#leftist discourse

[bisexualseraphim]

Really not sure why I’ve got so many 19 year olds in my notes going “LMAO KAMALA HARRIS IS NOT A LEFTIST WHAT PLANET DO YOU LIVE ON”

“Leftist” just means “someone with left-wing politics.” Which Kamala Harris overall has. It does not mean “person who prays nightly to a portrait of Stalin and has a prep bunker for overthrowing the government.”

Like I’m sorry to break it to you all but most people in the real world are not as far on the left as basically everyone on this website. I don’t know if being on here has skewed your views of the political spectrum or what but someone can very much be a leftist without openly advocating for all cops to be hung drawn and quartered in the streets.

So no, Kamala Harris is not a centrist just because she has some opinions which you or I may personally find pretty sour. And also saying “she’s not a leftist she’s a liberal” is redundant because in the modern United States liberalism is generally accepted as a left-wing ideology. There’s a reason people on the right love using “liberal” as an insult.*

(And because so many of you apparently love to put words in my mouth and invent things to get mad at, no, I’m not fucking saying I disagree with far left politics and agree with everything Kamala Harris believes. Have a good night)

*Okay, the people who can’t read have found another way to “um actually” me and seem to think I believe liberals are on the left just because those on the right use it as an insult. Um. No.

Essentially, the world “liberal” in the United States often means something different depending on who is using it. Conservatives think liberals are left-wing. Liberals themselves tend to think they’re left-wing. And those further on the left think liberals aren’t left-wing enough and believe they’re centre-right. It also depends on which type of liberalism is being referred to: there is classical liberalism, traditional liberalism, modern liberalism, social liberalism, neoliberalism, economic liberalism, conservative liberalism, etc. Modern and social liberals are, by definition, left-wing, whereas the others tend to fall closer to the centre or somewhere on the right. The one thing uniting all forms of liberalism is the belief in equality.

However, when discussing liberalism as a whole from a definitive standpoint, the form that is widely accepted to be the one that most are referring to when they talk about liberals in the United States today is modern liberalism, which focuses on equality, personal autonomy and social justice. Modern liberals advocate for access to education, welfare and healthcare, as well as voting rights, reproductive rights and rights for LGBTQ people. In terms of economics, beliefs can differ but since the Obama administration, modern liberals generally believe in higher taxes for the wealthy. Additionally, contrary to the beliefs of those further on the left, modern liberals see state and government as essentials to maintain both equality and order, and see it as the state’s obligation to make sure everyone in society has equal opportunities. Classical liberals, however, believe that although the state is necessary and should exist, it should still have minimal involvement and intervention in the individual’s private actions and beliefs of no harm is being done. This belief that some form of state should exist what makes a lot of leftists detest liberals, since those further on the left commonly reject state and government entirely as opposed to the idea of a state with regulation.

If you apply what I have just listed to Kamala Harris, then yes, she is indeed a liberal, and she is also left-wing. She may not be as far left as many would prefer, and may even hold some beliefs many here might associate more with the centre or the right, but overall she is still both liberal and left-wing regardless. Incidentally, she is recently being described in the media as “the most liberal US senator” (whether that’s true is a separate conversation), and this is in the context of her being the most left-wing.

You can argue whether she’s left-wing “enough”, but the reality is she is more left-wing than the vast majority of major US politicians in history, especially when taking into consideration that the Overton window has shifted to mean that basically anything that doesn’t abide by the GOP is seen as liberal/left by many. Some Republicans are now advocating for Kamala Harris, and that doesn’t suddenly mean it’s because she’s become a fascist; they have simply decided that Donald Trump is just way too far right for them, and they are willing to put differences aside and advocate for someone who promises to try to undo at least some of the damage he has done. (Some people on here could learn from that, ironically.)

Anyway TLDR Kamala Harris is a liberal and that isn’t a bad thing when you consider the fact she follows the most left-wing form of liberalism and the normalisation of fascist ideals in the US means that a liberal government remains ideal for social progression. Also yes some things she said at the DNC and in the CNN interview gave me the ick but she’s still worlds above Donald Trump and you still need to vote for her to keep that genocidal maniac white supremacist far away from the White House. I’m going back to bed now

[troythecatfish]

[whereserpentswalk]

Someone's going to post something like "paying taxes is mutual aid" and it'll cause discourse you can't even dream of.

[bynux]

Hey 'Muricans, did y'all see what happened in the UK and France? How, like, the public got together and voted and made it so their respective right-wing nutjob parties couldn't do jack shit?

We can do that too, at least to an extent. Like, our options suck absolute ass right now, don't get me wrong. But we can *also* maybe do some damage control while we work on a better solution.

[jan-silan]

trying to read online leftist discourse as a source of information is like getting the water for the fountain of knowledge directly from the thames

[thoughtfulqueerwizard]

so the republicans have been work-shopping a version of Project 2025 since the like 1970's with their 'best' people working on how to bring America in line with their view.

