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>What America calls leftists is considered pretty centrist everywhere else. They’re so afraid of empathic policies it’s no wonder the country is falling apart.

• hobs 2y ago
  Which? Be clear, because the only ones I hear you dogwhistling here are Trans folks rights or Black folks rights if you are vaguely referencing "social issues" and generally America's historical context there is Pretty Dang Bad.
  • Der_Einzige 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • olivermuty 2y ago
      This is the stupidest thing I have read on HN today. With regards from a hardcore european leftist
      • Der_Einzige 2y ago
        [flagged]
      • huang_chung 2y ago
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        • deleted 2y ago
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    • yawpitch 2y ago
      I haven’t met a left or right wing European who has more than the slightest clue what America’s abortion laws actually are.
  • cced 2y ago
    What’s the dogwhistle?
  • pegasus 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • mplanchard 2y ago
      I get being against this sort of thing, but it’s wild to me how people are SO against something so inconsequential (official language on government forms or whatever) that they’re willing to instead support a party that’s actively pushing us into authoritarianism. Like sure some inclusive language is silly, but it’s a lot better than losing our national parks, destroying our social safety nets, celebrating cruelty to immigrants, and ripping the constitution to shreds in the process.
      • piva00 2y ago
        My feeling is that people aren't much against something inconsequential per se, instead they are against something that's out of their status quo and that question some underlying values they haven't ever questioned themselves (for example: genders). Instead of being curious why exactly some people are proposing something that challenges their worldview they instead immediately allow their fear to take over, and reject the change. It's the same pattern that non-accepting parents of gay children tend to go through when their kid comes out of the closet; in that case a lot of them have a change of heart into acceptance because they love the person, over time they are able to overcome the fear and understand a new worldview. Not so much for the masses with flames being fanned by politicians wanting to capitalise on that fear, they are kept in fear, they are told to reject any attempt to educate them, the messaging calls it "evil" or "not from God" or "only for betas", adapted to the audience's most chauvinistic identity (religion, machoism, etc.). Since it's easy to manipulate those into hating whatever is the bad-word-du-jour then those same politicians can attach any policy with "combating bad-word-du-jour" and a lot of the believers won't question it much. It's disheartening because even though I'm quite progressive and leftist (in the European sense), I still believe that conservatism is necessary to balance out the discussion, unfortunately it's also an ideology intrinsically bound to the fear of change, a feeling very easy to be co-opted by power-hungry people. It's an ideology that rejects rationality and almost completely embraces emotion (fear), which is rather ironic since its most fervent followers want to believe they are the most reasonable and logical ones.
  • inglor_cz 2y ago
    There is nothing dogwhistleable here, US leftist race policy is a huge outlier in the Western world and I would hesitate to call it "liberal". Once someone groups people into racial groups and treats them like interchangeable Lego bricks by color, they have left any pretense of liberalism, which by necessity considers an individual to be the smallest and most vulnerable minority of them all.
• impossiblefork 2y ago
  The US is very liberal, but liberal doesn't mean left. Left to me means workers movements, and there's very little of that in the US.
  • jpadkins 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • ModernMech 2y ago
      The current new guard GOP are currently demonizing and firing federal workers who have protections under the law. Their actions are not pro worker.
    • HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
      Duping people, not actually trying to help them.
  • whatshisface 2y ago
    Identity politics is on the right in Israel. In a general sense I think it might not belong on the same spectrum as redistributive policies or militarism.
  • gruez 2y ago
    >The US is very liberal, but liberal doesn't mean left. At no point was "liberal" mentioned in this comment chain prior to your comment. >Left to me means workers movements, and there's very little of that in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics#Social_progressivism_and_counterculture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics#Social_prog...
  • epistasis 2y ago
    Biden was the strongest supporter of workers unions we have ever had, and the left in the US reviled Biden. Including the unions, largely. It's time to stop thinking in materialist terms when analyzing US politics, that has completely flown the coop. It's all culture war.
• closewith 2y ago
  For economics (both sides) healthcare, labour, "defense", energy, firearms, speech, religion and basic human rights, both main parties in the US are far right by Western standards (and true outliers for most). It's really only identity politics where the left is actually on the global left, and then it's far-left.
  • moomin 2y ago
    US is still pretty far-right on social policy by the standards of most of Europe. This is an average, there’s lot of outliers such as even the proper left in France being weird about Muslim dress.
  • gruez 2y ago
    >For economics (both sides) healthcare, labour, "defense", energy Those are arguably closer to "economic" than "social". Energy is plainly economic. Even healthcare and labor at the end of the day, boil down to dollars and cents (ie. how much people are paying for healthcare and how much they earn). >speech Having the strongest free speech protections in the world is "far right" now? >religion The Republicans might be "far right" on religion, but I don't see how the Democrats are. They can certainly be more secular (think the CCP), but at least they're not obviously religious. Compare this to the UK and Denmark which have state regions, and the christian democratic union in Germany. >basic human rights Clarify. "basic human rights" has been muddled by the left to include mean stuff like "healthcare", as well as the right to mean "right of babies not not get aborted" and "kids not being groomed".
