• blarth@thelemmy.club
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    64
    ·
    4 months ago

    Hey guys,

    Remember when we found out Russia and China were manipulating us into fighting between left and right, and now they’re dividing the left into 2 camps that are supposed to hate each other?

    Yeah.

    Yeah.

    • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      35
      ·
      4 months ago

      .ml leading the charge on this.

      I see a lot of other really suspicious shit around Lemmy. I have a suspicion it’s trying to be used like r/the_donald was.

      • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        18
        ·
        4 months ago

        If anything is being used to stir shit and divide and conquer it’s all the noxious anti-communist liberals running around crying about tankies

          • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            18
            ·
            edit-2
            4 months ago

            You see the problem is if we don’t agree with everything liberals say then we are dividing the left somehow. When will you learn that we simply strongly disagree with your ideology? The left isn’t allied with liberals and never has been.

            • frostedtrailblazer@lemmy.zip
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              4 months ago

              I disagree that there is a strong divide ideologically speaking. I think regarding the liberals in Congress this holds fairly true for their more conservative approach to progress, but I wouldn’t say it’s the same for what leftist-liberal voters want.

              For instance, I’m in favor of Universal Basic Income, Universal Basic Services, union support/collective bargaining, Universal Healthcare, universal daycare, free college/trade school education, and support for nuclear power & renewable energy solutions.

              I believe the capitalist system needs to be reigned in entirely where there should not be any billionaires. Tax loopholes need to be closed on corporations that allow for the billionaires to take loans on their stock. There should be no monopolies or big conglomerates as they prevent competition.

              Furthermore, we should change the reward structure of our economy by highly subsidizing jobs like teaching, researching, and the arts as I believe these sectors are what help a society to flourish yet are underfunded/underpaid.

              • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                5
                ·
                edit-2
                4 months ago

                We differ in that I recognize this to be impossible under capitalism. Monopolies and imperialism are a feature not a bug

                • frostedtrailblazer@lemmy.zip
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  4 months ago

                  I disagree that they are impossible; hard to do yes, but not impossible. They require the political power to implement those things is the key thing, but that goes with everything. In the US for instance, if it was just the blue states voting for those things to be implemented in blue states and if the blue states funded it then I think would be possible to implement some of those things even in our current political climate.

                  There’s a few things you need to make it possible though:

                  • Ending Citizens United, as it is much harder to implement these changes when politicians can be bought by corporate interests.

                  • Alternative Voting systems in place at local, state, and federal levels. As progressive politicians sometimes have a higher barrier of getting off the ground verses incumbents due to vote splitting.

                  • Reimplementing and expanding the Fairness Doctrine to include all traditional media, social media, and apply to online influencers. As misinformation is currently allowed to be spread without audiences being presented a more well rounded picture.

                  I will add that the monopolies are inevitable if the system is unregulated. Same thing with cartels. Capitalism only works with regulations to keep the system working. As the entire benefit of capitalism, innovation, all but stops when competition is not allowed to happen with big companies. That is why we need regulators that are not able to be influenced or bought out by corporate lobbyists.

                  Imperialism is less a feature these days, more globalist multinational conglomeration. It’s cut from the same cloth though, with unscrupulous companies seeking to exploit locals in international markets. The answer to dealing with these entities is that we need a multinational trade deal with our allies.

                  Namely, we need to punish companies and countries that try to exploit locals in other counties for cheap/exploitative labor practices. Any country or company that doesn’t do business by the agreement should be met with steep tariffs, ideally with some of those funds set aside to go back to the workers who were robbed of the fruits of their labor. I believe the agreement should require that resources be collected in a way that is sustainable, implementing green practices, and non-exploitative.

        • Emotional (he/him)
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          4 months ago

          Good point, tankies isn’t a very well know term.

          Telling new users they shouldn’t listen to the FooBars when they say “don’t vote for Genocide Joe, I’m your friendly neighborhood communist btw” doesn’t directly convey why the FooBars can’t be trusted. I think most people on Lemmy agree that communism isn’t the enemy.

          Maybe instead of tankie, we should use a more known and direct descriptor: don’t trust the dictators.

          • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            4 months ago

            I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. We live in a dictatorship of capital, I’m opposed to that.

      • Machinist@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        4 months ago

        Yup. There’s stuff that pings my radar as well.

