A Marxist is stuck in a room with a liberal, a fascist, and an anarchist. The Marxist has one gun and two bullets. What does the Marxist do? Shoot the liberal and the anarchist.
(Based off actual historical events.)
A leftist is stuck in a room with another leftist and a fascist.
The leftist has one gun and two bullets, and they must be used.
What does the leftist do?
Shoot the other leftist twice.
Of course they started with 6 bullets but the liberal and the fascist liked to pass the gun around and take pot shots at the marxist every so often so the marxist couldn’t ever influence or overpower them. This is just the moment the liberal realized there were only two bullets left.
Fuck that shit answer. I’d shoot myself twice.
Are you sure? Bullets move very quickly and are quite hard. Might hurt.
If the Marxist is Russian, I’m pretty confident I’d be able to shoot myself twice in the head in that room.
My political positions are somewhere on the left outskirts of Social Democracy, so I’ve no love for liberals. That said, when I look at the US, it was not the liberals that just gave a fascist not only a gun but an entire army.
When is it do you believe the Marxists and Anarchists were in power? When do you believe they held the gun to be able to give it away?
Punch up, not down.
To put it in another reference frame. When a video game fails who’s fault is it? The millions of consumers? Or the corpo overlords? When democrats fail, is it the fault of millions of voters? Or the fault of corpo overlords? When something fails it is always the responsibility of those in power to affect the most change. Except, when it comes to politics, then we forget that it’s those with power that hold responsiblity.
I hate predatory micro transactions and day 1 dlc. I don’t blame the people that boycotted them for the prevelence of mtx? I blame the people that demand they be sold first, then I blame the people that sell them, then I blame the people that bought them. It’s not the fault of the people that didn’t buy them. Except in politics for some reason.
Sorry, I just got recommended a “games are shit now corpos took over, it’s the leftist’s fault games are bad”. The misattribution of blame from ‘capital interests’ to ‘leftists’ is so pervasive even the “I’m left of center” crowd are doing it. I didn’t engage there but still need the catharsis
Is it a US liberal, or a “rest of the world” liberal (which typically means the opposite)?
Nah, the fascist and marxist work together to kill everyone else
Removed by mod
“Do you know why people don’t like liberals? Because they lose. If liberals are so fucking smart, how come they lose so god damn always?” - Will MacAvoy, Newsroom
Reminds me of a joke on a Bright Eyes song.
“There’s a Communist and an Anarchist in a car who’s driving? The cop.”
Oooh. What song? The only thing I have in my list from Bright Eyes is At The Very Bottom of Everything.
I have no idea. I just remember it in the intro of a song. Sorry to tease you lol.
It’s not a joke if it’s true
It’s not true, though. The Marxists, safely behind a wall, convinced the undecideds to give the gun to the Fascist.
No they didn’t, what a boring take divorced from reality.
And then blame the Party for not providing more attractive choices.
Our choices were Fascism or Corporatism. Why wouldn’t we blame the parties?
I blame the Democratic party as much as anybody else for not being progressive enough, but nobody can blame a party for their own decision not to vote.
Are you one of the people who consider voting third party to be tantamount to not voting?
I think he’s referring to people who didn’t vote because “both sides are bad”
Nah, those are the far-left authoritarians AKA tankies
You don’t have to be authoritarian to think Dems shit the bed.
I mean
Consequentially saying the dems are shit resulted in authoritarianism
So yeah
But what that user was saying is that 90% of the posts on Lemmy about Dems shitting beds are made by Tankies who unapologetically support Trump and Putin.
Consequentially saying the dems are shit resulted in authoritarianism
More like, the dems being shit resulted in authoritarianism. Republicans fight hard to implement fascism, democrats fight hard to keep the status quo, even as it grows more fascist.
What’s a liberal according to Lemmy? Economically liberal and socially liberal? Social democrat? Obama or Bernie?
It kind of has a double meaning. One side is someone who believes in like democracy, freedom, human rights, and the other side is someone who believes in private property. For historical reasons, the two tendencies are like joined together on most things, but there are differences.
A lot of leftists don’t like liberals because they defend private property and capitalism, but a lot of liberals see themselves as leftists because of those progressive values.
Whether or not a liberal is left wing very much depends on the liberal. Every socialist was once a liberal, whether they were political or not. Conservatives are a kind of liberal, but with the progressive parts removed so it only defends private property.
capitalism is really good at like hiding away its injustice behind contracts and laws, a socialist would see those laws as unjust and want to do radical reforms up to and including overthrow of the ruling billionaires. a liberal might not see the injustice, or if they do, tend to want to stick to courts and reforms because it does contain elements of fairness and justice. liberal justice is more fair than feudal justice, but less than what many socialists would like.
