Liberal is a dirty word.
They’re conservatives who have gay and black friends.
As ever, centrists are just fascists when scratched.
The left is pretty much splintered along different types of ideologies and levels of hostility towards conservatism, so they could not agree with each other.
The liberal establishment always abandons effective fellow liberals. Sanders, Mamdani, Thunberg…they’re actually trying to do something. That makes the established neolibs look ineffective and upsets their donors. So they turn their backs on the rabble rousers.
The liberal establishment always abandons effective fellow liberals. Sanders, Mamdani, Thunberg…
This is where there really is a distinction between “liberal” and “leftist” or “progressive.”
I would not call any of those three people “liberals.”
The current anger with Sanders appears to be, from an outsiders pov, that he didn’t criticize Israel by calling it a genocide soon enough.
That appears to be it.
I mean. To dismiss everything because one mistake, even if that mistake is massive, and then correcting that mistake, if belatedly, to me, says something very positive about that politician.
I’d prefer it was immediate, and it’s gross that it took him so long, but all the other stuff isn’t cancelled out by that. He’s still a net positive. And he DID criticize earlier than any other us politician I can think of, and sure it Could have been even earlier and harsher, but like. Fuck. If you hate politicians for being open to changing mind based on new evidence, or reforming beliefs you don’t like, or admitting mistakes, you are AGAINST them being rational and it plays right into the hands of neoliberal propagandists.
He has also consistently voted for Iron Dome rearmament packages, which materially supports the genocide.
He didn’t “change his mind based on new evidence”, public opinion just shifted to the point where he couldn’t get away with not calling it a genocide. The whole time he has always taken the most Israel friendly position he can get away with without losing credibility. Hell, in the very first line of his statement calling it a genocide he still insisted on repeating Isreali lies about October 7th.
They specifically mentioned the liberal establishment. You’re talking about criticism from people that probably abhor the liberal establishment even more than they do progressive liberals like Bernie.
Also I think this kind of criticism is important and I don’t know why it bothers people so much. It’s okay to be critical of things you ultimately support, either for ideological or simply for tactical reasons. It’s called critical support, and I think people should do it more often. Even if the criticism isn’t ultimately supportive, that doesn’t mean all of a person’s hate is directed in that single place. There may be more than just the surface level WHAT, like the WHY of it all and what that implies, that you are missing (or dismissing).
You have to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything, and refusal to engage in critical analysis - pretending any politician can do no wrong (or the contrary case; can do no right), getting defensive, and outright rejecting any investigation to prove or disprove your conclusion - does not fall into the category of ‘standing for something’ to me but rather overzealous team sports.
We have to practice more critical thinking, despite how badly our political class does not want us doing that. Whether it helps any specific politician win an election or not (which you can still do even with criticisms). Especially considering that it’s this kind of criticism that has made it untenable for a growing number of politicians to deny the genocide in Palestine; it’s pretty clear that the only needle that uncritical support will move is that of the progressives, towards the liberal end of the spectrum. After all, it’s our criticism of the current system and its complicity in human suffering that makes us progressive in the first place.
I mean. To dismiss everything because one mistake, even if that mistake is massive, and then correcting that mistake, if belatedly, to me, says something very positive about that politician.
even if it’s clear that he’s been doubling down on that mistake when presented with the evidence and then only switched it’s become clear that the tide has begun turn?
Better late than never?
Would you rather the kind of politician that just lies constantly?
You mean like how he lied about the number of civilians killed on October 7th?
There’s more, he criticized protests against ICE in LA turning into riots, and had some nice things to say about Kirk after he was killed.
That said I think it’s really unproductive for people to turn on him after he was a big spark in a movement and is still outspoken. He has irritated me a few times lately but he’s still one of the most influential leaders.
On the other hand look at the Right wing Clowns celebrating the kidnapping of Greta. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TX2tu6J0JY
I may not like Greta, but credit where credit is due, She’s brave. (Also Fuck NuxTaku you zionist pig, I heard your family is in Israel)
I just felt like people got tired of her and didn’t read as much about her, so not as much reason to feature her
Nah there’s a pretty stark shift right when she started to talk about Gaza.
It’s a pretty common trend, anyone that doesn’t tow the Israeli party line is pretty quickly outcast or opposed.
I thought that happened after the biggest interest in her had already faded but I might be misremembering it.
It’s sort of like Malala, and how she remained committed to socialism and Islam. I think ten years ago for a while the western boosters who brought her to international attention thought she’d flip and be a useful stooge. When she turned out to not be, we heard less and less of her.
Same deal with Greta Thunberg, who is something more dangerous than someone who can be bought: she’s someone who is principled for climate justice and human rights.