        However, the technical barrier to actually getting on Lemmy forces a minimum level of intelligence. I. E. the pool of useful idiots is way smaller than reddit. Most tankie wank gets called out.

        Doesn’t mean that we’re not being used for training data. I’m also still percolating on what can be done by just posting slanted articles and stifling disent.

        Lemmy is better but still totally susceptible to manipulation.

    • njm1314@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      23
      ·
      4 months ago

      Lol. Yeah im sure that it’s China and Russians who are causing leftist to not trust liberals. The last 300 years of human history in which liberals gleefully murdered leftists has nothing to do with it.

    • skisnow@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      4 months ago

      I’m not saying that this isn’t happening, but at the same time it also seems to get heavily implied in threads like these that the solution is for leftists to just get onboard with two-party neoliberalist capitalism just for this next one election, just this once, we promise.

      Calling on the Democratic Party to adopt left-wing policies keeps getting branded “divisive”, but calling on Leftists to adopt the center-right is treated like an attempt at unification.

      The people calling for party unity don’t want any of the political aspects of a united Left, they just want to carry on the same policies they had before but with more people being scared into holding their noses and voting for them.

      • TheFonz@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        4 months ago

        It’s just that lefties don’t seem to want to or know how to build power. It feels very performative. If they actually cared about any of the issues they are so vocal about, I don’t know, maybe they would do the groundwork to build a political framework. That’s why I applaud people like Zohran or AOC. They are there, doing the work day in and out. But online lefties are just pouting and crying about liberals non stop

        • skisnow@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          4 months ago

          Zohran

          Thanks for picking an example that so beautifully supports my case. Literally the one time a guy comes up with some mildly left-of-center policies that might actually stand some chance of getting implemented, Establishment Democrats turned on him so strongly that the guy they actually wanted felt emboldened enough to run against him as an independent.

          • TheFonz@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            4 months ago

            Yes. I didn’t think establishment democrats would just roll over without a fight. But they are boomers on their last ticket out. If we don’t at least try, then what’s the point? Is the sum total of all our efforts then intended to be online memes? That’s why I look up to Mamdani because he’s not punching the entire democratic apparatus. He’s punching the hardline centrist boomers that are holding the party back. After all, Zohran is running from within the democratic primary, and not as an independent. I have a lot of respect for him and will always support him. He’s doing the work to change the party and move it in the right direction. So is AOC. On the other hand, online lefties sum total action amounts to…memes? I don’t know. You tell me. What exactly are y’all doing?

            • frostedtrailblazer@lemmy.zip
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              edit-2
              4 months ago

              You get it; I think there is an issue of conflating what the lazy, safe seat Democrats in office that are borderline Republicans want and what the Democratic voters want. Mamdani is closer to what liberal/left Democratic voters want for our party. A big issue is the politicians in power of our party are mostly corporate types that are not necessarily trying to rock the boat too much.

              It’s a nuanced and multifaceted issue which mainly comes from Citizens United. Plus, it’s an issue of the First Past the Post voting system in much of the country making it harder for more progressive candidates to come out ahead.

              I think there’s also a bit of a misconception that we can’t incorporate things like Universal Healthcare, Universal Basic Income, Universal Basic Services, or other progressive/leftist policies under our current economic system.

              That’s not to say that we can’t change things down the line, but we can regulate capitalism and create income floors so no one is going without food, medicine, shelter, or support.

        • skisnow@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          edit-2
          4 months ago

          The hilarious thing about this is that I’m not even the only person in this thread that you’ve accused of being a Russian troll.

          It doesn’t even make sense on its own terms, like why would the Russians be trying to promote the case that the Democratic Party should make more concessions to the Left? Is “Russian troll” just what you call anyone who disagrees with your theories on political strategising?

          The big irony is that I don’t think you even realize just how perfectly you proved my original point. “Leftists should toe the Liberal Line” = Not Troll, “Liberals should accommodate Left-wing policies” = Troll, apparently

    • Deceptichum@quokk.auBanned from community
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      4 months ago

      The left has always been infighting. The two great memes of the left are walls of text and hating other leftists.

      But liberals are not leftists. And we’ve disliked you for decades and globally.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      4 months ago

      KGB handbook: play up the loudest voices on both sides of every social issue, make every tiny issue seem so overblown and saturated with lies and nonsense that average people stay out of it and stop trusting anyone involved.

