Aren’t liberals leftists though?
They are, or rather were. For most of the world, especially in Europe, liberalism means/meant socially liberal, i.e. left wing - based on personal freedom from imposition of others’ values on their personal and social lives. However, in America liberal has (relatively recently, as in 2000’s) become synonymous with neoliberal ideology, which is absolutely not left wing in any traditional sense, focusing on ‘small government’ and freedom of the markets—I guess because pronouncing two extra syllables is too much effort? Idk.
With the internet this peculiar usage has recently (as in the last 5-10 years) started leaking out of America and is being used in this confusing and ambiguous manner.
To be fair though, the Overton window has shifted so far right now that liberal (i.e. left of the nominal centre) shares much of the same space as neoliberal. See New Labour, and the current Labour government.
Edit: Deleted a paragraph that in retrospect was unnecessarily negative.
For most of the world, especially in Europe, liberalism means/meant socially liberal, i.e. left wing
Wuh? In most of continental Europe, liberalism typically means classical liberalism, a right-wing ideology about laissez faire economy. The US has always been the odd one out in using it to mean socially liberal (see also the last paragraph here).
Huh! My perception has always been the opposite, but that Wikipedia article appears soundly sourced. Don’t I feel silly?!
It appears I have been shown who is the boss.
Anyhow, I hope it’s agreed that the general point I had that there’s historically two different uses of that term and it’s not unreasonable to be confused about them still stands.
I’ll leave my comment up as-is for context.
This isn’t really true, even with being extremely vague.
Liberalism, as described by Locke, was primarily concerned with individual liberty (as mentioned), but included in those liberties was the right to private property. In fact, he was among the first to describe it as a ‘natural law’.
US liberals co-opt the label with emphasis on the social liberties, and neo-liberals co-opt the label with emphasis on the personal property.
Leftist politics, being primarily oriented along a materialist axis, is concerned with both social and economic liberation and identifies systems of oppression in both governance and capital owners. Referring to ‘liberals’ as ‘leftist’ ignores the central ideological focus of leftist politics to begin with.
No. Leftism is primarily defined by support for a socialist economy. There is not a single liberal on the planet that would support socialism.
That lack of nuance is not helpful. There are plenty of liberals that would like a more balanced economy.
Edit: I’m tired of everyone’s “that’s not socialism.” You have to get people behind it. That requires taking steps. You aren’t going to bitch at reasonable people online to wake up one day and we’ve made the full conversion.
“More balanced” means Capitalism with safety nets, right? That’s not Socialism.
Cannot tell if this is meant sarcastically? Probably?
Just in case you are serious:
Often debated because neither is well defined and liberal is used by different people to mean totally different things. As I would use the term, liberals are in favor of liberating markets and nothing else. Leftists are people who are in favor of progressive and emancipatory politics. So for me, liberals are definitely no leftists.
It was serious, in my head both were just terms for left wing further left than central left but not like extremist left wing.
Ah OK, really depends where you live. In Germany, for example, the liberal party is notoriously anti-left and usually allies with the main conservative, right-wing party. When it was founded after WW2 many Nazis joined it.
And it also depends what you mean by left vs right wing. In the US, the democrat party may be considered left leaning? But in comparison to many European left wing parties, it might be more of a centrist or even right-wing party. None of these terms can be really pin pointed down to an exact meaning and they are usually relative to other positions surrounding them. For me, defining liberal as market liberal seems like the most sensible definition, but then you might consider the US american Republican party to be liberal as well? Confusing!
And what is extremist left wing? Some people even consider human rights and medical care for everyone to be extremist left. Again, these terms always go in relation to other position like described via the overton window.
Meanwhile leftists: “Make sure you don’t vote in a way that might keep actual fascists from power. Better the fascists win than people who will make things only mildly better!”
This coming November. So you pretend that stopping fascists is important to you, but you’re not prepared to even put a mark in a box to stop it.
Ah, so rather than go against Trump’s bad policy and do something actually GOOD for our fellow human beings, we need to stick to this compromise position where we do something almost as bad as him? Because we are more worried about losing pro genocide voters than we are about an actual genocide, or something?
I hope that you can see how the “liberal” position on this is fucking disgusting
Firstly, never in the history of the world has fascism and authoritarianism been defeated through voting.
Second, from a socialist perpective, a liberal is a proponent of capitalism with democratic trappings.
Third lol
Only in the sense that they still exist, and thus have never truly been defeated. Fascists and authoritarians have lost elections, and thus lost or never gained power… but fascism and authoritarianism still exist as concepts. The only real way to change that is to:
A. Completely remove the concept from public consciousness, which is nigh impossible and can always be thought of again
B. Kill anyone you suspect of harboring fascist or authoritarian thoughts. Which is the kind of thing people think when they say “that just makes you a fascist/authoritarian yourself”.
You can not police thought unless you become that which you hate. You can help to foster an environment where those ideas seem silly and not worthwhile… bit not with swords or guns.
If you don’t believe that you can have what you want with democracy, with freedom of choice, with elections and voting. That your only choice is to force others to see things your way with violence… then I have some bad news for you. You are the authoritarian.
You can not force people to be free at the tip of a bayonet. They have to choose it for themselves.
We defeated fascism militarily 80 years ago, and yet it’s slowly it grew back and is poised to take power again. Everything that happened since wasn’t defeating fascism but nurturing it, as it’s been growing in power since. You are positing a false dichotomy. The only way to defeat fascism is to change to a system that doesn’t breed fascism.
Are Labour liberals? We have a Lib Dem party who I consider the liberal party, well I assume they are anyway.
Labour right now is just the Tory party from 12 years ago. So scumbags but only massive scumbags instead of gigantic scumbags.
