“Look at this terrible tragedy” is not the same as “if we do not end our complicity in this active genocide, we risk losing everything”
True, but that first one is directly what the meme is referencing. You actually accused me specifically I think of trying to distract from the terrible tragedy.
Liberals act as if their only option is to vote or not vote,
Well, but I don’t act that way. Am I a liberal? According to lots and lots of people on Lemmy, I am. Here’s a comment I made earlier tonight:
Real world non-electoral politics is going to be necessary to get us out of this mess (especially now), and it also leads to a good and fulfilling life. There’s something magic and human that happens with the people around you when you are fighting for something that’s actually worth fighting for, I’ve seen it.
You’d agree with that, right?
Or no?
This is what I’m talking about. Actually some of what you’re saying in this latest message, I agree with. But it has not a lot to do with the meme. My issue with the meme was this wild strawman, lumping congressional Democrats and people on Lemmy into the same ideological category “liberal” and then making a bunch of sweeping statements I guess about both, by which the whole thing can be motte-and-baileyed back around so that all of a sudden I’m an asshole who believes all these wild things and doesn’t care about genocide.
And here we are again, dealing with their choice to revere and defend the life’s work of a neonazi while we are still waiting for them to acknowledge the genocide they helped commit and which continues a year later.
Let’s try this. Who are some examples of who you are talking about here? Like who are 5 people who fit into this category who are revering Charlie Kirk and also won’t admit Gaza is a genocide? I am sure there are plenty of them (not sarcasm, I really do believe lots of those people exist, even some number of them on the American “left.”) Ideally out of government if you can, like I said I don’t think anyone in the US government is all that left (and if you’re only talking about congressional Democrats or something, then yes the meme makes sense.)
I can pretty much guarantee you that whoever those people are, they’re (a) a small subset of the people who the Lemmy consensus would describe as “a liberal” and (b) people I also despise pretty much as much as you do.
Right? Or do you believe that everyone the Lemmy consensus would describe as “liberal” also reveres Charlie Kirk, and also wants to silence any voices of Palestinian suffering?
True, but that first one is directly what the meme is referencing. You actually accused me specifically I think of trying to distract from the terrible tragedy.
No, and no. The meme is referencing liberals walking out of the Democratic National Convention last year literally plugging their ears to protestors who were kicked out for demanding democrats stop supporting Israel’s genocide against palestinians. Liberals then (and now) were refusing to address protestors demanding action against Israel’s genocidal campaign. They sometimes separately acknowledged it as a tragedy but refused to take action against Israel. “I think this is a tragedy, but unfortunately there’s nothing we can do until after the election”.
I haven’t actually accused you of anything, but it does kind of seem like i’m describing you. It’s not my fault you ascribe that label to yourself and hear that as a personal accusation.
Well, but I don’t act that way. Am I a liberal?
Don’t you? Could have fooled me. I could have sworn you were one of those people who place blame on voters for the 2024 election outcome, instead of recognizing the democrats torpedoing their own coalition by demonstrating complete contempt for their own base.
My issue with the meme was this wild strawman, lumping congressional Democrats and people on Lemmy into the same ideological category “liberal” and then making a bunch of sweeping statements I guess about both
They are talking about liberals, not a narrow group of congressional democrats
I don’t see any mention of lemmy in this meme.
I’d also point out that despite repeatedly agreeing that democrats are contributing to Israel’s genocide, you’ve also repeatedly taken offense at the suggestion that liberals are fascist collaborators.
the whole thing can be motte-and-baileyed back around so that all of a sudden I’m an asshole who believes all these wild things and doesn’t care about genocide
You can claim to care about genocide and also deny that democrats are defending and collaborating with the fascists committing it. The latter certainly casts doubt on the former.
Like who are 5 people who fit into this category who are revering Charlie Kirk and also won’t admit Gaza is a genocide?
There were 60 out of 212 democrats who voted against a resolution honoring Kirk and to my knowledge only 10 democrats have ever referred to it as a genocide. By my math that’s 193 democrats minimum who meet that description.
Or do you believe that everyone the Lemmy consensus would describe as “liberal” also reveres Charlie Kirk, and also wants to silence any voices of Palestinian suffering?
I believe those people would say something like, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”. Liberals are usually more upset that protestors may have killed momentum for their candidate than for their candidate openly collaborating in a genocide and giving protestors a reason to oppose them in the first place.
Yes, I was pointing to that contradiction. In your opinion, are liberal democrats fascist collaborators? I’m guessing that the question probably makes you feel a little uneasy. but that’s just a guess.
Am I a liberal?
Sure seems like the shoe fits, but if you want to make a case for yourself i’m happy to discuss it.
In your opinion, are liberal democrats fascist collaborators? I’m guessing that the question probably makes you feel a little uneasy. but that’s just a guess.
I don’t think most US Democratic politicians are liberals. They’re clearly center-right conservatives. I would definitely describe most US Democrats in congress as fascist collaborators, yes. But then the people on Lemmy who generally get accused of being “liberals,” I don’t think are fascist collaborators. Would you disagree with any of that?
