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The more… favorable right wing points I’ve heard are more along the lines of “I’ve busted my ass for what little I have! How dare you ask me to pay to subsidize the lives of people who aren’t trying to work?”
Completly ignoring the fact that better welfare programs should help them to not have to work so damn hard for so little in the first place. Or the fact that the welfare cliff and other various systemic problems make it that much harder to get out of that pit no matter how hard you’re trying.
It’s not even quite “fuck you, I got mine” because so many of them barely “got theirs” as is, which makes them even more protective. The ones that do have, have latched on to this idea of the entirely self made man, which ignores all the public welfare systems they used on their journey. Like schools, or roads. You can hardly exist in modern America without using multiple tax funded public works/welfare things every day.
Then you add in the hard spun rhetoric that taxes they already don’t want being taken from them might be paying for things they personally disagree with and things get extra firey.
Meanwhile the richest people on earth have spent more money than is comprehendable on convincing people that going after rich peoples’ money will just make everything more expensive for the normal folk.
But that would imply that they were currently leaving potential profits on the table. They’re already charging absolutely as much as they can, and constantly trying to shift it higher. I’m sure they’d still fuck us on the way down, but we’re never going to fix things unless we find some way to adequately tax the rich.
The “barely got mine and defending it” thing really sticks in other ways too.
When I wanted aid for school “sorry, we ran out. Should have gotten here earlier.”
When I wanted to get food stamps “sorry, you don’t meet the qualifications on a technicality.”
When I finally got Medicaid but couldn’t use it “not enough spots for you to be seen, sorry.”
Many times the administrators that gave me this news implied it was because too many people asked for it. Being young and stupid (and let’s face it, indoctrinated), it made me put the blame on the other people asking for aid. If there were less people that asked for aid, I wouldn’t be starving and sick. I thought that I was more worthy of the aid because some people are cheating the system and I deeply resented them.
Fortunately I grew the hell up and pulled my head out of my ass. It’s all a distraction we get fed from the news that other needy people are the reason why we suffer. It’s so hard to fathom how much the rich actually waste when all we see is our fellow working class folk.
To add a voice to the choir, I was raised like this too. We went the other direction of feeling guilty for needing aid though.
Like they weren’t completely wrong, you really should be able to raise a family off a single full time job, the problem is that said jobs don’t pay enough for that. But the broken system is good at defending itself, and politicians are quick to point out all the ways it does work, so you wind up with a ‘well, it works for them, guess I just have to try harder’ mindset. Like, I spent hours each week as a teenager helping mom do the extreme couponing and do stuff like take a cart through another line to get around limits on sale items.
I’ve been shit at math for my whole life, so maybe I’m just hoping I’m not alone in this, but I really think a lot of people are number illiterate. I’ve spent so much time learning to be grateful for my shoe-string budget, I have a hard enough time envisioning double my salary, and that’d just make me middle class. I literally don’t have a way of conceptualizing what 200x my salary would be like.
Meeting everyone’s basic needs isn’t even far left. This is how far the Overton window has shifted to the right. Meeting everyone’s basic needs is left-of-centre. Far left would be state owned and controlled everything, redistribution of wealth via any means necessary, all public services fully state funded and free for all at the point of use.
Far left would be state owned and controlled everything, redistribution of wealth via any means necessary, all public services fully state funded and free for all at the point of use.
“Socialism is when the government does stuff, and communism is when the government does all the stuff. What is a mode of production?”
God I fucking hate how the capitalist authoritarian states of the last century managed to gaslight everyone into believing this shit.
I am responding according to the context of the original statement. Yeh, you could go even further left and have anarchy, but that would be utterly impractical in today’s world.
[screams in communist]
It’s from the USA perspective. People not dying of easily preventable diseases, or children not going hungry, are extreme left for them.
Many of us would disagree with that, but in aggregate we’ve just elected “burn this motherfucker down with us inside” instead of the alternative who was still way too far to the right for most of us here on Lemmy, so you are unfortunately correct.
If you proposed children not going hungry to some of my conservative relatives, even in a room of mixed company they would say out loud something like “why should I have to pay to feed the kids they can’t afford because they can’t close their legs or put down the crack pipe long enough to get a job?” (Racist dog whistle very much intentional)
Noam Chomsky is Far-Left, and he advocated for a stateless society. But yeah the idea of liberty has definitely changed in
AmericaThe U.S.It’s because Marxists/Communists and Capitalists like to pretend Anarchism isn’t half of socialism because it hurts their arguments.