      This leaves people with no activism or outside opinion they can trust so they go along with whatever state media reports because what else is there.

      This has worked wonders in other countries, it is working wonders in America. It is going to work in your country next, reader. What are you going to do about it?

    • Quadhammer@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      4 months ago

      Divide and conquer. If the left can’t see that then they doom us all. Liberals want freedom and justice and that is NOT being represented by most democrats

      • Barbarian@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        4 months ago

        That’s a very one-sided take. Yes, leftists can easily fall for the divide and conquer purity tests. To pretend that liberals don’t fall for it as they have historically and are currently sabotaging popular & successful leftist candidates is ridiculous.

          • Keeponstalin@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            10
            ·
            4 months ago
            Blackshirts and Reds - Michael Parenti - Ch 1

            In Germany, a similar pattern of complicity between fascists and capitalists emerged. German workers and farm laborers had won the right to unionize, the eight-hour day, and unemployment insurance. But to revive profit levels, heavy industry and big finance wanted wage cuts for their workers and massive state subsidies and tax cuts for themselves.

            During the 1920s, the Nazi Sturmabteilung or SA, the brown-shirted storm troopers, subsidized by business, were used mostly as an antilabor paramilitary force whose function was to terrorize workers and farm laborers. By 1930, most of the tycoons had concluded that the Weimar Republic no longer served their needs and was too accommodating to the working class. They greatly increased their subsidies to Hitler, propelling the Nazi party onto the national stage. Business tycoons supplied the Nazis with generous funds for fleets of motor cars and loudspeakers to saturate the cities and villages of Germany, along with funds for Nazi party organizations, youth groups, and paramilitary forces. In the July 1932 campaign, Hitler had sufficient funds to fly to fifty cities in the last two weeks alone.

            In that same campaign the Nazis received 37.3 percent of the vote, the highest they ever won in a democratic national election. They never had a majority of the people on their side. To the extent that they had any kind of reliable base, it generally was among the more affluent members of society. In addition, elements of the petty bourgeoisie and many lumpenproletariats served as strong-arm party thugs, organized into the SA storm troopers. But the great majority of the organized working class supported the Communists or Social Democrats to the very end.

            In the December 1932 election, three candidates ran for president: the conservative incumbent Field Marshal von Hindenburg, the Nazi candidate Adolph Hitler, and the Communist party candidate Ernst Thaelmann. In his campaign, Thaelmann argued that a vote for Hindenburg amounted to a vote for Hitler and that Hitler would lead Germany into war. The bourgeois press, including the Social Democrats, denounced this view as “Moscow inspired.” Hindenburg was re-elected while the Nazis dropped approximately two million votes in the Reichstag election as compared to their peak of over 13.7 million.

            True to form, the Social Democrat leaders refused the Communist party’s proposal to form an eleventh-hour coalition against Nazism. As in many other countries past and present, so in Germany, the Social Democrats would sooner ally themselves with the reactionary Right than make common cause with the Reds.3 Meanwhile a number of right-wing parties coalesced behind the Nazis and in January 1933, just weeks after the election, Hindenburg invited Hitler to become chancellor.

            Upon assuming state power, Hitler and his Nazis pursued a politico-economic agenda not unlike Mussolini’s. They crushed organized labor and eradicated all elections, opposition parties, and independent publications. Hundreds of thousands of opponents were imprisoned, tortured, or murdered. In Germany as in Italy, the communists endured the severest political repression of all groups.

            Here were two peoples, the Italians and Germans, with different histories, cultures, and languages, and supposedly different temperaments, who ended up with the same repressive solutions because of the compelling similarities of economic power and class conflict that prevailed in their respective countries. In such diverse countries as Lithuania, Croatia, Rumania, Hungary, and Spain, a similar fascist pattern emerged to do its utmost to save big capital from the impositions of democracy.4

            The Liberalism to Fascism Pipeline (Neoliberalism Explained)

            Economic Update: Fascism

            • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.worldOP
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              5
              ·
              4 months ago

              True to form, the Social Democrat leaders refused the Communist party’s proposal to form an eleventh-hour coalition against Nazism. As in many other countries past and present, so in Germany, the Social Democrats would sooner ally themselves with the reactionary Right than make common cause with the Reds.