This is part of the problem with reasoning by labels. You get into extended wrangling about which labels apply to which people or not, or how to define the labels, or other things that aren’t really connected to the reality of the situation. And also you can make weird little indirect constructions (“I know you’re a liberal because you believe X” -> “Therefore I know you believe Y, because I know you’re a liberal”) that can further distort the reality.
I don’t see how you could disagree with anything out of the first paragraph there, referencing directly the reality, although you’re welcome to if you want to. But then by introducing the label of “liberal” to the equation you can say something that to you probably sounds pretty sensible which is wildly at odds with it. Right? Or you don’t see it that way?
Am I a liberal?
Sure seems like the shoe fits, but if you want to make a case for yourself i’m happy to discuss it.
Okay, so you think I’m probably a liberal. Noted.
I have no idea how to “make a case” about it, since you’re using this label in a very particular way. So I can’t even really say anything about the application of the label being right or not. By some definitions, I am. By some definitions, I’m not. My argument is that the application of the label by a big contingent on Lemmy doesn’t even really have any factual definition, it’s more just a trigger word with a pretty fluid definition which changes around as needed to attack enemies or accuse them of things. Your reaction to me saying most Democrats in government are center-right conservatives for example is super telling to me, where if we were talking about some other topic I feel like it’s likely that you would instantly agree with that.
I don’t think most US Democratic politicians are liberals.
It might help a little if you were to provide your understanding of ‘liberal’, because to me it seems like it’s confused at-best. My working definition of liberal is this one, and my chief criticism against it is that it provides no framework or acknowledgement of power existing outside of ‘government’ nor way of preventing that power from superseding it. My definition fits congressional democrats just as well as internet forum users who write apologia for why liberation politics are unfeasible (at any given moment) because they lack support from capital or from ‘moderates’. Nothing you’ve said so far makes me think you’re not a liberal as I’ve described it, but I’ll wait for you to try defining it yourself before hitting you over the head with it too many times.
But then the people on Lemmy who generally get accused of being “liberals,” I don’t think are fascist collaborators.
I disagree, but not because they’re frothing at the mouth for genocide. Liberalism is a philosophical framework that functionally separates an individual’s objections to the realities of capitalist and imperial systems from the agency to actually address them. “I support you in the goal you seek, but I cannot support your methods of direct action”. You might actually think that democrats are committing genocide and that they should be removed from office - but it’s your liberalism that prevents you from taking action against them. Hell, even the sitting democratic congresspeople might actually believe they are complicit in genocide, but their belief in liberal systems is what forces them into collaborating instead of resisting. It’s the same logic that prevents workers from joining a union or conducting a worker strike - the system of capital traps them by tying their material well-being to the well-being of the capitalist that exploits them:
“I agree we should have safer working conditions, but acting against the company risks me losing my job so I can’t support a strike”.
“I agree that democrats are fascist collaborators, but acting against them risks letting the fascist take the place of the fascist collaborator, so I can’t support protesting them right now”.
Liberalism is a system that coerces objectors into being passengers to fascism instead of organizing against it. That’s what makes it the ‘moderate wing of fascism’ - not because liberals secretly harbor fascist opinions. Is being a passenger better than being the driver? Maybe…? but it also ensures that we arrive at fascism either way, and that’s what we’re trying to avoid. To me, there’s no need to delineate between liberals and conservatives because my working definition doesn’t make them mutually exclusive. You can be a liberal as a democrat just as easily as you can be a liberal as a conservative. Are there democrats who aren’t liberals? Sure, but I think you have the axis of your scale backwards.
Your reaction to me saying most Democrats in government are center-right conservatives for example is super telling to me, where if we were talking about some other topic I feel like it’s likely that you would instantly agree with that
I mean, sure, I guess an argument could be made to center an arbitrary scale on someone more like Sanders, which puts most democrats right of center. But my point is that using an arbitrary scale isn’t helpful in addressing the core issues of liberal democracy. The most it does is re-frames the field of actors so that some democrats are on the other ‘team’, but that’s only helpful for electoral politics, not liberation politics. You seem really keen on establishing an ‘us vs them’ dividing line but the the problem is more persistent than the individual actors we’re talking about.
Liberalism has a close but sometimes uneasy relationship with democracy. At the center of democratic doctrine is the belief that governments derive their authority from popular election; liberalism, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with the scope of governmental activity. Liberals often have been wary of democracy, then, because of fears that it might generate a tyranny by the majority. One might briskly say, therefore, that democracy looks after majorities and liberalism after unpopular minorities.
To achieve what they took to be a more just distribution of wealth and income, liberals relied on two major strategies. First, they promoted the organization of workers into trade unions in order to improve their power to bargain with employers.
