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[+] 88 points 1 year ago (32 children)
  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    I would just like to state that most Americans have no idea what the difference between a liberal and leftist is. When you say you're a liberal, they think you're a leftist. When you say you're a leftist, they think you're a leftist. The conflation will always be there, given the history of the US and decades of the usage of the conflation in everyday American language.

    Edit Addendum: it doesn't help that liberals/democratic establishment are somewhat more """"""""""left"""""""""" of the conservatives/Republicans, which is why liberals are grouped with the "left" in the US. It also doesn't help that the "left", who would be more accurately known as that grouping of socialists, communists, anarchists, and every other small or large anti-capitalist and or progressive political identity group, just call themselves "the left" or "leftist", playing into the idea that one's politics can be quickly understood by pointing to the linear spectrum of "right" and "left", as if these broad and false dichotomies fit reality to a tee or some shit.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (11 children)
  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    .ml user detected, opinion disregarded

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Blinding yourself to the opinions of those who disagree with you is a great way to learn and grow 👍

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    You don’t have to have a party for an ideology to exist.

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  • [+] -7 points 1 year ago (14 children)

    Left is Progressive. DNC create progress everytime we put them in, even without having more than 50 senate seats in over a decade. DNC are your dudes.

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  • [+] 12 points 1 year ago (13 children)
  • [+] -11 points 1 year ago (12 children)

    Bernie lost because millions more people voted for the other candidates in 2016. The fact that he was even allowed to run on the DNC ticket despite his third party status is truly the opposite of fucking.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

    We already discussed this in another thread. The 2020 race was decided by Obama/DNC forcing multiple candidates to drop out. After Super Tuesday the chances were slim for Bernie to have any chance at winning and there was no point in voters coming out for the remaining primaries.

    Stop spreading bullshit.

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  • [+] 2 points 1 year ago (6 children)
  • [–] -4 points 1 year ago* (5 children)

    If that were true they could be reaping the benefits of supporting the Trump Admin directly, like Walczak and Tim Cook have.

    The fact of the matter is that the billionaires aren't a united front, either, because some of them are smart enough to realize their fortunes mean jack fucking shit in the face of a dictator who can take whatever he wants.

    If we had enough DNC to impeach then he would be impeached, if we had enough to remove then he would be removed. We're in this situation to begin with because the GOP have all three chambers and the SCOTUS. None of this shit would be happening otherwise.

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  • [+] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)
  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    And yet somehow none of this happened under the DNC? You make zero sense.

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Man, how fucking right wing do you need to be to consider liberalism to be left wing?

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  • [+] 28 points 1 year ago (4 children)
  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Liberals are the fascists in their baby form. Once the conditions of the capitalist state deteriorate they transform into fascists quite fast.

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    If they’re talking about Liberals in the centre-right sense, just because they don’t openly hate minorities while they still do a bunch of conservative shit and get in the way of real progress, they’re not 100% wrong.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    I wish these memes came with a political compass clarification of what these terms exactly mean for the author.

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  • [–] 44 points 1 year ago (25 children)

    This is all bullshit.

    Who fucking cares about these definitions? All y'all have the same damn enemy. Worry about the enemy first. Iron out disagreements over terminology once the fascists are gone.

    It's so weird that people spend so much time debating this pointless garbage.

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  • [–] [S] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    Oh, the problem is much deeper than definitions. One group is socially progressive but economically right. Then, the other group is both progressive on social and economic issues. The economic policies is where the rift is.

    Edit: wording

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    And the economic right have had all the power for the last god knows how many election cycles... They've been chasing the unicorn moderate that would somehow vote Democrat, which doesn't exist, but in doing so they lose the "left" vote.

    Those "centrists" and "moderates" are conservatives that are disgusted by the GOP, but would never vote for Democrats because they don't agree with their policies. They have no party but the economic right liberals keep trying to attract them... Hopefully now with the change in DNC leadership they'll stop this losing game and actually be what their voters want them to be.

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  • [–] [S] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    The "unicorn moderate" used to exist, and they grew from post-war up to the early 2000s. They were called the middle class. Back then when the middle class was much more prominent and bigger, they could still afford both private healthcare and keep up with the cost of living. One of the key litmus test of being "moderate" is the survey on affordable healthcare. In early 00s, socialised healthcare was deeply unpopular. However, it was from during and after the Great Recession of 2008 that the middle class shrunk and recognised that people need more public assistance. Affordable healthcare became increasingly more popular as time went on.

    Rent have also become almost unaffordable since the recession. Ever since then, many proposals and plans to create affordable housing were made but have been blocked not just by corporations, but also by individual homeowners who don't want their house prices to go down. And one of the hard to swallow pills is that many of them are liberals. One could easily search online of affordable housing being voted down in California and New York, states that are liberal strongholds.

    There is a reason why Zohran Mamdani's New York mayoral campaign is more widely successful than other Democratic candidates. He is addressing the growing cost of living by wanting to cap rent prices and providing government run grocery stores, which made him popular among the poor. Because the middle class shrunk and people had been shoved into fringes of poverty. The "moderate" voters that the Democrats are chasing is no longer there. At this day and age, "moderate" for centrists and neoliberals means the wealthy, while pretending that the word means the middle class voters from 2000s.

