I find it funny you claim there is clearly no debate while having a debate about this. The reason the person linked that article because of a different section:
Unrelated to the economic philosophy described in this article, the term “neoliberalism” is also used to describe a centrist political movement from modern American liberalism in the 1970s. According to political commentator David Brooks, prominent neoliberal politicians included Al Gore and Bill Clinton of the Democratic Party of the United States.[48]
Aha! You might say, it clearly says it is unrelated to the economic philosophy, but the point is that the word can often refer to different things, including Democrats.
Here is another quote from that link:
Neoliberalism is distinct from liberalism insofar as it does not advocate laissez-faire economic policy, but instead is highly constructivist and advocates a strong state to bring about market-like reforms in every aspect of society.
Sounds a lot like the Democrats to me.
As for your talk of comparing European liberals to American liberals being “propaganda” I disagree. I don’t know if this specific movement in lemmy that you speak, but I don’t think it is propaganda to show that one could want to shrink a gigantic government to medium one (European liberal) and they would be the same as someone who wants to expand a small government to medium one (American liberals). Healthcare being an obvious example here: the United Kingdom wanting to privatize NHS could be considered similar to Democrats who want to just regulate an already privatized system. The end state is the similarity not the action taken to get there.
I think this is an interesting discussion and am not trying to prove that European libs are the same as American libs, just proving that there is clearly debate here.
Ok, let me step back a bit.
Most things are debatable by honest parties. The world is complicated and yes, there have been occasional times when the term “neoliberal” has been used by different groups. And I’d be happy to have a discussion about that.
Lemmy is NOT the forum for that discussion. The majority of posters here are NOT debating in good faith. They weaponize nuance to try and shift goalposts.
This applies to almost any topic.
Bringing up a brief, limited, temporary usage of the term from 40 years ago is just ammunition that they’ll use to push their “Democrats bad” agenda. And undecided Lemmy readers in general cannot psychologically handle nuance.
So for things which are generally true, or mostly true, you have to discuss them in absolute terms. It’s like teaching a 5 year old that the world is round, and then teaching a 12 year old that it’s actually a bit squished. Lemmy users are 5 years old, and there are people out there trying to convince them that the world is flat. They’ll use terms like “there is some debate” or “the science is not settled” to introduce doubt.
If we were in a venue where I could trust participants to have a rational and reasoned discussion, sure, we could talk about different permutations of the term and different ideologies attached to it. For our purposes, here, the answer must be “No. Democrats are not neoliberal.”
I see no evidence to suggest that the majority of posters here are not debating in good faith, most posters here seem to me just normal humans who have biases and emotions - but I’d hardly call that bad faith. If you think this low of lemmy and its users I don’t really understand why you are spending time here.
Even if your assumptions of lemmy users where true I don’t see how that affords you the opportunity to discuss without nuance. Discussing in absolutes and without nuance would categorize you in the “weaponize nuance to try and shift goalposts” crowd I’d say.
But you do you
