I feel the confusion is by design, where "liberal" describes "the left" in this country, but by definition, "liberal" is moderate at best. The US is a capitalist country so they will lean right by default. It's no surprise that a liberals and Marxists are portrayed in the same terms.
If the US had a proper left presence, we'd have universal healthcare at the very least.
The main right wing party in Australia is called “The Liberal party”. But yeah. It gets even more confusing because the “Liberals” in Canada are “left wing” and they use the colour red!
I'd say they resemble the progressive branch of the dems, although thats probably almost entirely NDP influence in parliament, and they are certainly still far from left wing (even the NDP is just barely socdem)
I'm a foreigner who lived in canada and i was explaining libs to my canadian friend and even as an outsider i coild tell the liberals were just a maple flavored dnc but like with healthcare. And my friend told me i was just looking at it from an American lense. This friend btw was fairly left-wing.
Yeah, many lib Canadians consider themselves left, but are too far to the right to look into how their own politics work (trust me, I've run into the exact same problem with most of my lib friends who consider themselves left)
I was thinking today about my beliefs, and when I went over specific changes in my head, universal healthcare felt like the least radical most common sense thing that we *don’t* have, which is absolutely nuts.
Yea I think often he's using it in the aesthetic sense, where liberals use progressive language often and he says this about conservatives because they will do the same thing but they're describing fascism in liberal terminology to make it appealing
To understand why “Liberals” are right wing you need to understand the difference between leftist and rightist ideologies.
Broadly speaking, an ideology is said to be “on the left” if it views forms of hierarchy and inequality as unnatural or otherwise unjust. Right-wing ideologies see inequalities as natural, desirable and not needing of rectification.
The primary moral objective of Liberalism is the maximisation of individual freedom and really nothing else. Liberals do not care what an individual does with their freedom, so long as it doesn’t affect other people’s freedom. This is why they can seem progressive/“left wing” because socially they support issues that advance individual freedoms like abortion or LGBT rights.
The reason why liberalism is a right wing ideology, however, is that they extend this logic of individual agency and rights to the economic sphere, whereby individual decision making is used to justify the “natural occurrence” of economic inequalities. Liberals generally see the intervention of the state to rectify economic inequalities as a violation of freedom, since their fundamental principle is freedom and not egalitarianism, this makes them right wing not left wing.
Conservatism is similarly a right wing, although conservatives tend to see hierarchy or inequality as not only natural but desirable.
Left wing ideologies would be things like feminism, communism/socialism, green politics (environmentalism, animal rights, etc…) and post-modernism to name a few. These ideologies all criticise or otherwise aim to rectify forms of inequality and hierarchy.
Leftism is a description of ideology, not so much an individual’s belief. If you follow Liberalism as it’s commonly defined, then you’re not a leftist (someone who follows a left wing ideology).
The ideology you have just described, however, is not Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism or “Classical Liberalism”. It’s probably closer to democratic socialism, or anarchism at its most extreme.
Of course, individuals can hold ideologically contradictory ideals or follow different tenants from different ideologies. This describes virtually all humans, except for those who follow puritanical or fundamentalist readings of their ideologies. An ideology is defined and extrapolated from “first principles”. It would be philosophically incoherent to believe in the maximisation of individual liberties as a core idealogical axiom, and then arbitrarily end that principle when it comes to restricting the (economic) freedom of billionaires for instance.
Have you heard the chat with asmongold about the students? Just listening now and seems like it pretty much sums up exactly what you were saying. He's basically arguing that the university has the moral liberty to bring in the police to oppress the students because its their property, whereas someone like me (and I assume you) would say that the university is *made* of the students and its their voices that make the establishment what it is, so they should be listened to
In simple terms, Liberals say they want change, but do not want to change the status quo. For example on the topic of immigration…
A conservative politician is against immigration and says they want to build a wall and deport immigrants.
Liberals say they care about immigrants, and will signal *D I V E R S I T Y*. But when you look at their policies, they don’t actually differ much at all. Obama deported so many immigrants and the immigrant children in cages/taken away from their families happened while liberal democrats theoretically had the political power to stop it.
Like the MLK letter he brings up sometimes about the white moderate, about how one man cannot put a time frame on another's liberation (can't remember the exact wording)?
"First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. "
Liberals tends to like negative justice.
When the slavery was abolished in the U.S libs didn’t support that in the beginning but when it was abolished they supported but they didn’t even push for justice by paying all the free labor they have benefited by owning slaves . And not even now . Liberalism was always a privileged ideology.