Meeting everyone’s basic needs isn’t even far left.
When saying “Please stop bombing Palestinian children” is the most ultra-Tankie Iranian Revolutionary Guard propaganda printed in modern history, it does appear that public amenities are outside even the farthest fringes of left-wing ideology.
Far left would be state owned and controlled everything
I remember Elon Musk calling himself a socialist. And now that I’m looking at how he and Trump are running the country, I guess this does fit the above definition of Far-Left.
No, that’s authoritarian left as pure left is communal ownership. Market left would fit better and would use worker and consumer cooperatives and market syndicates rather than state ownership. I hate how Marxists convinced everyone they were the only form of socialism despite people like Pierre-Joseph Proudhon coming before him.
Centrism doesn’t mean that you can’t choose between democrats and republicans, it means that ideologically, you believe in a balance between capitalist ideas and socialist ideas. For example, you can believe in the Hayekian idea that the many interactions between individuals in the market is better at creating prosperity than a centralized government that distributes all goods and services. But you can also believe that the market can’t do everything on its own due to market failures like monopoly power, externalities, assymmetric information. There exists a compromise between the two that is negotiated through politics. A core necessity for this to happen is that democracy is maintained. Democracy is not maintained when elections are bought by companies.
What is happening in the US now is that politics has been taken over by the private market. No economist would have agreed with this (unless they were paid to). It is against everything that we know. This is not a left vs right stance. It’s a democracy vs autocracy stance. Autocracy can happen from both the right and left, and it doesn’t matter who.
The one thing I dislike about the idea of centrism is the idea that you can’t decide on everything because you remain agnostic about every issue. I think a much better idea to advocate for is pluralism: the idea that your opinion on specific issues is not dependent on your politcal stance. Every issue is unique and doesn’t automatically identify you with left or right. You can have different opinions on different issues.
It’s funny because from my European perspective there’s no (visible) left in the USA. Democrats are centrist. Sanders could be social democrat. Otherwise I fully agree with you.
I think this has only happened because of manipulation of the masses.
Ugh, market socialism exists.
Not all socialism has planned economies. That’s communism. A specific subset of socialism.
Capitalism doesn’t have a monopoly on market economies. badumtssh
Right, but I see market socialism as an ideological compromise rather than inherent socialism. Im from scandinavia, and my country is a capitalist country with a strong welfare state.
Socialism is when the government does stuff. And it’s more socialism the more stuff it does. And if it does a real lot of stuff it’s communism.
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You can advocate for wealth taxes, unions, and other welfare measures within a capitalist system. I’m from one of the most egalitarian countries in the world and we are capitalist too.
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Nope, but I’m from scandinavia, no oil money.
Edit: also, I dont like categorical descriptions, because reality is more complicated. But what is happening in the US is more specifically referred to as “rentier capitalism”. In Scandinavia, we have something like “welfare capitalism”.
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I’m not saying we don’t have things to work on, but it’s not black or white. Social injustice gets reduced over time in a democracy. Name a country that is not capitalist that has never done bad things.
agnostic are agnostic because there is no foolproof evidence basis.
with politics you can clearly see how some stances have been done and their effects. and other instances you also have a basis even in the most unclear case
just had an issue with the negative connotation implied here talking about agnosistics :D
I think we can all agree that adding religious parallels to anything is a waste of everyones time.
this
Yeah since people cannot be expected to have full knowledge of the evidence, you have to recognize you can be agnostic about some issues. It’s virtuous to seek evidence and knowledge, and you should make choices based on the best information you have.
I’m not advocating for independents btw. I think you should clearly pick a party to vote for, but the two party system is a horrible system for people who are pluralistic in their views.
I consider myself Centrist because I would rather eat 10 pounds of fried bugs than align myself with either absolute clown show of a party.
I’m a free agent, and the haters can’t stand that they can’t have me.
This only makes sense if you insist on reducing complex multidimensional concepts to a single scalar value. Even intuitively it doesn’t make sense. You place yourself in the centre between two philosophies you disagree with? What?
It actually makes more sense when you don’t reduce it. Look up a Nolan Chart, or quadrant-based political stance diagram. I fall squarely into the center of the Nolan Chart.
You think that reducing to two dimensions is significantly different than reducing to one. I disagree.
Lol, a lot of political scientists disagree with you, too. I bet they’re all stupid, right?
Why do you think voting for a party aligns yourself with that party?
