person I’ve ever encountered IRL would use it to mean socially liberal.
That’s because the socially liberal definition is almost exclusively American, and lemmy has a large number of EXTREMELY Eurocentric users. Almost like a weird mirror world of the typical “everything is assumed to be American until proved otherwise” in most social media.
According to lemmy, there’s the American definition, and then there’s the correct definition. And they’re not being tongue in cheek about it, they’re serious.
The very idea that a liberal can’t be socialist and a socialist can’t be liberal is nonsensical. They are orthogonal concepts.
The division between liberals and socialists is plainly promoted in order to divide people.
Liberalism supports Capitalism, Socialism supports Socialism. They are incompatible.
That’s ridiculous. Liberal socialist societies have been and still are the best to live in.
No such thing.
In the US political media ‘Liberal’ is deliberately used to reference the policies of the Democratic Party, which is demonstrably Neoliberal. This confusion is working as intended.
Thanks Rush Limbaugh and all the hellspawn you’ve enabled.
This confusion is working as intended.
And is exploited by tankies/fascists. By making “liberal” an insult from both the right and the left, using different definitions, they solidify in the mind if low information voters that Democrats are bad. Republicans, by being left out of this insulting, sound better by comparison.
It means you support capitalism, hence why “liberalization of the economy” means selling off public utilities, land, housing, and resources.
That seems like one very specific definition specifically for economically-neo-liberal, only mentioned below all the actual definitions
My parents used to called corned beef stew “Pig soup” so my brother and i would eat it. That doesn’t mean it was pork in there.
300 million Americans call corned beef “pig stew” and it’s in the dictionary. Welcome to living languages. Corned beef is now pig stew.
You cannot be open minded, tolerant and support human rights and freedoms while opposing capitalism. If you oppose capitalism - you’re pretty much an authoritarian shill.
Care to elaborate? Why is wanting to democratize production more authoritarian than wanting many competing dictators?
Because capitalism is what allows to democratize production.
Definitionally, it cannot. Capitalism is individual ownership, Socialism is collective ownership. By definition, workers in Capitalism have no real say.
Capitalism is individual ownership, That’s the key! It gives you all the rights and freedoms to create your own business and lead it the way YOU see fit. By definition, Capitalism doesn’t have workers or other classes, everyone is equal. Socialism is an authoritarian ideology, which puts the needs of a social construct (a virtual entity, if you prefer) over the needs, rights and freedoms of an individual. One must be very delusional to support authoritarian socialist ideas in any way, shape or form.
Don’t know why you’re being downvoted.
Liberal literally means free. As in “If it doesn’t harm me, you’re allowed to do it”. So yes, openminded, permissive, tolerant.
Don’t know why a lot of the US-Americans had to twist the meaning of it.
Because in politics, liberal means something else entirely. It’s an ideology defined by support for capitalism.
In Americans politics, and you guys are completely bonkers.
It’s actually specifically not true in American politics.
Liberal in America = left wing, favors greater regulation of markets
That’s absolutely not what it means
In the very closest definition, liberal means “if there isn’t a law against it, you’re allowed to do it”
liberal more broadly is just as simple: “if it doesn’t hurt me, you’re free to do it”
I mean, what do you think a “liberal democracy” is? The majority of Europe is made up of liberal democracies while also being social-democratic. France is a liberal democracy despite being heavily unionized and having huge welfare. How does that work?
It works because that’s not what liberal means.
Socially-Liberal, for example, is when you are liberal (freedom-loving / diversity-loving) in social aspects. You support gay marriages, you support freedom of religion, you support cultural diversity. Other Examples include religiously-liberal, culturally-liberal, or even politically liberal (you support the right to different political opinions than yours)
What comes closest to what you think it is is economically-liberal. Which essentially says that “as long as it doesn’t hurt me, you’re free to do what you want economically”. But even that isn’t what you mean. Is Pollution and accelerating Climate change harming me and therefore not protected under liberalism? yes, says the absolute majority of liberals.
Is lobbying harming me by making my Voice less weighted? Yes, say a lot of us.
So not even economically-liberal is a good term to describe what you mean.
I don’t know, what a good term for it is. But it isn’t Liberal. So please, for the love of god, stop misusing it. Words have meaning. Invent a new one if you have to, they all began that way anyways.