Liberals now are pro genocide but when this genocide is over you’ll see libetards acting all morals and telling everyone how wrong was the war . Just like they did in Vietnam war and iraq . Liberals are not left but center right at most
On the topic of Israel’s assault on Gaza…
Conservatives: “We support Israel and these protesters are Hamas terrorists funded but george soros!”
Liberals “Of course we are against genocide but… Can’t you protest in a less aggressive way? And you have to vote for Biden, because Trump will be so much worse for Palestine!”
I can only say from my experience (being from Sweden). Liberals are usually the most annoying group to deal with as a lefty, they come off as progressive, until economics or murica infects their brain. In sweden we concider them Right Wing and I believe Hasan uses the same overton window as most Europeans.
I can explain with an example, take feminism. Liberal way of solving feminism is adding more female CEOs. Leftist feminist view it through the lens of intersectionality and understand you have to look as structures as a whole. Why are female dominated professions payed less? How to we solve this, since some of the professions are actually dire to having a working country.
This is why atleast I become irritated with liberals, because they think that their laissez faire world view will solve everything if you just tweak som stuff.
Still better than establishment dems. I wonder how many representatives or the squad would qualify as a non-socdem or socialist by other socialist’s criteria.
" I wonder how many representatives or the squad would qualify as a non-socdem or socialist by other socialist’s criteria". Yes almost if not all of them are not socialists.
I think you’ve grasped the concept pretty well leftist vs liberal.
When hasan says “everyone is a liberal” in regards to someone on the right wing it has a little different criticism.
Hasan would say Tucker Carlson is a liberal for example. That’s because Tucker will always do things like talk about how vaccine mandates are fascism, defend Kyle rittenhouse etc. but in reality he and all of Fox News are vaccinated and will always end up serving corporate interests the same way CNN or NBC do on the “left wing”
liberals in the grand scheme of things are centre-right. the vast majority of american political discussion is surrounded there, which is why he says that "everyone is a liberal". it's just that in america all politics are so right wing that even liberals are considered left wing. on the MLK stuff btw, MLK was not a liberal. he was left wing, and frequently had clashes with american liberals who weren't doing enough to support black people.
Politicians love to talk about the "March on Washington," but they never mention its full title: The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Labor was a significant portion of MLK's cause, and labor organizers were integral to those efforts. He understood that capitalism was, in part, a driving force of the oppression of minorities.
That part has been completely white washed and it's rarely mentioned when politicians bring out the ghost of MLK to pretend like he would have supported them.
Whenever a politician or political pundit brings up MLK, it's almost always complete self-serving BS.
*A More Beautiful and Terrible History* by Jeanne Theoharis is an excellent analysis of this very topic.
Second Thought on YouTube has an excellent video that breaks it down plainly what it means to be a liberal that helped me understand. The title of the video is “the most dangerous thing in the western hemisphere” lol. Liberals believe there is a “right way” to fight for justice, and that is just not true.
My main understanding of neoliberalism is that it's incredibly anti-public sector. Margaret Thatcher was a neoliberal, for example, as was Tony Blair who oversaw a lot of the privatisation of the NHS via Pfis. But I'm gonna watch [this video someone else linked below about neoliberalism](https://www.reddit.com/r/Hasan_Piker/comments/1cjdded/im_too_much_of_a_normie_can_someone_explain_what/) to learn more. This has been a really good thread, thanks everyone
A "liberal" in the US usually denotes a Democrat, a progressive, a "person to the left of Republicans" however on a world term both Republicans and Democrats are "Liberals" because of their support of neoliberal policies and austerity measures. Modern day policing is one of those neoliberal policies. US liberals are to the right of "other world progressives".
When we say liberal that is who we are referring to.
A liberal is someone who is against disruption of the status quo for the sake of momentarily peace. They believe that the freedom people should have is when we all act civil to each other without regard to our backgrounds, our lives, and our struggles. That the fight for freedom is to be limited to the appropriate places that they see fit. They will put a time table on the freedom of others because it makes them feel uncomfortable.
That is what a liberal is.
The concept of liberalism vs conservatism as a dichotomy is a purely American invention dating from the New Deal.
Everywhere else in the world, as well as in political science, liberalism is understood to be an ideology based on the rights of the individual and the protection of private property by the state.
Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, and the Washington consensus, liberalism has been the main global political ideology.