              Well, the German SPD’s famous symbol was the three arrows, representing the opposition to conservatism, fascism and communism. Of course, SPD refused to form a coalition with the communists. And during the Great Depression, the SPD already lost their majority in the parliament and had to form a grand coalition with various parties. They were finally made insignificant when they lost more seats and influence in 1932 elections, being relegated in to minority and opposition. In spite of that, they are the only major party-- all 92 SPD MPs-- who voted down the Enabling Act, which gave absolute power to Hitler, while the rest of parliament either approved it or being communist MP they were prevented by SA to enter the parliament.

      • skisnow@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        4 months ago

        If the left can’t see that then they doom us all.

        Why is it the Left’s responsibility to toe the Liberal line in the name of unity, but never vice versa?

    • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      4 months ago

      The post is a jab about American folks who conflate the terms. I wasn’t expecting people to take this as seriously as others have!

      Although now that you mentioned it, I kinda sense that there could be something going on sometimes, especially on comments looking down on the working class supporting the Republicans, while refusing to acknowledge that they used to vote Democrats. Plenty of people worth their salt would tell anyone that it is because the working class felt abandoned after the outsourcing of jobs without offering alternatives. Unfortunately, a lot on the left, but more so on liberals, don’t see this and keep calling the working class as dumb hicks. There are definitely folks who are too far gone and support fascists, but to caricaturise everyone in the demographic while a more plausible explanation is available seems tone deaf. It made me think that there could be an intentional wedge to create in-fighting for such deliberate nosing down.

      • blarth@thelemmy.club
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        4 months ago

        The left and liberals are one and the same in America.

        Now I’m sure you’re going to go on some stupid fucking diatribe about how “aCkShuAllY they AREN’T”.

        That’s just Russian fucking propaganda. You’re trying to bisect the left to create infighting in order to prop up fascist interests.

        Begone, troll.

        • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.worldOP
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          4 months ago

          The left and liberals are one and the same in America.

          Just ask the opinion on economic issues and there is stark difference.

          That’s just Russian fucking propaganda.

          Is it really Russian propaganda? Or American oligarch propaganda to conflate the two terms?

  • clonedhuman@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    49
    ·
    4 months ago

    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.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        19
        ·
        4 months ago

        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.worldOP
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          15
          ·
          edit-2
          4 months 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
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      4 months ago

      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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        4 months ago

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

    • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

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

        • arrow74@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          17
          ·
          4 months ago

          No ground was gained Trump won. Decades of progress erased in 7 months. The genocide in Israel has accelerated. And our economy is crashing.

          If Dems won and kept things as they were 7 months ago everything would be demonstrably better than they are now.

          Would there still be issues? Of course there are always issues, but it would have been much better.

          • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            4 months ago

            That’s true I guess. Way too superficial for my liking, but that’s outside the scope of this conversation. The person I replied to said there would be (small) gains from electing Harris, not just less losses, so I was asking for them yo elaborate.

          • Sc00ter@lemmy.zip
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            4 months ago

            While this is all true, i can’t imagine that the left would have been celebrating a democratic win today if she won in the fall. If they truly wanted a democratic win (or to gain an inch) they would have pinched their noses and voted for Kamala

    • SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      28
      ·
      4 months ago

      Leftists hate democrats so much they helped vote in Trump instead of a very decent woman twice.

      The only thing leftists hate more then democrats are other leftists.

  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    33
    ·
    4 months ago

    american believing they have a left, Center left is the extreme end of the left in america, theres no lefter than that. most of them are on center right.

    • SippyCup@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      4 months ago

      We have two viable political parties.

      Fascist extremists and their enablers. Vote blue no matter who, so maybe the fascists won’t come for you.

      We have leftists with no one to vote for, shut out of politics by liberal NIMBYs who want good things to happen, they just don’t want to see them. More concerned about the value of their house than the value of human life. We have extreme leftists, they’re just not allowed to participate. And as of yet, none of them exist in enough numbers in the same place to start throwing Molotovs

    • Soulg@ani.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      4 months ago

      There is no far left political party but there are plenty of people who are far left. Yes, even by the European standards of the left.

    • PorkRoll@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      4 months ago

      The party is conservative, their constituents are being lied to. They just need to realize that electoral politics will not save us. Hopefully they do this before it’s too late.

    • Juice@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      4 months ago

      There’s lots of discussion below, but liberalism is the belief that enfranchisement and liberation comes from private property, which at one time was progressive in the face of feudalism. But since WW1, liberalism has not been a progressive movement as it has captured all of the private property in the world. Liberals are capitalists, leftists are not. Leftists (mostly) believe in class struggle, liberals (mostly) do not.