Like other political doctrines, liberalism is highly sensitive to time and circumstance. Each country’s liberalism is different, and it changes in each generation. … In each case, however, the liberals’ inspiration was the same: a hostility to concentrations of power that threaten the freedom of individuals and prevent them from realizing their full potential, along with a willingness to reexamine and reform social institutions in the light of new needs.
It sounds like your entire conception of what “liberal” doesn’t have much at all to do with this article you sent me, and is kind of centered around this one thing:
This willingness is tempered by an aversion to sudden, cataclysmic change, which is what sets off the liberal from the radical.
… and then some predictions about how it will function to enable collapse into fascism. More or less, the MLK definition of “liberal.” Makes sense to me. I can kind of see the narrative you’re constructing about how liberalism functions, and we could talk about that whole thing if you want. I don’t think that is the academic definition of liberalism though. Basically, it sounds like you’re defining liberalism as “allegiance to the government and rejection of methods of change outside of the formal government structure,” and kind of nothing else beyond that. IDK, maybe I’m wrong in that, tell me. If that’s your definition, then I am not one.
In addition:
“I agree we should have safer working conditions, but acting against the company risks me losing my job so I can’t support a strike”.
By this definition Biden is not a liberal, since he supported basically every strike aside from the rail strike that took place under his term. His labor secretary providing additional weight behind union actions was one of the big enablers of forward progress for the working class under his tenure.
I’d actually go further than this, into things like this and supporting the rail strike also even if it fucks up the economy, but if simply supporting strike actions makes you not a liberal, then I think a whole lot of people on Lemmy are exempted from criticism by this meme because they definitely are not liberals.
“I agree that democrats are fascist collaborators, but acting against them risks letting the fascist take the place of the fascist collaborator, so I can’t support protesting them right now”.
I mean that’s a very specific example lol. But sure.
I clarified what I think about this with some things here and here for example:
Where, something like the “uncommitted” movement is at least organized in a fashion where it seems like it could produce an improvement, by putting pressure on the Democrats, so that sounds fine. Just not voting for Democrats and hoping they’ll figure it out and move to the left seems pretty much guaranteed to give us something along the lines of the catastrophe that happened. Which is why I am opposed to it.
“Uncommitted” movement? Fine. Let’s put pressure on the Democrats to be better, in a way that’s organized and has some passable chance of saving some lives. Great stuff.
(I also at some point posted some articles I think about specific strategies to make effective protest against the Democrats that would actually make them change their policies, in addition to the obvious example of “uncommitted.”)
This is why I dislike having the conversation in terms of “liberal.” It’s going to mean that I’m going to have to spend an entire week clarifying what I believe and what I support, because you have such a strong narrative in your head that “PhilipTheBucket is a liberal -> PhilipTheBucket opposes protest movements if they might hurt Democrats’ chances -> because that’s how liberals are and he’s a liberal and I know that.” Even if I somehow managed to convince you of what I actually believe, you just perceive it as me trying to make this argument that I’m “not a liberal” or something. You’ll be deeply suspicious of it, because the bit is already flipped. You have this whole thing so firmly embedded in your worldview that you will tell me I’m lying if I try to tell just what I believe. I mean, it doesn’t help matters that I think something that’s kind of adjacent to that (“if Trump comes to power then things will be much worse, so it’s worth trying to keep him out of power”), but it’s not really rocket science to be able to distinguish between those two sort-of-similar sounding things.
Of course, if your whole point is just to trash me for being “a bad liberal,” then it suddenly does become really difficult to distinguish between them, and you can constantly keep swearing that I said the first one.
It sounds like your entire conception of what “liberal” doesn’t have much at all to do with this article you sent me, and is kind of centered around this one thing:
This willingness is tempered by an aversion to sudden, cataclysmic change, which is what sets off the liberal from the radical.
Kind of - it’s true that liberalism was originally conceived as a way of limiting revolutionary democracy from devolving into radical populist movements, but what’s important about it is the way it constructs its framework to do that. Liberalism chose to focus on ‘individual liberty’, but that comes with problems. Edmund Burk saw individual liberty and egalitarianism as a way of ensuring that the aristocratic class - which was well educated and already governed over productive systems - could guide democratic norms and resist the pull into populist hysteria. The side effect of this framing is that it gives space for other systems of power (e.g. capital and governance over the means of production) to accumulate without a real way of setting a limit.
The next two hundred years of liberalism split into two factions that sought to either rectify that problem or dismiss it as a non-issue, but it had already handicapped itself by setting individual liberty as its guiding principle. It meant that even the American flavor of liberalism - which sought to regulate capital through democratic reform - could only conceive of that question through the lens of individual liberty, and still had no way of establishing a limit to the accumulation of individual power other than by the question: ‘could this amount of power be used to threaten the liberty of individuals?’. This meant that capital could freely accumulate without regulation, so long as it never abused that power to the detriment of individual liberty.
Basically, it sounds like you’re defining liberalism as “allegiance to the government and rejection of methods of change outside of the formal government structure,” and kind of nothing else beyond that.