Liberal ‘leaders’ abandonment. There needs to be an understanding that leadership is no longer following the will of the people in the United States. On either the left or the right. This fact is more of a cause of why things are so crazy than anything the people are doing or wanting
At least in the United States
Also: Israel is currently a terrorist state
Also Israel now owns tiktok for a propaganda machine
Greta could have become a very rich liberal grifter.
keep them Davos cheques coming in.
instead she’s risking her life to help those humanity has abandoned.
respect
And you got leftist piling on liberals for some reason
Edit: oh shit I’m in .ml my bad(not really) lol hey at least you don’t ban dissent I guess
Edit 2: Leftists once again can’t see the forest for the trees with your ideological purity test pitted against defeating a common enemy. For people so smart you really need to understand that your power lies with NUMBERS
For some reason?
for some reason
how much time you got
“For some reason”
Liberals in the US are MAGA enablers. To the last individual.
Yeah what and you’re going to resist the us gov with what percent of the population?
We can leave USA & support countries where leftists have a stronger presence. Let US implode under right-wing fascism
Coward
Coward
Coward? I’m saying you need friends not enemies
Fascists and their enablers are not our friends.
I’m not a fascist enabler. I believe in personal liberty above all
Wym some reason? Y’all get off too easy imo.
Stop with the woe is me shit, you know perfectly well how complicit y’all are.
Wait so Greta is a liberal and doing right but other liberals are enables but leftists are … checks notes… circle jerking themselves to completion over a captured “ally”? Make it make sense
Greta is very clearly not a liberal. She’s been very vocally anticapitalist these past few years.
You can be liberal and anticapitalist
You quite literally cannot. Liberalism is the ideology of capitalism.
No, it’s not. It means I believe in personal liberty over economic system
Sure, if you ignore the meaning of both of those words.
Go on I’ll wait
They abandoned her around the time her environmental protests started being a little too effective. I mean disruptive.
they abandoned her right around the time she started to notice she wouldn’t be effective unless she started attacking capitalism as the root cause.
Looked like she was always pushing the marxist position to me. I mean, this mostly started when she was playing with the EU “aristocracy”.
When did she do that? I’ve lways thought of her as liberal with rich parents who get’s to do high-publicity protests that achieve nothing and distract from the economic problem.
Y’all got to take the word “distract” out of your vocabulary. Israel is not committing genocide to distract from the Epstein files.
I don’t really know or care much about Greta Thuneberg. But I wouldn’t criticize her unless my activism was objectively more effective than hers…and I don’t think that describes either of us.
Wasn’t that also when she started being critical of the impact of capitalism on the environment? 🤔
It’s going to always come down to wealth inequality, which is bred by unregulated capitalism, which is bribed into existence by money in politics.
And getting politicians to reject money is impossible since they don’t want to end up on the eating side of the inequality gap.
I think the opposite. The climate thing hasn’t been working as well, so they are flipping to the other side of the coin to push their authoritarianism.
Or maybe I just have an American bias. I’m too use to watching the false dichotomy see-sawing ever couple decades.
Effective? Come on.
I mean she’s great, gave a voice to what a lot of people have been thinking for decades before she was born. Maybe what most people think today. But there is really nothing that’s effective. It’s not dissing her, it’s just that the machine is too strong and it’s able to even use the opposition to itself for the machines purpose, like the article says.Usually. It didn’t work with Greta, so she’s just ignored.
“We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.” Ursula K Le Guin
It’s been done before, even under more oppressive conditions. It can and will be done again.
That’s great, but nothing to do with what I’m saying.
Everything made by humans can be destroyed by humans. No social system is forever. The rest is just skill issue.
Sure. Skill issue. Says the skilled warrior changing the world.
Sure. Whatever you say.
I actually teach how to plan, execute, and assess political and social impact, beyond practicing it in my orgs. Are you aware there are plenty of disciplines working exactly on this? Your rethoric is just a way to justify your inaction. If nothing can change, it means you’re exempted from your responsibilities. Too easy.
Your teach? Wow. I thought you are a psychic since you know everything about me from one Lemmy post lol.
I hope you aren’t such s duche with you students. Anyway, in any case it makes sense to asses effectiveness every now and then. For academic purposes of nothing else.
Dumb take, we have abandoned many an undefeatable system in the past, and giving people’s feelings a voice is what got us there
We have also not abandoned many systems many times, that’s not an argument. Show me the effect and disruption. I’m not against it, just right now there isn’t much there.
You can say she was the head of that flotilla and without her it would be at least much smaller and you are right, but in this case, considering what Israel did to them and there is still a lack of any real effects.
It’s incredibly hard to prove things like this so if you don’t believe it you don’t, but I don’t think the effects are just meant to be directly bringing food to Gaza. If that were the only way to measure it you’d be right. But the only thing which could possibly stop Israel is strong political pressure from the West and we are getting closer to that, the world is angry about it in a way they weren’t before. Even Germany, the most hard-line Israel supporter is changing its stance. These massive protests in Italy wouldn’t have been like this otherwise. Yeah maybe I’m wrong because these things are nebulous and slow but that’s how activism is and I think those things are real changes.
