1y ago

Indistinguishable!

294 comments

Far right: “while we’re at it we’re going to cut taxes for the ultra rich and corporations, and raise taxes on everyone else. Trickle down economics hasn’t failed as a model, it just needs 75 years to start trickling. And we’re gonna make it harder for people to vote and harder for people to trust elections because that’s our only chance of winning with a garbage platform that does nothing to benefit 90% of you.”
Average republican voter: DURR SOUNDS GOOD TO ME, JUS MAKE SUR U WAVE TH’MURKIN FLAG AND CALL THEM LIBRALS FAGS WHILE YER AT IT

I'd like to take a moment to thank the enlightened centrists in here for tripping over themselves to prove the point. Bravo.
- I imagine the far left would exterminate the lot of them for their political impurity!
- Wow, people aren't actually living walking, walking, strawman characters and they're speaking up about it. eNliGHteNeD cEnTRisT
  
  He said, about the people making the supposed strawman a real boy 😂
  
  lol thank you for your service.
  
  You come off as a moron here
  
  Dude, what's the point? Do you think you can convince a disingenuous memer that the far left isn't the social democrats? He's already painted you as the soyjack so he has won. The pigeon's knocked over the pieces and shit on the board, you can't checkmate that. It's like arguing with a teenager on Discord, you can't beat their collection of 17 second videos designed to make it look like you're dumb without actually saying why.

In fairness, the meme doesn't work all that well in Europe. The "far left" statement is defines centre-left parties here; far left is usually about enforced wealth and income sharing, even if it means imprisoning or mass killings. See Marxist collectivisation efforts, for example.
- I wrote a whole 3 paragraph reply to this, but it crashed and now I'm too lazy to write it again.
  But yes, this. "Everyone getting UBI and universal healthcare" is not far left. Far left is firebombing pharmaceutical companies or forceable seizure of private property to distribute amongst others, or enforced working arrangements to bring about equality.
  What most Americans on Lemmy call "far left", I'd call "basic respect for your fellow man and the compassion to put others before yourself".
  
  We have an Overton window problem here
  
  Which is why it's so crazy that people in America try the enlightened centrist thing. Our far left is center in many other countries.
  
  Tis the bane of my existence that people in the America's tar socialism and communism with the same brush ignoring their own history of market socialist policy creating long periods of stability. That McCarthism is one hell of a drug and they overdosing.
  
  There are plenty of far left people on here, if violent rhetoric is a key indicator. E.g., run into more than a handful of people that clearly assume most white people are white devils that genocide people of color in their spare time and that need to die, who also use the language of social leftism when they’re not spewing hate.
  Besides the Overton Window shifting to the right in the US, another problem is defining what is “left”. Does left mean open borders, or does it mean not using migrants as political pawns? Does left mean enforcing secularism in the public sphere, or does it mean bending over backwards with tolerance toward exclusivist minority religious groups who would not return the favor if they gained power? (Does it mean I have to learn how to uptalk and entirely repress myself to the point where I don’t even know what “me” is anymore and only a select few can take me seriously?)
  
  People who push UBI dont understand how economy and incentives work. Here in our EU country, we have universal healthcare and there is also some sort of UBI for a period of time if you were working previously, but lost your job or something. And its definitely not the saving grace people from US picturing it to be...
  The public healtcare here is in rumbles and pre-colapse, you either wait for some essential treatments up to a week or you will pay up and go to a private ambulance anyway... The treatment you get are also basically on the bare necessary level. Most hospitals are buildings from soviet era, with minimal up-keeping and modernization... Many of those workers who work in state hospitals are under payed and overworked, so many of the younger ones just get up and go somewhere abroad where they are payed better for the same job. We have the most doctors post retirement age (65) still working (probably oldest average age in the whole world), due to qualified workers shortage, as they mostly leave. And thats the not so nice real picture, of what many of you from US want to implement.
  Sure, first it will be nice and great to have free health care, but basically in every country they have it, the service quality slowly getting worse over the decades, as there is no incentive to modernize those hospitals that much, when its free after all, and you pay for it anyway, only that you pay for it with your taxes, so even the option to vote/choose with your wallet is removed from you...
- When I saw any self-described leftist call for that level of violence, my gut instinct was that they're a right wing neo-Nazi type trying to make leftists look bad.
  I'm starting to really dislike the "left vs right" paradigm, because it's so not enough to describe the variety of positions people hold, and it tends to lead into "us vs them" ways of thinking that are characteristic of fascism anyway.
- About which centre-left parties in which countries are you thinking?
  