No - even though that’s what liberalism initially sought to accomplish, it’s more broadly the way it goes about it that concerns me. Having a stable government that resists reactionary populism is a metric of success of any political system, but how they go about doing it is what distinguishes them.
By this definition Biden is not a liberal, since he supported basically every strike aside from the rail strike that took place under his term.
You really need to take a step back from specific policy decisions if you actually want to understand this. Biden isn’t a liberal because he supports worker unions - what makes him a liberal is they way in which he weighs his positions against how it does or does not threaten broader systems of individual liberty. The way he handled the rail strike in 2022 is actually a pretty good example of this - he ended up blocking that strike (and in the process undermining the long-term collective bargaining power of the rail unions), because allowing it to go through threatened the stability of the capitalist economy. Liberalism is happy to concede to worker demands so long as they don’t impact the functioning of their individualist economy. This enshrines the ‘ratcheting effect’ into our system, because it shields capital from the threat of collective organizing. Liberalism is happy(or maybe confortable…?) to watch injustices happen if taking action threatens liberalism’s dominant position, and will couch that decision in heroics for having saved us from the chaos of extended conflict.
something like the “uncommitted” movement is at least organized in a fashion where it seems like it could produce an improvement, by putting pressure on the Democrats, so that sounds fine. Just not voting for Democrats and hoping they’ll figure it out and move to the left seems pretty much guaranteed to give us something along the lines of the catastrophe that happened
Yeaaaa, except that’s not really where your criticism is being directed at. You’re taking issue with people involved with the uncommitted movement engendering a sense of apathy, since their protest of the democratic party necessarily involved persistently pointing out how complicit they actually were. You might project that onto people actually ‘choosing not to vote’, but there are eligible voters in every election that opt out of voting. The only to be upset this time is that those non-voters were being given ample reason to feel apathetic, but that isn’t the fault of protestors bringing the genocide into the national conversation, that’s the fault of democrats for trying to ignore it.
What makes this a liberal idea is how the political calculus is constructed and the underlying assumptions within it:
how much does taking action against Israel threaten individual liberty (within the us) and the influence of liberal governance
how much does protesting the democrats threaten individual liberty (within the us)
The amount of harm being done in Gaza is never a part of that calculation, it’s only ever a question of how much does this or that action threaten individual liberty. Democrats did the math and figured that turning on Israel made losing to the fascists more likely, but if that’s the only question they ever pose to themselves, there is nothing preventing them from sliding further and further toward fascism/oligarchy and it never happens that they stand up against evil despite the risk of personal harm to themselves and liberalism. They become passengers and unwilling (at best) collaborators to fascists, rather than true anti-fascists.
It’s going to mean that I’m going to have to spend an entire week clarifying what I believe and what I support, because you have such a strong narrative in your head that “PhilipTheBucket is a liberal -> PhilipTheBucket opposes protest movements if they might hurt Democrats’ chances -> because that’s how liberals are and he’s a liberal and I know that.”
I can only comment on what I hear from you, and I hadn’t even tried to assign you that label until you repeatedly asked me to. I have a firm understanding of what liberalism is - or at least, the broad framework within that diverse ideological discipline that distinguishes it from other political movements. Whether you fit into that category is immaterial to me. But that doesn’t change my criticism of liberalism as I see it pop up into political discourse on lemmy, or my criticism of you when you participate in it.
Of course, if your whole point is just to trash me for being “a bad liberal,” then it suddenly does become really difficult to distinguish between them, and you can constantly keep swearing that I said the first one.
There is no such thing as a ‘good’ liberal. There are only good times where liberals don’t stand in the way of liberation politics, and bad times when they do. It just happens that we’re in very, very bad times, and so liberals look pretty fuckin’ bad by extension.
it’s true that liberalism was originally conceived as a way of limiting revolutionary democracy from devolving into radical populist movements
Liberalism, when it was originally conceived, was the radical populist movement. There was no alternative to limit.
As the source you sent me pointed out, the definition has changed over time, and since then more radical alternative has emerged, which “liberalism” often opposes. That’s what MLK was saying. But at the time liberalism emerged, there was aristocracy or nothing. Like I said, it seems like your whole concept of it is as a limiting factor on progressive movements (which is certainly an element in the modern day), but that’s not the whole of liberalism and those progressive movements didn’t even exist in the beginning form of it. Liberalism was the progressive movement.
It meant that even the American flavor of liberalism - which sought to regulate capital through democratic reform - could only conceive of that question through the lens of individual liberty, and still had no way of establishing a limit to the accumulation of individual power other than by the question: ‘could this amount of power be used to threaten the liberty of individuals?’. This meant that capital could freely accumulate without regulation, so long as it never abused that power to the detriment of individual liberty.
Which is never.
Biden isn’t a liberal because he supports worker unions - what makes him a liberal is they way in which he weighs his positions against how it does or does not threaten broader systems of individual liberty. The way he handled the rail strike in 2022 is actually a pretty good example of this - he ended up blocking that strike (and in the process undermining the long-term collective bargaining power of the rail unions), because allowing it to go through threatened the stability of the capitalist economy.
