How To Tell If You're A Liberal

The teacher held up a picture of the Lord and asked, "Does anyone know who this is?" The little girl replied, "I do, that's the man that was holding me the night my parents died."

clmaossic thread

You thought Walt Disney was saccharine sweet and terminally cutesy-pie - until it made "Pocahontas."

Wau. Usually strawman viewpoints still represent SOMEONE's actual view SOMEWHERE.

what kind of vocal cords does a human soul have?

― and what, Wednesday, March 28, 2007 6:01 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

soulcal cords

haha i'd forgotten our run of vanguardist retail ads up there

ah, "cultural revolution" was what that yoghurt was called. yikes.

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/02/26/night.light.recall/night.light.cpsc.jpg

Make sure your home has a shining path!

― gff, Wednesday, March 28, 2007 6:20 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

lmaoooooooooooooo

Frank Capra managed to fool just about everyone; even his wife was unsure of his political affiliations. Longtime co-workers who were Democrats assumed he shared their political convictions. Katharine Hepburn, who starred in his 1948 picture "State of the Union," thought him "quite liberal"; others applied the term "radical" to him. And why shouldn't they have, when Variety was calling a sympathetic character in "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" "quasi-communistic" and The Saturday Evening Post was reporting that in the Soviet Union Capra was "hailed as a comrade"? But as Mr. McBride, the author of previous books on Howard Hawks, John Ford and Orson Welles, tells us, Capra was a lifelong Republican who never once voted for Roosevelt. He was an admirer of Franco and Mussolini. In later years, during the McCarthy period, he served as a secret F.B.I. informer.

i don't know about the later years but plenty of old-time progressive republicans from the la follette era disliked roosevelt and thought the new deal was corporatism disguised as reform (the first new deal, at least, was arguably modelled not on old-time progressivism but on wilson's wartime socialism). frankly, reading about the national recovery act (which suspended the sherman anti-trust act and, in william leuchtenburg's words, "created a series of private economic governments" or private trusts run by big corporations), it's easy to see what they meant.

that's not to say that capra didn't grow more right-wing in his later years -- i really don't know. but it's simplistic to think he was an insane reactionary just because he didn't care for roosevelt. politics wasn't that simple.

i don't know why it's shocking, State of the Union is very much fascist

I just remember he didn't like gay people too much in his autobio.

whoa wtf is the story with those insanely creepy religious stories?

where did they come from,who writes them,etc?

is that sort of thing common in america?

i'm far from being a militant atheist but there's something really unnerving about them

Posted this on the Facebook statuses thread...

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/419699_10150768379245744_755180743_12379765_1659794588_n.jpg

This pretty much sums up why there are two types of people in this world who will NEVER understand each other.

As she walked along under the tall elm trees, Diane asked "God" to keep her safe from harm and danger. When she reached the alley, which was a short cut to her house, she decided to take it, however, halfway down the alley she noticed a man standing at the end as though he were waiting for her. She became uneasy and began to pray, asking for "God's" protection. Instantly a comforting feeling of quietness and security wrapped around her, she felt as though someone was walking with her. When she reached the end of the alley, she walked right past the man and arrived home safely. The following day, she read in the newspaper that a young girl had been raped in the same alley, just twenty minutes after she had been there. Feeling overwhelmed by this tragedy and the fact that it could have been her, she began to weep.

Wait, what? God's intervention here was to pass the rape to somebody less religious?

Sucks to be you, heathen.

have the kids these days even heard of michael moore? get with the time ppl

You Know You're A Liberal If... blah blah blah

I can't help but notice that you could choose almost any of these illustrations at random, flip it on its head and claim that it faithfully illustrated how idiotic and irrational "conservatives" are, for example:

You agonize over threats to the social environment (pornography, promiscuity, and family dissolution) but are oblivious to threats to the natural environment (acid rain, toxic waste).

The results of such an exercise would be just as untruthful, unhelpful, smug and narrow-minded. Moreover, the whole thing pointedly excludes any reasoning as to why one might incline to one side of an issue or to another, so the strength of the reasoning can be examined instead of just the author's particular version of the conclusions.

So, who is peddling this stuff and, more importantly, why?

i prefer the cats

Liberalism manifests itself in various ways.

