The people who told me that were 100% boomers. There’s that idiotic saying “if you’re not liberal* when you’re 20, you have no heart. If you’re not conservative when you’re 40 you have no brains” ok boomer.
Note this is using the US meaning of liberal, not to mean “capitalist”.
The one I’ve heard replaces “brains” with “money.”
To the point at least. The impression I always got was that it was meant to imply you’d have money by then and not want to pay taxes.
I grew up in a rightwing household, and unquestioningly drank the koolaid until my late teens. The right’s bullshit eventually became impossible to ignore, so I dove right into the ‘both sides!’ trap and rode the Libertarian train for a while.
It became really easy to articulate what I didn’t like about the right; describing what was bad about the left was just echoes of Fox bitching about things like them voting on emotion instead of logic… but no real examples.
Around my mid-twenties I finally realized ^that was projection; then 2016 happened and holy shit they’re running Trump and Hillary?? Easily the two most hated candidates in my lifetime… against Gary Johnson - an admittedly goofy personality but likeable and most importantly not crazy, THIS IS THE LP’S TIME TO SHINE! …yeah they got 3% of the vote. We won’t ever see better conditions for a 3rd victory, so, pipedream shattered.
Guess I’ll have to just pick a lesser evil, so let’s see what we have to work with…
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there’s the red team. Burn through our fossil resources with reckless abandon. War, war, war, and more war. Shave social services down to nothing so we can claim ‘fiscal responsibility’ which is good I guess (hey! eyes down here, we’re done talking about the war part), a blatant integration of religion and politics, and they want to make life as miserable as possible for my gay/colored/female/nonchristian friends. Fuck, that’s pretty bad…
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Alright, next we have the blue team, which is the opposite of all those things, at the exceedingly high cost of… getting cockblocked by the red team when they try to implement those things… and… well there was that time Bill lied about getting a blowjob- outrageous! Surely the red team does a better job of keeping it in their pants… *checks* …uhh, nope! Fuck, I’m starting to become aware of my own cognitive dissonance and it feels like absolute shit.
So I start voting one issue at a time, crunching both options against eachother and choosing the one that’s best for the US. That way there’s no bias and I won’t be part of this tribal bullshit plagueing our politics… Weird, when I ignore affiliation and vote on policy alone, my ballot becomes solid blue. What are the odds of that?! Next election, solid blue again. And again.
My desire to be ‘independent’ on label alone is pretty much gone at this point, and I’m being more and more vocal about supporting leftwing policies. Family isn’t a fan, but they hit me with the shit OP is poking fun at - I only shifted blue because I’m poor! Once I make more money, just you wait and see, I’ll come crawling right back.
Now, I’m not rich or anything, but I’m (finally!) not living paycheck to paycheck. During all ^that I wandered into the military which gave me access to all kinds of socialized resources which have enabled me to get where I’m at now and have made a pretty significant improvement on my life. The thing that pisses me off about those socialized services is WHY THE FUCK DOESN’T EVERYONE HAVE THIS?! So wearing camo for 4 years for some reason got me this VIP tour of what we should should be doing for everyone.
I was a late bloomer, I got there. I haven’t missed a single election since 2016, big or small. Solid blue. I’ve gotten to the point where I’ll even look up the voter registration of candidates for nonpolitical positions like judges, and red is a deal breaker.
The better off I become, the more blue I get. The notion of red-shift with income is trash.
Well said!
Thanks for sharing! I feel like this is representative of a small but important political group recently.
there’s the red team. Burn through our fossil resources with reckless abandon. War, war, war, and more war.
The blue team is doing the same thing: burning through fossil resources in the name of war. The military complex doesn’t stop or change when blue or red are elected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Israel_in_the_Israel–Hamas_war
I encourage you to keep studying and researching. Politics isn’t a football match where teams compete against each others and “left” and “right” are two buzzwords.
https://archive.org/details/lawauthorityanar00kropuoft/page/n5/mode/2up
I encourage you to keep studying and researching. Politics isn’t a football match where teams compete against each others and “left” and “right” are two buzzwords.
