American "left" and "liberal" can't decide if they're in the same nutshell.
American "left" and "liberal" can't decide if they're in the same nutshell.
242 comments
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Liberals don't know they're conservatives.
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There's lots of discussion below, but liberalism is the belief that enfranchisement and liberation comes from private property, which at one time was progressive in the face of feudalism. But since WW1, liberalism has not been a progressive movement as it has captured all of the private property in the world. Liberals are capitalists, leftists are not. Leftists (mostly) believe in class struggle, liberals (mostly) do not.
Leftists see the problems with private property and strive for social enfranchisement, even at the expense of private property rights, particularly where such "rights" are a function of one dominant class over the rest. To leftists, the social is material. Liberals mostly struggle to even conceive of this.
There are not clear bright lines, it is a messy spectrum of belief and politics, particularly in the US where we are so individualistic. For example I usually find it easier to work with so called progressive liberals than authoritarian leftists, although this can vary dramatically over a variety of political issues. Sometimes Authoritarian Leftists work best with Progressive liberals, and leave moderate, practical leftists out! So there is no simple formula, except to deal with the actual conditions and act on behalf of the whole working class, rather than a particular group or unique subset of interests, in the struggle against the ruling capitalist class. This looks different in different places to different people, progress and truth is borne out of actual class struggle.
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The party is conservative, their constituents are being lied to. They just need to realize that electoral politics will not save us. Hopefully they do this before it's too late.
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there are conservatives and there are maga conservatives.
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MAGA isn't even conservative. They are just a cult.
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Euros don't know liberal means different things in different places. I've only seen lemmy draw a huge distinction between left & liberal. I think it's the Euro influence.
In North America, they call leftists liberals & don't split hairs like Europe & Latin America.
In Europe and Latin America, liberalism means a moderate form of classical liberalism and includes both conservative liberalism (centre-right liberalism) and social liberalism (centre-left liberalism). In North America, liberalism almost exclusively refers to social liberalism.
People in the US get seriously confused that the Liberal party in other countries (eg, Australia) isn't liberal.
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Anyone in the US who has taken a poli sci or government class knows the difference between liberals and leftists. Yes, the US is widely uneducated, but those are distinct words and philosophies. Rec book The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order and you'll see why leftists don't want to be lumped with liberals.
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Remove the American part. The right has found a nice way to divide the left and they're using it everywhere. If you find yourself hating everyone, using vitriole toward people on your side, stop and reflect that you're the problem.
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That sounds convincing but, when establishment Democrats fight the left ten times harder than they fight the right, I don't think it's right wing propaganda dividing us.
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The right has found a nice way to divide the left and they're using it everywhere.
Someone mentioned it that the problem is that NIMBYs happened to also be liberals. What do you think of building affordable housing and raising the minimum wage? These two issues are happening across the world, and they happened since mainstream parties have been in charge for thirty years.
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It's not nimbys, it's corporations buying up all of the housing, building only "luxury" apartments and price fixing the fuck out of the rent. Then they spout "Trickle Down Housing" where the "luxury" apartments will be available in 30 years.
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I'm in favor of both. I live in one of the most expensive states in the US, and I'm actually doing okay, but I'm very much in favor of affordable housing. People who work need places to live.
And people should make a living wage. But I also think that shit is too expensive, and increasing wages doesn't help. We're seeing the middle class absolutely disappear. We need to eat rich people, but that goes without saying.
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Fuck outta here, liberals shit on the left as much as conservatives do.
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liberalsleftists shit on the leftFTFY
They're not that unified & don't set aside their differences to work toward a common goal.
Case in point: trying to divide left liberals from the left.
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Republicans are the Fascist Party, Democrats are the Conservative Party; Dem Soc are the moderate party. We don’t have a left party in the US.
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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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PSL exists belive it or not
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We can be friends until the fascists are out of the government, then we need a social democracy and a ban on far right parties amongst other things.
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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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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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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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Leftists feel powerless and most are too insecure to go out and actually debate in right-wing spaces, so all they have is bickering internally about other leftists and complaining about liberals to satisfy their need for intellectual debate and drama.
You simply can't have an argument with a conservative, so I get how frustrating it is. But guys, there are other ways you can make progress, but I'm sorry to say it still involves leaving behind your discord polycule.
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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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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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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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Is this what shitlibs tell themselves?
Any leftist will use words like capitalism to describe the issues because it’s fucking all pervasive. And China and Russia are also both capitalist despite whatever tankiefuck will tell you.
We don’t have the same enemies, because you ally with the ownership class and not your own.
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american believing they have a left, Center left is the extreme end of the left in america, theres no lefter than that. most of them are on center right.
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There is no far left political party but there are plenty of people who are far left. Yes, even by the European standards of the left.
