Too obvious to be funny, but i still wanted to draw a shitpost.
this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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chapotraphouse
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Lins?
I think he misspelled lib.
Btw what we mean by liberals is the original political term for those who support capitalism, not the colloquial American synonym for Democrat that alt-right types use. Conservative and libertarians are also liberals strictly speaking because they also subscribe to the same basic underlying ideology.
Edit: quoting the relevant part
Old joke, the Soviet Union could’ve avoided collapse if instead of having one official state party, they had two, and they agreed on absolutely everything except abortion.
There's actually a lot to be said about the concept of "competitive" (not necessarily democratic) elections and how they increase the stability of a political system by shifting people's perceptions of what is wrong, that's part of what Fritz Bartel talks about in "The Triumph of Broken Promises", the neoliberal period imposed extremely harsh conditions on people but everybody went along in the end because they felt that they had a choice in the matter (lol) meanwhile the eastern block states wanted to try doing austerity but they knew the people would never stand for it.
Also ties into Chomsky’s observation that compliance with a political economy regime is done by having a narrow band of acceptable opinions but fierce debate within the band.
Didn't know he made that point, very astute
We really gotta get more unique words for things.
Hey I just wanted to stop in and say thanks for being patient, the whole terminology thing around ideologies is one of the more confusing barriers to entry into leftist thought but you're working thru it like a champ
You've already been linked the Wikipedia definition which is super helpful but I'm gonna paste the first bit again because it's worth reading more times, for fluent lefties as well:
Based on this, all democrats and pretty much all republicans and libertarians are liberals, and that's on purpose. This is what we mean when we throw punches at "libs" - we all believe that some of these qualities are good, but libs believe that all of these things are good - we don't terribly like things like "equality before the law" (it's just as bad for Jeff Bezos to steal a loaf of bread from a supermarket as it is for a houseless person), "freedom of the press/speech" (your freedom of the press is legally endowed on you just as it is to Elon Musk or Rupert Murdoch even though their actual freedom of the press is millions of times what yours is because they own billion dollar news and speech platforms), "right to private property" (you have the right to own dozens of resort properties just like Donald Trump does), etc. Liberalism - democrat, Republican, and libertarian - is built on the idea that everyone can use dollars and power and status to exercise their rights to whatever degree they want to, and one of our biggest reasons for calling them out under their shared umbrella of liberalism is that they all share the same fallacious worldview that allows people with more dollars to have more fundamental enshrined rights, and even though people with very few dollars can't actually exercise any of their fundamental enshrined rights, liberals pretend they have the same rights just because they could exercise them if they had more money.
Gotcha. Thanks for the additional information. Politics can get muddy real fast, and terms can be abused or misused to create confusion.
that's why we stick to the definitions used globally and historically and avoid the colloquial usage. culture changes but history is already written.
🥰
To be fair, this is more an American english thing. Re-quoting the relevant part of the Wikipedia article
even that's not entirely accurate. in hungary for example, "libsi", "liberális" means what it does in mainstream american politics (rabid capitalists that are not necessarily against gay people existing). this isnt that surprising, since orban hired former republican campaign managers to build up his image/rhetoric
I didn't really want to get into Overton Window stuff in a brief post but yes, good point.
Not really, terms should be historically constituted and there is a serious amount of self-codification among liberal theorists that makes the term extremely useful
There are only eight subspecies of liberalism that actually matter to real world politics, and they cover everything between anarcho-capitalists to DNC blue no matter who libs
Classical liberalism, utopian liberalism, social liberalism, neoliberalism, ordoliberalism, dirigisme, siege liberalism, and the mutated step-child fascism, these are the actual differentiations among the defenders of capitalism
There is only confusion on this matter because utopian, social and neo liberals successfully appropriated a mountain of socialist and anarchist lingo and incoherently applied it to themselves. I don't blame them, liberalism is deprived of any genuine vision of human progress or solidarity, it wears the liberatory spirit of anti-capitalist ideologies like a carnival mask and as a result millions of potential radicals end up confused as to where they stand in the struggle over capitalism
It's a problem. Libertarians stole "libertarian" for the Anarchists. "Liberal" now means you want to paint a rainbow on the bomb. People think "Conservatism" is a real thing but Nazis aren't. Most people have no idea what Anarchism, Communism, or Socialism actually entail, let alone the enormous breadth of thouaght across the length.
We just need a point system.
Ohhh you’re a 230? Fuck you 200 class people! Haha 😛
The popular American usage can just die as it isn't specifically useful anyway
I don't know about what they were saying exactly but we did have someone come in earlier and start by calling us intolerant tankies and then have a meltdown over some of our non binary users using neopronouns, I can find the link if you want it
lmao
I meant to say libs.
Yeah, I thought so… but then it makes no sense
I think it's a typo for "libs," since n and b are next to each other on an English keyboard.
Well, that makes no sense then.
Like CriticalOtaku said in this thread, here on Hexbear, if someone says "libs," we mean liberal in the older sense of the word.
I see. Well, I guess that’s the problem with a federated social media system. Rules for the entire system, with identical subs, and never really knowing where you are.
What’s this hexbear instance about?
we are a left unity instance. we are composed mostly of MLs and anarchists, so we are opposed to imperialism
So would it be a good place for a democratic socialist?
Yes for sure. If you mean actual democratic socialist ideology, like Evo Morales, Allende or Nelson Mandela, then yes. Hexbear is a left wing unity website.
If you mean social democracy, such as the Nordic/Scandinavian countries, then probably not. Though you're always welcome to stick around and engage in good faith.
No no, not social democracy. 😅
These damn similar names!
Yeah all the terms are hard to get a grasp of
If you agree that the west is currently the greatest threat to global socialism then this the place for you.
Well, west? I mean, I think the corrupt rich from everywhere on the globe are the problem, and while they may give lip service to the east/west, they’re all-in together.
Eeh...close enough?
The bourgeoisie aren't anyone's friends but their own, but there are places where they are more and less in charge, and there are larger and smaller coalitions, with the larger naturally being more malicious, though they tend to export that malice further from where they rest their heads for reasons of security.
QED western imperialism
we're mostly on the revolutionary socialist side of the spectrum but yeah, you'll be fine here. the inside jokes and cultural oddities will make more sense with time. welcome!
libs is shorthand for liberals
Well, someone else said it means libertarian…. People shouldn’t use shorthand when so many other words in the same topic use the same.
It means people who subscribe to the failing economic theory of liberalism not just Democrats but Republicans and Libertarians too.
its a shared colloquial understanding on the english-speaking western internet that "lib/libs" is shorthand for "liberal/liberals" in the vast majority of cases, the person who told you it meant "libertarian" was probably looking for the word "lolbert"
My bad, I should have clarified that to the rest of the world outside of the US, "liberal" means "Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian".
Oh goodness, lolbert? Is there a lolearnie?
The political tendency in America that describe themselves as "Libertarians" are extremely individualist, pro-capitalists who are absolutists about private property and essentially believe that instead of a government all social entities should be private corporations that contract with each other and individuals to form society. Ie instead of a city having a civic government there would be a corporation that privately owns all the property and leases it, a corporation that owns the streets, a corporation that provides police and military services, but only to people who contracts. Many of them don't go that far, but strongly believe that there should be little or no government regulation or interference in the economy.
It's a very unrealistic system and non-libertarians, ie almost all Leftists and almost all Democrats, along with a good proportion of Fascists (GOP and their allies) don't take Libertarians seriously.
also they can't shut the fuck up about age of consent laws so around here "pedos" is pretty much always implied when talking about