If two people want to attempt to unalive your mother with a 50% probability that they will succeed, and you have the chance to stop only one of them, reducing the chance to 25%. Does it mean that you align with whoever you do not choose?
Voting WITH a party is not the same thing as voting for a candidate that has openly identified as a member one party or the other because that is a barrier to entry or funding avenue for them.
I know it’s hard to accept, but the entire history of both parties hasn’t been “socialist utopia vs. Nazis.” For a century the Democrats didn’t eject all the Southern racists that declared they were Dems simply to be a counterpoint to Lincoln-to-MLK-era Republicans.
Even a cursory understanding of history should make anyone distrust all political parties forever.
But please tell me more about how the party that denied us a president Bernie Sanders (I) is worth my time.
Why not vote for Bernie then? Better than nothing. At least it may give a lot of people or the democrats faith that he could potentially win in the future.
I’m not saying that you need to give them your time, I’m just saying that voting for them doesn’t mean that you stand for what they believe. You can vote them and at the same time advocate for a different voting system.
Closed primaries. I never got a chance to vote for Bernie.
But please tell me more about how the party that denied us a president Bernie Sanders (I) is worth my time.
Like Bernie has said, it is the only realistic vehicle to carry someone like him into the White House. The way the US political system is structured your movement needs to take over an existing party instead of trying to establish its own new party from the ground up if it wants any hope of success.
Yes, that’s what “barrier to entry” meant in my comment. Happepend to Bernie, happened to a family member of mine at the county level.
Parties prevent YOU from being ABLE to vote for qualified candidates. That’s all they are for, to give unqualified rich or charismatic people a chance to sell the party to you. Nothing else.
Lol that’s not the far left’s position get the fuck out of here. The first paragraph is describing center/center-left.
Sadly in America meeting everyones basic needs is socialist and too close to Communism for our poor brain washed masses. Sadly the country culture is summarized in “fuck you i got mine” mentality and not community based.
What gets me is that socialism and communism are totally different things. They’re different means to a similar goal of an end.
wut?
Jesus Christ.
Far left in America just means tax dollars going towards actually helping the people.
Yeah sure, and what is far lefts position then?
Seize the means of production.
Fuck tradition.
Fuck economics.
Kill the people who resist or disagree, or sometimes also if you just feel like killing them. For the rest, strip away basic rights so that they won’t rise up to dismantle the system.
–
As someone pointed out, perhaps things are a bit different in America, but this is how I see far left generally from Europe.
how is that a bad thing? Right wingers deserve it
Party A… We want to kill 1.000.000 people
Party B … We want to kill 0 people.
Centrist… Lets just kill 500.000 people.
Sometimes there IS no centrist position
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The Democrats aren’t Party B here. At best, they’re the “centrists”.
who’s party b?
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You are literally too stupid to know what genocide is
The bar is set too high these days. I thought turning the entire region into dust and not leaving a stone atop another, while sniping random civilians would get you some recognition, but it seems this is nothing to you.
Gee, that’s funny because you talk like a terrorist-supporting piece of trash.
“Terrorist” is just a buzz word used to describe someone who commits the same crimes (or significantly less severe crimes) as your typical western state (or Israel), but isn’t on your side.
Is that what you call your wife right before you beat her? We all know how men in areas like Lebanon treat women after all, and you’ve already told me how much you love assaulting people… 🤔
Even with your retarded assumptions about an entire religious group who are at this point leaving practices of their assigned at birth religion (like your typical christian, jew, and whatever else did and are still doing to this day), Lebanon is the last Arabic country you can apply this to, on account of it’s population being composed of ~40% christians and the Muslim population being split in half between two sects and a million beliefs.
I understand your cunt is hurting after Trump won the election and gave you a little taste of your own foreign policy at home, but we must emphasize the importance of staying civil and not lashing out while the very existence of people you know and love is threatened (or some shit Dem voters would have expected of Palestinians).
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But Party B gets less than 1% of the vote.
Irrelevant. When its war crimes at stake you do the right thing anyway even when its hard or you know you will lose. We’re not exactly arguing over school vouchers here are we.
Narrator: The left did not, in fact, get everyone’s basic needs met.
Both Democrats and Republicans have been moving steadily to the right for the last 40 years. So Democrats are now where Republicans were in the 1980s: friends of banks, insurance and pharmaceutical companies. And the right has moved all the way into an insane asylum.
Whoever told you Democrats are leftists told you a big BIG lie. With some exceptions, like Bernie, and maybe AOC, most democrats are centrist, or even “economically right wing”.