The problem here is that in the US it means a very specific thing, while in Europe it means another specific thing. I think it gets mentioned every other time when this holywar reappears in comments
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_in_Europe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United_States
Which would be fine except the fucking Europeans keep insisting the American definition is WRONG and refuse to use it, making communication very difficult.
In European politics.
American liberals do not support free markets. They’re advocates of greater regulation amd stronger unions.
yes, they do. Both* US political parties are neoliberal parties. Regulation of markets is still a free market. Unions do not inherently oppose free markets either.
* must go back at least 10 years for this to be true for Republicans
Stop prevaricating.
More regulation = less free markets. It’s a spectrum, not a light switch. Dems want more restricted markets. Repubs want more free markets.
It sounds to me like you don’t know what a market economy is.
Nice
Lmao check out all the salty libs seeing themselves get called out in these comments.
- sincerely, an anarcho-syndicalist
Pretty much. “Lol why don’t you like libs?”
…cause we don’t like things the way they are, and the only goal of the libs appears to be prevent any sort of progress. Maybe we are allowed relief from existing problems, but fuck you if you wanna fix em!
the only goal of the libs appears to be prevent any sort of progress.
“Liberal” in America is literally synonymous with “progressive”. The entire point of the party is progress.
@[email protected] here’s another one
“Liberal” in America is literally synonymous with “progressive”. The entire point of the party is progress.
What are you even talking about? There are numerous Democrat politicians who don’t label themselves as progressive.
I didn’t say “Democrat” at all in my comment.
All progressives are Democrats, not all Democrats are progressives. The Democratic party is a coalition.
Does that mean there are Democrats who aren’t liberal?
Yeah. Bernie Sanders himself is not a Democrat, but most of his supporters are Democrats who are socialist, not liberal.
Then you’ve got your Joe Manchin types, who basically agree with Republicans but don’t like the racism etc. Blue Dogs.
Then you’ve got the split between “progressives” and “centrists”. Biden being more of a centrist, AOC being more of a progressive. “Liberal” means different things to different people, but most Democrats would say progressives are liberals while centrists aren’t.
Lol which party is pushing for progress?
The one throwing kids in jail for protesting genocide?
The one funnelling money to Israel hand over foot?
The one that let Republicans stack the judiciary while crying that it was “unfair” but not actually working to stop it?
Fuck the D’s bunch of cowards.
Yes.
Fuck the GOP. They’re doing everything you criticise the Dems for, except worse. That’s what “progress” means. Not that everything is instantly perfect. That it’s less bad.
That is absolutely NOT what progress means, you fucking dipshit.
prog·ress noun /ˈpräɡrəs/
forward or onward movement toward a destination. "the darkness did not stop my progress"Moving slightly slower on enshittofication than the other guys does not meet that definition.
Improvement, actual improvement, is what is required by progress.
I’m not asking for everything to instantly be better. I’m demanding that things stop slowly getting worse.
It’s getting less bad over time too, dumbass.
No, the entire point of liberalism is continued private property rights.
*Economic liberalism.
Liberalism.
Ah, so you’re not just unaware that the different terms cause confusion
You are maliciously spreading that confusion
My fault for giving you the benefit of the doubt, I don’t normally do that.
Nah, you just lie ✌️
“Authoritarian” would require that we, you know, have some authority. Which we don’t.
Neolibs do. And they just used it to arrest a bunch of students and people protesting against a genocide.
You all project so fucking hard it’s ridiculous.
“Authoritarian” would require that we, you know, have some authority.
No, it would require you to support the idea that there should be some central authority telling people what they should be doing. Which you do.
Lol okay bud. Then tell me how you justify 44 Democrat senators, 36 Republican senators and Joe Biden working together to block the rail strike? I can’t wait to observe your abilities as a mental contortionist.
I don’t. That’s precisely why I’m against authoritarianism.
Ok. Well I was against that too so maybe we agree on more than I assumed.
I will not stand for this anarchist erasure
It’s more that OP seems unable to fathom anyone to the left of them being both rational and uncool with liberalism. That’s why they specifically said “Authouritarian Communists,” the SpOoKiEsT LeFtIsTs.