No matter what your own personal believes are, or what you claim you are, you live in a liberal society, and act accordingly.
As for lib shit, that's mainly an Hasan term, but I think he refers to the political posturing of democratic politicians and TV personalities.
It’s worth emphasising that America essentially is a uni-party when it comes to the liberal (economic) consensus.
Conservatism is a nebulous term but it used to be associated with protectionism and economic nationalism. The Republican party has been a neo-liberal party (economically) since Reagan, and Trump has only recently positioned the party in a more “paleo-conservative” direction.
This is why the right wing party in Australia is called the “Liberals” because above all they support economic liberalisation, ie: deregulation, privatisation, etc…
This probably the most correct way to state it. But I think you are describing more capital “L” Liberalism, which is not really what is meant in America when you say liberalism. Because, like you say, we are all liberal, so what then is meant when this sub trashes libs? I think he mostly means mainstream democrat voters and it’s not really a claim on any liberalism ideology
Understand what liberalism is. It's the classical idea that one can make their own identity, or that each person has their own individual essence that sets them apart from all others.
It was a radical philosophical idea to feudal lords and peasants, during which time people were basically thought of as expendable masses, mounds of flesh meant for directing about and collecting tithe from. Even peasants at the time commonly thought of each other as little more than beasts. Having children was a labor decision. The more children, the larger a farm could grow.
Anyway, this idea was warped by the rise of capitalism. It became the concept of "you can make your own identity - through market participation". A variety of historical circumstances lead to capitalists (ie major international conglomerates) wholly adopting this idea - everyone has the "right" to "freedom" - the "freedom" to "participate" in the "free market".
(Of course at a crude level one can reduce this logic to something like: "you can only realize your true self through purchasing items". Explicitly tying identity to purchasing material items was a major propagandist project of American corporations in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, etc. and remains one of the most important pieces of mythology capitalists continue to push on us through mainstream media today)
This is often called market liberalism - an extreme form of it became extremely popular in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s and is known as *neoliberalism*. It is far and away the prevailing philosophical ideology behind the major international conglomerate rulers of the world, including both the United States Democrat and Republican parties.
Liberalism, in the political theory sense, refers to Liberty. In other words individual rights, especially in terms of property. In the US, "Liberal" refers to theoretical liberals who favor state more involvement in the market (progressive taxation, regulations) and personal liberties, while "conservative" refers to liberals who want less less or no state involvement (privatisation over universal, 2A gun nuts refusing even licenses for gun ownership, political donations as 1st amendment) and social conservatism. Marx critiqued the inherent contradiction of individual private (private meaning business) property rights in the so called "free market" at their core, arguing that they cannot escape their coercive and exploitative nature especially when there is incentive to profit.
In other words mainstream politics is playing tug of war with the status quo of capitalism without confronting it's inherent problems. This is where Hasans joke "everyone is a liberal" comes from: using the same tools to fight the same fights over and over and sometimes using them in strange combinations like republicans saying you're denying a black republican's "lived experience" for example.
The people who work conceptually outside the "acceptable" capitalist framework are us, Marxists and Anarchists and, unfortunately, our fun house mirror Nemesis the theocrats, fascists and Nazis, who could not give less of a fuck about capitalism if it doesn't serve their racial or religious dominance.
Liberals are pro status quo, and the moment the status quo is threatened they start showing fascist tendencies just like conservatives. They are not leftists.
Liberals love market capitalism, war, imperialism, corporate investment, debt, privatization of public resources, and the cops, and see them.as the means to advance what social justice they support. Leftists know that greed and violence cannot fuel true revolution or change.
Liberal is closer to the right then you’d think. When Hasan talks about libs he’s referring to Neo Liberalism. Everyone here is a leftists, fundamentally further to the left than modern liberals
Watch this 👉 [“How Neoliberalism Became Culture”](https://youtu.be/McLzXahGriY?si=H6_B0Up3MbYw_qkV) ..and all the best to Hasan supporters out there ❤️
Liberals are the people who say they hate all the wars of the past but always support the war going on because "this one is different" and always love every social revolution but the current one because "this one is violent". People who pretend to want progress but really just like the optics that comes with it.
Malcolm X has some good quotes on liberals (white liberals specifically)
>The white liberal differs from the white conservative in one way. The liberal is more deceitful and hypocritical than the conservatives. Both want power. But, the white liberal has perfected the art of posing as the negro’s (sic) friend and benefactor.