No offense but I think OP has a better grasp of this than you do
So, what do you think is happening in Palestine? In Lebanon?
You’re acting like that’s the only policy point that exists. There are meaningful differences in other areas. I don’t have enough non-propagandized information to argue for sure that there are differences in the middle east war department, but the parties certainly aren’t the same on all war-related matters (see Ukraine/Russia as an example). Their rhetoric is different for the middle east but again I can’t speak for their actions. And obviously their non-war policies are drastically different.
Alright, next we have the blue team, which is the opposite of all those things, at the exceedingly high cost of… getting cockblocked by the red team when they try to implement those things… and… well there was that time Bill lied about getting a blowjob- outrageous! Surely the red team does a better job of keeping it in their pants… *checks* …uhh, nope! Fuck, I’m starting to become aware of my own cognitive dissonance and it feels like absolute shit.
The DNC isn’t to the opposite of the GOP, they are aligned on the vast majority of issues and use the rest to yap loudly in disagreement. Dems aren’t left.
During all ^that I wandered into the military which gave me access to all kinds of socialized resources which have enabled me to get where I’m at now and have made a pretty significant improvement on my life.
Social programs aren’t socialized, that’s a bit of a misnomer.
However US Corporations that exploit US Workers and Workers abroad are subsidized, even for their losses. Us Taxpayers pay them while they exploit us further and Social Services get gutted and crumble. Gotta love neoliberalism, where socialized welfare is bad for workers, but good for corporations.
Edit: not actual socialism like worker owned, just socialized losses, as in the working class paying taxes foot the bill for the corporations benefit and privatized gains
Have you read Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism? It analyzes modern Imperialism, where workers in the Global North are both exploited by their bourgeoisie and yet benefit from the fruits of Imperialism, forming a labor aristocracy.
It isn’t Socialism for corporations, it’s Imperialism in action.
No, I have not. I’ve only touched on the book Consequences of Capitalism so far. Thanks for the req, I’ll check it out.
Socialism isn’t the right word, it’s not like they are worker owned in any regard. It’s just that the subsidies they receive for the benefit of their private business and profits for shareholders come from taxpayer money. Further redistributing weather to the wealthy at the expense of the working class Americans, and further enabling them to exploit us more. Their gains are privatized and their losses are socialized by the working class.
No problem! Lenin’s writing is very eye-opening as it’s Marxism applied to more modern, international Capitalism, but he may not make the most sense if you aren’t already familiar with Marxism.
I’m somewhat familiar with the principals, but not enough to thoroughly explain them in a casual conversation.
It’s definitely eye-opening to contextualize things like Nationalism, Fascism, Colonialism, and Imperialism within the Capitalist mode of production
Edited my comment to distinguish between genuine socialism and the welfare of corporations being socialized thru taxpayer money for their benefit and our expense.
You may want to swing back to Principles of Communism as well as Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels, then Wage Labor and Capital as well as Value, Price and Profit by Marx before getting into Lenin if you’re not confident in the basics of Marxism. Lenin is Marxism applied to early 1900s Capitalism, which has largely grown along the lines he analyzed and predicted (among numerous other analysis in theory and practice).
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really If anything i have become more communist as i have aged, when the daydreams of becoming a millionaire or whatever fade away all thats left is the reality of life as the 99% and it kinda sucks, also the older i grow the more i learn about history, about the world, just about everything really and the more i realize how fucked up capitalism is and how much i was lied to thru out my life. Putting that aside tho, people generally do become more reactionary as they age for the simple fact that what was revolutionary in our youth becomes standard and then reactionary over time while many people dont change their views much.
How is it that some of us get further left and some people go right? Even poors and immigrants go right and vote against their own interests. I really don’t get it.
Broadly speaking, I’d say it’s done out of fear. Voting conservative feels like staying the course and not challenging the status quo, even if it’s not ideal. Voting change could be seen as a threat to “stability” even when it’s a false narrative.
