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Apparently Europeans are bad at this too. Or do you think the French “socialist” party whose members have done things like lead the IMF is really socialist?
by umanwizard 6y ago
Apparently Europeans are bad at this too. Or do you think the French “socialist” party whose members have done things like lead the IMF is really socialist?
- Mordisquitos 6y agoDepending on context, the word "socialism" is polysemic in practice in a lot of places in Europe. As long as people are aware that the S for "Socialista" in Spanish governing party PSOE is used in the sense of "social-democrat", and not in the same sense as the 2nd S in USSR standing for "Socialist", it's fine.
- umanwizard 6y agoIndeed, you’re right. But isn’t this just restating my point? Americans don’t reliably distinguish between various left-of-center ideologies in their language, but that’s not uniquely American, because neither do Europeans.
- pbhjpbhj 6y agoI've heard lots of Trump supporters saying Biden is Communist; he seems just right of center to me. But it's about "othering", and USA have had a decades long programme making Communists into evil bogey men, so it's understandable from that perspective.
- umanwizard 6y agoThe fraction of people in the US who genuinely believe that Biden is a communist must be in the single digit percent. The fraction that understand he isn’t but use that as an exaggeration for rhetorical effect is higher, but still not the majority. However, jokes like “let’s ask ‘Americans’ to distinguish these” implies that conflating Biden-ism and communism is a mainstream consensus opinion, which is absolutely wrong. I see a lot of stuff about Reichsbürger and similar movements in German media; should we conclude anything from that about “what Germans believe” ?
- zorked 6y agoSocial-democrats are socialists though. They are one of the many subgroups.