Do any of them know what the word “liberal” actually means?

  • Andrzej@lemmy.myserv.one
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    2 months ago

    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.

    • FozzyOsbourne@lemm.eeOP
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      2 months ago

      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.

      • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        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.

        • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          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.

      • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        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.

      • dudinax@programming.dev
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        2 months ago

        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.

      • Glytch@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        A liberal believes capitalism is broken and needs to be fixed.

        A socialist believes capitalism is working as intended and needs to be destroyed.

        • db2@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          What’s someone who believes capitalism is broken and needs to be destroyed?

          • mhague@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            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.”