To add to what you said I’d also argue it comes with finding financial success while lacking the awareness of how lucky one had to be to achieve that kind of success in life.
– although lately I have also seen a lot of people that lack the imagination to consider a reality different from what’s presented to them by the status quo.
On second thought, that latter point just sounds a lot like Indoctrination.
Yep this. It’s a combination of becoming more financially well-off, combined with loss aversion, combined with a sense that the culture starts to alienate you. It’s like grandpa simpson said: “I used to be with it. But what was ‘it’ changed. And now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’, and what is ‘it’ is scary and strange.”
Immigrants being on the right is also implicit. Almost nobody is gonna migrate to some place new because things like recent changes are going well for them in their country of origin. They instead leave and migrate to some place that is relatively more stable & predictable. Host countries don’t like it when people migrate over and start agitating for change. As a result conservatism is built into the process.
–Consider the Cuban Communist. The Cubans that are happy with Communism have no major incentive to leave and resettle in Miami. The Cuban Capitalists OTOH flee to Miami where they espouse the evils of Communism while advocating for our government to continue the trade embargo, ensuring they can spread their pain to their fellow Cubans back in Cuba. It’s the same exact story with Falun Gong
Yeah I think they misunderstood what was happening cause they were getting wealthier as they got older.
Honestly, you just become more protective of your stuff and things you consider yours as you get older.
There are plenty of nerds that are super conservative about their fandoms and what is allowed to happen with them and same for all kinds of niches but the idea we would get more conservative with money really assumed we would accumulate more of it and assets. But what people do have is their apps and thoughts and those… Those people will be just as conservative as the boomers are about their money as they get older.
Honestly, you just become more protective of your stuff and things you consider yours as you get older.
Isn’t that plainly false? When I was in college, and just after that, I had almost no money, so I was incredibly protective of my stuff and things I considered mine. Later my income went up, so I didn’t need to worry about it as much. Surely many other people have had similar experiences.
I’ve been incredibly broke before and I think it’s different kind of protective. I’m frugally protective at trying to keep something working but that’s a different kind of possesive.
Of course you will care about food when you are starving. And you won’t care about scraps and leftovers when you are not.
But like that was a change of not being afraid to lose something you can rebuy. I’m sure their is plenty of non disposable items that you would have and ideals that you hold onto as truths about yourself. And im sure you don’t viewing housing and transportation as disposable.
I’m pretty old. Not very old, but old enough to be a legal adult. And I’m possibly the most liberal person in my family. I’ve been this way for years.
Liberal, or left?
A bit of both. I also don’t like capitalism.
Don’t really see how you can be both tbh
They don’t have to be entirely mutually exclusive. Though I imagine the most consistent form is just a left-facing liberal: like one that values philanthropy.
Though I have argued that some kinds of anarchists can embody this unholy fusion by way of contributing to society by removing themselves from it. Kind of requires rural homesteading in my experience, having known a few folks that I think could be defined that way.
…Though those homesteading types are often prone to going all sov-cit or worse. Also based from experience.
you’re left or you’re not, you’re a plain liberal
Got it.
If something, as years roll on talking to people with different experiences enriched me as a person.
I am becoming more annoyed by young liberals as I get older but I’m sure as shit not turning GOP conservative.
I know that conflating Liberals and Conservatives is practically lemmys official pass time, but I have to point out they are not the same.
Yet both liberals and conservatives (in your sense of the words) say this.
Liberals and conservatives are more similar than liberals and progressives.
No, I have a lot of experience in liberal organizations and they are not, despite the memes, closer to conservatism than progressivism. It honestly makes me feel like most people on lemmy have never really worked with liberal groups.
The major differences between a liberal and a social democrat or progressive comes down largely to deciding when a market has failed and when to use government intervention, both Liberals and progressives are fine with intervention, only the threshold changea. We want the same things, mostly, but disagree on how to get them.
Conservatives, philosophical Conservatives anyway, won’t typically even consider such a thing, and often do not even want the same things as Liberals or progressives.
