“Leftist” means very different things to different people. It’s not a very well-defined term, and really never has been.
Some people will insist that leftist means socialist, and that Nordic-style Social Democrats are actually right wing because Social Democracy is capitalist and anything that involves private ownership of the means of production is right wing.
Others will insist that somehow CNN is the “Communist News Network”, and that anyone left of Trump is a leftist.
So the better question is really what they mean. Did they go from being a college communist to a Social Democrat, or from a Joe Manchin supporter to wanting Charlie Baker to run?
That’s a vague response that I can’t really make any reply to.
If you aren’t voting for right-wing parties, that’s a good thing. You might be a pretty middle-of-the-road liberal, at least statistically speaking that’s not unlikely. Which in the grand scheme of things, is still fairly conservative, supportive of the maintenance of the status quo.
So if that describes you, I can see why people would say that’s conservative.
How is being middle of the road,conservative in the grand scheme of things
I literally explained it in the comment. You should try reading it again.
Maintaining the status quo, opposing change, is still quite conservative. Hell the right-wing party in some countries are the “Liberals”. And note that I said lower-case-c “conservative”. Just because the self-described capital-c “Conservatives” are running further rightward and flirting with fascism, doesn’t make the middle position not conservative.
ntg but the general kind of surface level spectrum might look more like conservatives, not definitionally, or, in the sense of the origin of the word, conservatives want to regress society back to some previous state. centrists yadda yadda status quo. and then liberals want to progress society, and that’s kind of equivalent to progressivism or leftism. Which is partially because americans are not politically literate, or actually literate, and don’t understand the differences between different words, but also because america as a whole is so far to the right (so is much of the world), and so stuck in the past, that actual leftism is incredibly fucking radical, and advocating for liberalism, or at least, the identitarian implications of liberalism, rather than fucked up plutocracy and bigotry, is still thought of as a leftist position.
you aren’t left leaning, and I’m not a communist. what happened to the nuance you were just prattling on about? abandon it already because you really like calling people communists that much?
College communists will absolutely label the entire democratic party right wing, and will call liberalism a fundamentally conservative philosophy. If you’re surrounded by literal communists, accepting that maybe a literal revolution isn’t the best idea will absolutely get you called a conservative.
That’s not really a new phenomenon, though. The German communist party literally labeled the social democrat party fascists, and thought they were just as bad as the nazis. Turns out they were kinda wrong about that.
College communists will absolutely label the entire democratic party right wing, and will call liberalism a fundamentally conservative philosophy.
I mean. I’m no college communist. But neither of those assertions are particularly out there?
When compared with parties in other democracies, the Democrats are pretty right-wing on many issues. And it’s not strange to refer to liberalism as a conservative philosophy, it tends to place emphasis on private property, free-market economics, and capitalism. There are places where the conservative party are “The Liberals”.
That is why I said “tends” to favour capitalism. Which I don’t think is unfair. Liberalism has also been built upon for a long time, so one would expect to find a lot of variation.
This whole comment is a straw man that feels like it was written by a walking Fox News segment.
They’ve descended into sloganeering identity politics and away from policy largely.
Completely nonsense. Just because there are some slogans like ACAB or BLM doesn’t mean that there aren’t policy proposals, it just means that “modern policing is a corrupt institution with bad systems that lead to bad outcomes and we should end qualified immunity and force police unions to pay when cops drastically abuse their power” doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker.
Lots of leftists genuinely believe society could just remove property, the police, money and all sorts of crazy shit
More complete nonsense. This is lemmy.ml, so they over represent here, but the vast majority of American leftists are mostly along the lines of “we should improve society somewhat.”
They think problems are easily solved with just taxes on the rich and everybody just acting like them as though that’s a realistic proposal.
This one I won’t disagree with. Quite a lot of things could be solved simply by taxing the rich, who are currently experiencing some of the lowest taxes in the history of the US, and during the US’s real heyday from 40-70 or so, were taxed at a significantly higher rate. They were also paid significantly less, with CEO to worker pay usually being around a 10-20x multiplier, instead of a 100s of times. This is simply empirically true, like the fact that other countries exist that do tax the wealthy more, have more social programs, and generally have better outcomes (lower crime, lower rates of poverty, lower rates of maternal mortality, lower overall average mortality, etc.) Even still, the calls for taxing the rich aren’t really even pushing for tax rates of the 50’s, they’re pushing for tax rates of like 2003, or even 2015 before they were given yet another tax break with no plan for paying for it. So yeah, pretty realistic given that we’ve done it in this country, and many countries are still doing it even more than we did.
Don’t even get me started on the modern Monetary theorists who think there is no downside to endlessly printing money.
Please don’t. This would be another argument against a straw man, unless you’re arguing for a gold standard or something which would just highlight a lack of knowledge about modern economic theory.
I think I agree with you. Since the left is more “popular” it now brings in more people with dumber takes. I do think though that some of the problem is were going to need some extreme solutions in the near future for increasingly pressing issues, and determining which of those are reactionary and lazy, and which are needed is difficult
there’s the victim complex again. twitter hates me! Reddit hates me! Lemmy hates me! do you have anything to do besides cry about how everyone didn’t start jerking you off for being a rightie?
I’m a leftist precisely because I started paying more attention and listening to both sides.
I was a centrist before I started doing that.
I was a leftist because my parents weren’t and I was a rebel.
I eventually grew up and thought ‘this is fucking awesome’ and kept going.
If you are paying attention and you have a drop of empathy then you’re almost guaranteed to be one.
I thought I was a centrist, because it was clear to me that both sides are terrible, and going to kill us all.