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We have two viable political parties.
Fascist extremists and their enablers. Vote blue no matter who, so maybe the fascists won't come for you.
We have leftists with no one to vote for, shut out of politics by liberal NIMBYs who want good things to happen, they just don't want to see them. More concerned about the value of their house than the value of human life. We have extreme leftists, they're just not allowed to participate. And as of yet, none of them exist in enough numbers in the same place to start throwing Molotovs
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I'm sure there's an actual Left in the USA, but it's not covered by any of the big parties.
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Are you from one of the countries where the far right was just named most popular? If not, I'll throw a "yet" in, because you talk like someone who lets perfection get in the way of not sees.
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Truthfully, do you think voting for the less evil is a better course of action than directly addressing an issue? If the Rs say "deport all non-whites" and the Ds say "deport non-whites with records", do you really think we should vote for the lesser evil instead of stopping the racist deportations?
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Hey guys,
Remember when we found out Russia and China were manipulating us into fighting between left and right, and now they’re dividing the left into 2 camps that are supposed to hate each other?
Yeah.
Yeah.
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.ml leading the charge on this.
I see a lot of other really suspicious shit around Lemmy. I have a suspicion it's trying to be used like r/the_donald was.
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Yup. There's stuff that pings my radar as well.
However, the technical barrier to actually getting on Lemmy forces a minimum level of intelligence. I. E. the pool of useful idiots is way smaller than reddit. Most tankie wank gets called out.
Doesn't mean that we're not being used for training data. I'm also still percolating on what can be done by just posting slanted articles and stifling disent.
Lemmy is better but still totally susceptible to manipulation.
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If anything is being used to stir shit and divide and conquer it's all the noxious anti-communist liberals running around crying about tankies
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KGB handbook: play up the loudest voices on both sides of every social issue, make every tiny issue seem so overblown and saturated with lies and nonsense that average people stay out of it and stop trusting anyone involved.
This leaves people with no activism or outside opinion they can trust so they go along with whatever state media reports because what else is there.
This has worked wonders in other countries, it is working wonders in America. It is going to work in your country next, reader. What are you going to do about it?
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Lol. Yeah im sure that it's China and Russians who are causing leftist to not trust liberals. The last 300 years of human history in which liberals gleefully murdered leftists has nothing to do with it.
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The left has always been infighting. The two great memes of the left are walls of text and hating other leftists.
But liberals are not leftists. And we’ve disliked you for decades and globally.
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What're you talking about, the whole system is working fine. The far right isn't riding to popularity throughout Europe, and clearly hasn't taken hold in the US.
Listen, if you can't do everything I like, then you're a fascist. And I mean everything. I'd pluck an example out of the air, but there's no point, because someone else will. And yeah, it's probably a good example, but I'm willing to bet the farm on it.
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I'm not saying that this isn't happening, but at the same time it also seems to get heavily implied in threads like these that the solution is for leftists to just get onboard with two-party neoliberalist capitalism just for this next one election, just this once, we promise.
Calling on the Democratic Party to adopt left-wing policies keeps getting branded "divisive", but calling on Leftists to adopt the center-right is treated like an attempt at unification.
The people calling for party unity don't want any of the political aspects of a united Left, they just want to carry on the same policies they had before but with more people being scared into holding their noses and voting for them.
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It's just that lefties don't seem to want to or know how to build power. It feels very performative. If they actually cared about any of the issues they are so vocal about, I don't know, maybe they would do the groundwork to build a political framework. That's why I applaud people like Zohran or AOC. They are there, doing the work day in and out. But online lefties are just pouting and crying about liberals non stop
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Yeah I’m done arguing with Russian trolls tonight. Good luck in your future endeavors.
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The post is a jab about American folks who conflate the terms. I wasn't expecting people to take this as seriously as others have!
Although now that you mentioned it, I kinda sense that there could be something going on sometimes, especially on comments looking down on the working class supporting the Republicans, while refusing to acknowledge that they used to vote Democrats. Plenty of people worth their salt would tell anyone that it is because the working class felt abandoned after the outsourcing of jobs without offering alternatives. Unfortunately, a lot on the left, but more so on liberals, don't see this and keep calling the working class as dumb hicks. There are definitely folks who are too far gone and support fascists, but to caricaturise everyone in the demographic while a more plausible explanation is available seems tone deaf. It made me think that there could be an intentional wedge to create in-fighting for such deliberate nosing down.
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Where are you from that somehow this isn't affecting you. I just saw top posts on Lemmy about how Germany and France joined the UK in having far right parties reach the top of the polls. Please don't let me demean whatever country you're from if it's not those, but a world where Germany, France, the UK, join the already gone US in far right ideology is no bueno (to use a language that might suffer in the future). But go ahead and take your jabs, because time is running out.