This both sides same stuff just hurts progressive causes, because it sours mushy people with little to no real philosophy on voting for liberal parties. Those people flip flop back to Conservatives when they get angry and we lose the progress we’ve made, as is about to happen in Canada.
rofl! The difference vetween a progressive and liberal is NOT just when they decide to intervene in corporations…
American liberals want to means test EVERYTHING that could concievably go to a poor person. A progressive realizes the red tape is fucking stupid and expensive in its own right. Remember the COVID funds? Sucked up by megacorporations more than small businesses like it was supposed to be for? Notice how American liberals didn’t go after those corporations or really care that the money instantly dried up for smaller fries?
Yea, American liberals are ABSOLUTELY closer to American conservatives in practicality. It doesn’t matter how many polite words they use if the end result is FUNCTIONALLY THE SAME. No, conservatives wouldn’t have given any money to poor people, but as already said, liberals didn’t care that corporations with lawyers that could push all the red tape got the money, not small businessesthat actually neededrhe help.
They BOTH serve to drain the government of public funds. You’ve just fallen for the pleasantries they put on the same negative slant of actions. No, liberals are not fascists themselves, but they’re always, always dumb enough to make things suck enough that fascists sound nice to fools.
I think the fact that you’ve spent a lot of time in liberal organizations is why you think that way about where it falls on the continuum between progressivism and conservatism.
Interesting that you characterize my statement as "both sides"ing. I would say the thrust of my statement is not “both sides” but “one side”. America does not have a progressive party, only conservative and conservative-lite. Given the choice, of course I’ll choose the latter, not least because the former is so far off the deep end it may never recover as a party. That does not mean I think that both parties are the same.
Visually:
--------Progressivism ------------------------ Center ------ Liberalism --------------------------- Conservatism.
The major differences between a liberal and a social democrat or progressive comes down largely to deciding when a market has failed and when to use government intervention,
Okay sounds like you’re just describing different labels for liberalism.
Compare these people to a communist who thinks we should literally nationalize and worker-self-manage the relevant sectors of economy and you’ll see what people are trying to tell you about how liberals and conservatives are basically the same.
No, I have a lot of experience in liberal organizations and they are not, despite the memes, closer to conservatism than progressivism.
Perhaps if you redefine progressivism.
The major differences between a liberal and a social democrat or progressive comes down largely to deciding when a market has failed and when to use government intervention, both Liberals and progressives are fine with intervention, only the threshold changea. We want the same things, mostly, but disagree on how to get them.
Yep, you redefined it.
Conservatives, philosophical Conservatives anyway, won’t typically even consider such a thing, and often do not even want the same things as Liberals or progressives.
Conservatives often do, and the distance between genuine progressivism and liberalism is shorter than liberalism and conservativism.
This both sides same stuff just hurts progressive causes, because it sours mushy people with little to no real philosophy on voting for liberal parties. Those people flip flop back to Conservatives when they get angry and we lose the progress we’ve made, as is about to happen in Canada.
Electoralism will not save you.
Conservatives are a subcategory of liberal. They aren’t conflated, that’s like saying thumbs and fingers get conflated.
Both the democratic party and the republican party are liberal parties. One of them got scratched.
A lot of conservatives are liberals. The two terms are not mutually exclusive.
Based on that link it says that conservatives are at odds with and are critical of liberalism. There is a subset of conservatism called liberal conservativism that incorporates liberal stances into the conservative position however.
I was lazy picking Wikipedia when everyone knows it’s got an American brainrot problem. That’s entirely my fault.
It is true that “conservative opposition to liberalism” is a thing that has exist and currently exists, but the issue is that “conservative” is a relative term, it refers not to an absolute ideological tendency (like liberalism does) but to the necessarily relative value of seeking to conserve the current order of things. This is relative because the order of things can be different, and that changes the question of if you want to conserve it (conservative), go back to some past state, real or imagined (reactionary), or advance to some future state of greater development (progressive).
