Comment on For me, it's going to be Fediverse or nothing
wpb@lemmy.world 1 week agoIt’s not leftist infighting if one side isn’t leftist.
Comment on For me, it's going to be Fediverse or nothing
wpb@lemmy.world 1 week agoIt’s not leftist infighting if one side isn’t leftist.
Wanpieserino@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Liberals are socially leftist. LGBTQ stuff, women empowerment, environment stuff, pro universal healthcare, …
Personally I view american politics as right wingers compared to west Europe, but oh well.
They still are viewed as a hundred million people on this planet that vote for the left side of their country’s politicians.
It’s not that easy with USA. Bernie Sanders is likely the most left wing there. AOC likely the same.
Joe Biden was less left wing, but he still helped people out during the pandemic compared to what republican’s would have done.
Here in Belgium you have more choice. You can choose between anti immigration, regionalists, liberals, Christian centrists, environmentalists, social democrats and Marxists.
Broader choice. Here in Belgium the left wing is considered environmentalists, social democrats and Marxists.
While liberals, although socially left wing, are economically right wing. Basically the party for the small entrepreneurs. The other right wing party is more for the multinationals. While the anti immigration party actually is quite socialist economically, but the same old “own people first” shit. It just so happens that being a conservative in Belgium means being somewhat of a socialist economically.
wpb@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I think In all honesty that we have different notions of what the word leftist means, and I’m not super keen on a discussion on semantics. Personally, I attach a very specific fixed non-relative set of ideals and principles to the word “leftist” (an acknowledgement that capitalism is neither fair nor efficient, a focus on building a state for the proletariat, cooperation over imperialism, etc etc). From your comment I get the sense that you have a more relativist approach. Whether or not someone is a leftist depends (additionally) on the political context in which they operate. In this light, you call Biden, a staunch neoliberal capitalist, a (lesser) leftist in the same breath as calling Belgian Marxists leftists. I am in no position of telling you that you’re using words wrong any more than you are in the position of telling me I’m using words wrong.
But there are some things you mentioned that I do think are worth discussing, under the assumption that we would both label the mainstream part of the democratic party as liberals. Because they do not support the policies you would label as socially leftist. The last time universal health care was part of a mainstream candidate’s campaign was Obama’s first campaign (17 years ago), and what we ended up with was essentially a handout to insurance companies, a very far cry from UH. No major mainstream candidate since even mentions it.
Then there’s the support for LGBTQ rights. I would like to focus on the T part first. Not only was there no countermessaging from the democrats to Trump’s virulent anti-trans rhetoric; after the race was lost, the MSNBC talking heads and major democrat campaign strategists were on national television claiming that part of the reason Harris lost was that she wasn’t tough enough on trans people. The transgender support by democrats is skin deep, and ready to be dropped when it becomes politically inconvenient. If the transgender folks are that easy to drop, don’t doubt the other letters won’t drop either. To finish off this section I’ll leave you with a nice Biden quote from 2006: “marriage is between a man and a woman and states must respect that”
Another policy you mention is environmentalism. I won’t be verbose. Big part of Harris’ campaign was that she was more pro-fracking than Trump.
Next women’s rights. Four years of Biden, nothing done to fix Roe v Wade. All these words about supporting women’s rights and here we still are with 12 year olds carrying their rapist’s babies to term. Actually, we don’t even get words, there’s a nice website which kept track of whether the Biden admin used the term ‘abortion’ in a press release (they did, once, more than a year in).
I’m going to take some liberty into what else you might consider socially leftist positions, namely a pro-immigration stance, and an anti-war stance.
War first. You can go back to the Senate and congress voting records. Democrats consistently vote in favor of bombing the middle east. The Biden administration pumped billions into the Palestinian genocide. During the Harris campaign, Waltz said that the expansion of Israel was crucial to the success of America. During the recent Signal gaffe from the Trump administration where a group chat leaked where they were planning to bomb Yemeni schools and hospitals, democrats were outraged not by the fact that the US would be bombing civilians, but rather about the fact that it leaked.
Immigration next. The kids in cages at the border that we were all (rightly) upset about during the Trump admin? Not only did the Biden admin do nothing whatsoever about this, the number actually increased during his presidency. The messaging from the conservatives is simple: the immigrants come in, they’re criminals, they take our jobs, and we need to do something about this. This is of course false, if you look at the actual statistics, undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes per capita than citizens, and the addition of immigrants to the workforce (and to the market as consumers) is actually a boon to the economy. Did the Harris campaign do any countermessaging on this, citing the statistics, and looking at reality? No. A big part of her campaign is that her border policies would be tough, and that she was tough on crime.
I’ve taken the US as an example, but the same pattern applies in Europe, at least in the countries I’m most familiar with (Germany and the Netherlands).
Finally, you mention that the extreme right wing is similar to the extreme left wing in Belgium, and that conservatives are left wing on an economic level. I can’t speak much for Belgian politics. I went to the Wikipedia pages of the leftmost and rightmost parties I’m aware of (PvdA and Vlaams Belang) and all I can say is that I don’t see it. I see stark differences on policies on a social level (one being incredibly pro multi-cultural) and on an economic level (one being very pro union and worker, and the other somewhere between neoliberal and protectionist). But again I know very little of Belgian politics.
