I don’t understand how the Democrats in USA can be considered left-wing. Sure, they are more left than the Republicans, but in my eyes they certainly not left-wing.
I don’t know what country you are from or how your voting system works. But I will guess that your country has many parties and after the election, a governing coalition is formed.
In the US voting system, similar parties get punished by stealing votes from each other. So, in effect, we have to form our coalitions before the election and choose the single candidate that will stand for all of us. So, you can think of the Democratic Party as the Democratic Coalition, made up of some truly left-wing factions, as well as some not very left-wing or even centrist factions, and so our candidate will be much more watered down than what you’d see in a different system.
I am from Sweden. You are correct that my country has many different parties that together form a governing coalition.
Thank you for making it a bit clearer to me! I appreciate it.
There are also Right-wing factions in the “Democratic coalition” you mention like The Cheney’s.
Calling the democratic party a “coalition” is extremely generous. It’s historically been a corrupt patronage network since Van Buren and any attempt to make it represent the will of its voters is thwarted internally. Its history is a graveyard of progressive movements.
You said it yourself, they are less far-right than Republicans, so Liberals get to pretend they are punks and rebels despite supporting the status quo.
Easy. We set the FBI on all the actual leftists decades ago. So the movement is having to slowly rebuild itself in the US. As a result Progressives are the farthest left things most Americans have experience with.
basically, the US is a one party system, but it has two parties
“The United States is also a one-party state, but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.” - Julius Nyerere
In the American sensibilities, the Democrats are left wing.
I know we’ve shat on Americans too many times that Democrats are not leftists and Republicans are far-right, but there is a place and time for doing so and I learned to cut Americans some slack. Americans simply have different Overton window because of different history and culture (I have explained before as to why, but I cannot be bothered to write another wall of text about it). Other countries don’t even follow a left and right political dichotomy. Many places, especially in developing countries, vote on personalities than policies. But few of us crap on people from developing countries for not following policy-based discourse, or not following the European-originated sensibilities of “left or right” politics.
We don’t currently have our own special political spectrum.
We can make a new one for you so you can feel better about this whole situation. Let’s call it the “the imperial political spectrum”. I’d be happy with that solution. Then you can say you’re left on the imperial political spectrum and it’s all good.
Americans are heavily propagandized and are politically illiterate. Generally speaking, they do not even know there is a world beyond “liberal” (Democrat) and “conservative” (GOP). It is considered nerdy and wonkish to even know very much about the two party bourgeois electoral system. So their sensibilities only mean as much as propaganda has eliminated any possibility of political education, let alone capacity for action in solidarity with humanity (even when empathy is there, correct analysis is not) for the vast majority of them. That requires developing projects dedicated to political organization and education outside and away from the two bourgeois parties.
Americans should only be cut slack to the extent that they are ignorant. They should not be cut slack for their knowing embrace of war, domination, racism, and so on. And when you simply inform them of the existence of such things, they will rapidly educate you in their commitment to the project. Perhaps they will momentarily feel bad, but most of the time they will quickly find a psychological salve for cognitive dissonance, lest they act outside of the tracks laid down for them by reactionary and genocidal capital. Our work on the left is to peel off more and more from those tracks and turn them into fellow track-peelers, this is naturally an opportunity for exponential growth if we can consistentlu break past what keeps them on-track.
Because American politics is weird and partisan a f.
Anything even remotely left will get you labelled a Commie or tankie by the right, while anything remotely right will get you labelled a Nazi by the left.
while anything remotely right will get you labelled a Nazi by the left.
Yeah it’s crazy how attacking the White House just cuz you can’t deal with the results like an adult gets a group a bad rep. What an unfair world what with actions having consequences and all that.
To be fair, a Left wing revolution is necessary. The Jan 6ers weren’t Nazis for trying to do a coup, but because fascism is Capitalism in decay, and an alliance between the Petite Bourgeoisie and Bourgeoisie. Most Jan 6ers were small business owners and the like.
Oh it’s been like that long before January 6th, and long before Trump even stepped foot in the Republican primaries eight years ago.
That wasn’t me defending Jan 6th either. Trump’s little Beer Hall Putsch was frankly inexcusable, and the fact that he’s likely not going to face any kind of criminal repercussions for it makes the US look weaker than the Weimar Republic.
The Left begins with anti-capitalism. If you aren’t against capitalism, you aren’t left.
That’s actually a really good layman’s explanation. I’m going to use that combined with, “you’re not a capitalist just because you support them. Capitalists are the people who own the capital.”
Who are the bottom two people on the left side?
Thomas Sankara, a Marxist-Leninist who liberated Burkina Faso, and Rosa Luxemburg, of Reform or Revolution fame.
Thomas Sankara and Rosa Luxemburg
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'Aha, I have depicted my opponent as the soyjak emoji and myself as the chad!"
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(just straight up misogyny)
Scratched liberal alert
Nobody did.
Saying liberals aren’t left wing is gatekeeping the term. Imagine saying that I’m not left leaning enough. Wtf is that supposed mean!
Would you prefer blue conservatives?
I used to think you were one of the good guys
Liberalism is the political ideology of mainstream capitalism, particularly for the imperialist countries. As the global economic system for decades and decades, this makes liberals a conservative ideology, its members attempt to maintain the fundamental capitalist status quo. Its members that attempt to make substantial changes begin to push at the fringes of liberalism and end up working against it. Reactionaries try to “restore” a largely fictitious past glory and reinforce conservative social mores in order to scapegoat the problems of liberalism onto marginalized communities. Those on the anticapitalist left, those that actually oppose the system itself, are the actually progressive historical actors nowadays. You could have given liberals that label in the 1700s to mid 1800s perhaps, but they are not the defenders of the current order.
Leftism is to go against the current class order, Liberalism supports it. Leftism isn’t an arbitrary vibe, if you’re pro-Capitalism then you aren’t against Capitalism!
Leftism isn’t to go against capitalism though. Leftism broadly refers to the ideology that supports socioeconomic equality. If I’m to remind you of the origin of the terms “left” and “right” as it relates to politics, the terms right and left refer to political affiliations originating early in the French Revolutionary era. “The Left” implied support for republicanism - becoming a republic, and not American republicanism, secularism and civil liberties.
Political scientists and other analysts usually regard the left as including anarchists, communists, socialists, democratic socialists, social democrats, left-libertarians, progressives, and social liberals. Movements for racial equality, as well as trade unionism, have also been associated with the left. Source
The sort of leftism you Marxist-Leninists advocate for is radical leftism. Social liberalism is still leftist.
Leftism broadly refers to the ideology that supports socioeconomic equality
Then by your own definition Liberalism is right wing! This is ridiculous.
its not about gatekeeping anything its about describing reality, if u are a worker either u are a pathetic boot licker or u are leftist and ur mouth looks rather muddy.
you are not left enough.
Smart cutie pies?
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Multiplied life expectancy by 1.5, brought literacy rates to 99%+, freed the slaves and peasants from the fascist Batista regime, there’s a lot to love about Cuba.