All makes perfect sense, and I actually agree with you completely on this whole part. My point was that you didn’t say liberals oppose strikes once they grow to the point that they threaten even a pretty trivial amount of harm to the overall economy but support them otherwise. You said liberals oppose strikes. I think that second thing is completely wrong, and I was demonstrating it by bringing up a person who I would call a liberal (Biden) and his support for strikes as a way of making economic progress for working people.
This is what I was saying about your definition of “liberal” being shifty in a way where it can change to support whatever you’re trying to argue at any given time. I can still be a liberal, even though I support pretty much all strikes including the rail strike. Why? Because I’m saying stuff you don’t like, and you need to call me a liberal as a way of attacking me. Biden can be a liberal and support 95% of strikes that happened under his watch, because he needs to be a liberal because he’s the enemy too. But also, liberals need to oppose strike actions, because you need to be able to criticize some particular “liberal” person by saying they would rather resolve conflicts with the working class within the political system instead of outside it, and so they oppose strikes. See? Shifty.
You’re taking issue with people involved with the uncommitted movement engendering a sense of apathy, since their protest of the democratic party necessarily involved persistently pointing out how complicit they actually were
That is precisely the opposite of what I am doing. I feel like you’re so thoroughly confused by your type of label-driven thinking that I can literally show you examples of me supporting the uncommitted movement, and then you proceed to explain to me why I take issue with the uncommitted movement.
Try just reading the examples again, I think. You’re expecting to see criticism so hard that you’re interpreting approval for as criticism against.
I can only comment on what I hear from you, and I hadn’t even tried to assign you that label until you repeatedly asked me to.
Well, you’re defending a meme which talks about “liberals.” My whole point is that the category you’re using is poorly defined in a particular insidious way. I think that there’s a community on Lemmy which thinks that Lemmy is full of “liberals,” accuses other people on Lemmy of being “liberals,” and accuses them of believing certain awful things because they are “liberals.” I’m trying to bring specifics to the definitions you’re using, because I think they will fall apart when they need to be made concrete in reference to certain particular people, as with the strike example above.
Put another way: I am not asking you a question about myself. I am asking you a question about your definitions, using various specific referents (myself, congressional Democrats, Bernie Sanders, Biden, users on Lemmy who are accused of being liberals). You keep talking in the abstract about “liberals” and explaining how this whole thing operates. And sure, I get what you’re saying. What I am saying is how some of your definitions fall apart or become contradictory once you have to apply them to specific people yes or no, and then defend the application of the label to those specific people. Which is why I think it’s a bad idea to use “liberal” as a key part of your argumentative style. I get why it’s attractive, because you can make compelling arguments with it and lots of people on Lemmy will agree with you, but the whole reason why it works so well for that is because the definition is shifty in a way which makes it divorced from you actually having to prove your case. And, you can try to claim things which are wildly divorced from reality by using it, which to me is a bad thing.
True, but that first one is directly what the meme is referencing. You actually accused me specifically I think of trying to distract from the terrible tragedy.
Well, but I don’t act that way. Am I a liberal? According to lots and lots of people on Lemmy, I am. Here’s a comment I made earlier tonight:
You’d agree with that, right?
Or no?
This is what I’m talking about. Actually some of what you’re saying in this latest message, I agree with. But it has not a lot to do with the meme. My issue with the meme was this wild strawman, lumping congressional Democrats and people on Lemmy into the same ideological category “liberal” and then making a bunch of sweeping statements I guess about both, by which the whole thing can be motte-and-baileyed back around so that all of a sudden I’m an asshole who believes all these wild things and doesn’t care about genocide.
Let’s try this. Who are some examples of who you are talking about here? Like who are 5 people who fit into this category who are revering Charlie Kirk and also won’t admit Gaza is a genocide? I am sure there are plenty of them (not sarcasm, I really do believe lots of those people exist, even some number of them on the American “left.”) Ideally out of government if you can, like I said I don’t think anyone in the US government is all that left (and if you’re only talking about congressional Democrats or something, then yes the meme makes sense.)
I can pretty much guarantee you that whoever those people are, they’re (a) a small subset of the people who the Lemmy consensus would describe as “a liberal” and (b) people I also despise pretty much as much as you do.
Right? Or do you believe that everyone the Lemmy consensus would describe as “liberal” also reveres Charlie Kirk, and also wants to silence any voices of Palestinian suffering?
No, and no. The meme is referencing liberals walking out of the Democratic National Convention last year literally plugging their ears to protestors who were kicked out for demanding democrats stop supporting Israel’s genocide against palestinians. Liberals then (and now) were refusing to address protestors demanding action against Israel’s genocidal campaign. They sometimes separately acknowledged it as a tragedy but refused to take action against Israel. “I think this is a tragedy, but unfortunately there’s nothing we can do until after the election”.
