Found this graph online for anyone who might still be confused. I think this makes it much more clear.
Who’s the guy between Joe and Mitch?
I think its Jeb Bush. Not 100% sure though.
Who is Joe and Mitch
The right-left divide is a fabrication meant to obscure the fact that the actual division is capitalist-socialist. Do you support the owning class, or do you support the working class?
Yeah capitalism isn’t interrupt about free markets and competition or investing in yourself. It’s about the ownership class, and the labour class (those that work for the owner class, make all the money and get proportionally none of it). Companies are mini monarchies where you get no say in the policy, the ownership of the company is usually passed on to descendents, you live half your life abiding by the mini monarchy. You vote outside of work, but not at work, work is not democratic. Even so, governments are not mediators between workers and elite, the people that end up in government are of the elite class and have their own interests in mind. We only have our labour rights and aren’t complete slaves today because of very strong socialist movements during and after the great depression and ww2. They compromised with some socialism to avoid complete socialism, but these movements are of course not too frequently mentioned in history lessons
This graph needs updating tbh. Bernie is not centerleft lol. And Obama and Hillary are far right as well. Tax cuts, dronebombings, imperialism and so on. The atrocities in Libya, the coup in Ukraine and all the other heinous shit. Don’t let pinkwashing fool you
Them cutting ACORN or giving bailouts to banks in 2008… It’s incredible what good PR does to the perception of these monsters.
Bernie Sanders is center left by all standards. You never had contact with left, or far left.
He is center right by the standards I have put forth, so definitionally not all standards.
Regarding your second point, I’d like to say it sounds like you haven’t had much interaction with leftists or left-wing political theory, considering your response.Edit: And by the most basic standard of “pro-capitalism or anti-capitalist?” He is, by his own admission a social democrat, which is an ideology that believes in reforming capitalism. So by the most foundational definition of what forms the left- and right wings in modern politics, he is right wing. However I’d say he’s centre right, rather than a hard right.
My grandpas were partisan, my father in Democrazia proletaria, police have pics of me at 4 in a general strike. We occupied schools and fabrics. I grew in a trozkjist family. My friend, you have no idea was it is the left.
Neat! I hang out with communist guerillas and a friend of mine carried out some sabotages when he was young and now he’s a union organizer. Also my dick is larger than yours. Also also you’re not my friend, fuck off with the condescension and, once again, educate yourself. Having family that has been politically involved does not mean you suddenly have an integral understanding of politics.
Considering the many Eastern European chuds I’ve met, it’s honestly more likely the opposite is the case.Edit: I cannot imagine being proud of associating with trots lol. Does explain your lack of political understanding though.
And again by definition Left-wing is anti-capitalist. That is what left vs. right is about. By definition. You being the type to have grown up among some vocal idiots does make a lot of sense for your behaviour.
These memes remind me of my high school religion teacher (I went to Catholic school in Canada, “religion” was what you would call Civics) who introduced the political spectrum. He wrote the usual line across the chalkboard with left/center/right labels, and explained what they were. Then, he extended the chalk line to the right, off the board and onto the wall, and continued past the corner onto the next wall. He was about half way to the back of the room before he started writing down names of any of our political leaders at the time. I don’t remember most of the names from 30 years ago, but Conrad Black was on the back wall.
Id say biden is center and bernie is left. Bidens policies were often more left than obamas. But its also hard to but them on the same scale that was made for european politics. Biden actually had a few policies which msde trans peoples lifes better while on other fronts supporting policies that would be pretty far right in europe. Europe is generally more economic left while the us is maybe more left socially but idk its quite complicated. Also mamdani isnt on this but same with him. Id say hes center left. Definitely not full left or how trump likes to call him a radical leftist.
Being more left wing than a right winger does not make you a centrist.
The annoying thing here is that there is a relative and an absolute notion of leftism, and it’s really hard to get a good grasp of what actual centrism and actual leftism looks like when your entire context consists of people who consider anything slightly left of full blown fascism “centrist” or even “left wing”.
