PSL exists belive it or not

I would just like to state that most Americans have no idea what the difference between a liberal and leftist is. When you say you’re a liberal, they think you’re a leftist. When you say you’re a leftist, they think you’re a leftist. The conflation will always be there, given the history of the US and decades of the usage of the conflation in everyday American language.

Edit Addendum: it doesn’t help that liberals/democratic establishment are somewhat more “”“”“”“”““left””“”“”“”“” of the conservatives/Republicans, which is why liberals are grouped with the “left” in the US. It also doesn’t help that the “left”, who would be more accurately known as that grouping of socialists, communists, anarchists, and every other small or large anti-capitalist and or progressive political identity group, just call themselves “the left” or “leftist”, playing into the idea that one’s politics can be quickly understood by pointing to the linear spectrum of “right” and “left”, as if these broad and false dichotomies fit reality to a tee or some shit.

Left is Progressive. DNC create progress everytime we put them in, even without having more than 50 senate seats in over a decade. DNC are your dudes.

You don’t have to have a party for an ideology to exist.

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Oh, the problem is much deeper than definitions. One group is socially progressive but economically right. Then, the other group is both progressive on social and economic issues. The economic policies is where the rift is.

Edit: wording

Leftists feel powerless and most are too insecure to go out and actually debate in right-wing spaces, so all they have is bickering internally about other leftists and complaining about liberals to satisfy their need for intellectual debate and drama.

You simply can’t have an argument with a conservative, so I get how frustrating it is. But guys, there are other ways you can make progress, but I’m sorry to say it still involves leaving behind your discord polycule.

The problem is we don’t have the same enemies, there are people who claim to be left but oppose Liberals, such as Tankies. Tankies aren’t the enemy of the GOP, they want the GOP to win over progressives like the DNC. They use words like “capitalism” to describe everything wrong with the USA because that way they can exclude the eastern dictatorships like Russia and China from the same criticisms.

Shit posts like the one above are the result of psyop campaigns.

Right? Do you want to get way more in terms of life quality? Then you are opposed to the hyper capitalist government. Do you want to get more money or do you want to give it to the oligarchs. It’s not polarized anywhere

It gets trickier when you look at other countries where liberal means “(mostly) unfettered capitalism”.

Yes, but I hate Trump more.
An inch of gained ground is better than a mile of lost ground.

Leftists hate democrats so much they helped vote in Trump instead of a very decent woman twice.

The only thing leftists hate more then democrats are other leftists.

I’m sure there’s an actual Left in the USA, but it’s not covered by any of the big parties.

We have two viable political parties.

Fascist extremists and their enablers. Vote blue no matter who, so maybe the fascists won’t come for you.

We have leftists with no one to vote for, shut out of politics by liberal NIMBYs who want good things to happen, they just don’t want to see them. More concerned about the value of their house than the value of human life. We have extreme leftists, they’re just not allowed to participate. And as of yet, none of them exist in enough numbers in the same place to start throwing Molotovs

There is no far left political party but there are plenty of people who are far left. Yes, even by the European standards of the left.

Are you from one of the countries where the far right was just named most popular? If not, I’ll throw a “yet” in, because you talk like someone who lets perfection get in the way of not sees.

Liberals are the fascists in their baby form. Once the conditions of the capitalist state deteriorate they transform into fascists quite fast.

The party is conservative, their constituents are being lied to. They just need to realize that electoral politics will not save us. Hopefully they do this before it’s too late.

There’s lots of discussion below, but liberalism is the belief that enfranchisement and liberation comes from private property, which at one time was progressive in the face of feudalism. But since WW1, liberalism has not been a progressive movement as it has captured all of the private property in the world. Liberals are capitalists, leftists are not. Leftists (mostly) believe in class struggle, liberals (mostly) do not.

Leftists see the problems with private property and strive for social enfranchisement, even at the expense of private property rights, particularly where such “rights” are a function of one dominant class over the rest. To leftists, the social is material. Liberals mostly struggle to even conceive of this.

There are not clear bright lines, it is a messy spectrum of belief and politics, particularly in the US where we are so individualistic. For example I usually find it easier to work with so called progressive liberals than authoritarian leftists, although this can vary dramatically over a variety of political issues. Sometimes Authoritarian Leftists work best with Progressive liberals, and leave moderate, practical leftists out! So there is no simple formula, except to deal with the actual conditions and act on behalf of the whole working class, rather than a particular group or unique subset of interests, in the struggle against the ruling capitalist class. This looks different in different places to different people, progress and truth is borne out of actual class struggle.

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Euros don’t know liberal means different things in different places. I’ve only seen lemmy draw a huge distinction between left & liberal. I think it’s the Euro influence.

In North America, they call leftists liberals & don’t split hairs like Europe & Latin America.

In Europe and Latin America, liberalism means a moderate form of classical liberalism and includes both conservative liberalism (centre-right liberalism) and social liberalism (centre-left liberalism). In North America, liberalism almost exclusively refers to social liberalism.

People in the US get seriously confused that the Liberal party in other countries (eg, Australia) isn’t liberal.

American.

I don’t call tankies “left”.

Your wish is your command.

liberals leftists shit on the left

FTFY

They’re not that unified & don’t set aside their differences to work toward a common goal.

Case in point: trying to divide left liberals from the left.

It was kinda done intentionally to muddy the terms to prevent people from thinking of alternatives to the status quo.

Most European countries have an (actually) liberal party; the one in Germany used to have its place between social democrats and conservatives, but has moved way to the right in recent years.

That’s because the definition of the word means promoter of human rights, meaning anybody using it otherwise are the ones misusing the word.

I don’t think the right did that to the left. We did it to ourselves. In contrast, the right is somehow really good at putting aside differences to work toward a common goal. I want to know how we can copy that.

The right has found a nice way to divide the left and they’re using it everywhere.

Someone mentioned it that the problem is that NIMBYs happened to also be liberals. What do you think of building affordable housing and raising the minimum wage? These two issues are happening across the world, and they happened since mainstream parties have been in charge for thirty years.

That sounds convincing but, when establishment Democrats fight the left ten times harder than they fight the right, I don’t think it’s right wing propaganda dividing us.

Agreed. But also, you can just ignore those terms entirely and focus on actual issues…

That’s sort of the point of my post. It’s trying to poke fun on people not knowing the difference and depending on how the person define the terms. Instead, they called this post a “psyops” and I guess I also inadvertently caused another leftist/liberal (in-)fighting depending how you look at it.

only tankies on lemmy call people here libs, and they are honestly no better than right wingers, both sides of the same coin.