Hitler came into power because the liberal PM appointed him chancellor to avoid creating a coalition with the left party. Liberals would rather work with a fascist over a socialist any day of the week.
SPD has been a liberal center-left party since it’s founding. Hindenburg’s closely held political beliefs had no bearing on the outcome of a liberal party avoiding a coalition with socialists by appointing a fascist to chancellor.
I know of no liberals at all that say that
Except for the 90%+ of Democrats in Congress and the White House who consider bipartisanship the highest political virtue, even now that the GOP is a literal fascist party.
Those liberals are ALL about compromising with fascists.
Most of them want a Congress that is willing to work together. Congress is literally supposed to work together.
Not when one of the parties is a fascist party. There’s no acceptable compromise possible with fascists.
Conservatism and progressivism are two hands of the same body.
More like progressivism is the supramarginal gyrus (the part responsible for compassion and empathy), the frontal cortex (logical reasoning), and the hippocampus (creativity) whereas conservatism is the medulla oblongata (fear and distrust) and not much more.
Besides, today’s Republican party isn’t just a conservative party. Fascism is much farther right than that, into “straight white Christian men SHOULD control everything and nobody else should have rights” territory.
Just because one of those hands has cancer doesn’t mean you remove the whole hand.
The entire GOP is controlled by that cancer. There’s no redeeming traits, nobody who goes against it without being ostracized.
The Alt-Right
Is a media term for “modern Fascist but were not allowed to use that word no matter how accurate it is”.
The government exists to make life as good for as many people as possible. That’s simply not possible when giving fascists ANY of the things they want.
No they don’t, they don’t care about getting leftists to agree.
When they say they care about bipartisanship, they mean they want to agree with all the new far right stuff that would probably make them richer.
Swedish liberals do
On Monday, Renew Europe chairman Stéphane Séjourné took distance from the decision of the Swedish Liberals to sign a government agreement that favours the far-right.
“I acknowledge that the Swedish Liberals blocked the far right from entering the government,” he told Politico, adding that he regrets “the agreement and the direction it is taking. “A government with the far right cannot have our blessing”, he said.
Sources within Renew Europe confirmed to EURACTIV that Séjourné personally regretted the decision of the Swedish Liberals on account of the “common values” shared by the Renew Europe members.
It should be noted that “blocked the far right” means “gave far right influence over the government with no accountability instead of collaborating with social democrates”.
Renew later also let the Swedish Liberals stay in their group, so they to some degree agree with the strategy of giving the far right influence over the government as long as it means you never have to work with a socdem.
Ahh, yes, a pointlessly divisive meme that only seeks to stir up shit. Peddle your bad faith trolling elsewhere.
liberals when someone points out they shouldn’t try to compromise with fascism.
Why is this “pointlessly divisive?” Liberals always attack leftists and side with fascists, it’s agitprop. It’s divisive with a purpose.
Is all Agitprop bad-faith? Lemmy.world’s proud tradition of left-punching seems more bad-faith.
I’m shocked, honestly, at the response to my comment.
I don’t understand how everyone can be missing this so badly. This meme, this attitude of left vs. far left, is the EXACT same thing that the right did to themselves before the last election (and are currently still doing). This whole idea that the liberals aren’t left enough, or that, as you say, the liberals are attacking the far left, is a lie. It’s agitprop all right, but it’s agitprop designed to agitate the entirety of the left, and divide them before an election. It’s turning blue voters into non-voters or third party voters. It’s doing exactly what the right wants. It’s giving them the election on a fucking silver platter. It’s just horseshoe theory mixed with a little, “The call is coming from inside the house.”
But, no. Go ahead. Keep believing yourself to be the victim of crimes you have no evidence of. Keep telling yourself that it’s you against the world. And when Trump takes office after the election in 4 months you can have so many other people to blame it on other than yourself.
Great work. Keep it up. You are a true free-thinker.
I’m shocked, honestly, at the response to my comment.
Why? Liberals have left-punched for their entire existence.
I don’t understand how everyone can be missing this so badly. This meme, this attitude of left vs. far left, is the EXACT same thing that the right did to themselves before the last election (and are currently still doing). This whole idea that the liberals aren’t left enough, or that, as you say, the liberals are attacking the far left, is a lie.
Liberals are not left. Liberalism supports Capitalism, Leftists support Socialism. Historically, such as in Nazi Germany, Liberals aligned with the fascists against the Leftists. It isn’t left vs far left, it’s left vs right.
It’s agitprop all right, but it’s agitprop designed to agitate the entirety of the left, and divide them before an election. It’s turning blue voters into non-voters or third party voters. It’s doing exactly what the right wants. It’s giving them the election on a fucking silver platter. It’s just horseshoe theory mixed with a little, “The call is coming from inside the house.”
No, it’s agitprop meant to get liberals to finally join the left against fascists, instead of liberals crying and handing the reigns to fascists yet again.
But, no. Go ahead. Keep believing yourself to be the victim of crimes you have no evidence of. Keep telling yourself that it’s you against the world. And when Trump takes office after the election in 4 months you can have so many other people to blame it on other than yourself.
When Trump takes office, it will be because liberals continue to “vote blue no matter who” as America tumbles further and further right, a dying empire, rather than for one time joining the left and organizing on the ground. Liberals vote once every 2 years and think themselves warriors against fascism as they fight against leftists at every step.
Great work. Keep it up. You are a true free-thinker.
Thank you! If you want reading recommendations, I have a bunch I think might help clarify some misconceptions you have.
Pfft, the same leftists complaining about Sanders and AOC not being progressive enough?
Get outta heeeeere
