this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2025
88 points (76.5% liked)
Fediverse
29207 readers
2091 users here now
A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to [email protected]!
Rules
- Posts must be on topic.
- Be respectful of others.
- Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
- Follow the general Lemmy.world rules.
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
IDGAF about what the US is cooking up when it comes to political definitions, much less so when they disagree with the rest of the world. Anti-capitalism is necessary to be on the left, it's not negotiable.
Just like you wouldn't call someone who denies god a Christian. There's no "but they deny god a bit less than Richard Dawkins, so they're more Christian": No, they're still denying god, they can't be Christian. If they consider themselves Christian despite denying god, then it stands to reason that they're quite confused about what being a Christian entails, don't you think?
You're ina thread authored by an canadian about "normies". North American concepts matter.
Edit even wherever you're from "left wing" (the scope of center to far left) exists, just the starting point of center is unique.
Further, your purity test determination leaves no room for the varied mins of people all over the world. For example fiscal centrists who are socially progressive. You may call that a false leftist, but I'd just say they're a mild left wing voter. I bet if they weren't purity tested they'd eventually shift their perspective on fiscal matters leftward.
Point being people hold varied political opinions, sometimes in complete contrast to themselves. I bet there's some completely theory pure fiscal leftists who don't believe in abortion rights, or some other bizarre combo
So you would call Peter Thiel a leftist? A literal billionaire? A literal neo-feudalist? Because he happens to be gay and proud of it?
You are taking a word that has been, since its literal inception (seating arrangements in the French national assembly, as seen from the lectern), been connected to the struggle of the masses vs. nobility/oligarchy, and you're attaching orthogonal meanings to it. You cannot be leftist if you're on the side of the oligarchy, if you're a capitalist.
"Socially progressive". You already have a term for it. Good. Use it. Don't dilute other terms, or even allow them to be turned into their opposite.
There's no centre point between "believe in god" and "deny god": Either you do or you don't, and anything agnostic is not in the centre, it's not a compromise, but off the axis altogether.
When did I suggest that would be a leftist? Maybe reread. Specifically the end.
He may hold left opinions on LGBTQ+ issues but hold completely contracting, non left wing opinions elsewhere. We can be sure that's true. He's certainly not a leftist, and likely not a left wing voter either.
Ultimately I'd highlight that you are doing the.thing: you are purity testing very broad language in a completely useless way
To be hyper clear for you:
Left WING is not leftIST
LeftIST is left WING
Whether -ist or -wing doesn't matter both still contain the word "left", don't they? Therefore, they are either anti-capitalist, or they're confused. And, yes, much of US politics is terribly confused. The moderate left, in the US, begins with AOC and Bernie, both solid socdems, radical is far a ways off. The Democrat establishment, by and large, supports the oligarchy, they don't even begin to be on the left.
Don't expect lefties from elsewhere to play into that confusion.