I haven’t actually accused you of anything, but it does kind of seem like i’m describing you. It’s not my fault you ascribe that label to yourself and hear that as a personal accusation.
Don’t you? Could have fooled me. I could have sworn you were one of those people who place blame on voters for the 2024 election outcome, instead of recognizing the democrats torpedoing their own coalition by demonstrating complete contempt for their own base.
They are talking about liberals, not a narrow group of congressional democrats
I don’t see any mention of lemmy in this meme.
I’d also point out that despite repeatedly agreeing that democrats are contributing to Israel’s genocide, you’ve also repeatedly taken offense at the suggestion that liberals are fascist collaborators.
You can claim to care about genocide and also deny that democrats are defending and collaborating with the fascists committing it. The latter certainly casts doubt on the former.
There were 60 out of 212 democrats who voted against a resolution honoring Kirk and to my knowledge only 10 democrats have ever referred to it as a genocide. By my math that’s 193 democrats minimum who meet that description.
I believe those people would say something like, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”. Liberals are usually more upset that protestors may have killed momentum for their candidate than for their candidate openly collaborating in a genocide and giving protestors a reason to oppose them in the first place.
Well, that sure makes sense.
Am I a liberal?
Yes, I was pointing to that contradiction. In your opinion, are liberal democrats fascist collaborators? I’m guessing that the question probably makes you feel a little uneasy. but that’s just a guess.
Sure seems like the shoe fits, but if you want to make a case for yourself i’m happy to discuss it.
I don’t think most US Democratic politicians are liberals. They’re clearly center-right conservatives. I would definitely describe most US Democrats in congress as fascist collaborators, yes. But then the people on Lemmy who generally get accused of being “liberals,” I don’t think are fascist collaborators. Would you disagree with any of that?
This is part of the problem with reasoning by labels. You get into extended wrangling about which labels apply to which people or not, or how to define the labels, or other things that aren’t really connected to the reality of the situation. And also you can make weird little indirect constructions (“I know you’re a liberal because you believe X” -> “Therefore I know you believe Y, because I know you’re a liberal”) that can further distort the reality.
I don’t see how you could disagree with anything out of the first paragraph there, referencing directly the reality, although you’re welcome to if you want to. But then by introducing the label of “liberal” to the equation you can say something that to you probably sounds pretty sensible which is wildly at odds with it. Right? Or you don’t see it that way?
Okay, so you think I’m probably a liberal. Noted.
I have no idea how to “make a case” about it, since you’re using this label in a very particular way. So I can’t even really say anything about the application of the label being right or not. By some definitions, I am. By some definitions, I’m not. My argument is that the application of the label by a big contingent on Lemmy doesn’t even really have any factual definition, it’s more just a trigger word with a pretty fluid definition which changes around as needed to attack enemies or accuse them of things. Your reaction to me saying most Democrats in government are center-right conservatives for example is super telling to me, where if we were talking about some other topic I feel like it’s likely that you would instantly agree with that.
It might help a little if you were to provide your understanding of ‘liberal’, because to me it seems like it’s confused at-best. My working definition of liberal is this one, and my chief criticism against it is that it provides no framework or acknowledgement of power existing outside of ‘government’ nor way of preventing that power from superseding it. My definition fits congressional democrats just as well as internet forum users who write apologia for why liberation politics are unfeasible (at any given moment) because they lack support from capital or from ‘moderates’. Nothing you’ve said so far makes me think you’re not a liberal as I’ve described it, but I’ll wait for you to try defining it yourself before hitting you over the head with it too many times.
I disagree, but not because they’re frothing at the mouth for genocide. Liberalism is a philosophical framework that functionally separates an individual’s objections to the realities of capitalist and imperial systems from the agency to actually address them. “I support you in the goal you seek, but I cannot support your methods of direct action”. You might actually think that democrats are committing genocide and that they should be removed from office - but it’s your liberalism that prevents you from taking action against them. Hell, even the sitting democratic congresspeople might actually believe they are complicit in genocide, but their belief in liberal systems is what forces them into collaborating instead of resisting. It’s the same logic that prevents workers from joining a union or conducting a worker strike - the system of capital traps them by tying their material well-being to the well-being of the capitalist that exploits them:
“I agree we should have safer working conditions, but acting against the company risks me losing my job so I can’t support a strike”.
“I agree that democrats are fascist collaborators, but acting against them risks letting the fascist take the place of the fascist collaborator, so I can’t support protesting them right now”.
Liberalism is a system that coerces objectors into being passengers to fascism instead of organizing against it. That’s what makes it the ‘moderate wing of fascism’ - not because liberals secretly harbor fascist opinions. Is being a passenger better than being the driver? Maybe…? but it also ensures that we arrive at fascism either way, and that’s what we’re trying to avoid. To me, there’s no need to delineate between liberals and conservatives because my working definition doesn’t make them mutually exclusive. You can be a liberal as a democrat just as easily as you can be a liberal as a conservative. Are there democrats who aren’t liberals? Sure, but I think you have the axis of your scale backwards.
