It's a word trying to describe the left of a political spectrum as an -ism, which is stupid. It'd be like saying liberals (who are on the right of the political spectrum for you Americans) are the same as fascists because their rightists.

[–] AaronMaria@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Categorizing something doesn't mean all subcategories are the same. While you can argue that it's overgeneralizing that would be a different argument. Leftist is used outside of American Politics. I'm not American btw.

[–] tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Let me preface with the fact I somewhat agree and I in no way doubt your knowledge about politics, this comment is mostly for other people that might read this.

But anyway, it's used in an inaccurate way a lot of the time in the US but right vs left have been pretty useful terms for the concepts of fluid decentralized, bottom-up political structures versus rigid top-down hierarchical structures. Like, if someone says a place is left vs right, it is simplistic but there are certain differences that are important to distinguish.

The terms "left" and "right" first appeared during the French Revolution of 1789 when members of the National Assembly divided into supporters of the Ancien Regime to the president's right and supporters of the revolution to his left.[6][7][8] One deputy, the Baron de Gauville, explained: "We began to recognize each other: those who were loyal to religion and the king took up positions to the right of the chair so as to avoid the shouts, oaths, and indecencies that enjoyed free rein in the opposing camp".[9][10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_political_spectrum

The world isn't black and white, but if there is a potential for political revolution in a given society, there are usually key issues that you are able to somewhat differentiate two camps into, with smaller numbers of supporters falling towards the middle. At different times there are more moderates than the wings of the spectrum so it would be less appropriate to use the terms, but in US politics there are many issues that are maybe irreconcilable as it stands.