  Here in Ireland, the Social Democrats. I'd throw Sinn Féin into the same category, but they are more populists than a genuine centre left party. SocDems in other countries in general tend to be the centre-left party that fits the "we want to provide for everyone's basic needs" definition.
- So the difference between center left and far left is the approach, not the goal?
  
  I'm no political scientist, but I think you are somewhat correct there. The end goal seems to be the old phrase, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." The approach differs, though: cenrte-left is focusing on the later part of the sentence, so each according to his needs. Far-left focuses on the first part, from each according to his ability.
  In practice, this translated to "We'll force to work your arse off, and we'll make it illegal for you to keep any merit-based reward for your labour" in the former Eastern Bloc countries. I'm familiar with this, as I grew up in one of those countries. It was illegal to be unemployed, and if you were skilled in any way, you could bet that you'd work long hours for miserable pay, because you've had the "ability".

boTh sIdEs aRe tHe SaMe!!!
- Nah, they see the difference. They just view both as equally bad
  Edit: To clarify, I am not defending them. I don't think both sides are equally bad, I'm saying that's what centrists see.
  
  Because smugly choosing the midpoint between a brutal fascist autocracy and greater worker enfranchisement and equity makes more sense than just picking the good option.
  They just view both as equally bad
  They're objectively wrong according to just about any metric you might care to examine.
  
  Exactly. This is why the Centrist camp bootlicks the Fascists every day.

Far left (hexbear): nuke all the western whites
Everyone else: that's fash lol
Far left (hexbear): that's literally transphobic meltdown
- Yeah that's exactly what they're saying, it's not just you wanting to make your point easier to make
  
  What is my point?
  Nuclear genocide based on color and location is pretty fascist. Care to refute?
- What is hexbear? I see it referenced here a lot.
  
  From what I gleaned lazily back then, they were a bunch of tankies ruining it for everyone so they were defederated (?)
  Edit- "tankies" meaning "far far far left...keep going...a little bit more...oh, dammit you found some soviet tanks didnt you?)
- You sound like you argue in good faith
  
  tankies are fascist tho.
  
  In YeetPics's defense, I've yet to meet a Hexbear user who does 🤷‍♂️
  
  You sound like you make sarcastic comments about people arguing in good faith
- Aren't hexbear actual far right trolls roleplaying as what they believe leftists to be like, though..?
  
  The magic is you can't tell the difference between honest tankies and lying fascists.
- This is just cringe strawman bullshit mixed eith your wierd hate bones for hexbear
  
  Did you just shame my boner for being rock hard?

Far left: save people, kill companies
Far right: save companies, kill people
Centrist: someone kill people, someone kill companies
- "Wow, both sides are killers."
- "Left wing extremist; right wing extremist - I see no difference.", "For sure there is one", says the kangaroo, "left extremists burn cars, right extremists burn foreigners. And this makes the left extremists worse, because the car could belong to me. Foreigners, on the other hand, I don't own any"
  German comedian Marc Uwe Kling in "the Kangaroo Chronicles"
- Something something Overton doorframe or something like that
  
  The broken Overton window fallacy, I believe it's called.
- Simpsons NPCs cheering