I mean, sure, I guess an argument could be made to center an arbitrary scale on someone more like Sanders, which puts most democrats right of center. But my point is that using an arbitrary scale isn’t helpful in addressing the core issues of liberal democracy. The most it does is re-frames the field of actors so that some democrats are on the other ‘team’, but that’s only helpful for electoral politics, not liberation politics. You seem really keen on establishing an ‘us vs them’ dividing line but the the problem is more persistent than the individual actors we’re talking about.
Is it?
It sounds like your entire conception of what “liberal” doesn’t have much at all to do with this article you sent me, and is kind of centered around this one thing:
… and then some predictions about how it will function to enable collapse into fascism. More or less, the MLK definition of “liberal.” Makes sense to me. I can kind of see the narrative you’re constructing about how liberalism functions, and we could talk about that whole thing if you want. I don’t think that is the academic definition of liberalism though. Basically, it sounds like you’re defining liberalism as “allegiance to the government and rejection of methods of change outside of the formal government structure,” and kind of nothing else beyond that. IDK, maybe I’m wrong in that, tell me. If that’s your definition, then I am not one.
In addition:
By this definition Biden is not a liberal, since he supported basically every strike aside from the rail strike that took place under his term. His labor secretary providing additional weight behind union actions was one of the big enablers of forward progress for the working class under his tenure.
I’d actually go further than this, into things like this and supporting the rail strike also even if it fucks up the economy, but if simply supporting strike actions makes you not a liberal, then I think a whole lot of people on Lemmy are exempted from criticism by this meme because they definitely are not liberals.
I mean that’s a very specific example lol. But sure.
I clarified what I think about this with some things here and here for example:
(I also at some point posted some articles I think about specific strategies to make effective protest against the Democrats that would actually make them change their policies, in addition to the obvious example of “uncommitted.”)
This is why I dislike having the conversation in terms of “liberal.” It’s going to mean that I’m going to have to spend an entire week clarifying what I believe and what I support, because you have such a strong narrative in your head that “PhilipTheBucket is a liberal -> PhilipTheBucket opposes protest movements if they might hurt Democrats’ chances -> because that’s how liberals are and he’s a liberal and I know that.” Even if I somehow managed to convince you of what I actually believe, you just perceive it as me trying to make this argument that I’m “not a liberal” or something. You’ll be deeply suspicious of it, because the bit is already flipped. You have this whole thing so firmly embedded in your worldview that you will tell me I’m lying if I try to tell just what I believe. I mean, it doesn’t help matters that I think something that’s kind of adjacent to that (“if Trump comes to power then things will be much worse, so it’s worth trying to keep him out of power”), but it’s not really rocket science to be able to distinguish between those two sort-of-similar sounding things.
Of course, if your whole point is just to trash me for being “a bad liberal,” then it suddenly does become really difficult to distinguish between them, and you can constantly keep swearing that I said the first one.
Kind of - it’s true that liberalism was originally conceived as a way of limiting revolutionary democracy from devolving into radical populist movements, but what’s important about it is the way it constructs its framework to do that. Liberalism chose to focus on ‘individual liberty’, but that comes with problems. Edmund Burk saw individual liberty and egalitarianism as a way of ensuring that the aristocratic class - which was well educated and already governed over productive systems - could guide democratic norms and resist the pull into populist hysteria. The side effect of this framing is that it gives space for other systems of power (e.g. capital and governance over the means of production) to accumulate without a real way of setting a limit.
The next two hundred years of liberalism split into two factions that sought to either rectify that problem or dismiss it as a non-issue, but it had already handicapped itself by setting individual liberty as its guiding principle. It meant that even the American flavor of liberalism - which sought to regulate capital through democratic reform - could only conceive of that question through the lens of individual liberty, and still had no way of establishing a limit to the accumulation of individual power other than by the question: ‘could this amount of power be used to threaten the liberty of individuals?’. This meant that capital could freely accumulate without regulation, so long as it never abused that power to the detriment of individual liberty.
No - even though that’s what liberalism initially sought to accomplish, it’s more broadly the way it goes about it that concerns me. Having a stable government that resists reactionary populism is a metric of success of any political system, but how they go about doing it is what distinguishes them.
You really need to take a step back from specific policy decisions if you actually want to understand this. Biden isn’t a liberal because he supports worker unions - what makes him a liberal is they way in which he weighs his positions against how it does or does not threaten broader systems of individual liberty. The way he handled the rail strike in 2022 is actually a pretty good example of this - he ended up blocking that strike (and in the process undermining the long-term collective bargaining power of the rail unions), because allowing it to go through threatened the stability of the capitalist economy. Liberalism is happy to concede to worker demands so long as they don’t impact the functioning of their individualist economy. This enshrines the ‘ratcheting effect’ into our system, because it shields capital from the threat of collective organizing. Liberalism is happy(or maybe confortable…?) to watch injustices happen if taking action threatens liberalism’s dominant position, and will couch that decision in heroics for having saved us from the chaos of extended conflict.