People not realising this is what’s so baffling.
Narrator: The left did not, in fact, get everyone’s basic needs met because it hasn’t been in power for nearly half a century. And incidentally, every time it was represented in government there were major strides in “getting everyone’s needs met”.
Don’t believe me? Do a Google search for “most liberal/leftist US presidents”, click any of these listicles and try to find the most recent leftist president. Notice how there isn’t a single one more recent than 1969?
For most of you reading this, the last actual leftist government predates your parents’ birth.
1969
For most of you […] this predates your parents’ birth.
Why did you have to make me feel old
That’s not even far on the left, that’s just some middle of the ground left. Real far left would be burning government buildings while having a heated discussion about the order of the colors for the flag to be raised over the rubble.
Thank you, I know lemmy is left leaning and so am I but let’s not lose our touch with reality here. People can downvote as much as they want but I’d say you’re objectively right. Or does anyone want to place some counter argument instead of downvoting? Because I can’t think of any
To some degree, I agree, including the tendency for infighting among leftists. It’s why I’ve never liked this meme or its variations much. On the other hand, I’ve recently seen only one side actually mobilize to attack government buildings and harm people inside, and it wasn’t the left.
Anecdotally, this week at work, I heard a self-identified rightist argue for banning gay marriage. Others sitting around their table agreed. I’ve also had the privilege of hearing we should get rid of social programs, and too many jokes about killing people they don’t like. Last time I talked to a tankie and they defended oppressive policies saying the ends justify the means, folks around us made fun of them and moved on.
I think one of these groups might not be a real issue. At the very minimum, they’re definitely not as dangerous as the other one, right now. So, is the meme a bit silly? Sure. Does that matter? I don’t feel like it does.
Please don’t reply re: proper tankie political classification. It’s beside the point, I’m using them because it seems to be what most imagine when they think “far left.”
My point, simple and plainly put is that wishing for an egalitarian society (or whatever it is called) isn’t an extremist believe (as in far-x) and most people would usually agree with it.
I just think it is just how much mass media controls most people’s perception, and how is that the key factor antagonizing with finding common ground.
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Oh c’mon, I consider myself to be on the left but this is a strawman and you know it
Edit: if you want this to be more accurate then add this at the end of far left section: “at all cost. And I mean ALL cost.”. And reminder, we’re talking about FAR left here
Yeah someone needs to study the death toll of far left policies.
I’m not sure that’s fair. The “death toll of communism” has more to do with authoritarianism and political maneuvering than economic policy. Also, the people quickest to point out this fact don’t seem to be using the same measuring stick to tally up the equivalent “death toll of capitalism.”
It’s just propaganda that doesn’t hold up to serious scrutiny. All governments - including ‘centrist’ ones - have an awful lot of blood on their hands. Enough blood that I wouldn’t say there’s a significant difference due to economic policy alone.
Authorianism is pretty much how I see the far-left.
Communism, I’m still unsure about.
I’m fine with criticizing the failings of capitalism.
What no theory does to an mf
Uh… The farthest left ideology out there is anarchism, which is long story short the abolishment of the top-down state. That is literally the opposite of authoritarian.
Political theory is not a two dimensional line.
Those of us who recognize that organization is the most powerful force in human history recognize anarchism for the controlled opposition it is.
Capitalists love anarchists. What isn’t to love about an ideology that wants to overthrow the established structure but ideologically refuses to use any strategies that have historically actually, you know, have worked?
P.S. for the intellectually honest anarchist, what was the outcome of the Paris commune, or Spain?
More people die every year due to the lack of food, medicine and clean water than whatever made up number you can come up with for “far left” policies.
Indeed, studying it is the best way to learn that the huge numbers that get thrown around in pop-history are completely made up cold war propaganda.
A more real scenario.
European country bans far right candidate with conections with Russia trying to poison their democracy.
Le centrists: What about muh freedoms!?.
US Government forces Universities campuses to remove degrees of students for protesting (by threatening cutting funds) and threatens foreign students with deportation if they protest.
Edit: Just read the news that an University caved to Trump’s demands to be able to get funds. Among the demands is for police to be able to arrest students.
Le centrists: Well they were asking for it…
Centrists in the EU don’t think like that at all. Centrists can hold strong opinions, their position isn’t just do not pick sides and play devil’s advocate at all times. As a centrist, both scenarios boil my piss.
You’ve just described two extreme situations, that any centrist would instantly notice are extreme.