To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one, an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to keep on good terms. The result is that both the organization and the individual are harmed. This is one type of liberalism.

To indulge in irresponsible criticism in private instead of actively putting forward one's suggestions to the organization. To say nothing to people to their faces but to gossip behind their backs, or to say nothing at a meeting but to gossip afterwards. To show no regard at all for the principles of collective life but to follow one's own inclination. This is a second type.

To let things drift if they do not affect one personally; to say as little as possible while knowing perfectly well what is wrong, to be worldly wise and play safe and seek only to avoid blame. This is a third type.

Not to obey orders but to give pride of place to one's own opinions. To demand special consideration from the organization but to reject its discipline. This is a fourth type.

To indulge in personal attacks, pick quarrels, vent personal spite or seek revenge instead of entering into an argument and struggling against incorrect views for the sake of unity or progress or getting the work done properly. This is a fifth type.

To hear incorrect views without rebutting them and even to hear counter-revolutionary remarks without reporting them, but instead to take them calmly as if nothing had happened. This is a sixth type.

To be among the masses and fail to conduct propaganda and agitation or speak at meetings or conduct investigations and inquiries among them, and instead to be indifferent to them and show no concern for their well-being, forgetting that one is a Communist and behaving as if one were an ordinary non-Communist. This is a seventh type.

To see someone harming the interests of the masses and yet not feel indignant, or dissuade or stop him or reason with him, but to allow him to continue. This is an eighth type.

To work half-heartedly without a definite plan or direction; to work perfunctorily and muddle along--"So long as one remains a monk, one goes on tolling the bell." This is a ninth type.

To regard oneself as having rendered great service to the revolution, to pride oneself on being a veteran, to disdain minor assignments while being quite unequal to major tasks, to be slipshod in work and slack in study. This is a tenth type.

To be aware of one's own mistakes and yet make no attempt to correct them, taking a liberal attitude towards oneself. This is an eleventh type.

We could name more. But these eleven are the principal types.

They are all manifestations of liberalism.

lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0Rr_1GJ2pY

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chomsky

Liberalism manifests itself in various ways.

^^ This one is very clearly originated by an organization much enamored of Stalinism.

it's mao

Posted this on the Facebook statuses thread...

A FB friend unironically posted this on Sunday afternoon, whereupon I unironically blocked him.

which means I'm an example of the "fifth type."

Aimless, it's a similar story to the facebook meme thing I posted. But this time it's a warped misconception of liberal values as mapped/perceived by right-wingers. Like for instance the one about tolerance towards everyone except white Christians, it's almost as though whoever came up with that is saying 'well they love Muslims and other suspect types we don't like therefore they hate us' - it's an assumption that one HAS to hate something in order to be human, discounting the act of hate itself of course.

Maybe this is all obvious. I dunno. Each panel misses the point in so many ways. Like, a: I don't really know any stereotypical hippies who are hopelessly devoted to Apple, but if they were, what's the problem? It's not big business in general that liberal people are against, it's big business that grows in an irresponsible way, and as far as I know Apple is nowhere close to Enron in terms of this.

Just depressed to see people I know - people i generally believe to have brains - posting it on fb and going 'lol, so true, look at the hypocritical liberal dreadlock' as if these are the fundamental values of liberalism and not some bullshit cooked up by a Texan pastor in about 10 minutes.

I wanted to say all that on fb but I'm getting wise to spouting off on social networks, so I'm putting it here. I know this is obvious.

ha the apple one is the only one with any real zing

Xpost yeAh alfred, I nearly blocked but put it down to temporary foolishness on the part of a few misguided generally apolitical Englishers

Liberal:

We have got to KILL that attitude. https://t.co/H6jEWacJkW

— Adam Tooze (@adam_tooze) September 13, 2023

Commie:

Capitalism will never fall on its own. It will have to be pushed. The accumulation of capital will never cease. It will have to be stopped. The capitalist class will never willingly surrender its power. It will have to be dispossessed. https://t.co/HbKEtGrjp8

— David Harvey (@profdavidharvey) September 12, 2023

When it comes time to eat the rich, please let me be the first to fill up on that sociopathic POS.