So when liberal revolutionaries set the west on fire, conservatives were in conflict with them because the conservatives were trying to preserve the feudal/aristocratic/monarchic order that the liberals opposed. Now that the liberals in the west are no longer revolutionaries but overwhelmingly the establishment and without any serious contest, the acting of promoting liberalism over other ideologies is conservative and the old position of promoting a feudal/aristocratic/monarchic order is reactionary. The rise of neoliberalism, in particular, represents the overwhelming historical victory of liberalism over both reactionary and progressive forces (“There is no alternative,” the perfect conservative slogan).
Of course, a political ideology can be a mix of conservative and reactionary or conservative and progressive (I’ll let you decide on reactionary/progressive), and I’d say that former pair is pretty important for understanding the ideology of the Republicans, but don’t let that exaggerate in your mind the piddling degree to which the latter pair applies to Democrats.
Is that a better explanation? Whether this is how you personally want to use the words or not, this will help you understand how socialists use them.
You people so naive its toxic. Ill leave this here for reference about one of the many examples as to why communism is not the way to go:
Thank me later.
3 week old account
Only comment
Why not use your main account? Ban evasion?
As if communism were the only alternative. And you call us naive.
It pretty much is in the long run.
Climate Change will make planned economies inevitable.
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Are the tankies in the room with us now?
What is “tankiness?” Any support for AES?
Also, in AES countries it isn’t “privledged elite vs poor bastards.”
How many millions died under Stalin, Mao, Che?
How many millions died under Kissinger, Truman, McCarthy?
don’t know, tell me with sources, please
They’re just past the end of the pier, those big things that aren’t seals.
Well, for one example: Kissinger approved Operation Menu, which is estimated to have a death toll of at least 100.000 civilians, and this is just ONE operation. Operation Condor, an anti leftist repression campaign in the Americas, has an estimated count of 80.000 killed and 400.000 political prisoners. These are just specific cases: the “knife wounds” amongst the “amputated limbs” for an analogy.
Millions of Nazis, yeah
Stalin alone:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin
Conversely, his totalitarian government has been widely condemned for overseeing mass repressions, ethnic cleansing, executions, and famines which caused the deaths of millions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin
This contained official records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953),[8] around 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag,[9][10] some 390,000[11] deaths during the dekulakization forced resettlement, and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s,[12] with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.[13] According to historian Stephen Wheatcroft, approximately 1 million of these deaths were “purposive” while the rest happened through neglect and irresponsibility.[2] The deaths of at least 5.5 to 6.5 million[14] persons in the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 are sometimes, though not always, included with the victims of the Stalin era.[2][15]
Makes me think of the old Samuel Clemmens quote
THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak;
whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
~ Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
It’s so easy to pretend the mob that turned on French nobility in the 1800s or the Qing Dynasts and Russian Tsars in the 1900s or the Arabs who lashed out at European occupation in the 2000s were simply seized by mania or some animal impulse.
It’s so easy to pretend they had no grievance, they suffered no generational atrocities, they had no motivation for their violent uprising, save the insidious Mind Virus of Leftist Agitation.
It’s romantic to see the aristocracy and the colonial governments of these nations as martyrs of a golden era. They were cruelly deposed by savages for the crime of living the gentile and sophisticated life. They were the Eloi, dragged into the dirt by vicious Morlocks who envied their perfect beauty.
But it’s all bullshit.
The aristocracy were monsters. They maintained their grips on the people through generation after generation of terror, torture, and enforced ignorance. They were cult leaders and warlords who claimed turf through centuries of conquest, inquisition, and cultural indoctrination.
When these archaic institutions failed, we like to blame the revolutionary leaders who happened to climb atop the ruins of their bloody legacy. But they were simply at the right moment in history to witness a corrupt edifice crumble under the weight of millions of their own dissatisfied subjects.
How many do you think? Legitimately, what’s your understanding of history? Where are you getting your numbers?
You’re right. Maybe we shouldn’t have a state people suffer and die under.
