this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
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[–] clonedhuman@lemmy.world 46 points 1 week ago (5 children)

This is all bullshit.

Who fucking cares about these definitions? All y'all have the same damn enemy. Worry about the enemy first. Iron out disagreements over terminology once the fascists are gone.

It's so weird that people spend so much time debating this pointless garbage.

[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

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

[–] Asafum@feddit.nl 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And the economic right have had all the power for the last god knows how many election cycles... They've been chasing the unicorn moderate that would somehow vote Democrat, which doesn't exist, but in doing so they lose the "left" vote.

Those "centrists" and "moderates" are conservatives that are disgusted by the GOP, but would never vote for Democrats because they don't agree with their policies. They have no party but the economic right liberals keep trying to attract them... Hopefully now with the change in DNC leadership they'll stop this losing game and actually be what their voters want them to be.

[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The "unicorn moderate" used to exist, and they grew from post-war up to the early 2000s. They were called the middle class. Back then when the middle class was much more prominent and bigger, they could still afford both private healthcare and keep up with the cost of living. One of the key litmus test of being "moderate" is the survey on affordable healthcare. In early 00s, socialised healthcare was deeply unpopular. However, it was from during and after the Great Recession of 2008 that the middle class shrunk and recognised that people need more public assistance. Affordable healthcare became increasingly more popular as time went on.

Rent have also become almost unaffordable since the recession. Ever since then, many proposals and plans to create affordable housing were made but have been blocked not just by corporations, but also by individual homeowners who don't want their house prices to go down. And one of the hard to swallow pills is that many of them are liberals. One could easily search online of affordable housing being voted down in California and New York, states that are liberal strongholds.

There is a reason why Zohran Mamdani's New York mayoral campaign is more widely successful than other Democratic candidates. He is addressing the growing cost of living by wanting to cap rent prices and providing government run grocery stores, which made him popular among the poor. Because the middle class shrunk and people had been shoved into fringes of poverty. The "moderate" voters that the Democrats are chasing is no longer there. At this day and age, "moderate" for centrists and neoliberals means the wealthy, while pretending that the word means the middle class voters from 2000s.

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Debating in right wing spaces is futile. Those morons don't know the first thing about sourcing material or the truth

[–] lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com 0 points 1 week ago

That's a reason to debate them.

[–] KeenFlame@feddit.nu 4 points 1 week ago

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

[–] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

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

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world -1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That's not what Liberal means, though. That might be what the Liberal Parties usually stand for, but that's not what the word means at all.

[–] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

*sigh*

Modern usage and definitions

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.

In my country, the formerly centre-right, now just right "the market will take care of it" party calls itself liberal ever since the 50s.

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world -1 points 1 week ago

And the North Korean Dictatorship calls itself the Democratic Peoples Republic, whats your point?

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world -3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

It is a jab at Americans who can't tell the difference between left and liberal and often conflate the two.

And sure look, if liberal Democrats really want to win again, they have to deal with "kitchen table issues" as Mamdani puts it. And as I mentioned to one of the commenters, who are the ones who keep voting down affordable rent and housing, even in liberal states, because it will bring their house prices down? Mamdani forwarded a solution to that by capping rent prices and he won over people for that. That alone says why American left and liberals are actually different though mainly on economic issues.

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world -4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

CaPitAlIST LIbrUhLS CoNFLaTe HuMAn riGHTs wiTh ProGRESS HUURRGGH DURRRR Yeah I know your whole spiel

[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Affordable housing, freedom from want and jobs are human rights.