Or I will alternately accept the universe Freaky Friday-ing him into the body of a Walmart greeter.

i'd go with bundled into a car and body dumped in the weeds somewhere

wow he's the same guy who complained about millennials wasting their money on avocado toast

That guy looks exactly like an evil property developer

i don’t think adam tooze is endorsing the gurner quote in that tweet

Jude Law would play him.

(xp) He isn't but that's not the point being made.

https://i.redd.it/apahyb4xzjmx.png

If you look under your bed it's all pinko and red.

I think because Tooze's grandad was a Soviet spy recruiter, the two Toozes followed him vowed to be as milquetoast as possible to restore respectability to the family name!

i don’t think adam tooze is endorsing the gurner quote in that tweet

Tooze is not only unprepared but also unarmed, he is all talk

i don’t think adam tooze is endorsing the gurner quote in that tweet

― flopson, Wednesday, 13 September 2023 bookmarkflaglink

(xp) He isn't but that's not the point being made.

― Monthly Python (Tom D.), Wednesday, 13 September 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Yes, Tooze seems to think he can be talked around. That it's an attitude issue.

if i was being generous to Tooze i might argue he meant "that attitude" in the broader sense rather than specifically Gurner's

but that's irrelevant, it's dumb liberal handwringing either way

Tooze also lacks the appropriate physique to go much beyond words

food politics is a _fascinating_ topic to me

i feel like liberalism kind of leans into outrage a lot. the big difference to me is the liberal attitude is "this is a betrayal of our values" and the red and black are "this is an embodiment of capitalist values".

Maybe you KILL the attitude by killing the person who holds it hehe

Gurner is just saying what 99% of executives already believe and our Federal Reserve has tried to make happen for almost two years now. Quiet part loud, etc..

I say old boy, no true gent of hedge fund management or whatever the fuck untrammelled greed shit you do says the quiet part out loud on a public platform

Maybe you KILL the attitude by killing the person who holds it hehe

While this is true, and obviously Tooze lacks the minerals for such a task, there have to be questions about whether Harvey is any more likely

While this is true, and obviously Tooze lacks the minerals for such a task, there have to be questions about whether Harvey is any more likely

― anvil

of course not, anti-capitalist revolution doesn't hinge on whether or not some 87-year-old white professor kills someone or not. it's not contingent on killing anybody at all. liberals look at phrases like "dispossession of the capitalist class" and automatically impute violence to us, while continuing to ignore the structural violence of the systems they endorse. "eat the rich" is a good slogan, but are any of them even gluten-free? i don't eat gluten.

what's interesting is that tooze is lampshading the violence inherent in the system, if you will... but does he recognize it for what it is?

Probably gonna have to “re-educate” most of the capitalist class, tbf.

Put them to work in a call center.

anti-capitalist revolution doesn't hinge on whether or not some 87-year-old white professor kills someone or not.

I was referring to the other poster who was in two minds about whether it might be best to kill or not. I wouldn't expect Harvey to take part directly, but incitement or stochastic measures could potentially move the needle in a more direct and significant way than words - unless Harvey is talking about taking power via electoral means, which seems unlikely as that would put him in the same camp as Tooze

I'm curious as to what motivated the original post. Lost to time, I expect.

Yes, Tooze seems to think he can be talked around. That it's an attitude issue.

― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 13 September 2023 11:08 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

if i was being generous to Tooze i might argue he meant "that attitude" in the broader sense rather than specifically Gurner's

but that's irrelevant, it's dumb liberal handwringing either way

― School of RAAC (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 13 September 2023 11:16 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i think either both or one of you are having a failure of reading comprehension. he’s clearly saying that gurner’s attitude is the one that needs to be KILLed. i disagree that the implied violence is more liberal (pejorative) than Harvey’s tweet, which is just boilerplate and essentially non sequitir. it’s interesting that tooze is so contemptible to uk left to inspire such an uncharitable misreading; in the context of us politics and economics discourse he’s quite far to the left

What implied violence? It was Gurner who used the phrase "kill that attitude", he's merely using Gurner's own language against him.

it's always enlightening when an arrogant melt prick accuses you of lacking reading comprehension because you don't support the status quo and consider some prof posting milquetoast criticisms of capitalism from his comfy seat a bit of a nob.

imo there are 2 ways to read tooze’s tweet

1. tooze is aghast at the violence of gurner’s phrase. “can you believe he said we have to KILL workers attitude of wanting better pay and working conditions?” highlighting the violence of gurner’ phrasing

2. requoting gurner, but now the attitude in question is gurner’s own. capitalizing KILL evokes the guillotine. “we have to KILL (wink wink) this attitude”

xyz and nv seem to be suggesting a third and fourth alternative

3. tooze is emphatically in agreement with gurner. “yes, we do have to KILL workers’ attitudes!”