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what’s a retart?
Maybe they are into chemistry\alchemy.
I vaguely “knew” that alembics, retorts, and calcinators were things because of some fantasy book or another. Morrowind taught me what they were.
Hehe, same.
You can only get more conservative when you have things to protect like a house and a pension.
Most millennials retirement plan atm is die of heatstroke in 150 degree weather in a 8 person shared apartment in Alaska.
I have a house and a pretty sizable retirement account.
I will GLADLY take a lower home value, higher taxes on my retirement, higher taxes in general, so long as the ultra wealthy are also taxed accordingly.
You can only get more conservative when you have things to protect like a house and a pension.
In aggragate, that’s the more reliable way to make a population more conservative, but remember that a reasonable portion of fascists in a society that is going in that direction are going to be people who either lost that or never had it and, in either case, blame some minority for that fact. (The majority are still people like you describe, though, the petite bourgeois, etc., who feel insecure in their holdings)
I agree if you mean neoliberal-conservative
I assume they meant conservative, not fascist.
Luckyyyyyy!
Or you’ll get more communist when you have people to protect, like children or friends who start getting sick now that they’re not young anymore
I became a socialist because I was an “essential employee” during the height of the pandemic. I was treated like shit by my company, the customers, and the government while they sung my praise. I watched my grandpa get good cancer treatment with the VA (shocker, I know, but it happens) while my sister and grandma had to fight insurance for cancer treatment.
We can’t make a perfect world, but we can make a better one. And it starts with a socialist economy.
I became much more progressive after living in a “blue state” for much of my adult life. It’s hard to miss that the most successful economies in the us are also the ones who pay most attention to quality of life. We can look at the contrast in our neighboring states, and see the advantages brought by near universal healthcare, investments in an excellent education system, care about the environment, higher minimum wage, support for unions, and so much more
If you’re referring to Nordic Social Democracies, they fund their safety nets via Imperialism, they can’t exist without impoverishing and exploiting the Global South. It’s the epitome of the Labor Aristocracy.
No, sorry,I was being us-centric - it seemed like that’s where the thread was.
As one very specific example, when COViD funding for school lunches ended, some us states decided to no longer provide free school lunches. Massachusetts passed a “millionaire tax” and funded free school lunches out of that
As a slightly older example, Massachusetts passed effectively universal healthcare coverage, signed into law by governor Mitt Romney, and later served as the model for the Affordable Care Act
Looking at school system ratings by us state, I see what looks like a strong correlation between excellent schools and a stronger economy.
It’s the same issue as the Nordics, the US is a de-industrialized nation that makes the bulk of its profits off of Imperialism.
That and the lead poisoning.
Statement unclear whether increased conservatism is the natural result of property/capital or if property/capital are merely requisite.
Whenever people say that you grow more conservative when you get older, they’re working from the premise that you’ll grow more affluent and comfortable later in life. For Americans, that just isn’t true anymore. Wages are mostly stagnant, home ownership is much less attainable, and cost of living is at an all time high. Yet for some reason, pundits just can’t figure out why millenials aren’t getting more conservative as they age, or why zoomers appear to be following this trend.
Yeah, though there’s also the phenomena of older folks generally being more against change and clinging in the past more, the idea being that you have less future to look forward to (since you’re closer to death than your birth) so instead you look towards the past and become nostalgic about it.
Oh yeah, that’s definitely why older folks are socially conservative, although usually when I hear people say this (and definitely in the context of this meme) they’re talking about becoming fiscally conservative.
there’s also the phenomena of older folks generally being more against change and clinging in the past more,
That’s more a consequence of the moment. Older people like stable material conditions. And with programs like pensions, public health care, and a safe suburban neighborhood with good amenities, they see the status quo as worth defending.
But swing through North Africa and the Middle East during the Arab Spring (anyone remember that?) or pop over to the UK in the wake of the last election cycle or visit an impoverished neighborhood in Haiti or a bombed neighborhood in Lebanon and you’ll find plenty of elderly revolutionaries.
you look towards the past and become nostalgic about it
People may be nostalgic for their youth, but they are rarely nostalgic for being treated like a child.