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The left and liberals are one and the same in America.
Now I’m sure you’re going to go on some stupid fucking diatribe about how “aCkShuAllY they AREN’T”.
That’s just Russian fucking propaganda. You’re trying to bisect the left to create infighting in order to prop up fascist interests.
Begone, troll.
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Divide and conquer. If the left can't see that then they doom us all. Liberals want freedom and justice and that is NOT being represented by most democrats
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That's a very one-sided take. Yes, leftists can easily fall for the divide and conquer purity tests. To pretend that liberals don't fall for it as they have historically and are currently sabotaging popular & successful leftist candidates is ridiculous.
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If the left can’t see that then they doom us all.
Why is it the Left's responsibility to toe the Liberal line in the name of unity, but never vice versa?
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No,
I think we've decided this. The left (rightfully) hates the Democrats.
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Leftists hate democrats so much they helped vote in Trump instead of a very decent woman twice.
The only thing leftists hate more then democrats are other leftists.
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Two things:
Leftists did vote for Clinton. (You'll recall she got more votes.) That is despite the fact that she was a piece-of-shit candidate that we didn't want, and didn't win the primary.
Harris was just plain stupidity. You can't look poor people in the eye for three months and tell them you won't change anything and still claim to be decent, much less a legitimate presidential candidate.
Respectfully, you're being very unreasonable. You don't get to punch the voters in the face and then whine that you broke your hand.
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Leftists aren’t numerous enough to have had much an effect on the election.
But I will confirm your second statement.
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Any "left" that doesn't promote human rights can fuck right off back to the dictatorship it came from.
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How did you figure out I was a genie?
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Man, how fucking right wing do you need to be to consider liberalism to be left wing?
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American.
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Americans sometimes use the two words to mean the same thing. So in that context it's not as confusing but when they're speaking with non-Americans it can cause issues and clearer terminology would be nice
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Most European countries have an (actually) liberal party; the one in Germany used to have its place between social democrats and conservatives, but has moved way to the right in recent years.
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It was kinda done intentionally to muddy the terms to prevent people from thinking of alternatives to the status quo.
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That's because the definition of the word means promoter of human rights, meaning anybody using it otherwise are the ones misusing the word.
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That was a good episode!
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At this point, I just want the lesser of the two evils.
You know, like leftist vs a fucking lunatic fascist pedo rapist who is burning our country to the ground as if his addled slimy ass is going to take any of it with him when he finally cacks.
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Yes, we need things to get cleaned out of the Barney Horror Picutre Show, but if we give up ground about twice more, it'll just be full-on Right vs Right. The next person that goes in has to be left of Biden at the very least or no margins will be made. We couldn't even get we'll stop funding the atrocities in Gaza out of the "left" candidate last time.
Should it have been K? F yeah in comparison, but give us something to drag people out of the house to vote for.
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A big need is inspiring younger people to vote and get them to believe voting is important. That's an extremely tough battle and will only get harder the more establishment people the DNC puts up and the longer we're stuck with a FPTP system. Young people want to hear they'll be cared for just as much as older people. That they'll have safety nets despite not having worked for as long, that they can more easily afford to live a decent life without much sacrifices. They also want to know that their friends and family will be cared for. This means no taking a "state's rights" stance on people's freedoms and protecting those they know abroad, including those in the middle east.
This can also mean not playing nicely in politics to try and keep appearances. Trump is a dumbass, but a lot of young people liked him cause he went on the very vocal offensive and didn't hold back a single thought. He was comfortable and confident in saying any stupid thought that entered his head. Dems care too much about appearances for them to sink that low which is harming them in this new era of politics and social media.
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Do not split.
But what is happening in Hong Kong is they come up with a slogan, which is translated as Do Not Split, which is, we know that some people are willing to be confrontational with riot police.
And when they are, that’s going to cost the state in terms of not only resources, but it’s going to cost the state in terms of political capital and support. And we know that there are some people who are not willing to do that. And we are going to abide by the protocol of Do Not Split, which means that we’re not going to criticize them openly, and they’re not going to criticize us openly.
If we’re the pacifists, we’re not going to have them criticize us for being sort of like, I don’t know, limpid or flaccid or not courageous or whatever. And we’re not going to criticize them for being more confrontational. And the thing is that the support is also tacit.
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Yes please.
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Your quote contains exactly zero material applicable to the American left. The disagreement between leftists and liberals is a lot deeper than what tactic they prefer to reach the same goal, and liberals have repeatedly and incessantly attacked and sabotaged the left for their own ends. I mean hell, "and they're not going to criticize us openly"? Have you seen how liberals talk about the left?