Would him putting on the Darth Vader armor be an analogue to many “toxic” leftists using doxxing sites dominated by the far-right to try and ruin the lives of people that aren’t 100% into Stalin?
putting on the Darth Vader armor
doxxing sites dominated by the far-right
Yes. Becoming an unkillable cyborg space wizard and outting someone paying for a message board full of Nazi copypasta are the same.
I am the only true leftist. The rest of you are posers and/or feds.
look, tankies aren’t leftists, they are fascists wearing the skin of the lefties they killed
Fascism isn’t just authoritarianism. It is a certain set of conditions that can essentially be boiled down to as “colonial violence against the imperial core” but it is incredibly more complicated than that.
Words have meaning, and you should look up those meanings before you start just throwing them around.
Words DO have meaning, and you just butchered so many of them it’s not even funny.
fundamentally, fascism is the belief that social hierarchies are not only natural but preferable to any other social system that attempts to disrupt said natural order, all other aspects of fascism stem from this one line of understanding
Social hierarchies are always going to be present, even anarchists believe that. Fascism just assumes that they are natural and inherent, while leftists beleive that those hierarchies should be voluntary or chosen by the people.
Just becauae you haven’t done any political reading doesn’t mean i don’t know what words read.
the entire idea of the progressive moment is to abolish these hierarchies, then again the American “leftist” understanding is so fucked at this point that I can see you believing this, as most “communists” in the states are tankies, that would also explain the horrible misunderstanding of fascism along imperial lines, because you literally don’t have any other larger critical lens in the states, as most of you aren’t upset about the existence of hierarchies, but just have the feeling that you are not in your deserved spot of said hierarchy
Fascism has nothing to do with colonial vs imperial, wtf
Can’t have fascism without a strong national identity and an activist military.
Which again is an entirely separate thing from colonialism. The two may go together but they’re not necessarily linked in any way.
Which colonial power lacks a politically influential profit-seeking military?
The political spectrum is not linear, but circular and fascism and communism sit on the join but with different lie.
Coming from a country that experienced both several times in the past century, I hope the real people tankies would just shut up and move to Russia to learn a life lesson.
nope, the Marx Leninist idea of a vanguard party doesn’t even purport to be communism, rather the idea that you must go through a phase of state capitalism to grow the nation’s capital after a revolution (revolutions tend to destroy capital) before you can enact communism, it’s just that during the age of ML Fascism was the popular new political ideology, and Lenin did heavily base the idea of the vanguard party on a lot of the same basic understanding as the fascists did.
and of course the fascists did what they do and killed the lefties
tankies aren’t leftists
Counterpoint:
Tell me you don’t hang out with anarchists without telling me…
don’t anarchists call themselves libertarians?
No, they call themselves Libertaire. Libertaire was adopted by french anarchists at the end of the 19th century when anarchist publications were banned from France. Sadly, as Americans do, the word was misused and transformed by Milton Friedman, on the behalf of oil companies, and later that failed actor named Ayn Rand, to described unabashed, unregulated, capitalism and corporatism.
No anarchist worth it’s salt would ever use the word libertarian instead of Libertaire.
Brian: Excuse me. Are you the Judean People’s Front?
Reg: F*** off! We’re the People’s Front of Judea
Yeah I don’t think you know anything about anarchism as political theory if you think it has anything to do with corporatism and capitalism. I’d suggest you pickup some theory and brush up on working class history.
What American political education does to a MF…
You replied to the wrong comment
I don’t think so, maybe I misread the point you were making, but again I doubt it.
I was just making a funny reference dude
Who doesn’t hate those dang rightwingers, The Liberals?
to be fair, the word “liberal” has lost its meaning in the US, because there no differentiation between economic liberalism and social liberalism. the guy in the meme would be a classic socialist in europe. we do have liberals here too, but they are the economic liberalism-type and more in line with the US-Republicans in economic questions, like tax cuts for the rich and businesses.
It’s as meaningless as any words that hang on the notion that there’s a “spectrum”.
You either you accept what works and fosters human well being and liberty, adjusting your politics accordingly to reality as we learn more about the world, or you’re conservative, a fundementally irrational denial of reality.
This is why seemingly different groups like Marxists and neo-nazis end up at the same place ultimately; they’re unwilling to give up on failed ideas. It doesn’t matter what label one applies, if you’re still trying failed ideas after they’ve produced untold amounts of harm then you’re just on one road to fascism or another.
It’s a binary, not a spectrum.