I'm a centrist who hates extremists on both sides. I'm also not a transphobe like this comic would lead you to believe.
I usually end up voting democrat because the republicans are more extremist, but democrats definitely aren't solely about getting everyone's needs met. I've seen democrats want to smash unions, leverage insider trading solely for their own benefit, and introduce draconian drug laws.
This bad tweet creates a straw man out of every group. It's a great example of why everyone should look at issues individually and not play politics like it's some stupid sports game where your team is always right and the other team is always wrong. This style of thinking is why Republicans vote down every Democratic idea simply because "they're on the other team". It's a really low IQ take.
- I’m a centrist who hates extremists on both sides.
  I'm just looking for an explanation of what constitute "extremes". Because I get mailers from right-wing organizers warning me of transgender book clubs and full defunding of the police happening next election cycle if I don't immediately throw my support behind the local GOP. But the folks on the far-left in my home town of Houston are only "radical" in the sense that they keep handing out food to homeless people via "Food Not Bombs" despite the city sticking volunteers with $2000 ordinance violations for being an illegal food vendor.
  This bad tweet creates a straw man out of every group.
  Get off Twitter. Touch grass. Go down to your actual in-person city council events and find out what the people on each end of the political spectrum are discussing right now.
  Again, coming back to my home town of Houston, the HISD school board has been fully co-opted by the state government. One of the big issues in local politics right now is how to respond. Right-wing municipal leaders are running cover for the governor's decision and promoting judges/legislators in line with the state takeover. They're defending moves to cut in-school food programs, fire rebellious teachers, and spend enormous amounts of money converting libraries into detention facilities for "low-performing" students. The liberals and centrists are dithering and throwing up their hands, insistent that they have no power to do anything in the face of the state's takeover. Meanwhile, the Far Left folks are attempting to organize teachers and parents into an effective political opposition, to stage protests and walk-outs when administrators abuse their authority, and to formulate community education guidelines in line with a properly egalitarian system.
  These are my "Far Right" / "Centrist" / "Far Left" options. Not randos with goofy profile pictures on some social media site, pretending to be Chad Right or Woke Left. But a bunch of retirees down at the public library handing out sandwiches versus the cops hassling them and shutting down their operation. Or the teachers trying to get class sizes down under 30 kids per classroom and ending the obnoxious Pearson-sponsored testing regimes versus some state-appointed administrators who have all come directly from the real estate sector and only care about making the school district lucrative to local business interests.
  The folks in the middle - the ones with actual authority, anyway - are consistently do-nothings, more focused on self-promotion than any kind of policy goals and unwilling to stick their necks out on anything even remotely controversial for fear of a social backlash.
  
  I’m just looking for an explanation of what constitute “extremes”.
  Centrist here. Far right is pretty easy and you've identified them. Far left can be seen in communities such as FuckCars. Another would be either recommendations for the government to build housing for everyone in city centers, taking over active (or inactive) real estate on the scale of millions. Elimination of all carbon-based fuels. Shuttering of the entire military. Since I'm a centrist I will tell you that those are fine ideals, just as educing regulations to the bare minimum of recommendations and balancing the national budget are excellent goals. None of them are practical because the leftist ones are either unworkable financially or would throw the economy into a black hole and the right ones are unworkable because there are way to many opportunistic motherfuckers out there that would poison their own mother to make an extra dollar or would throw the economy into a black hole.
  I'm not in politics because I can't fucking afford to be. I would likely be a shoo-in for the local council. I was approached by the mayor and an existing councilman to do so. In researching it, I'd be looking at 500-700 hours a year of unpaid time. My neighbor is on the School Board. That's about 3/4 of the hours of Town Council, but it's a brutal cage match every meeting. For no reimbursement. Even at the state level, representatives are paid about $17k/yr and offers no benefits. That's less than 1/3 of what I'm paying to send my kid to college. Heck, my health insurance - with a $13k deductible - is $21k per year. And I'm just not corrupt enough to use a position like that to grift money on the side.
  do-nothings, more focused on self-promotion than any kind of policy goal
  Yeah, those aren't centrists. Those are narcissist's who don't otherwise have an extreme political (usually religious) agenda. A lack of political or societal ideals is not the same as a having centrist or moderate set of ideals.
- "Get everyone's needs met" is a core leftist idea, so what you've actually argued is that Democrats aren't particularly left wing.
  I don't like saying they're conservative, either. That's a little too simplistic. Democrats tend to umbrella over a lot of different groups. But the core group isn't particularly leftist.
- USA democratic are right wingers in Europe, lol
- 6 persons so far think it should be a sports game.

That stance isn't really the 'far' left, the 'far' left doesn't even have have a significant voice in US politics currently.
- Yeah they do bro Bernie almost won bro The green party has a chance bro

That is absolutely not what the far left wants, the US is just that far right that reasonable outcomes are considered far left.
- Yeah. That's like center-left in reasonable countries.
  
  Yeah. I don't know if the meme originates from the US, but it seems so. Where I'm from, centrist and much of the right would consider this "far-left" view an obvious norm.
  When same-sex marriage was voted in, all but one state voted over 60% Yes (some over 70%), despite much of the nation having voted in a right-wing government just two months earlier.
  The meme's "far-left" view is a start, but it's not a 21st century far-left.