So, where's my leftist version of this? You're telling me I'm on the side without a cohesive gameplan? The closest thing I can think of are individual liberal and left leaning politicians stances or priorities that they list on their campaign pages, but that's not even close to the level of detail and planning in P2025. There needs to be a comprehensive plan on the left to make America better for the people and not just the wealthy.

[dyslexic-asexual]

The only people Ive actually heard talk about Firebombing a Walmart™ are edgelord middle school boys, so yeah of course theyre not gonna do it. They just say it to get attention, which begs the question why are so many people still treating it like a serious opinion a substantial demographic believes- ohhhh wait thats literally the definition of the strawman fallacy. Yeah that makes way more sense now.

[sir-dyke-genderpunk]

Listen I hate "proshippers" they make me extremely uncomfortable but don't bring that shit into legitimate leftist politics and debate, it makes you look like a chronically online clown

[butwhyyhwtub]

Please tell the TikTok 'leftists' that not every person, group or government that is anti-West is their ally.

[bisexualseraphim]

I just saw someone in a LEFTIST SUBREDDIT claim that believing that most countries in the world besides Israel are not safe for Jews is “Israeli propaganda.” Right after a planned pogrom was just committed against Jews in the Netherlands. This comment had 62 upvotes and several replies agreeing.

The last year has really opened my apparently oblivious eyes to just how much the whole world either doesn’t care about Jewish people or straight up hates them because Jesus fucking Christ. Just blatant antisemitism but it’s apparently okay if the people saying it are on the left. I just don’t understand how so many people can be okay with this shit, especially in situations where it’s impossible to use the “it’s for Palestine” excuse. How is straight-up denying how severe and common antisemitism rhetoric and violence is helping the people of Palestine, exactly? I mean fucking hell, even if in some twisted universe it did help, that’d still be no excuse for it. Helping one oppressed group should never come at the cost of another.

I’ll probably get shit for it but whatever. I need to start speaking out about this more. It is literally so easy to show support for Palestine without being remotely antisemitic but even so somehow most of y’all can’t fucking manage for 2 seconds. If people end up having an issue with me calling out then they were pretty damn shitty activists in the first place

[ecrivainsolitaire]

Finally, someone put it into words.

[troythecatfish]

[whereserpentswalk]

Hate to tell you this but if you think everyone slightly more marginalized than you is weird and making you look bad and that all the things bigots say about them is true, and think of everyone slightly less marginalized than you as fundamentally privileged people who are the same as your oppressors and don't need advocacy for them, than you will very quickly find yourself without a movement.

[bynux]

A Message for Marxist-Leninists

Hey do me a favor. If you're an ML/tankie, just go ahead and block me. Rampant militarism, authoritarianism, and imperialism are all still bad things if you paint them red. Silencing the speech of political opponents through threats of violence is still bad if the government is "communist"

Yes, the US sucks. Yes, you're just as bad if you think it's okay for your government to do the exact same shit because "well my cause is justified." No. Go jump into a woodchipper. I'm done with you.

[deluviandaydreams]

I've been seeing discourse lately, that at least seems to me, to imply that a leftist revolution should exclude military veterans and active duty soldiers as an inherently imperialist grouping.

I can't help but see this line of thought as both purely ideological, and also a massive failure in strategic thinking.

Furthermore, it's just incredibly stupid, to the point of being obtuse, to ignore the long history of anti-imperialist radicalization that's been demonstrated time and time again from military veterans. Some of the most influential leftists in my life are combat vets who acknowledge their participation in the imperialist project and have dedicated their lives to working against it.

Below I'll leave part of a speech Maj. General Smedley Butler gave, he's the most decorated Marine in the history of the US. I think they're words everyone should know.

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives."

[quark-nova]

Still baffled that some people will try to justify ethnic cleansing or deportation in some circumstances. Like, no, even if their government is shitty or they share an ethnicity/language with a war enemy, that never justifies deporting hundreds of thousands of families away from their homes.

This isn't aimed at one specific group, there are quite a few that should hear this. And concerningly this also holds true in some leftist circles.

"Stalin did nothing wrong" tankies who actively try to justify the deportations of the Mekshetian Turks, of the Crimean Tatars, of the Koryo-saram, of the Volga Germans. Because "sharing an ethnicity with people colonized by an enemy" justifies labelling thousands of people as potential spies and deporting them to Kazakhstan according to them.

Fringe "Palestinian liberation" folks who pollute a perfectly legitimate (and needed) movement by forgetting the whole point of self-determination and instead calling for Israeli Jews to be deported back to Europe. (Yes I'm always ashamed to see the fraction of Palestinian liberation discourse that gets polluted by antisemitic shit)

On the other side, fringe "landback" folks who cheer on Palestinians being deported and expelled from Area C (even though that was never close to what landback was ever supposed to mean).

Yes, I've seen all of these in (different) leftist (or at least self-proclaimed leftist) circles and I'm ashamed. At some point you just have to realize that you're talking about other human beings, and that these are just ways of perpetuating state oppression and dividing people even more, which is the opposite of what leftist thought should stand for. We can do better, much better.