Amen. I’ve seen so many anglocentric lemmy users conflate “classical liberalism” or “neoliberalism” as liberal while they’re actually the opposite. Ideologies under the capitalist umbrella limit freedoms and liberties to apply only for the upper echelon
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Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 5 months agoI don’t know what you think neoliberal means, but it’s not progressive. It’s about subsuming all of society to the logic of the market, aka full privatisation. Every US president since Reagan has been neoliberal.
They will support fascist governments because they oppose socialists, and in fact the term “privatisation” was coined to describe the economic practices of the Nazis. The first neoliberal experiment was in Pinochet’s Chile, whe the US supported his coup and bloody reign of fascist terror. Also look at the US’s support for Israel in the present day. This aspect of neoliberalism is in effect the process of outsourcing fascist violence overseas so as to exploit other countries whilst preventing the negative blowback from such violence at home.
Progressive ideas don’t come from neoliberals, or even from liberals. Any layperson who calls themself a liberal at this point is unwittingly supporting neoliberalism.
The ideas of equality, solidarity, intersectionality, anticolonialism and all that good stuff come from socialists and anarchists, and neoliberals simply coopt them as political cover. This is part of how they mitigate the political fallout of supporting fascists. It’s like Biden telling Netanyahu, “Hey now, Jack, cut that out! Also here’s billions of dollars for military spending.”
boredtortoise@lemm.ee 5 months ago
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It’s America-specific, not anglocentric. Elsewhere doesn’t do the whole “liberal means left wing” thing.
Liberal here at least generally refers to market and social liberalisation - i.e. simultaneously pro-free market and socially liberal.
The Liberal Democrats (amusingly a name that would trigger US Republicans to an extreme degree) in the UK, for example, sided with the Conservative (right wing) party, and when Labour (left/left of centre) was under its previous leader, they said they’d do the same again, because economically they’re far more aligned with the Conservatives. But they also pushed for things like LGBT rights, because they’re actual liberals.
boredtortoise@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Yeah I thought that was the gist of my comment but maybe I didn’t clarify enough. The right-wing appropriation of a “liberal” market is the oxymoron as it creates a hierarchy where less money = less liberty
SSUPII@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
Internet political terminology confuses me greatly. There are so many conflicting arguments over the meaning that I have lost all understand of what I am supposed to be. In the politics of the country I live in we refer political thinking into just left or right and nothing else, so adapting is made much more complex.
melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Thank you