    • bigfudge 2y ago
      If you think the UK state religion is in any way relevant to this then you are sorely mistaken. The Church of England has little to no influence on daily politics and is a historical oddity. All political parties, left and right, are essentially secular. Religious politicians basically have to keep their faith quiet while gaining and maintaining office. Blair is a good example of this.
  • vanviegen 2y ago
    > It's really only identity politics where the left is actually on the global left, and then it's far-left. That rings true, but how did the US get here? How did identity politics suddenly come to be the most important thing, bringing the world order to its knees?
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Well yeah, plenty of developed countries are xenophobic and bigoted in terms of same sex marriage still. I’m curious what “social issue” you are imagining that is represented by the american left but not the european left otherwise.
  • derektank 2y ago
    The US left wing is far more supportive of trans rights, particularly youth gender affirming care, than its counterparts in Europe. For example, I do not think you'd see a Democrat outside of a swing district publicly say, "It's very important that we protect female-only spaces," as Keir Starmer has. Also, while on the campaign trail he said he wouldn't scrap the proposed ban on teaching young people in England about transgender identity in school, saying, "I'm not in favour of ideology being taught in our schools on gender," language not too dissimilar from the Trump administration's.
    • amenhotep 2y ago
      Starmer is a centrist and Labour have been very weak against a trans panic being whipped up by right wing media.
      • derektank 2y ago
        Yes, that's my point. And there are many Labor MPs that are to the right of Starmer on this issue. The party that's closest to the Democrats (and arguably slightly more left on the issue though not by much) are the Lib Dems, and they got, what, 12% of the vote? Also, do you not think American right wing media is not capable of whipping up panics? This feels like special pleading.
        • bigfudge 2y ago
          Outside of trans rights though, it’s hard to see what issues the us left is to the left of Europe on. What’s more, we actually have left wing parties in power and using govt machinery to advance what would now be called ‘woke’ in the us.
• Aromasin 2y ago
  The biggest win the Republicans and billionaire class ever had was convincing the American public that left == liberal. It's not. Blue hair, trans flag, black lives matter, pro-palestine, etcetera; these are socially liberal stances. "Left" doesn't mean any of these things for the rest of the world in a conventional sense. Left means unions, workers rights, socialism or sydicalism; generally, power to the workers/99%/people rather than the capatilists/monarchists/regime. Americans should continue to conflate socially liberal and economically left-wing at their own peril.
  • ForTheKidz 2y ago
    It's worth noting that labor unions have mobilized all over the globe in solidarity with Palestine. Given that the main bone of contention in this country is continued material and financial support to a military campaign it feels odd to lump in with "social liberalism".
  • gruez 2y ago
    >Left means unions, workers rights, socialism or sydicalism; generally, power to the workers/99%/people rather than the capatilists/monarchists/regime. Everyone claims they're the true voice of the 99%. Trump, despite being a billionaire, claims he's defending Americans workers by imposing tariffs and deporting undocumented immigrants. More broadly the right claims that they're fighting against the "elites" in the media/academia/corporations/"deep state".
    • karparov 2y ago
      Trump and Musk claiming they fight against "the elite" is one of the major jokes the rest of the world is laughing at.
      • thfuran 2y ago
        It was surreal watching Trump, the man who has made his very name into a corporate product, campaign against Hillary Clinton with claims that she's too influenced by corporations. And, somehow, our politics managed to get even stupider since then.
• peatmoss 2y ago
  I agree, but would add that many issues (left and right) here are more extreme. I think two things are a self-reinforcing cycle driving both ends of the political spectrum to extremes. First, hyper-partisanship has emerged where it was formerly held in check by social norms within our political institutions. Second, US politics has become a national pastime, replacing sports and other things in our attention. Everyone is able to be part of the commentator class by virtue of social media (I cite this thread, including my comment, as an example of this). Normie centrist views tend not to garner much attention either in traditional media or in online forums. Instead, we tend to focus much more on the issues that clearly and quickly establish our membership and bonafides in a particular group. The same extreme-voices-get-heard feature gets recapitulated through our political system. Especially the rise of getting primaried from the left or right. Break ranks with your side? Get primaried. The result is that, to get heard over the fray, political candidates need to articulate more extreme views and stick to them. Lots of words have been spilled about how various electoral reforms could get us out of this mess. For me, I believe ranked choice voting and open primaries represent an optimal trade-off between "legal, and plausibly implementable" and "yield biggest improvements to electoral system." A major complaint against ranked choice voting is that it tends to bias for more moderate centrists, which I think would be a not-bad problem to have.
• ahartmetz 2y ago
  Conveniently, these certain social issues do not threaten elite interests like "traditional" leftism would.