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.
this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2025
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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.
“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
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?
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.
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.
Yes.
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.
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.
The Marxists, safely behind a wall, convinced the Undecideds to give the gun to the Fascists.
When you definitely understand marxism
This person is ideologically opposed to doing even the most cursory research on marxism and dialectical materialism but thinks they have authority to speak on it, throughout this thread.
No wonder they think half of lemmy is "overrun with CCP trolls and bots", they are completely uncurious and, in fact, hostile when it comes to information that contradicts their worldview.
It's especially funny of them to throw around the word "propagandist" like that's not precisely what they are doing.
Meme-maker probably didn’t vote.
Yeah, Kamala lost because of that one vote. It's all op's fault.
No shit, they're a chinese propogandist.
If they do have US Citizenship they probably voted for Trump.
Lemmy.world is such a weird place, man. I also like how in the propaganda version, LW is like this crazy liberal place where you will get banned for saying what based on this comment and voting is clearly the majority view.
So this story actually happened, in 1932 Germany. No one had the gun at the beginning. The liberal said to the Marxist, “Holy shit that guy is really dangerous, let’s stop him.” The Marxist said “FUCK YOU YOU’RE REALLY DANGEROUS” and started swinging his fists in every direction. The liberal was still trying to talk with the establishment conservative, to gang up on the fascist, while the Marxist was still windmilling to no particular purpose, when the fascist got the gun. The first one he shot, of course, was the Marxist. The anarchist stood in the corner, facing away from the room, and said that turning around would be giving consent to what was going on, and so he refused to do it.
The Marxist, wounded, left the room, what was left of him, and found the communist room. When he got there, the communists shot him, and killed him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Germany and search for “KPD leaders purged by Stalin”
The liberal said to the Marxist, “Holy shit that guy is really dangerous, let’s stop him.”
The liberal in question had spent the last decade handing military equipment to the freikorps to massacre communists before staffing the cabinet with fascists and making Hitler chancellor.
The liberal in question had spent the last decade handing military equipment to the brownshirts to massacre communists
Citation?
They also hadn't been massacring, that I know of, it was street fighting, almost all non-fatal. You can show me if I'm wrong, though, that's just my impression.
before staffing the cabinet with fascists
and making Hitler chancellor
Incorrect. The conservatives did both of those things. The liberals had gotten castrated by the refusal of the KDP to work with them in any respect, and so they couldn't really do anything against either the KDP or the fascists, and so the left went down as did the liberals as did the rest of the establishment, without any unified front against the fascists. But the liberals had tried very explicitly to ally with the KDP against the fascists, and the KDP refused, calling the social democrats "the main enemy."
I am sure there is some portion of blame to go to the SDP as well. Pointing fingers after a catastrophe is a time-honored tradition and maybe not a useful one. My point was that in the one real-world example of this that I know of, the Marxists absolutely refused to form a coalition against the fascists, if it meant they would have to work with the liberals, and the fascists were able to win amongst all the leftist infighting. So the particular brand of finger-pointing that exists in OP's meme definitely has a real-world counterexample.
I actually don't think there is a strong enough left in the US for this to be a useful model of what just happened in the recent election here. But it wasn't for lack of trying, by the portion of the supposed far-left that is on Lemmy.
citation
https://annas-archive.org/md5/c483c46aa433ad04d44312e860111d6f
It references descriptions from 1919 where the bodies overwhelmed the city's capacity to store them, and were rotting in the streets, and egbert's use of the freikorps and other right-wing paramilitaries to kill communists (including Rosa)
There was also a massacre of sailors with one survivor I can't seem to find any reference to.
The conservatives did both of those things
Egbert is the one who nominated Hindenburg, who made the actual handover.
the liberals had tried very explicitly to ally with the KDP against the fascists
They held a rally calling for unity, in which they called for everyone to vote for Hindenburg in the name of unity. That is not an attempt at unity, that is an attempt to make themselves seem like reasonable moderates.
Naturally the KDP ran on the slogan "A vote for Hindenburg is a vote for Hitler is a vote for war"
Wait: So after the KDP tried to do a violent revolution against the fragile post-first-revolution government of 1919, including explicitly rejecting the idea of holding elections because they might not go the KDP’s way, they were still so butthurt about the fashion in which the rest of the government had defended itself against getting shot and overthrown, that a generation later they still couldn’t stomach the idea of getting together with the SDP even to ally against literal Hitler. Even though the SDP by that point didn’t give a shit about their own attempted overthrow anymore, and just didn’t want the Nazis. And in your mind, that’s all the SDP’s fault for not just getting shot or exiled, like the KDP had in mind in 1919.
Like I said: The real life example is very different than the meme. The Marxist tried to shoot the liberal 13 years before, and was still so upset about the shooting-back that they got, and so, the windmilling and FUCK YOU. Great. Sounds like a fun bunch to interact with. Oh, and also, when they finally DID get in charge of things in the East, after the war, it was a fucking nightmare that lasted for decades. Which was part of the SDP’s objection to it in the first place. Great stuff.
Most people on LW that are from the US do not know what liberals are. They are often referring to "US libs" which, in most cases, say and do things that are anti-liberal or anti-libertarian. While this is apparent to most, to these Lemmings it is not due to the saturation of US media, social or otherwise.
In truth, a liberal supporting a fascist is as "classic lib move" as the anarchist fighting for an absolute monarchy. By definition, these things are impossible. So the joke is being told wrong due to being misinformed or to spread more of it.
The poster isn't from world, but yeah theres a constant external pressure from tankies. Its even worse on instances that didnt defederate from Hexbear.
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