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This reminds me of that meme (article?) someone posted a couple days ago about some dude who loves metal gives up trying to explain to his family that he's not goth, cuz it's easier to just lets his family ogle at his 'goth phase'.
So... same energy - whether or not "left" and "democrat" are synonymous depends entirely on the person I'm talking to... they either already know, or I don't have the energy to try to teach them.
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Agreed. But also, you can just ignore those terms entirely and focus on actual issues..
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100%
This is pointless identitarian bullshit that does nothing to stop the fascists currently in charge of the United States.
It all makes me a bit suspicious.
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That's sort of the point of my post. It's trying to poke fun on people not knowing the difference and depending on how the person define the terms. Instead, they called this post a "psyops" and I guess I also inadvertently caused another leftist/liberal (in-)fighting depending how you look at it.
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I wish these memes came with a political compass clarification of what these terms exactly mean for the author.
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It doesn't matter who you vote for.
Democrats rig their primaries.
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far right liberal capitalists or literally figurative nazis.
if you're on the wrong side of us 'foreign policy' both of these groups will exterminate you all the same.
the bipartisan consensus between them is that capitalist exploitation continues
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True, but maybe with small changes in the sociopolitical fabric of the US, eventually, in some decades, US foreign policy can change also. Western European powers are STILL up to no good in Africa and West Asia and they have been at it for hundreds of years... Small steps, right? 😔
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I get confused because the right and left both call each other the libs and as far as I can tell, US liberals don't really align to either liberalism or libertarianism, rather an acute section of them here and there for personal benefit.
The free market, for example, which both ideologies oppose as soon as it encroaches on other freedoms, becoming anti-liberal. But US libs will strip the liberties off anyone for a buck and an entirely unregulated free market will let them do that. Adam Smith covered so much of this stuff and I'm pretty sure US libs would say he's a commie.
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only tankies on lemmy call people here libs, and they are honestly no better than right wingers, both sides of the same coin.
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I hate liberals more than conservatives because at least with conservatives they don't go around pretending to be on my side while doing heinous shit. Conservatives just do the heinous shit without the pretense.
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I dont get it
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People here need reminding that every time the Dems lose, they go to the center to find voters. You can't play Mexican standoff by protest-no-voting (or 3rd party) because they have an out: the center voter. And the center voter actually shows up.
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Nobody is left enough for anyone on the left, and no allies are wanted. No wonder the right are your guys lunch, they’re united while you all attack each other
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What does this even mean?
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thats why the right wins most of the time, they are unified by hate, while having too many different concessions is means the party is in disarray.
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It's almost like left and right are bullshit labels, sort of like conservative obviously was to MAGA after Trump was voted in.
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I base my labels on the seating arrangements of the revolutionary French parliament from over 200 years ago. What's wrong with that?
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I think both sides of the National Assembly would have had you guillotined if you said they're a parliament.
PS: Guillotines didn't exist at that point so this is technically inaccurate.
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I feel like online lefties are all performative and have no genuine strategy for building power. So they resort to the usual purity testing and punching out at liberals non stop. Meanwhile, conservatives are literally ripping people off the streets and putting them in cages. But hey, did you know liberals are actually centrists?
It's like, my dude, learn to build political power first. Then you can move on to putting liberals in concentration camps like you've always been wanting to do. This here is just posturing
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I mean, it's a meme not a dissertation, but also breaking away from liberals is a precondition to building any kind of real power. As long as the left is only an appendage of the liberal establishment, it'll never appeal to the broader working class.
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I don't disagree with this sentiment. It's also hard to entertain these types of conversations online because I never know who I'm talking to. Am I interacting with a tankie, an anarchist, or even worst - lemmy's worst nightmare - a soc dem? Each will have a different position and mandate it's own type of discourse. But regardless of what your political alignment, you should want to build power.
If you're a tankie, you will completely eschew building coalitions with liberals. And there's nothing wrong with that! But then, I don't know, build an independent party and do something instead of bitching 24/7 about liberals.
If you're a soc dem, you could try to rebuild the democratic party from within. It's already undergone several waves of changes, so whose to say it couldn't happen again? AOC and Mamdani are trying. I support them.
If you're an anarchist, the same principle applies. You should want to build power. You don't have align all the time with liberals, but maybe you can form coalitions around policies that highlight the goals of anarchism in a way that makes the movement visible to the general public. You know, building power.
Posting memes 24/7 about liberals is like screaming into the void where all your friends are standing next to you and clapping. Like, ok? What's next?
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This seems to be changing. Liberals are waking up to the realities that leftists have been working against them the entire time.
All the problems mask on socialists pretend socialism solves are solved by a decent government in a liberal capitalist society.
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