Yeaaaa, except that’s not really where your criticism is being directed at. You’re taking issue with people involved with the uncommitted movement engendering a sense of apathy, since their protest of the democratic party necessarily involved persistently pointing out how complicit they actually were. You might project that onto people actually ‘choosing not to vote’, but there are eligible voters in every election that opt out of voting. The only to be upset this time is that those non-voters were being given ample reason to feel apathetic, but that isn’t the fault of protestors bringing the genocide into the national conversation, that’s the fault of democrats for trying to ignore it.
What makes this a liberal idea is how the political calculus is constructed and the underlying assumptions within it:
The amount of harm being done in Gaza is never a part of that calculation, it’s only ever a question of how much does this or that action threaten individual liberty. Democrats did the math and figured that turning on Israel made losing to the fascists more likely, but if that’s the only question they ever pose to themselves, there is nothing preventing them from sliding further and further toward fascism/oligarchy and it never happens that they stand up against evil despite the risk of personal harm to themselves and liberalism. They become passengers and unwilling (at best) collaborators to fascists, rather than true anti-fascists.
I can only comment on what I hear from you, and I hadn’t even tried to assign you that label until you repeatedly asked me to. I have a firm understanding of what liberalism is - or at least, the broad framework within that diverse ideological discipline that distinguishes it from other political movements. Whether you fit into that category is immaterial to me. But that doesn’t change my criticism of liberalism as I see it pop up into political discourse on lemmy, or my criticism of you when you participate in it.
There is no such thing as a ‘good’ liberal. There are only good times where liberals don’t stand in the way of liberation politics, and bad times when they do. It just happens that we’re in very, very bad times, and so liberals look pretty fuckin’ bad by extension.
Liberalism, when it was originally conceived, was the radical populist movement. There was no alternative to limit.
As the source you sent me pointed out, the definition has changed over time, and since then more radical alternative has emerged, which “liberalism” often opposes. That’s what MLK was saying. But at the time liberalism emerged, there was aristocracy or nothing. Like I said, it seems like your whole concept of it is as a limiting factor on progressive movements (which is certainly an element in the modern day), but that’s not the whole of liberalism and those progressive movements didn’t even exist in the beginning form of it. Liberalism was the progressive movement.
Which is never.
All makes perfect sense, and I actually agree with you completely on this whole part. My point was that you didn’t say liberals oppose strikes once they grow to the point that they threaten even a pretty trivial amount of harm to the overall economy but support them otherwise. You said liberals oppose strikes. I think that second thing is completely wrong, and I was demonstrating it by bringing up a person who I would call a liberal (Biden) and his support for strikes as a way of making economic progress for working people.
This is what I was saying about your definition of “liberal” being shifty in a way where it can change to support whatever you’re trying to argue at any given time. I can still be a liberal, even though I support pretty much all strikes including the rail strike. Why? Because I’m saying stuff you don’t like, and you need to call me a liberal as a way of attacking me. Biden can be a liberal and support 95% of strikes that happened under his watch, because he needs to be a liberal because he’s the enemy too. But also, liberals need to oppose strike actions, because you need to be able to criticize some particular “liberal” person by saying they would rather resolve conflicts with the working class within the political system instead of outside it, and so they oppose strikes. See? Shifty.
That is precisely the opposite of what I am doing. I feel like you’re so thoroughly confused by your type of label-driven thinking that I can literally show you examples of me supporting the uncommitted movement, and then you proceed to explain to me why I take issue with the uncommitted movement.
Try just reading the examples again, I think. You’re expecting to see criticism so hard that you’re interpreting approval for as criticism against.
Well, you’re defending a meme which talks about “liberals.” My whole point is that the category you’re using is poorly defined in a particular insidious way. I think that there’s a community on Lemmy which thinks that Lemmy is full of “liberals,” accuses other people on Lemmy of being “liberals,” and accuses them of believing certain awful things because they are “liberals.” I’m trying to bring specifics to the definitions you’re using, because I think they will fall apart when they need to be made concrete in reference to certain particular people, as with the strike example above.
Put another way: I am not asking you a question about myself. I am asking you a question about your definitions, using various specific referents (myself, congressional Democrats, Bernie Sanders, Biden, users on Lemmy who are accused of being liberals). You keep talking in the abstract about “liberals” and explaining how this whole thing operates. And sure, I get what you’re saying. What I am saying is how some of your definitions fall apart or become contradictory once you have to apply them to specific people yes or no, and then defend the application of the label to those specific people. Which is why I think it’s a bad idea to use “liberal” as a key part of your argumentative style. I get why it’s attractive, because you can make compelling arguments with it and lots of people on Lemmy will agree with you, but the whole reason why it works so well for that is because the definition is shifty in a way which makes it divorced from you actually having to prove your case. And, you can try to claim things which are wildly divorced from reality by using it, which to me is a bad thing.
Does that make sense?