Bernie “both sides” Sanders is left-wing? Hardly. The guy is a sheepdog for grassroots movements that can disrupt the DNC and that’s basically it. Had he had a political career in a country with a welfare state then he’d be busy dismantling it. His foreign policy is right wing. His domestic barely clears.
he’s center-left in the context of american politics. his policy positions would basically be in alignment with Germany’s FDP which is centre-right
In some respects. The FDP would never subsidize green technologies on such a scale though.
“We have to be open to all technologies, so strategically advancing those that make sense and aren’t scams would lead to an evil planned economy!”
funny thing is, it wasn’t even all that subsidized
some grants and a tax break, the next administration eliminated that practically overnight
Now watch Schummer fall in line with Trump, now that the Iran war has begun. This is how we know he was never a lefty!
fuckin’ Schomer Yssrael ass dork. the fact that all us ashkenazi are as related as we are means he’s probably my cousin makes me want to slap him so fuckin’ hard. acting like israel speaks for me, and he speaks for israel, therefor he speaks for me? unacceptable. what a huge fuckin’ dork
Bernie isn’t far left by international standards, but I wouldn’t put him in the centre. Nobody in the centre is trying to make radical changes to things. What Bernie is proposing is pretty radical compared to where the US currently is. And, I think if those reforms actually passed, he’d still be trying to move things even more to the left.
And Biden as “far right”? It has lost all meaning if you’re applying that label to him.
He stopped a rail worker strike for safer working conditions, then six moths latter there was a massive derailment and an environmental catastrophe in Ohio. You would call that left?
Do you mean that supporting a genocide is a centrist policy?
Yeah they sacrificed nuance for effect - but the scale tipping to the right is still effective. A more informative version with brief explanations of what ‘center’ and ‘left’ and etc. are would be great too.
Idk. Simping for a fascist ethnostate sure doesn’t seem left to me.
… and it’s just a meme, homie.
It usually takes more than one thing to label somebody left or right.
And “it’s just a meme” is how we ended up with a meme in office twice.
Do you realize how insane our politics are for people to think of supporting a genocide as just one thing on a list of policies?
Yo, the only reason Hitler is considered right-wing, because he wanted to lead the German nation to prosperity. Stop purity-testing!
/s (in case it’s not obvious)
Genocide Joe still was a right-wing politician. With his hwole political legacy.
… wait a second… you think Trump became president, because of leftists not con&idering the Dems anything but right wing? Lol.
Twice, so far
Could someone clarify the watch this space part?
Entering that space is risky. For politicians it means endless primary challenges from the right with bottomless campaign funding.
For individuals it means being fairgamed by right wing watchdogs. Online harassment campaigns, doxxing, swatting, squealing or falsifying info to ICE, etc.
Pretty obvious but what this country needs is a surge of real leftist politicians. Not that a far left loonie is more moral than a far right loonie. What we need is balance. Its what is missing from every bill and every law.
Chasing “balance” is how we got here in the first place.
Ha ha ha ha.
Thanks mate.
Well you see, it’s going to do a trick.
In a sane world centre would be ‘status quo making decisions based on objective reality’ yet somehow even the idea that we should base our decisions on verifiable date is like super extreme gay communism left by current standards.
The ‘left right spectrum’ is a harmful concept because it makes communism seem like an extremist position even though it’s in the best interest of 99% of people, and only unpopular due to billions and billions worth of red scare propaganda by the 1%.
I am a centrist!
Me 
Who is this guy in right side from Trump?
Peewee German, the Nosferatu
Stephen Miller
The Overton Window is known to many but still most can’t see how it shapes acceptable politics. What’s left and right in the US is shifted so far right from most other democratic countries.
I think it’s important to recognize the Overton Window is shaped by what is acceptable to voters. This means that the present state of affairs can only be the result of one or both of these scenarios:
-
Enough of the US voting population leans far enough right to move the window, or
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Political policy is being dictated by forces other than what voters find acceptable.
