this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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because that, without context, might make someone feel sympathy for one of these ghouls.
But surely there are enough pictures out there of those ghouls together that you don't need to create fake ones. There's enough misinformation on the internet as it is.
even if there wasn't any misinformations on the internet, you still wouldn't need to create new ones.
libs don't give a shit about truth. they literally can't understand the idea. telling a liberal the truth is like reading poetry to your dog. it's a sweet romantic idea, and maybe it makes you a good person, but only the tone actually matters.
lemmy has convinced me that neither conservatives nor communists know what a liberal is.
"Liberal" means different things in Europe vs America, and that confusion has been specifically exploited by propagandists as well, just making things worse.
I myself am a stupid american. I cannot say that I've read any great works of philosophy that discuss the espoused ideals of political movements.
What I have read are dictionary definitions. I have observed how people behave, what people think these words mean, and how almost everyone who gives themselves a label is either a liar or just wrong. Obviously, this is about the american versions of the words.
Liberals: "everything sucks, but it could suck less if we put in a tiny amount of effort to fix things. You may be mildly inconvenienced by these efforts."
Conservatives: "everything sucks and it's the libs' fault! They changed things and now everything sucks! Fuck {insert racial slur here}!"
Communists: "everything sucks and it's the libs' fault! They're just as fascist as the conservatives because capitalism!"
Republicans: "We're conservatives!" (they're actually fascists)
Democrats: "We're liberals!" (some of them are, but most of them are conservatives. Also spineless failures, but that part isn't important to this conversation.)
Am I on to something here, or am I just stupid?
yeah, that seems to me how people use these words
nevertheless, "liberalism" used to have an actual definition. it meant somebody would would say "things are allowed unless they are forbidden", which is contrary to the anti-liberal (sometimes identified as conservative) view that "things are forbidden unless they are allowed", which means, liberals don't bother with things that don't matter.
now, if you're a trans girl shitting in a public toilet, that doesn't matter because it doesn't really change anything. that is why liberalism says "ok, it shouldn't be forbidden, so by default it's allowed" while anti-liberalists claim "i don't see why these people are doing this, therefore they are faking it (being trans) and also it should be a crime until proven innocent".
American use of the term "liberal" centers around purely social aspects - all people have the same rights under the law, so as long as you're not harming anyone else you should be allowed to do whatever you want. Gay, trans, sexually attracted to trains, don't care, you do you.
European use of the term tends to imply economic liberalism, a la Laissez-faire capitalism.
Thus, American liberals are moderately left-wing, and European liberals are moderately right-wing.
It's a weird quirk of society that permissive economics and restrictive social norms tend to get bundled together, and restrictive economics together with permissive social norms.
yeah it's weird, thank you for recognizing that as well :D
fuck yeah, invisible, like the ring of power. that's... that's what this is, right?
I'm not sure what you mean, but also my instance's recent update may have may have caused some fuckery (several ancient comments have been sent to the top of my unread list recently, idk what else might have happened).
no im in a group that's not on that list.
I'm not going to pretend that it's a comprehensive list, There's tons of views held by relatively small groups that are valid and worth considering, but don't really influence political discussions much, at least not around here anyway.
what's your group?
people who leave your mom's house sulkily after she declines our advances and staying would be awkward.
Yeah in europe liberals are liberals, while in america liberals are liberals but it must not interfere with capitalist interests
Eurocentrism lol
life has convinced me that liberals certainly don't. I guess if we're both right, only we anarchists can see the truth. as if my ego needed that.
Here's a work going through every major liberal philosopher and what liberalism meant to them, and how they dealt with the contradictions. It's the same definition used in every serious work for the last 200 years or so.
This confuses a lot of Americans whose political understanding is largely dictated by cable news, because since 1980 or so, conservatives started using liberal to mean "far left" as a pejorative due to Reagan calling Carter's policy too liberal. Later on, the American "left", social democrats, started using it to mean the same thing, but in a positive context.
I'll read that, but not today. For the sake of responding within the current month, I had chatgpt summarize it for me. The gist I get is that "liberalism" is a lie, and it's secretly fascism (I'm paraphrasing the summary pretty hard), benefiting the in-groups and oppressing everyone else. Would you say this is an accurate, if oversimplified, description of what you want me to understand?
Not really, it's more that liberalism contains contradictions between various freedoms it supports, and even contradictions between how the same "freedom" is practiced by different groups, and when those contradictions become unsustainable, the right to property by the dominant group always takes precedence.
It's important to understand any political philosophy as not an idea floating in a vacuum but as a social tool used by a group in society; liberalism is the philosophy the bourgeoisie use to justify their power.
I mean kinda since fascism is a tool used to buttress capitalism when it's own contradictions become unsustainable, but that's not really in the book.
chatgpt's summary didn't compare liberalism to fascism, I made that comparison myself based on what I read.
I wouldn't say that's entirely wrong, fascism being a failure mode of liberalism. The phrase "scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds" or Trotsky's "Not every exasperated petite bourgeois could have become Hitler, but a particle of Hitler is lodged in every exasperated petite bourgeois" come to mind.
I may have to stop calling myself a liberal. This does not align with my opinions.
If you don't support capitalism, you aren't a liberal.
I am of the opinion that any economic model / government will decay into fascism if not appropriately maintained and protected from bad actors. Capitalism is not inherently good nor inherently bad, it's what we've got. The disaster that is the current state (and foreseeable future) of the US is a failure to maintain and protect its government and economy from bad actors. I would be willing to try another economic model if the opportunity arose.
What does this make me?
Practical.
jk though, most people are in that position; in Cuba, Vietnam, China, Russia, etc before the revolution, the masses didn't read a bunch of books, decide communism sounded like the best way to run things, then overthrow their oppressors.
Though it's important to understand the effects capitalism has had on society though are inherent to capitalism, not bad individuals doing capitalism wrong. That is the framing fascists use, since they've been privileged by the system, they need to invent reasons for its failing that don't change it structurally. So you get wild conspiracies, foreigners, or whatever else is easy to believe.
We're not "confused", we have a different variant of English and a different definition for "liberal".
i guess you're wrong about that. what you're referring to is the fallacy that all liberals are extremely short-sighted and can't make reasonable decisions, which is why they're constantly manipulated and that causes them to be liberal in the first place.
there are liberals who can see reason.
if they could see reason in 2025, they wouldn't be liberals anymore, I don't think. the only thing liberalism ever had going for it was a big tent that could at least get its distasteful monkey paw version of good things done, and now they don't even want to do that.
ok i get your point. you were referring to "liberals" as a political party, i.e. the democrats. i was referring to liberal individuals, i.e. people who engage in the rights of liberty.
more an ideology that closely aligns with the political party; there's a certain kind of brain rot.