Russian agitprop designed to separate us and cause us to fight.
Don't fall for it.
- Here's a fun fact, a large part of the far right movement in the world is due to years and years of unchecked Russian propaganda coupled with the modern social media platforms, in fact Russia has embraced this to the fullest and is running propaganda in Africa/Latin America and assisting human traffickers in an attempt to generate MORE refugees.
  just look at some of the trends, the American southern border has more people than ever trying to get across in boarder cities, and the amount of refugees crossing the Mediterranean has jumped by over 200% in recent months.
  Now, there is plenty to criticize in the handling of the refugees by the EU and the US.
  But it doesn't change the fact that Russia is activly doing this in an attempt to assist the far-right pushes in the western world.
- Nope this is 100% centrist thinking. You can see me arguing with these morons.
  
  You've been baited. Put your energy into something that will produce results.

That's not centrists

Im starting to think it was a mistake comming to lemmy thinking there was gonna be a decent discucion, the tankies where probably a sign of it i guess, theres no way most of them arent edgy tenagers or ccp shills, the same goes for you guys that defend political parties (diference being democrat and republican shills). They dont have your best interests in mind and whant you figthing over their bs culture wars so that you dont pay attention to the real corrupt shit that benefits no one but themselves and their rich friends.
And no, there isnt a middle point between genocide and not genocide and you know that that isnt what is being argued by people that disagree with you (at least not in good faith admidetly). This feels more like lashing out against anyone that disagrees with your viewpoints, no matter if they are the other team or not even playing in any of them, or maybe its an attempt to group anyone that disagrees with some of your viewpoints (or at least those that are percieved as absolute truth by the "left" that other people question in good faith) into the other team that you dont like so that you justify lashing out aginst them.
I dont like that, username checks out.
- This place is filled with children. It's join the hivemind or be downvoted into oblivion.
  Nuance is not a feature of Lemmy.
  
  Fucking rich for the person who said
  No one with a penis is going to use the same bathroom or changing room as my daughter.
  To accuse others of lacking nuance.

Litterary the same thing

Far left also fond of purges.
- Tolerance cannot flourish without intolerance of the intolerant
  IE: tolerance is a two way fucking street and we will never tolerate Nazis nor their sympathizers. A good Nazi is a dead one
  
  Yes, that part is reasonable.
- They only want to purge people whose beliefs are different, which is actually a good thing.
  
  History tells a different story. And I'm very much left-wing.

Just tankie takes.
- what part of this is tankie? do you see other lefties use tankie as an insult towards a group you see as being on the left and assume that it applies to all people on the left?

Ok, everybody. Let's take a deep breath, calm down a little, and talk about how almost all kiddie fuckers are white male heterosexual youth pastors or sports coaches.

That's the far left as defined by the far right. The actual far left likes to pretend that Stalin did nothing wrong and that nothing happened in Tienanmen Square.

Far left: we're gonna exterminate everyone who's not us.
FIFY

- I can't tell which direction this is posted from, but if you take the bird's perspective (how you generally refer to limbs: the owner's perspective) the top one is the left wing.
  
  Propaganda is not viewed by the creator, it's viewed by the viewer. Which means the upper wing is the right wing.
- Boy, you are ALL OVER this thread crying and sething. Go outside and touch grass, or go back to reddit, please.
  
  I am not crying my friend. I am responding to the shitload of hate comments I get for telling the truth.

Far left: „Capital is the root of evil. Follow me, I know the true way!”
Far right: „Capital is the root of all prosperity. Follow me, I know the true way!”
People that care to learn from mistakes of others: „Yeah no, we learned the price of following those claiming to know the true way. Over and over again.”
- People that care to learn from mistakes of others: „Yeah no, we learned the price of following those claiming to know the true way. Over and over again.”
  Ah, yes, the "You think I'm going to fall for people claiming to have a solution? Everyone knows the status quo is the best things will ever be." Party.
  People who bring change generally talk about it. Sorry if smug stagnant cynicism doesn't really fit in there.
- Yeah no, we learned the price of following those claiming to know the true way.
  So we're just gonna follow the capitalists again. And again. And again.
- If this post was a person

You should look into the German "Rote Armee Fraction", and review if what you view as the extreme left is really that far left.
- Guess what: sharing goals with extremists doesn't mean that you approve of the methods that make them extremists. To equate everything far left of neoliberalism with groups like the RAF is as reductive and frankly bigoted as equating all Muslims with isis or al quaeda.
  