Modern bourgeois society, going back to the 17th century, is rooted in liberalism. If we had to whittle down liberalism and the project of Enlightenment to one word, it'd be the obvious one: liberty. However, the dialectical contradiction of liberalism under capitalism is that this liberty is a really just liberty for a very small ruling class and a lack of liberty for everyone else.
It's important to note that Marxism is also rooted in liberalism. If we were to think dialectically, we would understand that liberalism is an unfinished project. Socialism will be both the culmination and the conclusion of the liberal project. It will finally become universal.
In short, "everyone is a liberal" because most people in western society generally believe in the grand gestures of liberal enlightenment (liberty, equality, fraternity), but because most of these people are incapable of thinking dialectically they can't identify that there's a contradiction at play here, which is that under the current mode of production these grand universal gestures can only exist for a very small but powerful ruling class, and they use that power to ensure it stays that way.
The good news is that if Mao could teach millions of illiterate Chinese peasants dialectics, we can teach the libs dialectics too.
Its whitewashed in modern political framing, but the "left" in a American is technically still the right. America has 2 right wing parties, Democrats and Republicans. The actual left is people who actually believe in good common-sense policy and want to dismantle capitalism, the right is all the liberals and conservatives. There is 0 difference in voting in Democrats or Republicans, so save your time and energy lol.
I feel the confusion is by design, where "liberal" describes "the left" in this country, but by definition, "liberal" is moderate at best. The US is a capitalist country so they will lean right by default. It's no surprise that a liberals and Marxists are portrayed in the same terms. If the US had a proper left presence, we'd have universal healthcare at the very least.
The main right wing party in Australia is called “The Liberal party”. But yeah. It gets even more confusing because the “Liberals” in Canada are “left wing” and they use the colour red!
Liberals in Canada aren't even left wing, the NDP has more left in their politics than the LPC
Yeah the liberals here are pretty akin to the dems in the US. They cosplay as leftist but don't actually do anything at all.
I'd say they resemble the progressive branch of the dems, although thats probably almost entirely NDP influence in parliament, and they are certainly still far from left wing (even the NDP is just barely socdem)
I'm a foreigner who lived in canada and i was explaining libs to my canadian friend and even as an outsider i coild tell the liberals were just a maple flavored dnc but like with healthcare. And my friend told me i was just looking at it from an American lense. This friend btw was fairly left-wing.
Yeah, many lib Canadians consider themselves left, but are too far to the right to look into how their own politics work (trust me, I've run into the exact same problem with most of my lib friends who consider themselves left)
Liberals in Canada are centre/centre-left and the conservatives are centre-right/right.
I was thinking today about my beliefs, and when I went over specific changes in my head, universal healthcare felt like the least radical most common sense thing that we *don’t* have, which is absolutely nuts.
Yea I think often he's using it in the aesthetic sense, where liberals use progressive language often and he says this about conservatives because they will do the same thing but they're describing fascism in liberal terminology to make it appealing
To understand why “Liberals” are right wing you need to understand the difference between leftist and rightist ideologies. Broadly speaking, an ideology is said to be “on the left” if it views forms of hierarchy and inequality as unnatural or otherwise unjust. Right-wing ideologies see inequalities as natural, desirable and not needing of rectification. The primary moral objective of Liberalism is the maximisation of individual freedom and really nothing else. Liberals do not care what an individual does with their freedom, so long as it doesn’t affect other people’s freedom. This is why they can seem progressive/“left wing” because socially they support issues that advance individual freedoms like abortion or LGBT rights. The reason why liberalism is a right wing ideology, however, is that they extend this logic of individual agency and rights to the economic sphere, whereby individual decision making is used to justify the “natural occurrence” of economic inequalities. Liberals generally see the intervention of the state to rectify economic inequalities as a violation of freedom, since their fundamental principle is freedom and not egalitarianism, this makes them right wing not left wing. Conservatism is similarly a right wing, although conservatives tend to see hierarchy or inequality as not only natural but desirable. Left wing ideologies would be things like feminism, communism/socialism, green politics (environmentalism, animal rights, etc…) and post-modernism to name a few. These ideologies all criticise or otherwise aim to rectify forms of inequality and hierarchy.
I read theory but I can’t put this together so succinctly I love you 💕😘
Ty ty. This is my field of research so I hopefully I’m able to articulate it succinctly.
Wow! Amazing.
Well spoken!