Lol thats great, i came under a “biden bad”-post just a few hours ago to the same conclusion. the best friend of a left-authoritarian isn’t anyone on the left wing, its an right-authoritarian.
i’m a socialist with anarchism as an ideal in some aspects, and for quite a while i couldn’t understand why anyone on the left side of the spectrum would actively lobby against biden in the upcoming election until i realized that.
Biden literally supports genocide, so it is reasonable for people to not want to support him even if it comes at a cost to themselves. If you’re unable to understand that, even if you disagree, I very much doubt you are aligned with the kind of goals you purport.
You clearly don’t understand that America as an institution has supported genocide your entire life and longer, it’s just more in your face right now than it’s ever been, Biden may support genocide but so did Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Ike, Truman, FDR, Hoover, and on back. This isn’t new shit and yes we desperately need better, but the genocide of the people you are arguing for will continue either way, but it will be faster with Trump. If you feel this strongly about stoping the US support of genocide regardless of who is president, I suggest you look into direct action, if you don’t have the backbone for that shut the fuck up.
Your vote isn’t a declaration of loyalty, love, support, or condoning. It never has been in this country, what it is is a small expression of which of the two directions presented to you is preferable. In this iteration we are presented with the maintenance of the status quo, which is fucking so stupid and I in every other circumstance would fight tooth and nail against it, but the other option is authoritarian christofascism which will culminate in at the very minimum of a constitutional crisis when blue states refuse to enforce the Gilead bullshit while thousands are murdered in red states. You want to stop genocide in Gaza? Me too, it’s gonna be hard to do that when there’s a cleansing happening in the US.
It’s a fucked up system, I hate it too, but again the only other option than these two ancient assholes is direct action and that has a lot of other consequences even if they are worth it in the long run
So I’m going to just tell you this; what you’re doing above is not convincing anyone.
Given that factual reality, you then have to ask yourself, as someone who probably likes to believe that you’re pragmatic and worldly; if your strategy for convincing millions of voters to support Democrats inspite of their increasingly fascist, right-wing tendencies is not working, what are your other practical options for actually helping Biden win.
And remember, this might involve changing your politics, or getting off the fence and actually doing something etc.
In any case, it’s a rhetorical question, since I’ll be blocking you. Think about it though, think about 2016 and how badly your political strategy failed this country then. Consider changing.
Leftists literally threatening the country with a fascist takeover if Dems don’t bow to their impossible demands.
We’re not trying to win your vote. We’re trying to stop you from infecting more undecideds. You people are rotten and need to be cut out of the process before you kill us all.
There’s a huge differentiation between social and economic liberalism! Liberals in the US means almost exclusively social liberalism. Liberal in the us is progressivism.
Economic liberalism is a Republican position, not a Democrat one.
@[email protected] I promise this is the last one, I’ve made my point
You’ve made it clear that you believe words do not have meanings, and are just vibes, yes.
300 million people having the same vibe
9 billion having the same vibe as me.
Multiple definitions of words can exist. When 300 million people agree on a definition, that’s a valid definition.
Also, the RIDICULOUS ARROGANCE of Europeans never fails to astound me. 9 billion people? You really do think you represent the whole world lol. News flash, the colonial era is over, you lost your empires. Just stop, you’re embarrassing yourself.
I’m not a European, lol. The entire world and the entirety of academia understands Liberalism the way most people on Lwmmy use it, ie to refer to a pro-Capitalist ideology.
Op, are you in the US?
In the US, the choices for voting are Republican and Democrat.
Which of these parties is “liberal?”
The argument being made when non conservatives dislike liberals is when the liberals in question align with the Ds, because the Ds have every interest in pushing vaguely progressive policies during elections and never actually follow through in office.
Remember student loans? Still out there Remember universal healthcare? Still gotta pay for insurance Remember tax reform? Still paying higher rates than people who can’t conceivably spend all of their money.
The primary goal of the Dems when in power is to maintain power. Fuck those guys. Not quite as hard as Republicans, but it stands.
Signed, Not a fucking tankie
The democrats are the liberal party. They support abortion, religious freedom, police reform, civil rights (sometimes), drug decriminalization, etc.
That being said, they are trying to encapsulate and entire half of the political spectrum. There’s going to be gaps, disagreements between individual party members, and places where one policy or value has to override another.