The meme is a reference to the idea that social democracy, liberalism and fascism are all different aspects of capitalism.
I would use the terms as they mean depending on the context of the conversation and who the audience is. If I know that my audience is American and probably less knowing of the original meaning of the terms, I would use the words liberal and conservative as they mean in American mainstream sense. But if I know that the audience is knowledgeable enough to know what the word liberal means in the classical sense, I would use the term in such a way.
If you see anti-liberal sentiment that means “capitalism” which means “western world power” because some parts of Lemmy is overrun with CCP trolls and bots.
The actual definition of Liberal is meaningless here, but worth noting it means “advocate of equality and personal rights and freedoms”.
The root of the word liberal is liber which means to make free. Classical liberalism is about making people free. To liberate.
Neoliberalism to the contrary is a far right ideology brought to mainstream politics in the US by Ronald Reagan and in the UK by Margaret Thatcher. Neoliberalism differs greatly from classical liberalism because its about freeing capital not people. Neoliberalism was embraced by the most right wing elements of the democratic party in the early 90’s by Bill Clinton and many others like Nancy Pelocy who restructured the party to reflect the new demand to serve capital over people.
This new desire to serve capital like the republicans who came before them was a challenge the the breadbasket the Republicans relied heavily upon. Needing to differentiate themselves the republicans created a new ideology of neoconservativism. The was led by republicans like Newt Gingrich.The republicans still needed to serve capital but also needed to differentiate themselves further from the democrat embracement of neoliberalism. This is the birth of their right moving ever right courting the never ending supply of batshit crazy.
As the right moved ever right the democrats stayed lock step behind them moving ever to the right. This was the demise of our democracy and led us directly into the fascism we face today.
While classical liberalism and neoliberalism share the root word liber, they are very different in their end goal and overall ideology. This is an important distinction that should not be ignored, overlooked or forgotten.
So I guess OP means neo-liberal rather than liberal in general.
Is it correct to say that neo-liberal is economically liberal but not socially liberal?
I see American conservatives tend to also use “liberal” to qualify their opponents, but in this case it seems to attack the social liberal specifically (typically about gender, sexuality and origin).
Overall, this single term seems to have a different meaning depending on the political section so it’s hard to understand on such an out of context statement, I wish people would use more precise periphrases.Is it correct to say that neo-liberal is economically liberal but not socially liberal?
Yes that would be fair. Neoliberalism is about freeing capital.
Overall, this single term seems to have a different meaning depending on the political section so it’s hard to understand on such an out of context statement, I wish people would use more precise periphrases.
There is a certain amount of historical ignorance involved in this, I once fell into this category. There is also people taking the root word libre in any context to lump everyone into one category as the US conservatives do and some on the left seem to do this as well.
I don’t agree with people on the left or right besmirching or confusing classical liberalism or social liberalism with neoliberalism. All three are different. I fall far more in the camp of social liberalism which is similar to classical liberalism but with more emphasis on the social contract and the thought that governance should play a role in that social contract for its citizenry. My post above left out social liberalism for brevity as I find the two to be very similar.
I would advise never taking anyone on any social platforms definitions for just about anything. Even mine. There is dictionaries and encyclopedia’s for just this purpose, words have definitions often with interesting histories. Below are some links that will give you a far better understanding of the differences and their histories.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
I’m just curious. How long would you consider a reasonably quick read expressed in hours?
Depends on how quickly you have to read. It’s not a very dense book because like half of it is restating history and context you can just skim by if you’re already familiar with the time period, and it uses very accessible language.
Yeah that’s why I’m curious. I read at about 350WPM so what I consider a fast read may be slow for some.
It also depends on the density of the text. I’ve been struggling through Imperialism by Lenin for like a month.
Sorry, I literally don’t have an answer, I have never timed how long it takes to read something. All I can say is how quick it feels to read something.
So rich people? 18th century bourgeois were probably quite liberal but I bet a lot of current bourgeois are more conservative than liberal, so it’s hard to understand.
Yes.
I’m saving this one. Too on the nose.
“Christo-fascists are coming!”
They’re already here.
“They’re rounding up brown people and LGBT will be next!”
Been saying concentration camps and trains are inbound for years now.
“Give up your guns!”
Perhaps liberals should take a WWII history class?
“But they’ll kill you if you defend yourself!”
Yes, that often happens when fighting fascists.
People don’t consider that there are worse things than going out in a gun battle. Much much worse.
More like spot themselves in the foot and drop the gun at the fascist’s feet.
Anarchist has his own, and due to his knowledge of history he kills the other three before the marxist can attempt to talk him into teaming up against the fascist then turn around and stab him in the back while bickering with the liberal.
