The US doesn’t really have a far left. It barely has a left. What MAGA calls left tends to be rather center, like the position that people should be able to afford healthcare.
also “left media” never has a foothold in the MSMs too.
“Radical left Joe Biden” will never not be funny.
“Centrists” are those that oppose authoritarianism in all forms. The far left and and far right make rationalizations about why their preferred flavour of authoritarianism is good (it just gets a bad rap!) while pretending to vehemently oppose the other side’s flavour of authoritarianism.
But in the end, those who rationalize in favour of any kind of authoritarianism could easily be manipulated into supporting any other kind of authoritarianism. There’s a reason the Nazis called themselves the Nationalist Socialist party, just a small amount branding can get a good number “leftists” to support fascism. Because few people actually think in ideological terms, they just go along with the group and repeat whatever ideological bullshit they’ve heard to conform with the group. It’s easier to turn a socialist into a fascist (and vice versa) since it’s mostly just about branding.
Socialists and Fascists love the concept of political spectrum they can put themselves on opposite ends of, but that’s all an artificial construct to allow for fear of the other to rationalize the need for a strongman to protect them from the other side that supposedly has completely different values than them. But the “far right” and “far left” have both been conned into being willing to give up their rights in fear of the other. Fascism is a convenient rationalization for communism and communism is a convenient rationalization for fascism. These “ideologies” has a symbiotic relationship with each other.
Those who fall for these grifts believe the verbal diarrhea of demagogues that use a lot of words and say little other than give a vague feeling of “trust me, give me power, I will make you stronger / more equal”. The stupid see someone using a lot of words and don’t notice there isn’t any real explanation of how the demagogue will deliver on their vague promises. They just need to hate the same people their audience hates and use a lot of words, and the stupid will eat whatever bullshit is thrown at them.
Internet podcasting has allowed people to have an endless selection of small time demagogues to choose from. The flavour of authoritarianism the stupid will fall prey to is entirely dependent on which content an algorithm selects for them. And that is based on content they may consumed before puberty. These grifters need to get them while they’re young, someone with more life experience will be more likely to say “yeah sure that’s a lot of fancy words, but how does any of that help me right now?” which they don’t have an answer for.
Right now we live in a dictatorship of the wealthy. The capitalists control productive forces, decide how the majority of us spend our time, and lobby governments in their own interests. On the other hand, the workers, the people that labored to create everything we need, are given a fraction of the value of what they produce in the form of wages. In other words, every person that survives on their wages is exploited by necessity. We are institutionally coerced to sell our labor (i.e., make money for the capitalist) or fall into abject destitution.
Centrists obviously don’t see the dictatorship. We live in a time where the rule of the wealthy is as normal as the divine right of kings once was. Accordingly, centrists may be sensible enough to see the following trends as problems, but they tend to think of them as entirely disconnected:
- Stagnating wages (despite rising productivity)
- The wealth gap
- Corporate offshoring
- Periodic recessions
- Perpetual aggressive wars
- Millions around the globe living in abject poverty
- Literal slavery abroad to produce cheaper consumer goods
- Literal slavery domestically in prisons
- Skyrocketing cost of living (food, shelter, gas, education, healthcare, childcare, etc)
- Functional monopolies (despite anti-monopoly laws)
- Politicians in the pockets of billionaires
- Climate change (despite decades of warning from scientists)
Marxist theory can explain all of these problems, and in many cases predicted them before they happened. But if the billionaires can convince people like you that a better economic system is synonymous with authoritarianism, and that continuing capitalist wealth extraction is the reasonable “center” position, then they can prevent the workers from banding together against the ruling class.
Advanced strawman. Opposing fascism isn’t far left. It’s just not-right.
The wall of lies and whataboutism goes below.
Centrists are actually with maga, they just don’t wear the hat. See Fetterman, Schumer, Jeffries, etc
Counterargument: Centrists are actually a diverse group with many very different positions, that just have in common the fact they don’t agree with either of the currently dominant political factions.
Aggressive reposte: what you just did (political stereotyping, where you label everyone who disagrees with you as basically being the same cartoon villain) is, in my experience, an example the left-wing bigotry that drives centrists away from your political faction. Disagreeing with your doesn’t mean that I agree with the hateful morons on the right, it just means I also see and won’t tolerate your bigotry.
So hating a hateful ideology and people who hold that ideology is bigotry. Damn, you need to see a chiropractor, you just twisted yourself in knots for that poor argument.
No, the bigotry is lumping all centrists, who have a diversity of views, in with the hateful ideology, despite having zero information about what they actually believe.
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice. - Martin Luther King Jr.
Most centrists I have interacted with have the same thought, I don’t care as long as I’m not affected by it. As long as the sense of order is maintained they will let babies starve, houses burn, and deforest our planet to maintain that stability. So you must excuse those of us on the left who have interacted with people more conservative to us for so long. We’re tired of the bullshit and we’re not going to let you live it down anymore. I have heard people talk about how centrists/moderates, whatever term you use to describe them, are the swing voters. From my personal experience in the USA with the moderate, the moderate fucking sucks.