Nah, your first statement is close, but you miss by a bit:
“The democrats are the liberal party. They [pretend to] support abortion (when trying to get elected), religious freedom (when trying to get elected), police reform (when trying to get elected), civil rights (when trying to get elected), drug decriminalization (when trying to get elected), etc.”
When not trying to get elected they don’t actually DO anything.
Drug decriminalization was a big deal in the 70’s and we are maybe just now kinda getting around to it.
I didn’t even call out the shit behavior on civil rights, you did that.
They seem a-ok with police fucking with college kids right now.
They’ve had 50 years since roe v wade to guarantee the right to abortion, and they didn’t.
What DID they do?
Helped give money to people who are already rich through tax breaks. Helped give money to people who are already rich through deregulation they allowed through. Helped give money to people who are already rich through defense contracts. Helped give money to people who are already rich by overthrowing foreign governments with control over resources out oil barrons want.
Id call those “gaps”, yeah.
Literally everything Democrats do is bad, especially the good things they do.
Got it.
Definitely not sounding like fash talking points at all.
When choice 1 is kill me slowly (maybe suggest slowing down oil emissions but not actually enforce it), and choice 2 is kill me quickly (lets sell Alaska to Exxon), what is the correct choice?
I would honestly prefer choice 3 which is stop fucking trying to kill me.
Should I commend the D team for not being quite as bad as R? Jesus man, I just want to have options that aren’t two different versions of wrong.
Seriously, how do you not understand that this is an ENGINEERED false dichotomy?
Additionally, everyone is coming at me going “the liberal party is progressiveby definition” and yet no one gives any examples of ACTUAL progress o. The D platform that ever a tualky gets acted upon. So far I’m the only person here who’s even. Rought up the ACA, and I do grant that it is mild progress, for the US, not for anywhere else in the developed world.
Choice 3 is just choice 2 with a fake mustache.
Should I commend the D team for not being quite as bad as R?
Yes.
Jesus man, I just want to have options that aren’t two different versions of wrong.
Sucks, welcome to being an adult.
and yet no one gives any examples of ACTUAL progress
It’s pointless because every time we do you just throw out a red herring. Or start screaming that doing something to fix the problem is somehow worse than making the problem worse. Or you just go quiet.
Let’s try. Biden has forgiven $153 billion in student loans that would not be forgiven under the GOP. That is progress.
Commence with the mental gymnastics.
Debt forgiveness is a decent step… Again unless educating your populace is as high a priority as it should be, in which case higher education would be freely available to any who wanted it. That’s not a moving goalpost, that’s simply how it always should have been.
Under that, there simply is no student debt. Also, worth noting that debt forgiveness doesn’t actually fix the problem, it just gets people to shut up and go away, so yes I am still screaming for good and free public education for the public good.
There it is. No progress is good enough. Ever.
Fuck you and your “biden bad” propaganda.
Democrats tried to fix all those things but were blocked by Republicans in Congress and on the Supreme Court. And that is Democrats fault somehow? Give us more numbers, we’ll get you more results.
I vote D because I have no other valid choice. When Obama was in the president seat, he had both houses of congress and only managed to get the aca. Don’t get me wrong, telling insurance they have to cover preexisting conditions is a good thing, but only by the standard that we are required to use insurance anyways. We need single payer.
Don’t misquote me. I don’t think D and R are the same thing. I know that I suffer less under D leadership than R, however, things only actually ever seem to move further right. For example, why are we throwing college kids in jail for stating the obvious: that supporting the massacre of civilians is heinous? I think that D and R are playing the same game, Power, and the little people who aren’t rich are the ones paying their dues.
I don’t think D and R are the same thing.
BUT
I think that D and R are playing the same game
Suuuuure.
For example, why are we throwing college kids in jail for stating the obvious
That’s not moving right. The US has always done this. You’re just too young and/or uninformed to know about the countless time this has happened throughout history.
I like how the fact that “this has happened before” is somehow a valid excuse for it to happen now. Dismiss me if you like but you still aren’t offering any actual rebuttal.
Since the 80s, and Reagan bot major parties have facilitated the transfer of wealth away from the middle class and to the rich specifically.
I don’t need to call that out because it’s been there for everyone to see for 40 fucking years. What the actual fuck are you on about.
That’s not moving right.
Rebuttal above.