4. tooze is in disagreement with gurner, but thinks we just have to talk it over in liberal fashion. “i politely disagree that we have to kill worker’s attitudes, and we will debate this like rational liberal gentlemen”

none of which i see any evidence for, either in the text of the tweet itself or in anything else i’ve ever read by AT. the fact that such an interpretation is even considered makes me realize that uk leftists hate tooze to an extent i had not realized

5. He is ironically repeating what Gurner said, perhaps for emphasis.

it's always enlightening when an arrogant melt prick accuses you of lacking reading comprehension because you don't support the status quo and consider some prof posting milquetoast criticisms of capitalism from his comfy seat a bit of a nob.

― vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Wednesday, 13 September 2023 3:08 PM (thirty-six seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

the fact that perpetually enraged self righteous moron calzino favours #3 in my taxonomy is, imo, evidence against it

5. He is ironically repeating what Gurner said, perhaps for emphasis.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 13 September 2023 3:10 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

thats #1, try and keep up

Not exactly, I don't think he necessarily has to be "aghast."

lol so much convoluted bollox posted in one post over a 7 word tweet, great work.

The criticism isn’t that he agrees with Gurner but that tsk-tsking his words and implying that ghouls like Gurner can be reformed (as a class) is futile and toothless.

You can never make the billionaires better, you can only hope to make them not exist (either as billionaires or people at all, your choice).

3. tooze is emphatically in agreement with gurner. “yes, we do have to KILL workers’ attitudes!”

Are you serious?

Talk about misreadings!

The Labor MP Jerome Laxale wrote the comments were what you’d “associate with a cartoon supervillain, not the ceo of a company in 2023”.

“Mr Gurner should spend more time running his company, instead of using a public forum to regurgitate his dastardly economic theories,” Laxale wrote.

uh oh he's one of those guys:

'I get about 250 different tests of my bloods which will say, ''this month you're deficient in (vitamin) D, your testosterone is up or down''. Then the physios, dieticians, doctors on call set my regime,' he told the Australian Financial Review earlier this year.

'I take about 50 or 60 tablets a day. It's always very specific to my latest results.

'We want you to live to 100 but not just live to 100 – but live to 100 feeling amazing, that's the aim.'

incidentally i’m actually not a huge tooze fan. his book on the economic history of nazi germany is a great read (although it mostly repurposes earlier research by Avraham Barkai and Werner Abelshauer—i don’t really get how one ends up a tenured prof in history at columbia for popularization but it’s not my field) but he’s fallen off hard in the last couple years as he transformed into an up-to-the-minute pundit liveblogging the financial times. going back and rereading his early newsletter posts shows a lack of prescience, short attention span, and bizarre mix of priorities and allegiances. but as I said I’m coming from this seeing him as a part of the broader economics/policy discourse (where he’s left of liberal and MMT/post keynesian adjacent), not familiar with him in uk pol. so why do you guys hate him so much?

3. tooze is emphatically in agreement with gurner. “yes, we do have to KILL workers’ attitudes!”

Are you serious?

― Monthly Python (Tom D.), Wednesday, 13 September 2023 3:16 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

did u read the words around it too or did you just skip to that part?

"incidentally i’m actually not a huge tooze fan. his book on the economic history of nazi germany is a great read"

I'm in agreement with you there

The criticism isn’t that he agrees with Gurner but that tsk-tsking his words and implying that ghouls like Gurner can be reformed (as a class) is futile and toothless.

You can never make the billionaires better, you can only hope to make them not exist (either as billionaires or people at all, your choice).

― papal hotwife (milo z), Wednesday, 13 September 2023 3:16 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

milo a vote for #4. i personally don’t see it

did u read the words around it too or did you just skip to that part?