But I can say something about the conservatives portraying themselves as socialists. Please do not fall for it. This is a trick as old as Hitler. They put the “Socialist” in nazi only to trick workers into voting for them. They ended up privatizing more than any government before them (something I hope we can agree on isn’t very leftist), slashed minimum wage, culled unions, and put socialists in concentration camps. Not very left wing. Same with the current far right in power in the Netherlands. Portrayed (successfully) as economically leftist during the campaign, but every policy they’ve put in place is economically right wing. They tried putting a flat tax (unsuccessfully so), they’ve gutted public services, and they increased income tax while leaving corporate taxes fixed. They do this every time, do not fall for it.
Wanpieserino@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Let’s see. Belgium has 0,26 gini income inequality. (EU 0,29). We have great hospitals. Uz Leuven and UZ Gent being world top class hospitals. When my wife will give birth, it will cost us 300 euros. Median income in the country is 3800 euros gross. Which comes to about 2600 euros net.
Schooling is tax paid. There are like no private schools here because who would want to fund that (there’s one in Brussels, would cost 500k euros to have your kid schooled there till age 18, while public schools get funding from taxes). Higher eduction costs like 1 month wage to fund a bachelor’s degree tuition wise.
Median net wealth per adult is 250k euros. Puts us alongside Australia, Luxembourg and Iceland.
We have unions, personally I’m with ABVV, which is the socialist variant. They help with certain stuff. Went there when I was unemployed for 3 months.
There’s unemployment benefits for 2 years. Only the first year is good income. Not really necessary to be longer than 1 year imo.
Quite some sick leave. Medical bankruptcy isn’t a thing here. There’s a maximum invoice per household per year. Which is a pretty low sum. Depends on income level too. Can easily be as low as 500 euros per year.
Maternity leave is decent, my wife is on maternity leave starting 1 august until 1 February.
Child benefits exist. My wife will get 250 euros from that every month I think. At birth she gets 1250 euros too. And we get a free stroller and car seat. Quite good quality too.
There’s an issue with the amount of daycares. Just no space. But starting age 3, the kid will just go to school. Which is properly funded.
Public transport… there’s rails everywhere. 80% of trains are for commuting in Europe. Belgium is no exception. I don’t have a car, there’s no need for it.
They are building bike lanes alongside the train rails for car free commutes.
It’s very tax friendly to lease an e bike with your company. It uses the taxes on your end of the year bonus. Basically turns a 1500 euros net bonus into a 4500 euros bonus. Allows people to lease a premium quality e bike for commute and buy it after 3 years for 15% of original value.
There’s always investment in social housing.
We’ve got quite a lot of immigrants. Immigrating is really easy. My wife basically went from Indonesia to Belgium with a tourist EU visum. We married and then she never had to leave. Since I have housing and a job.
Psychologist costs 11 euros per session, psychologist gets 85 euros for it.
Trans people can get sex change surgeries and hormones funded by tax money.
One of the earliest countries to allow gay marriage.
47% of EU electricity was generated with renewables in 2024.
Government funded the purchase of electric cars quite a bit until now. Same with solar panels.
Buying a house costs 3% tax if it’s your only house that you will live in. Otherwise it’s 12%.
There’s a lot of funding to teach immigrants Dutch.
Cleaning is the stereotype job for immigrants that don’t speak Dutch, since that job is funded 2/3rd with tax money. The client pays 10 euros per hour and the cleaner earns 13,64 euros per hour. + Free e bike. Can get this job without speaking Dutch, because there’s just such a high demand.
We have a lot of doctors per capita.
Walkable cities like Ghent, Brussels, Bruges, Antwerp, … All cities are walkable.
High social mobility. A lot can be achieved within 1 generation.
It’s a pretty nice country. But my wife does call it boring as fuck 🤷🏻♂️
Wanpieserino@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Thanks for the detailed report, bout USA my only information is social media which is limited. I did see a rise in bottom 50%'s wealth % during Biden’s term. But the income gini is still 0,42 so I suppose that’s meaningless.
About 20% of the Flemish people voted for Vlaams belang, they are in general the less educated folks.
That’s why Vlaams belang has to portray themselves as “for the man”. Bring back industry to Belgium, promote manual labour jobs for Belgians.
It’s just a stunt, because they (together with the Marxists) are banished from being in the government. They always are in opposition. The other parties long ago agreed to that.
Vlaams belang is the 2nd largest party now, but in opposition. Luckily. The only issue is that they can always complain about anything that went wrong and promise heaven if people vote for them. Then when shove comes to push “oops, sorry guys we can’t help, we wish we could, but we’re in opposition”. They’ve never actually had to prove themselves capable leaders. They get paid well though.
Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Until the second it becomes evident that they might have to stand up for any of that.
Wanpieserino@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Nah, America really spread a lot of information throughout the world on these things. So much even that people got sick of it.
America is all about branding, sure they might not structurally provide a good system for these people, but they do grant them a good brand to use.
The public opinion of these people have mooned quite a bit.
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yigruzeltil@lemm.ee 1 week ago
If your own child was on the LGBT+ spectrum and was right now in the US, your take would have been way different.
Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 1 week ago
And you’re eager to jettison them.