What you’ll notice online is that a lot of these people who want to move the overton window understand this, so their goal is to remove the left from the voting population. There are a lot of ways to do this. You can require ID to vote, and then invalidate trans people’s IDs. You can gerrymander so the votes don’t count. You can just plain old kill people. You can make it very unpleasant to vote. You can suppress candidates who represent the left wing from winning primaries. And if you’re really clever, you can make up a propaganda line that convinces leftists it’s in their own interest not to vote.
the Overton Window is shaped by what is acceptable to voters
No. It’s shaped by what’s acceptable to the media, politicians, and their owner donors.
Much more often than not, the vast majority of voters don’t get to choose beyond harm reduction by choosing the lesser evil. Which is still an evil.
Political policy is being dictated by forces other than what voters find acceptable.
Yup. 🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
#2 it has always been #2 except sometimes those “forces” want the same things or the “forces” that agree with something the public also happens to agree with have a win for a minute
-
I don’t think the US is the outlier that people think it is. Other “democratic” nations are undergoing the same political issues at the behest of the same economic interests.
With the major difference that those nations have a lot more social programs to combat poverty and homelessness, and have health insurance that doesn’t bankrupt people. That really helps with social cohesion and prevents larger scale radicalization.
No way fr? It’s like being a liberal doesn’t make you a leftist and that you can definitely be a right wing liberal
I would say that most liberals are right leaning. They’re not willing to stand up for leftist values. When people “accuse” them of wanting open borders they backpeddle like crazy.
You can indeed be a right wing liberal, it is however more difficult to be a left wing conservative
is being a left wing conservative even possible?
Depends on the country. The “conservatives” in the late USSR were the people opposing abolishing the union. I think the same descriptor is used for chavistas and Cuban communists.
I am of the opinion that green are very often left wing conservatives.
I thought they were communists
Not on lemmy, where being left means you have to absolutely and entirely go along with whatever the others feel should be a leftist belief. Purity tests all day every day, followed up by literal campaigns and concerted efforts by other “leftists” against the offending people.
See the whole online boycott war being fought against .ml because the owners ran afoul of something. Lemmy is just as stupid as other social media but has a different demographic, which makes it at least for the time being more palatable.
A “conservative” leftist would probably be someone who generally agrees on economic theory but has a less open and progressive view towards social issues such as marriage rights or immigration.
What you define is segregation : a society where progress benefits me, but not you, because you are different.
What i define is how most actually socialist or communist countries of the past were organized though. See for example the GDR, socially just as conservative as most other countries at the time; to the point that the formerly GDR part of germany is now a breeding ground for far right political power.
My point is not that socially conservative ideas have merit, but that they are not inherently ideologically incompatible with wanting a not-capitalist economy. And that we do ourselves little good by constantly falling back into the old leftist trope of never being able to achieve political power because everyone only agrees on like, 90% of issues.
You are mixing a lot of things here : capitalist vs anti capitalist regime is not this same as progressive/conservative politics.
If you believe social progress should benefit only you and not me, you are not progressive.
And I’d like to point out that all regimes you mention are not different from any other : they all had a ruling class. This is, again, not progressive.
And as I pointed out in an other comment: studies suggest that Totalitarianism is not about left or right, because they use the same concepts to validate their ideologies.
Damn you’re hilarious, any more jokes in there?
If we consider one of the key value of the “left” being progress, I think it is difficult to concillate both.
People who tried to conserve Soviet Union can arguably be called left wing conservatives.
I’d argue they were totalitarian and not conservative. The funny thing about Totalitarianism is that it does not really care about being left or right and seems to share the same values : https://news.emory.edu/stories/2021/09/esc_left_wing_authoritarians_psychology/campus.html
Totalitarianism is a made up word by a CIA stooge (who was an actual anti-Semite, before the word lost all meaning) cooked up to draw parallels between the USSR and Nazi Germany so as to propagate red scare propaganda.