I did but that part was so stupid it kind of leapt out at me.

Probably gonna have to “re-educate” most of the capitalist class, tbf.

― papal hotwife (milo z)

that's the challenge, isn't it? all forms of authority are ultimately coercive... all of us happen to be under forms of authority that disguise their coercion in a largely effective manner. any alternative way of doing things isn't going to have that same privilege, and so isn't going to be effective.

and part of the coercion is deliberately stoking fear, uncertainty, and doubt about what anti-capitalist governance would _look_ like in practice. portraying those of us who oppose capitalism as taking us on a slippery slope to a repeat of what happened under the khmer rouge.

of course it's a risk. whatever happens isn't ultimately going to be up to me, but yeah, personally, i'm not hugely in favor of violent revolution. if someone else has a gun and i don't, it's real real easy for them to turn that gun against me. plenty of tankies out there, plenty of people pretending to be something they're not trying to attain power for its own sake, power for themselves. tankies are dangerous in proportion to the number of tanks they have access to.

saying the quiet part out loud is a _real problem_, not just for capitalists but for anybody who has power that they want to keep. the liberal myth is that of universality, that we all want the same things, share the same values, are in some sense _all alike_. they see tim gurner as a peer, a fellow human, and they are outraged at his words because they believe he has betrayed _their shared values_. the more direct the ruling classes are in their rule, the fewer people think of themselves as belonging to the _same group_ as the ruling elite.

for a long time i thought of myself as being an "ordinary person", meaning a white cishet man. i lived in indiana and it was ok. i was ok with it. then november 2016 happened and i lost my shit. those of y'all who were here then might remember that, i completely lost my shit. the whole foundation of my reality was based on not saying the quiet part out loud, and now that was gone. suddenly i stopped _wanting_ to belong to the same group as them. suddenly there was nothing i feared more than being _like_ them.

well. i guess i'm not much like them. we don't have much to talk about, people like me and people like them.

you see some trans liberals around. not a lot. usually it's people newer to transition.

if an american pundit quote tweeted a screenshot with the infamous nyt Tom Cotton op-ed with “we have to KILL protestors” where it was clear that the implication was that the pundit was “ironically repeating the phrase for emphasis” (as jimbeaux put it), would you conclude that they were implying that republican senators can be reformed as a class? it seems like a stretch to me

I did but that part was so stupid it kind of leapt out at me.

― Monthly Python (Tom D.), Wednesday, 13 September 2023 3:29 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

if it still isn’t clear i was attributing positions 3 and 4 to milo and/or xyz, i personally think it’s 1 or 2 and that those are misreadings

The fact that you thought 3 was a possibility shows the extremely low opinion you obviously hold of certain fellow ILXors - something that, dare I say, has been demonstrated itt - or maybe just of the *spit* UK Left in general.

ok, i gotta split, wading through all of this detailed quote-parsing is _agonizing_

for it's worth I've read 3 Tooze books, and no I didn't think he wanted to kill workers' attitudes in that seven word tweet.

i don’t think adam tooze is endorsing the gurner quote in that tweet

― flopson, Wednesday, 13 September 2023 bookmarkflaglink

(xp) He isn't but that's not the point being made.

― Monthly Python (Tom D.), Wednesday, 13 September 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Yes, Tooze seems to think he can be talked around. That it's an attitude issue.

that's great. I'll be waiting with baited breath for flopson's next detailed analysis of some dull very short tweets

I think we'd get more mileage out of expressing outrage over this dude saying that we need to double unemployment so that workers are once again grateful to be given jobs.

Which, as kate said upthread, is saying the quiet part out loud.

i don't hate Tooze fwiw but i seem to have been exposed to his meltier tweets i guess

YMMV but it seems to me that Tooze is saying that he is a Viking with respect to his sleeping abilities.

honest, The Wages of Destruction is a brilliant read. He clears out lots of myths and weeds that have grown around the nazi economy in other history books. But at end o' fucking day he's just like any other dickhead prof when he posts on politics!

More like Snooze, amiritie

The notion that calzino is a moron doesn’t stand up, “sorry”.

in Crashed he mentions in the foreword about how political discussions with his daughter influenced him, even possibly made him rethink some things. No mention of his grandad!

