Comment

Comment on The highlighted division and factions of Lemmy.

homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

I’m kind of surprised to not see this answer, so I’ll throw it in: it seems to me that there are a lot of people from various countries who have built-in language for politics that they believe is shared across the world - but it isn’t.

As a dumb American, I’ve always been a liberal because that was the inclusive, progressive, luxury-gay-space-communism option as opposed to the conservative, regressive, racist, ignorant violent option. People from other countries don’t seem to appreciate that at all, because their “liberal” is what we’d call neoliberal or corporate Democrat, and they apparently don’t have a FPTP / Slaver’s College fix on their elections and they just don’t grok the two party thing.

As you can imagine on here there’s a lot of hate from both conservatives and leftists for “liberals”. I think that’s ridiculous but it’s usually easier to try and adopt their definitions than to explain why the other 379,999,999 of us don’t use it that way. (Well - 350M, say. Parts of the PNW use it that way too.). It’s just kind of exhausting in threads about American politics.

If someone calls me a “liberal” (or libtard, libcuck, etc) I naturally assume they’re racist, fascist, AM radio fuckwits. But then they want to jump into some world where H4A, UBI, No Oil is what they’re all about and once again I’m like - well, yeah we agree, again. So.

(Usually the retort is, “well then why are you a liberal?!” Which. Goes back to the exhausting thing.)

source

Sort:hotnew top

SnokenKeekaGuard@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
The most important point of unity for the left is the economics. Political identity must be defined by being the proletariat first and foremost.

When you have people who break that, well their place is questioned.

source
- homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Mmm hmmm. Yeah. Yes.
  
  So an American proletariat is . . . Anyone who is limited by health insurance, student loans, and mortgage rates? Or is it something else?
  
  We don’t really use the word proletariat, uh, at all. Ever.
  
  source
  - SnokenKeekaGuard@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    In a very basic sense (and this may very well be debated but to explain it simply I’ll say): anyone who doesn’t own their own labour, as in you work for someone else.
    
    source
    homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    That’s pretty much every liberal I know, yeah.
    
    Well. I know some house painters I guess. They don’t work for someone else, per se.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
zerofk@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
To me as a European, posts and comments about US politics can be very confusing. There’s the different interpretation on the word liberal you mentioned. There’s also the fact that the colours are reversed: here red is for the left - socialists and communists - while blue is the liberal right (not so much conservative right, though there are conservative subgroups of the “blues”). And there’s the fact that they often assume familiarity with political events and people unknown to me.

Somewhat related: posts and comments from the far and extreme left are often even more incomprehensible. They seem to have their own language entirely.

source
- homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Lemmy has been enlightening in teaching me these things but yes - different!
  
  source
thoro@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Liberalism has an actual definition. Neoliberalism is a subset of liberalism. Either way, neither position is socialist and both are capitalist. That’s the distinction. That’s always been the distinction. Leftist politics is distinctly anti capitalist.

To leftists, liberalism, even progressive liberalism, can never address the material concerns for workers, inequal accumulation, and capitalism’s contradictions because it cannot attack the central tenet of its ideology: the private ownership of land and resources. And most of the social stuff was being advocated by leftist groups in the west for years before they became popular enough for the mainstream, liberal parties to embrace.

I’m an American. Conflating liberalism with leftism is a media game that has successfully ensured the Overton window does not shift left. It reveals the mass political ignorance here. Of the policies you’ve listed, only H4A is arguably socialist.

You can understand the two party system and make decisions to support certain candidates/policies in an election without identifying as a liberal.

source
- homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  
  To leftists, liberalism, even progressive liberalism, can never address the material concerns for workers, inequal accumulation, and capitalism’s contradictions because it cannot attack the central tenet of its ideology: the private ownership of land and resources.To leftists, liberalism, even progressive liberalism, can never address the material concerns for workers, inequal accumulation, and capitalism’s contradictions because it cannot attack the central tenet of its ideology: the private ownership of land and resources.
  
  Well put, and yes I’d agree. Where I seem to draw the ire of leftists is when I point to the clock and say we have one year before we have to vote, and all things being equal we’re going to vote for the Democrats because attacking the central tenet of this country’s dominant ideology is not going to happen in this election cycle.
  
  The 2024 Presidential election threads were a depressing reminder that some leftists can’t get out of their heads, or ivory towers, or whatever to make incremental progress because the glorious revolution is at hand. Or something. So I get to be the evil liberal who wants healthcare for all, student loan forgiveness, and a Green New Deal. And all of those things go down the shitter because republiQans vote as a single juggernaut bloc and we don’t.
  
  source