In Hannah Arendt analysis it does not matter for what purpose the tools of state power are utilised, merely that they are utilised. It does not matter if the state has broad support from the population, all that matters is that the state acts. This is an infantile worldview.
The word itself is without any meaning beyond “descriptor of enemy state”. Any definition is either so broad as to describe every nation-state or so narrow that it could just be replaced with the name of the state one is trying to foster fear of.
Not really no, closest is a Moderate Conservative, which is just any conservative with a leaning towards the center
There is no left or right anymore. There are only fascists and antifascists.
so… left and right then?
Which are basically just synonyms for left and right.
Why did George Washington lead the continental army again?
To avoid taxes on “owning” people:
none of those whose misfortune it is to have slaves as attendants will visit the City if they can possibly avoid it; because by so doing they hazard their property
when slaves who are happy & content to remain with their present masters, are tampered with & seduced to leave them; when masters are taken at unawar[e]s by these practices; when a conduct of this sort begets discontent on one side and resentment on the other, & when it happens to fall on a man whose purse will not measure with that of the Society, & he looses his property for want of means to defend it—it is oppression in the latter case, & not humanity in any; because it introduces more evils than it can cure.
it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery in this Country may be abolished by slow, sure, & imperceptable degrees
Whoever apprehends the said Negroes, so that the Subscriber may readily get them, shall have, if taken up in this County, Forty Shillings Reward, beside what the Law allows; and if at any greater Distance, or out of the Colony, a proportionable Recompence paid them, by George Washington
it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery in this Country may be abolished by slow, sure, & imperceptable degrees
Honestly, I could see this as being better than the alternative – better than having a Civil War. Especially if it was started during Washington’s time.
Say, just pass a law that says no new slaves can be imported and anyone born after the law passes is not born a slave, no matter the status of their parents. Then, (hopefully) slave owners don’t get all violent over losing their ‘property’, and slavery is slowly abolished in the country over the course of a generation.
Is it as good as complete, total, and immediate abolishment of slavery? Hell no. But if it could have ended slavery without a war that killed millions, maybe it’s worth it. Especially if it was done in Washington’s time, such that slavery would already be essentially over by the time the Civil War would have otherwise started. So, on the balance, less people suffering under slavery overall. Pragmatism?
Oh well, who are we kidding? The slave owners would never have allowed such a law to stand, and they’d start a different Civil War about it if nothing else worked.
Just for reference. It was more than I thought.
Our national estimate is 698,000 Civil War deaths. This is substantially higher than the conventional historical estimate of 618,000 but lower than the most recent estimate of around 750,000 deaths based on a 1% census sample.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2414919121
New estimates of US Civil War mortality from full-census records
Joan Barceló, Jeffrey L. Jensen, Leonid Peisakhin, and Haoyu Zhai
Edited by Margaret Levi, Stanford University, Stanford, CA; received July 25, 2024; accepted September 25, 2024Oops, shit. I was off by about an order of magnitude on the death toll. Still, though.
Oh wow, defending a slaver for wanting to keep his slaves? I wasn’t expecting to actually encounter one in the wild today.
Oh come off it. I’m not defending the fucker. Just saying that a slow, gradual abolishment of slavery that started much earlier might have been an overall better outcome, with fewer people enslaved and fewer people killed over it.
Kill all slavers.
That is indeed a very nice goal. But is it practically achievable?
Forgive my propaganda learning, I thank you good person.
If only more than one of those were pictured.
The only ones that want us to believe that are the fascists. If they can keep us fighting each other, we won’t be able to fight them.
lmao, agreed.
E: whoops, those two sentences were so contradictory I could only remember the second by the time I was responding.
Those are just different words for the same things.
They’re not, but your antifascism meter is mis-calibrated.
Always has been, it’s only that now the violence turns inwards.
I don’t think I would say Hillary Clinton was to the left of Joe Biden. At least he had Lena Khan and a strong FCC. Something I don’t think Clinton would have ever done. I would reverse those two.
For that matter I don’t know if Obama is to the left of him either.
