this post was submitted on 12 May 2025
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Yes. The US people are strongly ideologically incoherent. We like policy's from the far left and far right We want to shoot guns at the government for being oppressive and to also opress people. When ever it is offered people respond hugely positively to socialist policy. It simply isn't offered enough for that preference to be meaningfully measured. Look at the 70s. Or the recent blm. Trump using some left wing talking points is infact campaigning to the left of the DNC. He didn't government that way but if you are a low engagement type of voter you can get that vibe. The DNC is far enough to the right that most fascist parties are too the left of them.
The recent conservative turn in this country is in many ways due to the reaction to blm. The entire history of the 70s is right wing reaction to civil rights and the great sixties social movements, and as the decade progresses the neoliberal consensus more and more takes shape until finally coming to ascendancy under Reagan who is given more of a popular mandate than trump has ever had. More than half the time the “oppression” we want to shoot the government for is “I’m being taxed as a small business owner” or “I the vaunted small business owner am being asked to comply with regulations put in place to benefit the working class.” Hardly a revolutionary outlook. For every great example of revolutionary politics in this country, you can find like 100x as many examples of Americans expressing the violent colonial settler ideology upon which the country was founded. I’m not arguing that Americans are irredeemable, but many of the popular movements in this country were in reality not as popular as we want to believe. There was always popular support for the opposition to these movements, and it’s that opposition from which trump emerges.
Trump threw out crumbs to the left in 2016, but he didn’t campaign as a left wing candidate. He also campaigned to the right of the dnc and his most vocal support always came from the far right. Lifting a couple Bernie sanders-esque talking points doesn’t make one a left wing candidate when you’re also making statements far to the right of any other candidate in the field. Why focus in on the couple vaguely left wing statements when you have more right wing talking points and your political platform is right-wing?