I am thinking of the political effects. I’m surprised that there doesn’t seem to be any after what they did to her and others on the boats.
But on the other hand, the world has stood by for more than half a century of torture of Gazans, so it shouldn’t be surprising.
I’m surprised that there doesn’t seem to be any after what they did to her and others on the boats.
This stuff takes longer than a news cycle, that was two days ago.
But on the other hand, the world has stood by for more than half a century of torture of Gazans, so it shouldn’t be surprising.
Agreed.
This isn’t at all to say her original stance was misguided. It is to say that she recognises genocide and ecocide come from the same root. Systems of power that destroy ecosystems also destroy people, also destroy planets, also destroy worlds. She is in many ways simply displaying a logical consistency, as much as a moral one, about the interconnected nature of the evils that plague our civilisation. And this is where she broke with a liberal class who see evils selectively and in terms framed and dictated by empire.
hear hear! Too many people who love the “first they came for” poem who still think Palestine is a pesky wedge issue being used against their boys in blue.
It can’t be both?
Its not like you can’t be disgusted by Israel, the neo-british empire they are a part of along with Hamas that is all too happy to be their handy little patsy whenever they need an Oswald or Crooks. Or at least, I don’t find that opinion to be a challenging one to have.
I don’t really understand what you’re saying or which bit you’re responding to, both of what?
Libs are so used to cosplaying a smart skeptic with their “how about both sides bad? 😌😌😌 You can do two things at once (pause for applause)” that they don’t even bother to parse anything before belting out old reliable
She’s not that rowdy little girl anymore. Now she’s a fierce young woman.
So of course they abandoned her.
They dropped her the very moment it became clear she’s an actual leftist and wasn’t just this little kid talking about climate change.
The term “liberal” is toxic. Liberal’s are disliked by “the right” and by progressives. They are truly useless snowflakes that do nothing but virtue signal and sell everything and everyone out that threatens their convenience and comforts.
I completely agree.
The left needs to stop letting liberals define them.
I don’t think it is toxic, as much as it is almost always misused. Read the following and tell me how many people you know have been using the term correctly.
For leftists that’s exactly who we’re talking about when we say liberals. The right to private property and equality and the consent of the governed are logically incompatible. Right liberals (e.g. US Republican party) emphasise the former, and moderate liberals (e.g. US Democratic party) pay lip service to the latter while only actually protecting the former. It’s really only about property in the end.
I wouldn’t say those three things are inherently logically incompatible, but there would be a lot of grey areas.
The power structure of the federal government doesn’t make it any easier to actually exercise the federal government to accomplish helpful objectives, but making things worse is a relatively easy exercise.
The focus on state level politics seems much more meaningful to actually accomplish any goals, since at least there is not as big of a hurdle where land and money have more power/representation than real people.
They are not logically incompatible, but we will have to make clear and specific decisions about where one ends and the other begins.
Unless you are asking me to live in a society where I must share my toothbrush with others because I am not allowed to keep any private property.
I do believe in private property: with modest, reasonable limits. Which we can and will discuss the details of over time, and I understand that will likely become a heated discussion at times, but I believe it is an inevitable and necessary one. Does that disqualify me from being a leftist? Does it make me a liberal too? Let me know.
Private property in this context means things which generate/are used to generate capital, not just any kind of object which people might have and use. The important distinction is that capital is social, it is a means of coercing others to do work for you. That’s true for a factory, where people work for the owner, or for a rented property where the tenant must work to pay the owner. It’s true in a way even for wages - when you spend money you are buying the products of people’s labour (which under capitalism was not produced in a just way). It’s not the case for your toothbrush.
The distinction that liberalism made was that everyone should in theory be allowed to own private property rather than royals appointed by divine right and hereditary nobility they delegated some power to. Not that in the 1700s we were suddenly allowed to have our own clothes for the first time in history.
It’s not the case for your toothbrush.
Isn’t it though? I didn’t make my toothbrush. It came from the toothbrush factory. In fact, it’s an electric toothbrush. Which presumably requires a lot of somewhat high tech inputs and resources to create. Would someone have developed this innovation without some economic pressure to do so? I’m not totally convinced. I think there is some role for capital in that sense. Maybe I’m wrong.
Thank you for taking my somewhat tongue in cheek comment so generously though. My humor is not always placed appropriately and doesn’t always come across well, but it sometimes provokes people to respond, and I’m simply trying to learn and keep an open mind, and I appreciate your time and effort in sharing your knowledge.
I’m coming for that toothbrush 😈
It just shows that an ambassador for one topic doesn’t have to be successful for another.
you might be proving the author’s point somewhat.