If the moderate is who truly votes in presidents then they have failed us multiple times now with Trump. Thoroughly, absolutely. I don’t know how you can live a life seeing the horrors perpetuated for money and power to still think our system okay. If you’re not swayed by the plight of the fact we can feed everyone on the Earth, we just cannot satisfy the gluttony of the wealthy to do so. Of maintaining order while a group of people who had no choice in their birth are subjugated, beaten, rounded up and jailed just for existing, and lynched for existing. If you look at everything wrong in this world and aren’t galvanized away from moderation and right wing politics, then you’re lost.
Ok buddy. Enjoy slurping Trump.
Not an American
Counter-counterargument: Centrists are actually a diverse group with many very different positions, but they all end up supporting fascism by staying inactive. I don’t think you’re evil for not picking a side, I think you’re short-sighted for assuming “staying out of it” is possible and preferable to fighting for change. Winner-take-all, first-past-the-post elections will always result in a two-party system, if you want to change that without literally burning it all to the ground, you have to do it from within the system. You can still be a centrist, just try to take the context of the whole political structure into consideration when you vote. You can say you don’t tolerate bigotry, but your actions (or rather, lack of actions) make you a liar.
I’ll summarize something I said before:
Democrats will hurt you for money, but Republicans will pay for the privilege. Both parties subservient to capital but there are still meaningful distinctions. Change must come from the bottom.
Okay but the Far Left is antisemitic because they don’t support Israeli
genocidefreedom and democracy. So they’re even worse than MAGA.I’m glad we’ve got someone capable of identifying and stating how others sit on a political plain.
How about we stop pretending that the left doesn’t have its own share of emotionally damaged asshats and try to pick leadership that solves problems instead of pandering to one side or the other?
tankies are probably the worst presentation of the “left”
Who’s pretending ?
If you can only paint ‘your side’ as the hero, then you are a naive child with 0 life experience.
Pure projection
Reading 19th-20th century theory on the internal contradictions and inherent exploitation of capitalism offers a very convincing framework for understanding our current reality. To paint such analyses as naivete ironically reveals a lack of familiarity with the subject matter.
Those who have been critiquing, reading critiques, and debating about it for a long time are naive for not blindly buying Carl’s Jr’s Big Bucket of Fries!
Far left citizens may oppose fascism but their leaders aren’t doing a good job of it. America needs a better left wing party.
your right because there is none
People thinking the Dems are left. They’re left of the GQP, they’re not left of the spectrum, far from it. The neoliberal is as much not your friend as the fascist is.
Lmao.
Because both make money.
Yeah, both are too loud and impeding the centrist ability to go back to Brunch lmao
Brunch: May or may not include stuffing their own pockets
i think the “current far left” supports authoritarianism, so not the opposite, just different flavor of the same side.
That’s because the political compass is two-dimensional, but everyone insists on thinking of it as a one-dimensional thing.
You’ve got left wing and then you’ve got right wing, and then in the vertical direction you’ve got authoritarianism and libertarianism. When people say far right and far left what they really mean is that the extreme edges horizontally and right at the top vertically. Think Castro, and not Gandhi. Both were left wing but are nowhere near each other in political phasespace
Even the 2 dimensional compass is a simplification, though orders of magnitude better than the binary “left or right” simplification, and also better than the 2 dimensional gradient as well.
Yet another poorly made fallacy meme. Is there a bot just crapping out this same template every few days?
what
Memes must be logically sound at all times
8 days ago https://lemmy.world/post/39694498
These “Leftist good, right bad, central dumb dumb I see no difference” meme’s are to Lemmy what the Big Mac is to McDonalds. This place is littered with the same, tired, fucking false fallacy. Dear lord, leading up to Dementia Donny winning his second term, 3/4ths the post on Lemmy were just that. Wasn’t accurate, original, or funny the first 50 fucking times, not sure it’s going to be any other time.
Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Lemmy post (FUNNY!!!)
Yes, believing centrism to be a valid political position, due to it being the centre, is a fallacy.
Why does the left have to keep being represented as long hair, man bun hippy types?
I’m a step away from a high and tight, and with my thining hair, close to just needing clippers.
Yeah, I’m a balding hippy type
I mean… I’m not in a position to disagree with it.
still better than the other two in this meme 🤭
Fair, dude probably cares about his hair.
WTF happened to centrism, instead of measured response to right and left it has just turned into the place where cowards hide
Makes more sense when you realize a lot of so called “enlightened centrists” are just Republicans who don’t want to be lumped in with them but love their hateful policies.
It didn’t used to be that way, not entirely sure what happened to change that
The current political climate is galvanizing and honestly I don’t see it as a problem. We cannot survive as a society much less species with how things are now. Some people are only concerned with how they’re viewed, so they lie about what they believe in order to look not terrible. Truthfully, nuance is dead, and playing both sides means the one that takes away will always win.
Always was
Me coming into the comments section:
