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according to @Custoslibera’s post
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this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2024
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American Liberals are a different thing from those who subscribe to (non-American) liberal ideology.
Democrats have a really low bar to score. "Not Trump" is shockingly low. Leftists are in agreement, "not Trump" is better than "Trump".
I really don't think the democrats need to do much at all to convince the left, besides remind everyone how fucked it was four years ago.
I think it's more important to prevent people migrating to the right (as we see with GenZ Andrew Tate fans), and pull in as many moderate right-wingers as possible.
It seems impossible at first glace, but I've seen viseos of republicans openly trying to convince their peers that Trump deceived them. It gives me a sliver of hope.
Liberals are liberals, no matter the country. Liberalism refers to a Capitalist ideology centered around individual freedom and private property rights, and it originated in the Enlightenment.
Gen Z is more leftist than it is fascist. There's a reactionary rise in fascism as fascism is really just a response to the decay of Capitalism and the rise in Socialism, as the bourgeoisie protects itself violently.
American liberals are not a different thing.
I'm just tired of discussing semantics at this point so I just don't care enough to argue about what Liberal means.
I learned my lesson, I cannot use that word online to express what the definition of Liberal means to me based on the contexts of how it was used academically/philosophically.
GenZ is generally more progressive, but there has been a worrying rise in anti-feminism within GenZ men. The amount may be small in relation, but the fact that it is rising at all is concerning.
Liberal, as it was and always has been used academically and philosophically, refers to Liberalism, an ideology centered around private property rights and individual liberty as core values.
You are using it as a synonym for open-minded and forward thinking, which are certainly good traits, but not exclusive to nor expressive of leftism. Leftism is about worker ownership of the Means of Production, plain and simple.
As for Gen Z, yes, there is a rising reactionary movement just as there is a rising Leftist movement. Socialism is more popular than ever among Gen Z. The fact that fascism is also rising, albeit at a slower pace, among Gen Z is just a symptom of the rising Socialist sympathies. Fascism has always been expressed as a defense against rising Socialist sympathies as the bourgeoisie violently protects itself. People don't just decide to become fascist, nor do they just decide to become Socialist.
History is driven by material conditions, not by people and ideals. Look for root causes.
What's your take on the Andrew Tate bullshit?
Do you think that is in a similar vein as a reactionary fascism?
Personally, I think it's a symptom of the new generations being less connected as a result of our social condition fueled by overuse of technology and social media.
I see the rise of misogyny is how young men are failing to understand that it isn't just them being isolated, the young women are feeling isolated too. It's not that feminism has made women too critical of masculine traits, but rather, young men just don't realise being masculine isn't going to make you a superstar.
Then it comes back to social media. The perception about what it takes to be loved and successful.
It's multifaceted, but similar.
First, again, people are driven by material conditions more than people and ideas.
Following this, we can see that the rise in feminism has resulted in a reactionary response from some subsets of young men. Compounding this issue is Capitalism's continued decline, by which people are further alienated not just from their labor, but from each other. The withering of communal structures and the commoditization and addiction of human contact via social media has additionally pushed young men into struggle.
Some of these young men find misguided hope that they can still succeed in the system and come out on top, delusionally buying into alpha-male bourgeois mythos, and band together.
It's similar to fascism rising in popularity as a response. There's a thesis, an antithesis, and eventually, a synthesis. That's the dialectic at work! Although I think people can take the dialectic too far, in an almost religious manner, it can be helpful to analyze current events.
I think even in a communist society, the failed experiment which is social media would have resulted in a lot of isolation.
Being exposed to a lot of beautiful, charismatic, multi-talented people creates a perception that the one witnessing is not as special.
Even within tighter local communities, I could see how a teenager could form a perspective of their community being below-average in talent and forming resentment.
Of course, it's all speculation, and obviously capitalism plays a role, I'm just not convinced it's as significant as the role social media plays alone.
Social Media exists in its current, harmful form as a consequence of the Capitalist Mode of Production. Capitalism is still the root.
Sure, but I still think it would be harmful regardless, due to the new technology being in its infancy, and people not really being adapted for healthy use of it.
I don't see the older generations having a problem with "communist facebook" but for teens, it'll always be an issue.
Don't you think those companies have incentive to push for things that provoke outrage, and thus engagement? Imho endless political debates are not the expression of democratic feelings. They are just the way they keep you on the platform for ads.
I wasn't considering political bullshit. More about influencers in the teen-sphere.
Liberalism doesn't start with capitalism. This is just bad political science people on the Internet love to repeat. Liberalism revolves around the idea of individual liberty, from which the idea of property rights commonly emerges. Capitalism is arguably a corruption of some subset of these ideals, but is in no way a necessary outcome of individual liberty.
I would add that when the ideas were first conceived, property ownership was a progressive measure, as opposed to the ruling party owning all the lands.
If you take the intent behind the outcome, you get the definition I posted.
You're confusing a few of my points here.
Capitalism is not a necessary outcome of individual liberty, correct! However, liberalism itself was focused on many things, such as private property rights and Capitalism itself. Liberalism is not just individual liberty.
No, Capitalism was not a central tenant of, or unique to liberalism. This is widely cited by people on the Internet but it is simply wrong. Big-C Capitalism is something which has emerged independently in the post feudal world several different times, in several different forms. The central tenant of liberalism was, in fact, the notion that individual liberty is foundational to self determination and participatory government.
The people who push the "liberalism is capitalism" trope are poorly informed leftists who naively conflate all of the evils of modernity with the dominant political mode of the era. While there is definitely a link between two, this messaging is done in an intentionally misleading way.
No, you're again misreading me.
Capitalism is not unique to liberalism, never said it was. Liberalism is, however, a Capitalist ideology. There are many Capitalist ideologies, and liberalism is one of them.
Liberalism does effectively require some framework for private ownership, but that in itself is not a sufficient condition for Capitalism. My issue with what you are saying is the conjecture that you cannot have socialist economic structures alongside liberal political ones, which is the (incorrect) dogma of many online leftist spaces. You can have collective ownership of labor (in various forms), while still owning a house or a suitcase or a jacket, while also being an actualized participant in liberal democracy.
If you're aware of leftist belief, then you should also be familiar with the concept of personal property, and the difference between it and private property. Additionally, you can have a representative democracy based on modern liberal Democracies with a Socialist structure, but you're trying to pretend that liberal democracy is liberalism.
You cannot have Socialist economic structures alongside liberal structures, this is the correct take.