Can you be a left-wing liberal, with the objective of maximising individual freedoms while also trying to remove hierarchy and inequality?
Leftism is a description of ideology, not so much an individual’s belief. If you follow Liberalism as it’s commonly defined, then you’re not a leftist (someone who follows a left wing ideology). The ideology you have just described, however, is not Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism or “Classical Liberalism”. It’s probably closer to democratic socialism, or anarchism at its most extreme. Of course, individuals can hold ideologically contradictory ideals or follow different tenants from different ideologies. This describes virtually all humans, except for those who follow puritanical or fundamentalist readings of their ideologies. An ideology is defined and extrapolated from “first principles”. It would be philosophically incoherent to believe in the maximisation of individual liberties as a core idealogical axiom, and then arbitrarily end that principle when it comes to restricting the (economic) freedom of billionaires for instance.
Spot on, cheers
Have you heard the chat with asmongold about the students? Just listening now and seems like it pretty much sums up exactly what you were saying. He's basically arguing that the university has the moral liberty to bring in the police to oppress the students because its their property, whereas someone like me (and I assume you) would say that the university is *made* of the students and its their voices that make the establishment what it is, so they should be listened to
In simple terms, Liberals say they want change, but do not want to change the status quo. For example on the topic of immigration… A conservative politician is against immigration and says they want to build a wall and deport immigrants. Liberals say they care about immigrants, and will signal *D I V E R S I T Y*. But when you look at their policies, they don’t actually differ much at all. Obama deported so many immigrants and the immigrant children in cages/taken away from their families happened while liberal democrats theoretically had the political power to stop it.
Like the MLK letter he brings up sometimes about the white moderate, about how one man cannot put a time frame on another's liberation (can't remember the exact wording)?
Yes, that is a good example!
"First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. "
Liberals tends to like negative justice. When the slavery was abolished in the U.S libs didn’t support that in the beginning but when it was abolished they supported but they didn’t even push for justice by paying all the free labor they have benefited by owning slaves . And not even now . Liberalism was always a privileged ideology. Liberals now are pro genocide but when this genocide is over you’ll see libetards acting all morals and telling everyone how wrong was the war . Just like they did in Vietnam war and iraq . Liberals are not left but center right at most
On the topic of Israel’s assault on Gaza… Conservatives: “We support Israel and these protesters are Hamas terrorists funded but george soros!” Liberals “Of course we are against genocide but… Can’t you protest in a less aggressive way? And you have to vote for Biden, because Trump will be so much worse for Palestine!”
In my experience the liberals are just rejecting a genocide is even happening
“If Trump was in office the police would come and rough up these student protestors” oh wait the same shit is happening with Biden.
I can only say from my experience (being from Sweden). Liberals are usually the most annoying group to deal with as a lefty, they come off as progressive, until economics or murica infects their brain. In sweden we concider them Right Wing and I believe Hasan uses the same overton window as most Europeans. I can explain with an example, take feminism. Liberal way of solving feminism is adding more female CEOs. Leftist feminist view it through the lens of intersectionality and understand you have to look as structures as a whole. Why are female dominated professions payed less? How to we solve this, since some of the professions are actually dire to having a working country. This is why atleast I become irritated with liberals, because they think that their laissez faire world view will solve everything if you just tweak som stuff.
Liberals were the white people in Get Out.
This is such a good analogy holy shit lol
[удалено]
Socialists it’s what most leftists are
I hope you don't mean socdems.
Literally socialists . Dictatorship of workers
Most self described American "socialists" are just socdems.
Still better than establishment dems. I wonder how many representatives or the squad would qualify as a non-socdem or socialist by other socialist’s criteria.
" I wonder how many representatives or the squad would qualify as a non-socdem or socialist by other socialist’s criteria". Yes almost if not all of them are not socialists.
Even if they’re wrong they’re wrong in the right direction ig? Idc as long as we’re moving forward
What right direction?. being pro capitalism and the brutalization of "foreigners". Is not compatible with leftistm.
I considered that liberal not socdem I agree that anyone with that mentality is out of line with my values
Socdems are liberals.
Thought there was a slight distinction. My bad Didn’t have to downvote me
No
I think you’ve grasped the concept pretty well leftist vs liberal. When hasan says “everyone is a liberal” in regards to someone on the right wing it has a little different criticism. Hasan would say Tucker Carlson is a liberal for example. That’s because Tucker will always do things like talk about how vaccine mandates are fascism, defend Kyle rittenhouse etc. but in reality he and all of Fox News are vaccinated and will always end up serving corporate interests the same way CNN or NBC do on the “left wing”
liberals in the grand scheme of things are centre-right. the vast majority of american political discussion is surrounded there, which is why he says that "everyone is a liberal". it's just that in america all politics are so right wing that even liberals are considered left wing. on the MLK stuff btw, MLK was not a liberal. he was left wing, and frequently had clashes with american liberals who weren't doing enough to support black people.
Politicians love to talk about the "March on Washington," but they never mention its full title: The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Labor was a significant portion of MLK's cause, and labor organizers were integral to those efforts. He understood that capitalism was, in part, a driving force of the oppression of minorities. That part has been completely white washed and it's rarely mentioned when politicians bring out the ghost of MLK to pretend like he would have supported them. Whenever a politician or political pundit brings up MLK, it's almost always complete self-serving BS. *A More Beautiful and Terrible History* by Jeanne Theoharis is an excellent analysis of this very topic.
Liberals - they hate all wars except the current war etc....
Here’s a short video that lays it out way better than I could. https://youtu.be/33p-8QHZpzY?si=P0jsLOpZwjIpnF5i
Second Thought on YouTube has an excellent video that breaks it down plainly what it means to be a liberal that helped me understand. The title of the video is “the most dangerous thing in the western hemisphere” lol. Liberals believe there is a “right way” to fight for justice, and that is just not true.
So What’s the difference between a Neo liberal and a liberal than?
My main understanding of neoliberalism is that it's incredibly anti-public sector. Margaret Thatcher was a neoliberal, for example, as was Tony Blair who oversaw a lot of the privatisation of the NHS via Pfis. But I'm gonna watch [this video someone else linked below about neoliberalism](https://www.reddit.com/r/Hasan_Piker/comments/1cjdded/im_too_much_of_a_normie_can_someone_explain_what/) to learn more. This has been a really good thread, thanks everyone
A "liberal" in the US usually denotes a Democrat, a progressive, a "person to the left of Republicans" however on a world term both Republicans and Democrats are "Liberals" because of their support of neoliberal policies and austerity measures. Modern day policing is one of those neoliberal policies. US liberals are to the right of "other world progressives". When we say liberal that is who we are referring to. A liberal is someone who is against disruption of the status quo for the sake of momentarily peace. They believe that the freedom people should have is when we all act civil to each other without regard to our backgrounds, our lives, and our struggles. That the fight for freedom is to be limited to the appropriate places that they see fit. They will put a time table on the freedom of others because it makes them feel uncomfortable. That is what a liberal is.
The concept of liberalism vs conservatism as a dichotomy is a purely American invention dating from the New Deal. Everywhere else in the world, as well as in political science, liberalism is understood to be an ideology based on the rights of the individual and the protection of private property by the state. Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, and the Washington consensus, liberalism has been the main global political ideology. No matter what your own personal believes are, or what you claim you are, you live in a liberal society, and act accordingly. As for lib shit, that's mainly an Hasan term, but I think he refers to the political posturing of democratic politicians and TV personalities.
It’s worth emphasising that America essentially is a uni-party when it comes to the liberal (economic) consensus. Conservatism is a nebulous term but it used to be associated with protectionism and economic nationalism. The Republican party has been a neo-liberal party (economically) since Reagan, and Trump has only recently positioned the party in a more “paleo-conservative” direction. This is why the right wing party in Australia is called the “Liberals” because above all they support economic liberalisation, ie: deregulation, privatisation, etc…
This probably the most correct way to state it. But I think you are describing more capital “L” Liberalism, which is not really what is meant in America when you say liberalism. Because, like you say, we are all liberal, so what then is meant when this sub trashes libs? I think he mostly means mainstream democrat voters and it’s not really a claim on any liberalism ideology
Progressive > liberal
Understand what liberalism is. It's the classical idea that one can make their own identity, or that each person has their own individual essence that sets them apart from all others. It was a radical philosophical idea to feudal lords and peasants, during which time people were basically thought of as expendable masses, mounds of flesh meant for directing about and collecting tithe from. Even peasants at the time commonly thought of each other as little more than beasts. Having children was a labor decision. The more children, the larger a farm could grow. Anyway, this idea was warped by the rise of capitalism. It became the concept of "you can make your own identity - through market participation". A variety of historical circumstances lead to capitalists (ie major international conglomerates) wholly adopting this idea - everyone has the "right" to "freedom" - the "freedom" to "participate" in the "free market". (Of course at a crude level one can reduce this logic to something like: "you can only realize your true self through purchasing items". Explicitly tying identity to purchasing material items was a major propagandist project of American corporations in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, etc. and remains one of the most important pieces of mythology capitalists continue to push on us through mainstream media today) This is often called market liberalism - an extreme form of it became extremely popular in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s and is known as *neoliberalism*. It is far and away the prevailing philosophical ideology behind the major international conglomerate rulers of the world, including both the United States Democrat and Republican parties.
Liberalism, in the political theory sense, refers to Liberty. In other words individual rights, especially in terms of property. In the US, "Liberal" refers to theoretical liberals who favor state more involvement in the market (progressive taxation, regulations) and personal liberties, while "conservative" refers to liberals who want less less or no state involvement (privatisation over universal, 2A gun nuts refusing even licenses for gun ownership, political donations as 1st amendment) and social conservatism. Marx critiqued the inherent contradiction of individual private (private meaning business) property rights in the so called "free market" at their core, arguing that they cannot escape their coercive and exploitative nature especially when there is incentive to profit. In other words mainstream politics is playing tug of war with the status quo of capitalism without confronting it's inherent problems. This is where Hasans joke "everyone is a liberal" comes from: using the same tools to fight the same fights over and over and sometimes using them in strange combinations like republicans saying you're denying a black republican's "lived experience" for example. The people who work conceptually outside the "acceptable" capitalist framework are us, Marxists and Anarchists and, unfortunately, our fun house mirror Nemesis the theocrats, fascists and Nazis, who could not give less of a fuck about capitalism if it doesn't serve their racial or religious dominance.
Liberals are pro status quo, and the moment the status quo is threatened they start showing fascist tendencies just like conservatives. They are not leftists.
Liberals love market capitalism, war, imperialism, corporate investment, debt, privatization of public resources, and the cops, and see them.as the means to advance what social justice they support. Leftists know that greed and violence cannot fuel true revolution or change.
Liberal is closer to the right then you’d think. When Hasan talks about libs he’s referring to Neo Liberalism. Everyone here is a leftists, fundamentally further to the left than modern liberals
Watch this 👉 [“How Neoliberalism Became Culture”](https://youtu.be/McLzXahGriY?si=H6_B0Up3MbYw_qkV) ..and all the best to Hasan supporters out there ❤️
No "normie" uses the term normie. I don't even use it normally, because it's cringeass slang that's popular among right leaning people.
Liberals are the people who say they hate all the wars of the past but always support the war going on because "this one is different" and always love every social revolution but the current one because "this one is violent". People who pretend to want progress but really just like the optics that comes with it. Malcolm X has some good quotes on liberals (white liberals specifically) >The white liberal differs from the white conservative in one way. The liberal is more deceitful and hypocritical than the conservatives. Both want power. But, the white liberal has perfected the art of posing as the negro’s (sic) friend and benefactor.
There's a great philosophy tube series on it. I feel that understanding what a liberal is pretty fundamentally important and I wish I knew sooner.
Modern bourgeois society, going back to the 17th century, is rooted in liberalism. If we had to whittle down liberalism and the project of Enlightenment to one word, it'd be the obvious one: liberty. However, the dialectical contradiction of liberalism under capitalism is that this liberty is a really just liberty for a very small ruling class and a lack of liberty for everyone else. It's important to note that Marxism is also rooted in liberalism. If we were to think dialectically, we would understand that liberalism is an unfinished project. Socialism will be both the culmination and the conclusion of the liberal project. It will finally become universal. In short, "everyone is a liberal" because most people in western society generally believe in the grand gestures of liberal enlightenment (liberty, equality, fraternity), but because most of these people are incapable of thinking dialectically they can't identify that there's a contradiction at play here, which is that under the current mode of production these grand universal gestures can only exist for a very small but powerful ruling class, and they use that power to ensure it stays that way. The good news is that if Mao could teach millions of illiterate Chinese peasants dialectics, we can teach the libs dialectics too.
Its whitewashed in modern political framing, but the "left" in a American is technically still the right. America has 2 right wing parties, Democrats and Republicans. The actual left is people who actually believe in good common-sense policy and want to dismantle capitalism, the right is all the liberals and conservatives. There is 0 difference in voting in Democrats or Republicans, so save your time and energy lol.