Democratic market socialism is a perfectly moderate ideology. You can also consider weekends, paid leave, women’s vote as socialist policies. It is one of the main political currents founding the EU and South America. Only in the US is it used to describe radicals or as a swearword.
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sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 week agoDisagree, it’s pretty far left.
You refer to .ml, but that’s not really left, it’s a tankie instance, which is closer to fascism than socialism. I see far more people on Lemmy idolizing communism/socialism than any other extreme ideology.
Gsus4@mander.xyz 1 week ago
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Sure, democratic socialism is center left, I’m talking about actual socialism, which gets promoted here quite a bit. Reddit was mostly dem socs and welfare state proponents, Lemmy takes it a bit further.
Gsus4@mander.xyz 6 days ago
Yes, but that is no reason to disparage socialism itself. In authoritarian socialism, it is the authoritarian part that sucks.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Democratic socialism isn’t socialism though, it’s capitalism with lots of government services.
The authoritarian part is pretty much baked in to “real” socialism since you need something to control the means of production until society is ready, and that hasn’t yet happened. Yes, there are other theorized structures, but they’re unproven.
Tankies (i.e. many of those on .ml) are into the authoritarian part, whereas people here are more into democratic socialism, which is another thing entirely.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
It depends on where you draw the line for “the center.” I’d probably agree it’s leftist for America, but it’s center-left on a global scale. You’ll usually get some push back if you promote true leftist politics. Usually more agreement than dissent, but still some.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Sure, the US does skew right. I do think Lemmy is pretty far left even compared to areas like Europe that are further left from the US. It’s kind of hard to gauge whether people are serious about things like “guillotine the rich” (or Luigi references) or exaggerating, but you don’t see that type of talk on popular subreddits (even before the crackdown), at least I didn’t, and coming to Lemmy was a bit of a shift left from what I already saw as “center left.”
I am a bit left of center in the US and pretty centrist on a global scale, and I lean fairly libertarian. I’m left of most libertarian candidates in the US, supporting things like UBI as an alternative to welfare programs. So I think I have a decent perspective on what’s left and right.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
I am a bit left of center in the US and pretty centrist on a global scale, and I lean fairly libertarian. I’m left of most libertarian candidates in the US, supporting things like UBI as an alternative to welfare programs. So I think I have a decent perspective on what’s left and right.
I started at your position a long time ago, when I was a teenager. I realized libertarians are full of shit, and eventually discovered a better descriptor of my beliefs was anarchist (in particular, social anarchist). I think the government shouldn’t be telling people how to live or what they can or can’t do. It should be there to protect people (emphasis; not corporations).
Libertarians (in the US at least) are really just anarcho-capitalists. They want freedom for businesses, but usually at the expense of freedom for people. They don’t want protection for people from exploitation. They want businesses with enough money to be able to exert their authority as far as possible, to the extent of blocking competition and effectively creating slaves. (They’ll argue they don’t agree with slavery, but what’s the difference between your employer owning your ability to live and slavery?)
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
anarchist
I have serious practical concerns with anarchism, but that is certainly the ideal.
I started life as a conservative, mostly because I bought into the lie that they actually wanted smaller government. Ron Paul got me excited because he actually wanted smaller government, but seeing him get trashed by the establishment pushed me out. Around that time I found Penn Jillette (libertarian anarchist), and he really resonated with me.
I dislike the Libertarian Party, but I have liked individuals within it, and that generally seems the most likely party to actually make a difference (i.e. get on a debate stage so people can hear a different perspective). My ballot is all over the place though, with a mixture of Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, and sometimes a random third party if the candidate is good.
But yeah, I just want to be left alone, and if we need a government (I think we do), it should be limited to protecting us from each other and ensuring everyone has the necessities. Other than that, business should be largely unrestrained and unprotected (limited liability should end after a certain size, execs should be arrested if they break the law, etc), and there should be strong support from government to protect privacy. Consumer protections should largely be unnecessary if the market is sufficiently competitive, and ending protectionism should provide that, but consumer protections should be provided by the AG leading lawsuits against companies.
I think “classical liberal” is the better term for me, but “libertarian” gets the message across pretty well, and I identify with the NAP underpinnings of the ideology. I’m registered with the party to increase the stats of third parties to hopefully encourage electoral reform (end FPTP), not because I think they’re great.
Gigasser@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Aren’t the devs of Lemmy Marxist leninist or something and .ml is one of their instances?
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
That’s what they claim, but their moderation practices feel a lot more on the tankie spectrum than marxist leninist.
jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
I left because of the api changes and the excessive censorship (rip r/watchpeopledie my beloved) and it’s general hatred towards ita mobile website
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
The API changes were the last straw for me too, but I had been searching for a while because it felt very much like an echo-chamber. Lemmy does too, but at least the API is open.
Soggy@lemmy.world 1 week ago
You’re oversimplifying (and so was I, to be totally fair). The Reddit exodus has lots of reasons. I think it has more to do with one’s thoughts on corporatization and technocultural knowledge which does correlate with left-leaning politics. I’m sure there are many who are just sick of platforms giving Trumpists tacit approval (I think this is the primary driver for people leaving twitter) but that Venn diagram is not a perfect circle.
.ml has tankies, and there’s plenty of fair criticism to direct at Dessalines and the mod team for generally cultivating a culture of knee-jerk anti-Western thought (and the inverse, more importantly) but it’s not “closer to fascism” because it leans authoritarian and drapes itself in USSR/CCP aesthetic. But it’s mostly a FOSS instance with well-deserved bashing of US imperialism and state-sponsored terrorism.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Tankies are pretty close to fascism, and tend to support regimes like in Russia the same as regimes in China. For them, the motivation doesn’t seem as motivated by economics as itvi government structure, since modern Russia is very far from socialist ideals. Basically, anything that goes against US interests is the priority, not economics as it would for your average socialist.
Soggy@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I think you’re losing some nuance but yeah “anything that goes against US interests is the priority” is a real problem in some leftist spaces (I was banned from /r/latestagecommunism for suggesting that maybe the things we hear about North Korea aren’t just Western lies to discredit a true Communist state.) Of the “big three” I see the most of that on lemmygrad so I don’t bother.
But there’s a scale of uncritical support and I think people use “tankie” a little too broadly to dismiss people rather than consider the different facets of belief. Online discourse sucks.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Agreed 100%. People also use “Nazi” way too liberally, and it’s really off-putting and cheapens the term for actual Nazis.
And there’s only so much nuance I’m going to put into a comment, but for “tankie,” I generally mean those who support authoritarian regimes because they stand up to the US, not because of their actual ideology. Supporting China, Russia, and NK in the same breath is nonsensical, especially since only one of those is actually somewhat communist and one is explicitly not. I get it, there are a lot of reasons to dislike the US, but that doesn’t make Russia and NK “good.”
And yeah, online discourse sucks, probably because we self-organize into echo chambers. Reddit was less bad when I joined, but pretty much any reasonably popular SM is problematic now.
PapaStevesy@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I just hate their app and refuse to use it
Soggy@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Oh it’s a terrible app, just the worst.