  True, but that argument can be made both ways. I was simply trying to point out that the definition of far left in the meme doesn't compute with the memories from my youth.
- Hilariously, the far right paramilitary organizations in both Germany and America are just as bad as the RAF was, only difference is that they were far right, and the police didn't care about them as much...
- That's kinda like saying that one should look into the Bolsheviks, if someone expresses an interest in Communism. Sure the Bolsheviks managed to take over the USSR, but they almost didn't, and they wouldn't have been thrown in the gulag, had the Menchaviks gotten in power. Stalin was so very harmful to the revolution, that even Lenin said directly, "Don't let Stalin take over."
  Fucking Wilson ruined everything.

Is your socialist country gonna be democratic? If so, what about the people that will vote for the capatalist party? What If the capatalist party gains popular support? Will socialism just step aside?
- Is your capitalist country gonna be democratic? If so, what about the people that will vote for the socialist party? What If the socialist party gains popular support? Will capitalism just step aside?
  
  What If the socialist party gains popular support? Will capitalism just step aside?
  80% of South America: hahahahaha coups go brrrrrrrr
  
  Just do it like the Romans, Only the riche really have the right to vote
- You say that like capitalists let countries become socialist when the people vote for it.
  Hint: they don't
- "Is your egalitarian country gonna be democratic? If so, what about people that will vote for the nazi party? What if the nazi party gains popular support? Will egalitarians just step aside?"
- Theoretically you can still have far left with capitalism you know, it just needs the heavy regulation it never gets
  
  Tf?
  Capitalism is incompatible with the far left which is about abolishing hierarchy and living in a stateless classless moneyless society.

Left right scale is for dummies
- Only if you're the kind of dummy that thinks tankies are left wing rather than authoritarian state capitalists.
  
  That's a contradiction, I just said I don't categorize any of them as "left" or "right", so how could that apply?
- Sorry you were downvoted, political viewpoints are indeed way more nuanced that a single axis (even if I do use the binary terms upon it myself as useful shorthand occasionally)
  
  Guess that's what I get for phrasing it like that.
  Absolute fact though, "left" to "right" is complete pseudoscience, people want to try to cram the entire subject of how humans reason out ideologies onto a single scale. It makes absolutely zero sense. Most people don't have a single thing it measures in mind, and even if they do, it's not the same thing as if you go and talk to someone else. It has more to do with how we've been corralled into polar group identities and fed division by politicians and media than anything to do with how ideologies actually work.
  You can even see it in this thread. Some people are going with the "horseshoe" explanation ("oh, both extremes are authoritarian") and some people say that the "left" "extreme" is completely anti-authoritarian. You people can't even agree on what the scale measures in the first place, so why are you using it? "Well, the ideologies on the left side are leftist, while the ideologies on the right side are rightist."
- I prefer a horse shoe
  
  yes and the open part are the loons and tinfoil hatters
  
  Yep, after interacting with tankies you realise how much more sense it makes
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory

The truth is somewhere in the middle.
- Golden Mean Fallacy

You know who's a far-left? Russia. They totally got their basic needs covered.
- You mean the nationalist country which invades its neighbours under false pretenses while being ruled by an oligarchic class?
  Sure, what a great example of left wing policy m8.
- I think you missed a few newspapers on 26/12/1991
  
  The USSR wasn't far-left, either. It was Communist in name-only. A country led by an authoritarian tyrant isn't communist unless you warp the definitions from Marx and other theorists so far that they're unrecognizable. But the capitalist countries loved that Communism became synonymous with authoritarianism: made it easier to paint all those power-grabbing countries with the same brush while also presenting left-wing organizing as the enemy.
- Lmfao, wtf? You're not being serious, are you?
- Russian is not far left lol just dumb. Even the Soviet union was capitalism hiding behind a title

That's pretty american view point. how about:
Leftest: friends with Pootin and WinniePooh, anti nuclear, anti European Union Left: lesser friend with Pootin, anti nuclear, fine with EU Center: not friend with dictatorships, pro EU, pro nuclear Righter: friends with Pootin, anti EU Nazi : anti EU, friends with Pootin, amd well, nazi
- Why do people think China is communist, despite all the evidence that is not. China has the fastest growing billionaire and millionaire class in the world. They are infected with the same issue we have. People in power stockpiling wealth and preventing true equality even tho we have enough resources and understand to move past things like money and power.
- P. S for the offended left : i took example of Mélenchon here

294 comments