Turns out I was just a leftist all along
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Good luck to you then. The more I learn about the world, and the more different people I meet, the more repulsive conservatism becomes.
“Leftist” means very different things to different people. It’s not a very well-defined term, and really never has been.
Some people will insist that leftist means socialist, and that Nordic-style Social Democrats are actually right wing because Social Democracy is capitalist and anything that involves private ownership of the means of production is right wing.
Others will insist that somehow CNN is the “Communist News Network”, and that anyone left of Trump is a leftist.
So the better question is really what they mean. Did they go from being a college communist to a Social Democrat, or from a Joe Manchin supporter to wanting Charlie Baker to run?
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That’s a vague response that I can’t really make any reply to.
If you aren’t voting for right-wing parties, that’s a good thing. You might be a pretty middle-of-the-road liberal, at least statistically speaking that’s not unlikely. Which in the grand scheme of things, is still fairly conservative, supportive of the maintenance of the status quo.
So if that describes you, I can see why people would say that’s conservative.
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I literally explained it in the comment. You should try reading it again.
Maintaining the status quo, opposing change, is still quite conservative. Hell the right-wing party in some countries are the “Liberals”. And note that I said lower-case-c “conservative”. Just because the self-described capital-c “Conservatives” are running further rightward and flirting with fascism, doesn’t make the middle position not conservative.
ntg but the general kind of surface level spectrum might look more like conservatives, not definitionally, or, in the sense of the origin of the word, conservatives want to regress society back to some previous state. centrists yadda yadda status quo. and then liberals want to progress society, and that’s kind of equivalent to progressivism or leftism. Which is partially because americans are not politically literate, or actually literate, and don’t understand the differences between different words, but also because america as a whole is so far to the right (so is much of the world), and so stuck in the past, that actual leftism is incredibly fucking radical, and advocating for liberalism, or at least, the identitarian implications of liberalism, rather than fucked up plutocracy and bigotry, is still thought of as a leftist position.
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You can think whatever you like, but that isn’t what I wrote.
no it doesn’t.
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jesus you freaks have such a victim fetish
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you aren’t left leaning, and I’m not a communist. what happened to the nuance you were just prattling on about? abandon it already because you really like calling people communists that much?
College communists will absolutely label the entire democratic party right wing, and will call liberalism a fundamentally conservative philosophy. If you’re surrounded by literal communists, accepting that maybe a literal revolution isn’t the best idea will absolutely get you called a conservative.
That’s not really a new phenomenon, though. The German communist party literally labeled the social democrat party fascists, and thought they were just as bad as the nazis. Turns out they were kinda wrong about that.
I mean. I’m no college communist. But neither of those assertions are particularly out there?
When compared with parties in other democracies, the Democrats are pretty right-wing on many issues. And it’s not strange to refer to liberalism as a conservative philosophy, it tends to place emphasis on private property, free-market economics, and capitalism. There are places where the conservative party are “The Liberals”.
Liberalism, as in the philosophy, isn’t inherently pro-capitalism. There have been liberals that are opposed to capitalism.
That is why I said “tends” to favour capitalism. Which I don’t think is unfair. Liberalism has also been built upon for a long time, so one would expect to find a lot of variation.
Ah yeah, the non nuanced view of leftists
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go ask some conservatives their opinion on trans people and see the incredible variance in their answers.
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conservatives learn what hypocrisy is challenge
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who just happens to agree with conservatives on everything
This whole comment is a straw man that feels like it was written by a walking Fox News segment.
Completely nonsense. Just because there are some slogans like ACAB or BLM doesn’t mean that there aren’t policy proposals, it just means that “modern policing is a corrupt institution with bad systems that lead to bad outcomes and we should end qualified immunity and force police unions to pay when cops drastically abuse their power” doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker.
More complete nonsense. This is lemmy.ml, so they over represent here, but the vast majority of American leftists are mostly along the lines of “we should improve society somewhat.”
This one I won’t disagree with. Quite a lot of things could be solved simply by taxing the rich, who are currently experiencing some of the lowest taxes in the history of the US, and during the US’s real heyday from 40-70 or so, were taxed at a significantly higher rate. They were also paid significantly less, with CEO to worker pay usually being around a 10-20x multiplier, instead of a 100s of times. This is simply empirically true, like the fact that other countries exist that do tax the wealthy more, have more social programs, and generally have better outcomes (lower crime, lower rates of poverty, lower rates of maternal mortality, lower overall average mortality, etc.) Even still, the calls for taxing the rich aren’t really even pushing for tax rates of the 50’s, they’re pushing for tax rates of like 2003, or even 2015 before they were given yet another tax break with no plan for paying for it. So yeah, pretty realistic given that we’ve done it in this country, and many countries are still doing it even more than we did.
Please don’t. This would be another argument against a straw man, unless you’re arguing for a gold standard or something which would just highlight a lack of knowledge about modern economic theory.
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I think I agree with you. Since the left is more “popular” it now brings in more people with dumber takes. I do think though that some of the problem is were going to need some extreme solutions in the near future for increasingly pressing issues, and determining which of those are reactionary and lazy, and which are needed is difficult
well, you definitely didn’t move right then.
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remind me again how going apeshit every time you see a trans person requires thought and achieves something?
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Why do you disagree vehemently with leftist economics?
and i didn’t pull a lever to get the most extreme far left positions
but thanks for assuming that because i disagree with you
another example of the hypocrisy i referred to
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there’s the victim complex again. twitter hates me! Reddit hates me! Lemmy hates me! do you have anything to do besides cry about how everyone didn’t start jerking you off for being a rightie?