Someone called Gibby once told me "you've got a brain, Dowd, but it's just not a thinking brain"

Nah you are very well read, but you use too many exclamation marks and too many scary swear words to be considered a brane genius by smug ilx pseuds - we know you’re legit though

idk who any of you are but flopson was the first person to point out that melt tweet was a literal quote of davos prick, and therefore that the most likely interpretation was "davos prick quote illustrates that elites are waging violent class warfare against workers"

i don't know who adam tooze is and i refuse to care

I think we'd get more mileage out of expressing outrage over this dude saying that we need to double unemployment so that workers are once again grateful to be given jobs.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, September 13, 2023 3:02 PM (thirty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this seems otm though, although hopefully off-tm when seen in context (posting in ilxor.com)

xxp
I'm dyslexic and bad at editing, sometimes I scan posts twice and miss out that I've posted double words - but fuck editing out exclamation marks!!!!!!

xxp nobody cares, don’t talk to calzino like that.

idk who any of you are but flopson was the first person to point out that melt tweet was a literal quote of davos prick, and therefore that the most likely interpretation was "davos prick quote illustrates that elites are waging violent class warfare against workers"

It didn't need pointing out. Unless you're assuming everyone else reading the tweet or watching the video is a dolt.

Well this has gone a few places while I was away lol

i don't hate Tooze fwiw but i seem to have been exposed to his meltier tweets i guess

― School of RAAC (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 13 September 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Def not a Tooze hater. His twitter is a pretty amazing account, which is him looking at data points on world events (most of which aren't headlines). He then sorta tries to use his substack to write history as it's happening, which is a dubious enterprise but I can read him and appreciate the hard work.

But as NV and calzino say the guy has melty politics. My reading is based on past behaviour, and it was very funny to contrast him with Harvey (no room for irony or funnies, just straight up "we have to kill them"), but it was just a short tweet so if my reading comprehension is gone then join the queue...plenty of ilxors say this, and worse, about my posting.

i like and value poster calzino fwiw, my point was just about the substance of the meaning of the tweets, but i'm not sure it's even worth trying to discern

i hate melty dolts just as much as anybody, but it seems to me that the point of a message board is to talk about this sort of thing, so it strikes me as unhelpful that those who do are implied to be pedantic cryptolibs

Wanna chat to him

A letting agent pulled a gun on a woman and her children during an illegal eviction. Two and a half years later, he was fined £400. Incredible reporting by @hajmedd (and editing by @CharlottEngland) https://t.co/NvAcv8OYjj

— Rivkah Brown (@rivkahbrown) September 13, 2023

https://www.afr.com/property/residential/tim-gurner-deeply-sorry-for-wrong-comments-about-tradies-job-losses-20230914-p5e4mi

“My comments were deeply insensitive to employees, tradies and families across Australia who are affected by these cost-of-living pressures and job losses.

“I want to be clear: I do appreciate that when someone loses their job it has a profound impact on them and their families, and I sincerely regret that my words did not convey empathy for those in that situation.”

So he's not apologizing for the actual ideas, just that he didn't make them sound warm and fuzzy enough. Figures.

I heard from a radio report that he's worth 600m and was born into inherited money, so I doubt he appreciates much at all about how soul destroying poverty can be

I think he appreciates it in the sense that he fucken loves it

it's a basic fact that unemployment is an important tool of capitalist employers. it's pretty bleak that people are suddenly claiming to be shocked by this

A Liberal (or a right winger in a lib newspaper) often talks up a "people's revolt" to discipline the market. Imagine revolting over something as paltry as the high street?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/14/developers-tory-killing-high-street

I heard from a number of sources that liberals bed down with fascism really easily. So not sure how you'd spot one if there wasn't a fascist nearby.
Never not seen in the same room together?

fascists are liberals' shock troops they keep them in the basement until they're needed to protect some property or suppress an uprising

liberals despise all the basic principals of democracy just as much as fascists do, they only really like democracy when evil or even worse is on the ballot in a two party system. To liberals the most heinous thing you can do is attempt to overthrow this precious democracy, which I think is a fine idea and even a fascist scumbag like Trump attempting to do it doesn't dissuade me at all from this being a good idea.