      Leftists see the problems with private property and strive for social enfranchisement, even at the expense of private property rights, particularly where such “rights” are a function of one dominant class over the rest. To leftists, the social is material. Liberals mostly struggle to even conceive of this.

      There are not clear bright lines, it is a messy spectrum of belief and politics, particularly in the US where we are so individualistic. For example I usually find it easier to work with so called progressive liberals than authoritarian leftists, although this can vary dramatically over a variety of political issues. Sometimes Authoritarian Leftists work best with Progressive liberals, and leave moderate, practical leftists out! So there is no simple formula, except to deal with the actual conditions and act on behalf of the whole working class, rather than a particular group or unique subset of interests, in the struggle against the ruling capitalist class. This looks different in different places to different people, progress and truth is borne out of actual class struggle.

  • FuckFascism@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    30
    ·
    4 months ago

    We can be friends until the fascists are out of the government, then we need a social democracy and a ban on far right parties amongst other things.

    • Packet@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      28
      ·
      4 months ago

      Liberals are the fascists in their baby form. Once the conditions of the capitalist state deteriorate they transform into fascists quite fast.

        • Soup@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          4 months ago

          If they’re talking about Liberals in the centre-right sense, just because they don’t openly hate minorities while they still do a bunch of conservative shit and get in the way of real progress, they’re not 100% wrong.

  • drewaustin@piefed.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    25
    ·
    4 months ago

    Man, how fucking right wing do you need to be to consider liberalism to be left wing?

  • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    4 months ago

    Do not split.

    But what is happening in Hong Kong is they come up with a slogan, which is translated as Do Not Split, which is, we know that some people are willing to be confrontational with riot police.

    And when they are, that’s going to cost the state in terms of not only resources, but it’s going to cost the state in terms of political capital and support. And we know that there are some people who are not willing to do that. And we are going to abide by the protocol of Do Not Split, which means that we’re not going to criticize them openly, and they’re not going to criticize us openly.

    If we’re the pacifists, we’re not going to have them criticize us for being sort of like, I don’t know, limpid or flaccid or not courageous or whatever. And we’re not going to criticize them for being more confrontational. And the thing is that the support is also tacit.

    https://sh.itjust.works/post/42969194

  • RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    4 months ago

    Americans sometimes use the two words to mean the same thing. So in that context it’s not as confusing but when they’re speaking with non-Americans it can cause issues and clearer terminology would be nice

    • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      4 months ago

      Most European countries have an (actually) liberal party; the one in Germany used to have its place between social democrats and conservatives, but has moved way to the right in recent years.

  • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    4 months ago

    I hate liberals more than conservatives because at least with conservatives they don’t go around pretending to be on my side while doing heinous shit. Conservatives just do the heinous shit without the pretense.

    • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      4 months ago

      far right liberal capitalists or literally figurative nazis.

      if you’re on the wrong side of us ‘foreign policy’ both of these groups will exterminate you all the same.

      the bipartisan consensus between them is that capitalist exploitation continues

      • YappyMonotheist@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        4 months ago

        True, but maybe with small changes in the sociopolitical fabric of the US, eventually, in some decades, US foreign policy can change also. Western European powers are STILL up to no good in Africa and West Asia and they have been at it for hundreds of years… Small steps, right? 😔

  • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    4 months ago

    This reminds me of that meme (article?) someone posted a couple days ago about some dude who loves metal gives up trying to explain to his family that he’s not goth, cuz it’s easier to just lets his family ogle at his ‘goth phase’.

    So… same energy - whether or not “left” and “democrat” are synonymous depends entirely on the person I’m talking to… they either already know, or I don’t have the energy to try to teach them.

      • clonedhuman@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        4 months ago

        100%

        This is pointless identitarian bullshit that does nothing to stop the fascists currently in charge of the United States.

        It all makes me a bit suspicious.

    • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      That’s sort of the point of my post. It’s trying to poke fun on people not knowing the difference and depending on how the person define the terms. Instead, they called this post a “psyops” and I guess I also inadvertently caused another leftist/liberal (in-)fighting depending how you look at it.

  • josefo@leminal.space
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    4 months ago

    I wish these memes came with a political compass clarification of what these terms exactly mean for the author.