If I am expected to answer for what XxCommieCoomer42069xX says on a discord channel, then I am at least left of center according to my calibrations.
This is why whenever someone spits “liberal” out in a discussion, it just freezes my brain for a little while as I try to figure out what the fuck they mean by the word.
It’s a classic example of “you keep saying that word, it doesn’t mean what you think it means”
It comes off so elitist when people like you and OP act this way though. Most people don’t like politics or even want to get involved. A majority of those ones that do get involved have such a baseline understanding of what their political affiliation is it’s shocking. Hell, for most of my life I didn’t know better either. I always considered myself a liberal Democrat, but better realized that I’m fully a progressive.
It’s better to be open and supportive of people, and to talk to them about their beliefs. It goes a lot better than ridiculing then over it. You catch a lot more flies with honey, than with vinegar.
The ideological landscape could not be more topsy turvy if someone was deliberately trying to make sane conversations impossible. There needs to be some kind of grounding shibboleth that can erase all ambiguity.
You don’t think someone is deliberately trying to make sane conversations impossible?
Deliberately and extensively
Yes exactly. Around here, “the liberals” are the parties on the right wing of parliament…
Same for the US, with them being on the right side of the political spectrum
I would have described FDR as centre left
The guy that locked up Japanese US citizens? A majority of the brains behind the New Deal came from his SoL Francis Perkins
No left wing government has ever been authoritarian or had institutionalised racism, you’re so right
FDR was a centrist afraid of a communist revolution. This is the only reason the US got the New Deal. Funny it didn’t last 20 years before it started getting dismantled. They are now at the SS dismantling phase.
Keep talking about reforming capitalism though.
New Deal boosted USA economy for decades tho, shit got done & people could spend.
Imagine if socialism was a thing then.
Okay so is every possible candidate for an American left wing leader just “a centrist whose afraid of communists?” Why even bother arguing with me then you’ve already made up your mind. The reality is he pushed through left wing legislation that pulled working class Americans out of the depression and put America onto the world stage as the leading power. His actions make him centre left regardless of the reasons you think he made them.
FDR did more for American workers reforming capitalism than any revolutionaries have since.
It was fake reform BTW. It was never meant to last and you are a fool if you believed it was supposed to.
Okay buddy you’re the one against a policy that improved the lives of workers
When did I say I was against the New Deal?
Are you putting words in my mouth?
The US has no left wing leaders.
Does Bernie Sanders come close, in your opinion?
No, especially the last several years with his ‘lets fight fascism by electing my good buddies the blue fascists.’ He’s never been anything but a party sheepdog
Honestly now I think you’re a master-baiter and you caught me hook line and sinker. This is a straight up “there is no war in ba sing se” bit right?
Liberals are not left wing they are centrist.
You’re so brave for saying this
And you know little of political theory.
So brave for saying this
In 1934, a nationwide strike wave brought the us economy to its knees. Cities all along the trans continental railroad went on strike. Minneapolis had been basically completely taken over by a Trotskyist vanguard party, whose non-violent political tactics subverted police and big business interests at every turn. After the police shooting of two union dock workers in San Francisco on bloody Thursday, 160 unions initiated a 4 day general strike. In 1935, we got our new deal.
Workers, fed up with their conditions and inspired by socialist organizing, won a New Deal for ourselves. Giving credit to FDR for it, is ahistorical. It is exactly the sort of ruling class mythologies held and perpetuated by liberal elites. FDR was trying to rescue capitalism from the workers who had organized into a force capable of bringing it down, and seizing the means of production for the workers.
Despite the rational reforms FDR and Keynesian economics brought to the US economy, all of those reforms have been rolled back. That is because only the workers are able to win a rational economic system through struggle, it will never be given to us by some president who is beholden to the class that holds all the power and money.
There were many factors that contributed to disabling the American radical militant workers movement. Some was liberal meddling, and right wing regressive collaboration with regressive big business. But one thing that gets overlooked is how our movements were dismantled by Stalin’s Comintern, who caused splits and purges in our movements along the lines of loyalty to the Stalinist bureaucracy.
So completely blaming liberalism isn’t totally accurate either, unless you consider Stalin to be a liberal or a comprador (which honestly I think is kind of true.)
I try to be easy on liberals, I think progressive liberals are basically allies, at least when their illusions doesn’t get in the way of principled struggle. But don’t be confused by the mythology of FDR. Great man theory is a myth, only great movements of workers are capable of positive change under capitalism.
FDR was the leader at the time of the new deal. He gave into the will of the workers. This makes him left wing.
Sure. Left wing for a president, even the left wing of the ruling capitalist class. Not the left wing of the working class.
But you’re absolutely right. He was the guy who did the thing at the time that was needed to do the thing. History isn’t made by great men. It is made by workers. My point is he sided with the winners.
But he hadn’t adopted the sensibilities and interests of the working class. It just so happened that a large enough section of the ruling class agreed with him at the time, not completely without his presidential influence, but that’s the whole problem right? FDR was hardly the first member of the the ruling class who had won over to the side of workers, many great socialists, including Marx, Lenin, were themselves members of the bourgeoisie. But there is a canyon of difference between the guy who led a revolution in Russia, and the guy who stopped one in america.
As far as presidents go, he’s not a slave owning mass murder, pedophile, complete nepo-baby, etc., the man wasn’t evil as far as presidents go, but he was only evef momentarily and conditionally on the side of workers. Populism isnt necessarily leftism
There is no left wing in the ruling class just proletarian appeasers.
Why would you advocate for losing control over the means of production when you control the means of production?
Your statement is a contradiction.
You’re doing literally everything in your power to not recognise this guy as left wing to the point of absurdity. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than: sides with workers, left wing. Sides against workers, right wing. Being left wing isn’t some special club that only you and all the people you like can join. It’s a broad political stance largely defined by the politics of the time. There are plenty of terrible leftists.
Who made you king of the left?
I did not vote for you.
No one votes for the leftist monarch.
We all take turns. It’s my turn tomorrow.
We’re an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.