There's a ton of this exact same kind of liberal-bashing from the right. Turns out the "liberal" is just a convenient label that means 'people who argue with my premises'.

You realise the term liberal means different things on both sides of the ocean right

If "liberal" is intended to mean "a member of the Liberal Party", then it would be helpful to make that distinction. Otherwise, it's six of one and a half dozen of the other in terms of defining one's enemy according to whatever is most convenient to dismiss them as wrong or evil.

This particular discussion has been had a million times.

Didn't think you needed to be told this, Aimless. Don't you know everything?

It's hard to have a discourse if we can't agree on what words mean.

Liberalism as an economic and political project is as coherent as any really - I mean you can also argue about the definition of fascist, communist, social democrat, etc. The reason it's become a byword for "left of center" in the US is that any kind of credible left had been very effectively marginalized and erased from the mainstream. As this changes, the US definition of liberal starts to resemble that present in Europe - and obviously a lot of US liberals feel uncomfortable with where that positions them.

it would help if people didn't pretend these isms are perfect ideal types with clear boundaries

it makes most sense to me to define liberalism as the hegemonic common sense of the societies where most of us live and because that's not always the same liberalism isn't always the same and it has the same tendencies towards faction and syncretism and opportunism as any other political tradition but that doesn't make the word any more meaningless than "christianity"

xp There still isn't much of a "credible left" in the U.S. Meanwhile, the American right has been able to characterize centrist and slightly left-of-center liberals (in the U.S. colloquial sense) as radical leftists.

Turns out the "liberal" is just a convenient label that means 'people who argue with my premises'.

lock thread, we got it sorted

Well, according to xyzzz's post quoting the "Liberal" and "Commie" positions, I qualify as a Commie, since it was clear, succinct and agrees with my perceptions of the world. By comparison, Tooze's tweet was so ambiguous that it was impossible to extract any particular position from it, which is one of the most common complaints about liberals.

jimbeaux, that is why I said "as it changes", not "now that it's changed". Nonetheless all sorts of leftist positions are now popular, though nowhere near dominant or consensus, amongst left of centre ppl in the US that would have been viewed as insane extremism 20, 30 years ago. The move away from liberal as a self-identifier comes with that, I think.

I honestly can't think of a single political position that meets that description, but that's probably a failure of imagination on my part.

Well I don't live in the US but I can say I was speaking to liberal identifying Americans online and reading liberal identified US publications since the early 00's and the idea that there hasn't been a general leftward shift amongst these demographics AT ALL since the Clinton years...that does sound like we live in paralell universes, yeah.

it's been pretty wild hearing americans saying positive things about labour organising over the last decade or so I thought it would never happen

remember when everyone told the story about getting in trouble for moving a chair like it was something that had actually happened to them

also the Trumpian rhetoric that get's widely amplified in the US is wildly inaccurate and quite barmy. Like Kamala and Biden are communists and Marxists etc. Mind you it's almost as barmy as Starmer getting derided as a "lefty lawyer" by Sunak, really.

Tooze is a very old-school liberal. Likes investment, isn't obsessed with means-testing, sees a lot of dangers with the way the right have been turning out in Europe.

The ones in the UK have totally lost the plot since Brexit and Blairism.

xp Oh, no doubt there has been a leftward shift among a, perhaps sizable, part of the U.S. electorate. This is probably mostly among the younger demographic. However, to say that the positions they are taking would have been insane extremism 20-30 years ago ignores the political history of the U.S. There really is nothing new under the sun; if anything, the political left of the Boomer generation was more radical than its successors. If there have been any shifts that would have been unthinkable 20-30 years ago, they have come mostly in the realm of the personal, e.g., same-sex marriage, which truly was a fringe idea just a couple of decades ago.

if anything, the political left of the Boomer generation was more radical than its successors.

A certain portion of it were so during their youth, sure (I hesitate to make grander pronouncements because I do think a lot of the boomer self-mythology is far from representative of the generation as a whole), but they didn't stay that way! By the time you get to the 90's for instance the economic orthodoxy of the boomer generation is pretty cemented and a lot of the ideas that came crashing down in '08 still taken as certainties.

You'll get no argument from me on that. Of course, that happens to a lot of leftist movements, at least in the so-called "developed world," as their constituents age.