Define centrism.
Centralists define centralism as whatever their personal particular political views are at this exact moment in time. They also like to try and claim that anybody who disagrees with them is either ultra right wing or ultra left-wing. Rather than just somebody who doesn’t think that everyone’s opinions are equal.
Everyone will have a slightly different understanding and perception of centrism. That goes for all words and ideas. Conversation is so vital because it helps us iron out the differences. Most people want the same thing at the end of the day; peace, prosperity, and love. All of the misunderstandings we have get in the way of that.
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Eg, free education, citizen pay, more renewable energy good but unchecked, uncontrollable immigration bad.
That just sounds like a center-leftist with one extra step, and that’s the problem with centrism: The right has little to no good ideas, so someone who thinks critically about their positions will strongly lean left, and someone who doesn’t will strongly lean right. “Centrists” are therefore people who simply don’t care about politics and not subscribers to a coherent political ideology.
Really because I’m not at all on board with allowing self-serving oligarch to play act as being a legitimate political positions.
Yeah neither are centrists, even the US definition of Centrists would nope that
That’s my point though. I’m not a centralist and I never claimed to be one.
I’m definitely not in favor of centralism I don’t think it works, I think it allows for dangerous situations like the one I just described where people who absolutely need to be stopped are not stopped because “what about their freedom”. But I am not some left-wing extremist simply because I don’t think Nazi should be allowed to go around being Nazis. If you think that’s radical then I think your political dial is somewhat misconfigured.
The thing is the US has freedom of expression laws, most of the world doesn’t because it turns out that unconstrained freedoms like that aren’t really a very good idea. If it weren’t for the Constitution, which Americans seem to be obsessed with, I’m sure the US wouldn’t have unrestricted freedom of expression either.
The fuck are you on about? I’m a centrist and if Iwas in the US I’d be out protesting right now. Where are people getting these backwards ass views on what centrists represent?
European countries haven’t banned the far right, the AFD, Sweden Democrats, Front Nationale, Orban, etc. are not banned and they are the results of their own political failings. Not that Putin magically conjured them forth with a wave of the hand. Playing into the meme… Germans do anti-semitism and fascism Germanly… “what are we, a bunch of Russians!”
The most popular romanian fascist candidate (who allegedly was supported by Russia) has been banned
But only after it no longer was ‘allegedly’ if I understand correctly.
Americans with their white or black bullshit
I used to say that because I though “the left” was Putin and Xi Jinping
Still waiting on that basic need.
Biden built entire wings onto for-profit hospitals during Covid, while ironically being against universal healthcare. Almost like his donors didn’t want it or something.
Biden and the democrats are far left? Come on… As a European, that sounds absurd.
In the US political spectrum, democrats are center-left at most. Compared to European politics, they’d even be considered center-right or conservative on many issues.
Biden is not even close to far left.
in my book far left are hexbears hence centrism is something like social democrats a la usa bernie
gotta hate politics and its muddy definitions but I unironically like to call myself centrist. Then I am surprised how controversial it is on the interwebs because apparently everyone has different definitions. They routinely make them up on the fly 🪰
For me centrism is a fine art 🎨 of staying far away from the madness of extremism 🤪. I love centrism. I huff centrism. I breathe centrism.
I fuck with centrism.It is deeply based in the sense of superiority and moral high ground. As all politics but this is a fundamental part of centrism. Centrism is saying “You all suck” I am better than you and enables feeling of superiority over the biggest swath of
Redditorsinternet activists 🤓 which is a lovely perk. It is a true essential trick of the ultimate hedonist. If politics were about sex, centrist would be someone jerking it off to the mirror.Ah yes, despicable Hexbears, and their, checks notes, support of trans and anti-Imperialist struggles. I love being a centrist and hating such tankie-ism.
Nice cherry picking chef. Might try career in confectioning 💩
I think you might’ve accidentally added sarcasm tags to your admission.
sarcasm tags are for the weak willed, we don’t do such things even in the autism central online. What happens, happens
I have unironically read my comment 10 times already just to savor how perfectly and tastefully it is composed. Truly a masterpiece of some kind.
Poe’s law has bested me. I’m just gonna hope it’s all a joke and leave, now.
You are free to leave.
Love to see the compromise for that one.
“What if we let them kill some of that social group so everyone gets what they want?”
Sure, the 1% it is.
We’re going french style.
😎
Some kind of national socialism
But the far left are commie bastards idk what else to tell you
/s for whoever the fuck needs it
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