And you’re going to find it hard to locate a South African native nostalgic for Apartheid or a Pole or Romanian who misses occupation or a Chinese national who pines for the Century of Humiliation.
Westerners coming out of their post war pre-Reagan Golden Era just have more to be nostalgic for.
yup it applies only to the privileged class, and of course only people in that class would think that is the general experience.
All of that is the same here in Germany. Check out the stats on home ownership here… But oh man are the kids flipping to the AfD (far right nazi party) quick and in huge numbers. It’s scary to see.
German government should just ban the AfD and end with it.
While that sounds like a good idea, it’s not really a solution. You can’t just ban a political party because you don’t agree with it, that wouldn’t be democratic.
The Nazi Party being banned was good, just not enough
Fuck this “goody two-shoes” bullshit, ban and repress.
You 100% can, fascists are a national threat. Entertaining them via “civility” is nonsense.
Honestly, that makes sense to me. It seems like when economic systems start breaking down for people, they turn to populism. It’s either left-wing populism, which argues for reigning in the excesses of capitalism, or right-wing populism, which scapegoats minority or immigrant groups. Right now, the youth in the U.S. are interested in left-wing populism, but right-wing populism (AKA Trumpism) is the only thing making it into the political mainstream.
Where are those youth in the US? While they seem loud online, why hasn’t that translated into votes?
The youth in the US is mostly actually leftist, and they give them the choice to vote for a centrist or a right wing candidate. That’s a big part of the reason. Also, just the fact that the youth also votes less, on average, even those youth who identify as right wing.
I know because I am an actual leftist, and I didn’t vote for a long time into my adulthood, because it feels like a scam. I finally got over the fact that not participating in the vote is worse, but I completely understand the apathy amongst actual leftists in the US. We’ve had no true representation in our whole lives.
If you don’t vote for the centrist candidate, you can’t object to the right extremist.
Actually this does track that a lot of what I see online is people who seem unwilling to compromise: neither are what I want so both the same. You need to be willing to vote for the one closest to what you want, and work toward moving that leftward over time.
We had a huge success with “The Squad” getting enough attention before Biden’s first nomination to influence the party platform. As a minority voter, this path is more likely to succeed than not voting
If you don’t vote for the centrist candidate, you can’t object to the right extremist.
You absolutely can. Voting is not the extent of political action.
Actually this does track that a lot of what I see online is people who seem unwilling to compromise: neither are what I want so both the same. You need to be willing to vote for the one closest to what you want, and work toward moving that leftward over time.
You can’t move right-wingers left through thoughts and prayers, this is astrology.
We had a huge success with “The Squad” getting enough attention before Biden’s first nomination to influence the party platform. As a minority voter, this path is more likely to succeed than not voting
And yet they accomplish nothing and are kept like barking dogs on leashes. The electoral process is a filter, it prevents radical change. See how the monsters treat Rashida Tlaib.
You can’t move right-wingers left
Exactly. If you have to chose between right wing and centrist , elect the centrist and move them a bit to the left. prepare to do this through multiple elections
And yet they accomplish nothing
And yet President Biden is very centrist but has passed some of the most far reaching changes ever on the environment, renewable energy, unionization, etc.
An example of both is climate change regulation. Legislation passed during Biden’s term should get us about halfway to our net carbon goal. A pessimist may focus on that not being nearly enough, but I see a new center, where we can have more success working on more substantial change
Actually, youth turnout is pretty high right now, with record turnout being set recently for both midterms and presidential elections. In 2020, turnout for the under thirty crowd was 50%, a possible new record, and it was 30% and 27% in 2018 and 2022 respectively, which are 30 year highs. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party leadership prefers centrist candidates, and frequently puts its thumb on the scale to ensure that moderate candidates win, so that turnout isn’t translating into progressive politics.
Funny enough, just after I made the original comment, I read an article about how the youngest U.S. voters are starting to lean further right than before, so it’s possible the ship has sailed on this all together. Given how aggressively the right wing has been to trying to indoctrinate young voters, who are watching Democrats successfully suppress left-wing populism while Republicans embrace right-wing populism, it’s possible the youth are deciding that the far-right offers them only chance for change. I hope not, though, because then we’re screwed.
Because for every loud voice you read on lemmy there’s 1000 boomers and nut jobs that either a) don’t use the Internet regularly b) don’t leave Facebook or c) hide away in right wing circlejerk sites like truth social and 4chan. A and B just being old, and none of them being people that can handle having their views challenged, which is definitely going to happen in a space like this.
left-wing populism, which argues for reigning in the excesses of capitalism
Left wing means ending Capitalism, not just “reigning it in,” which never works long-term.
“Left-wing,” is a very broad term. In the Weimar Republic, yes, the left-wing alternative to right-wing populism was communism. In America today, Democratic Socialists like Bernie Sanders are the left-wing alternative. If that doesn’t fall in line with your definition of, "left-wing,’ that’s fine, but it most people wouldn’t define it as exclusively anti-capitalist ideologies.
The Overton Window is relative, sure, but that’s only useful in defined constraints, and only for one point in time. Leftism is socialist, rightism is Capitalist.
Bernie is a Social Democrat as well.
…and Sanders himself defines Democratic Socialism as the completion of the New Deal reforms, not a gradual transition to a socialist economic system. There’s a difference between the Overton Window shifting and a gradual change in definition over generations, but if you want definitions to remain entirely static, then we’re both using left-wing incorrectly, as it’s, “real,” definition is opposing monarchy’s veto power over parliament.
Yes, he calls himself a Democratic Socialist while being a Social Democrat, I’m aware.
Left wing in the modern context refers to anti-Capitalism.
What if you start to become better off, but realize so many other parents are unable to provide for their kids like you can, and you can’t hope to provide for your kids like the wealthy can? What if paying exorbitant amounts of money for your kids education drives home the point that we need to make that investment for all kids futures? What if you are more often on the hiring side and realize your well being depends on the next generation having opportunities and the means to successfully achieve them?
Then you’re a good person, which is a statistical minority. Most people will never intentionally vote against their economic self-interests by raising their own taxes (although you can trick them into voting against their economic self interests; Republicans have been doing that for years by using racist dog-whistles to attack entitlement programs and pushing discredited trickle-down economic theories).
Then you are alright with me. I think a large amount of our problems as a species come from those with a lack of empathy. If everyone thought like you, then we wouldn’t have the vast wealth inequalities and greatly varying qualities of life between working class and upper class.
On the other hand, if everyone had empathy in the first place, I think we wouldn’t have the economic systems that put profits over people.
The Mode of Production determines social thought, not the other way around.
You don’t think that more empathetic people would be involved in creating fairer modes of production? I think sociopaths and those lacking empathy are at least part of the reason that capitalism still runs rampant in the world, but its just my opinion.
If you downvoted me don’t know why, just adding my opinion.
I know plenty of people that grew up in capitalism and still have empathy, and also hate capitalism, so I guess I don’t understand exactly what you mean, either.
You don’t think that more empathetic people would be involved in creating fairer modes of production? I think sociopaths and those lacking empathy are at least part of the reason that capitalism still runs rampant in the world, but its just my opinion.
The base creates and reinforces the superstructure, which reinforces the base, not the other way around.
The base creates and reinforces the superstructure, which reinforces the base, not the other way around.
I don’t know what this has to do with empathetic people and sociopaths. I understand that the system that we live in is more likely to produce sociopaths than a Socialistic one, but I don’t think that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about them and their hindrance to our advancement, considering that they do indeed exist.
I usually appreciate you spreading knowledge, but I don’t really see what you are trying to add here. Nothing I wrote disagrees with anything you said, and vice versa.
You said if people were more empathetic we would have a better Mode of Production, but the process is reversed.
