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What do you mean? This is _precisely_ what I'd expect. Hating on (neo)liberals like Hillary Clinton is damn near ubiquitous on left forums these days, as is d
by wutbrodo 9y ago
What do you mean? This is _precisely_ what I'd expect. Hating on (neo)liberals like Hillary Clinton is damn near ubiquitous on left forums these days, as is dismissing what they perceive as shallow identity politics and conflating liberals with the right.
Like, you literally couldn't have picked a better quote to sum up the left's views in 2017, and then you captioned it with "I'm not sure how left this is".
- blowski 9y agoWhich just goes to show that reducing politics to a simple "left-right" axis is part of the problem, and not particularly helpful.
- chongli 9y agoEh, not really, Hillary Clinton is way to the right of most non-US western politicians. It's just that the US skews so heavily to the right to begin with that she seems normal.
- wutbrodo 9y agoAgreed, I have a comment down below expressing frustration at exactly that. I was just speaking on the terms that the parent comment was: liberals aren't very popular these days on the left _or_ the right, and as such aren't very well-represented in hard-left forums. That being said, I wouldn't really classify Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as all that leftist. In the two-axis model, they're sort of straight down-the-middle centrist liberals (like me!)
- tray5 9y agoThe entire democratic party really isn't leftist, outside of the heavily skewed American ecosystem, they're centre right.
- wutbrodo 9y agoTreating left as if it has some inherent, context-free meaning is ridiculous. If you're going to define a spectrum, the context matters, and the context we're currently discussing is American politics. You may as well say that American politics only contains extreme leftists, when compared to the rest of American history.
- tray5 9y agoSure it is, leftism occupies a spectrum of economic and social ideals, which the US left (led by the DNC) falls uniformly outside that spectrum. I mean Monarchists are left of fascists, but that doesn't make monarchists leftist just because you compare them to something further right. Just because your system is dominated by capitalists doesn't make the rest of the spectrum irrelevant, and redefining the conversation to fit into your narrow band is what has led to the frustrations with the American situation. The American left is not left when considering the entire spectrum of left-right political ideas, and you don't get to suddenly chose to define something as leftist within the context of your narrow window of acceptable thought, it must encompass all ideas.
- Domenic_S 9y agoThat's just not a meaningful distinction. Technically correct, probably -- useful? Nah.
- FridgeSeal 9y agoCould you clarify? How is it not a useful distinction - they pretty clearly outlined the differences.
- tomjakubowski 9y agoYou're confusing "the American left" with the Democratic Party. The US left exists, it's just terribly unorganized and has little political power. Their opposition has simply done a better job of marginalizing them compared to left movements in other countries.
- pfarnsworth 9y agoThere is nothing centrist about Clinton or Obama or even the Democratic party, they're right of center. That's why Sanders was so incredibly popular, because he espoused true liberal beliefs, and something that hasn't been heard or represented in a long, long time.
- dragonwriter 9y agoIt's why confusing the Democrats, a party whose dominant faction is a center-right one with the left is a problem, but its not really a problem with reducing politics to a single axis (that is a problem, in general, though its actually not that inaccurate when it comes to US politics.)
- tray5 9y agoIf I'm being honest it's because the American left really isn't leftist at all, and I think that Americans are becoming aware of it