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  • [+] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Right? Do you want to get way more in terms of life quality? Then you are opposed to the hyper capitalist government. Do you want to get more money or do you want to give it to the oligarchs. It's not polarized anywhere

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago* (17 children)

    The problem is we don't have the same enemies, there are people who claim to be left but oppose Liberals, such as Tankies. Tankies aren't the enemy of the GOP, they want the GOP to win over progressives like the DNC. They use words like "capitalism" to describe everything wrong with the USA because that way they can exclude the eastern dictatorships like Russia and China from the same criticisms.

    Shit posts like the one above are the result of psyop campaigns.

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  • [+] 4 points 1 year ago (12 children)
  • [–] -5 points 1 year ago* (11 children)

    Liberal means advocate of human rights, bare definition. If there is at all an ownership class then liberalism is not being administrated. And I assure you, the word "Capitalism" on Lemmy is used the vast majority of the time as a dogwhistle for "Western Nation".

    In what way does exchanging money for goods cause outlawing gay marriage or banning books? In what way does it cause not taxing the rich? Makes no goddamn sense. Authoritarianism and Conservatives cause those things.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    Liberal means advocate of human rights

    Not unless you're creating your own personal definition. At best, liberalism means advocating for individual rights, and where you or I might disagree with the application of that idea is where individual rights are in tension with communal or collective rights more broadly

    In what way does exchanging money for goods cause outlawing gay marriage or banning books?

    Markets are not the same as capitalism. It's a description of a system that enshrines abstract ownership over systems of production. If you dont take issue with the coercive mechanisms within capital relations, then im not really sure where to put you 'on the left'.

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    Mandated, unconditional individual rights ARE collective rights and also human rights.

    You also appear to no know the definition of Capitalism because if Capitalism is not a regulated Market System then the USA is also not a capitalism. Not surprising since you people use it as a dog whistle to mean "western nation" that you lack understanding of what it actually means.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    Mandated, unconditional individual rights ARE collective rights and also human rights

    Not when those rights are in conflict with another individual's. The classic example is the individual right to private property, but there are many others. American liberals do recognize these limits and contradictions, but accept as granted the right to private property. It's the center tenet of leftist critique, so it makes a lot of sense why there's a lot of cynicism about liberals claiming to occupy the same space. Sure, they have some overlap, but the main contention is left unaddressed by American liberals and so leave themselves open to derision.

    if Capitalism is not a regulated Market System then the USA is also not a capitalism

    It's a type of regulated market system, but it's defined by its mode of production being capitalist in nature. Socialist and communist systems still employ regulated markets, but collectivize ownership over productive capital instead. Abolishing capitalism isn't a way of saying we should abolish markets, but to remove capital as the mode of production

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

    If rights to one person contradict the rights of another, resulting in loss and harm then guess what? Individual rights aren't being mandated and upheld and that's not Liberalism.

    Socialist and communist systems still employ regulated markets, but collectivize ownership over productive capital instead.

    No, they don't, because that has never existed and will never if you keep bending over backwards to dictators.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (6 children)

    If rights to one person contradict the rights of another, resulting in loss and harm then guess what? Individual rights aren't being mandated and upheld and that's not Liberalism

    I dont think you're getting it, honestly. There are a ton of examples where liberalism exposes tensions between individual and collective rights, and most of them revolve around the right to property. Liberal democracies are constantly having to enforce new regulations because capital owners are constantly finding new ways to abuse their ownership of property in ways that harm others. You can say all you want that isn't 'true liberalism', but then what democracy would qualify then? What happens when the accumulation of wealth under liberal democracy leads to such a disparity of power that government can no longer function as a regulating body? hint, you're living it, bud

    No, they don't, because that has never existed

    Are you sure? There have been no examples of socialized systems of production?

    I think you're confusing socialist and communist states with socialist and communist systems.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Liberal democracies are constantly having to enforce new regulations because capital owners are constantly finding new ways to abuse their ownership of property in ways that harm others.

    I think you accidentally just said the antithesis to your entire argument by claiming liberals are protecting individual rights from those who would take advantage of them.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

    liberals are protecting individual rights

    Yes, they are protecting individual rights to property, and that's a huge issue.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    Personally I think a much bigger issue is that no rights are being protected and we're devolving into a white nationalist militaristic dictatorship which refuses to tax the rich.

    But keep wingeing about the horrors of copyright laws and small scale landlords.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    Nah, I can just see past the noise of nationalism to what systemic conditions gave rise to it. Thinking we can return to liberal democracy without seizing some portion of our means of production away from private ownership is nothing more than naivete.

    But keep winging about the horrors of socialism.

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Shit posts like the one above are the result of psyop campaigns.

    It is a jab at Americans who can't tell the difference between left and liberal and often conflate the two.

    And sure look, if liberal Democrats really want to win again, they have to deal with "kitchen table issues" as Mamdani puts it. And as I mentioned to one of the commenters, who are the ones who keep voting down affordable rent and housing, even in liberal states, because it will bring their house prices down? Mamdani forwarded a solution to that by capping rent prices and he won over people for that. That alone says why American left and liberals are actually different though mainly on economic issues.

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  • [–] -4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    CaPitAlIST LIbrUhLS CoNFLaTe HuMAn riGHTs wiTh ProGRESS HUURRGGH DURRRR Yeah I know your whole spiel

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Affordable housing, freedom from want and jobs are human rights.

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