this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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A big problem of this entire argument, particularly when Americans are making it, is that nobody seems to agree on who the "centrists" and "leftists" are supposed to be.
Turns out social democrats are pretty sure they're leftists, but everybody else self-identifying as a leftist is convinced they are indistinguishable from free market liberals, while free market liberals think they're center left while social democrats are pretty sure they are indistinguishable from neocons.
Unless you're in the US, where apparently social democrats are both far left and communists, the word socialism has about as much meaning as a Rorschard test card and hard left people seem to be a figment of an AI's imagination in that they appear to exist exclusively online.
So yeah, I really don't know what the OP is talking about, honestly.
This shit right here is why I hate to argue about labels or whether someone is/isn't liberal/leftist/centrist/conservative/whatever. At best, they're an extremely vague, ill-defined, hyper-individualized label that means different things to different people. One person says "I'm a leftist," and they mean it as "I'm a progressive Democrat who supports heavily regulated capitalism, labor unions, LGBT rights, and am pro-choice." Another person says "I'm a leftist," and they mean it as "I'm an anarcho-communist who believes billionaires should forcibly redistribute their wealth, and I don't give a rat's ass about LGBT or minority rights because they're a bourgeoisie distraction from class consciousness."
I don't care about your label, I care about your policies. Those actually tell me something about you.
An anarcho-communist who thinks gender identity is a bourgeoisie distraction, is actually a Soviet flavored fascist.
Not an anarcho-communist.
1000%. To me it feels like 99 times out of 100 it's a complete waste of time to not only figure out what collectivist labels one is using, but then getting them to define that label, because not everyone uses the same term the same way, etc. etc.
That time and energy could be spent discussing the actual topic at hand. I've 'debated' abortion with a friend who is very against it, but labels herself as progressive/leftist. Is it really worth the effort trying to unravel the apparent contradiction? What purpose would that actually serve, in the end? The topic at the time was abortion, so really, the only relevant fact about one politically at that time is what one's stance on that particular topic is, and why it is what it is.
This excessive and ever-more-granulated labeling is a waste of time at best, and an artifically-created wedge that drives people apart who are actually in agreement, at worst.