this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025
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I actually think it is incredibly important to understand these distinctions. There is an entire generation of people who grew up with "I want weed and to not pay taxes. I guess that makes me a libertarian?" just like we have a generation of people who grew up with "I think it is stupid that I will be in debt forever because of college. I guess I am a communist?"
Understanding these distinctions is important.
Just because someone aligns with socialism doesn't mean they are a libertarian socialist or a communist. Just like how someone can also be a libertarian but not be a socialist. The reason there are two words in that term is because it is a merging of multiple ideologies.
We see it all the time. Leftists become tankies because they listened to the equivalent of a facebook post at a drum circle and don't want to actually understand their own ideologies. So rather than being a socialist democrat or a libertarian socialist or any other flavor, they become full on tankies because "Well. I like socialism and socialism is communism so the CCP never did anything wrong". And that is used by right wing governments because... the vast majority of communist governments were evil and corrupt fascists (also many had stopped being communist along the way but...)
And same here. You and others are insisting that it was "co-opted". But if you actually go back to the roots of the movements and even look at how the left uses it, it is one aspect. And yeah, right wing politics did push to use the term... because the idea of "tear it all down and make it better" aligns well with youths. But... just because they "won the branding" doesn't mean that their pseudo-anarchists aren't libertarians.
And I also very much argue it is worth making people look themselves in the mirror to actually understand what they are advocating for with "libertarianism" regardless of if it is "polite anarchy" or not.
From a historical perspective, absolutely. My point is that it's not worth attempting to "out message/propagandize" literal billionaires that own the platforms in which we would attempt to do so.
Rothbard quite literally claims this, this isn't an opinion lmao.
Yes and? What is your point even supposed to be? That it's not an umbrella term that comprehensively covers conceivable form of socialism? I don't think anyone is arguing that.
We are simply pointing to the historical usage of the word, it's origins.
In the modern, Americanized version of the word sure. But that doesn't change the fact that historically, and originally, it meant something entirely different.
Again, not sure who your arguing with here. The problem isn't that it's "polite" anarchism (whatever that even means), it's that they stole and corrupted terms, ideas, etc, the very bastardization itself.