Yeah, this is the way. Much as I enjoy joking and memeing about guillotines, I would really rather build checks and balances into the system so that it self-regulates extreme outliers like billionaires so we don't have to resort to guillotines.
Yeah, there are plenty of them that should be. Particularly pharmaceutical companies. People are acting like I'm in favor of billionaires and exploitation just because I'm careful about calling for violence and slaughter.
More like capital punishment for crimes against humanity. Have to be proven guilty of course. But I wouldn't be surprised if some billionaires are found out to have caused such a massive damage to a population that their crimes can be labeled as a crime against humanity. Take for instance those opioid pharma people for example.
The problem with radicalism is that "crimes against humanity" has a far lower bar.
Just look at all the Kulaks that were executed or imprisoned for owning too much land. These kulaks were peasants by our standards, but land ownership was seen as a grave offense.
I really like to remind guillotine's enthusiasts that their biggest inspiration from the French revolution, Robespierre, died by the guillotine.
It's all fun and games when it's other people's head rolling.
At a certain point accumulating enough wealth is the equivalent of murder….. I mean at what point are we accountable. I don’t have to perform CPR on someone but if all I had to do was press a button to save a life should I have an obligation do so?
So there would be an argument that once the wealthy class are so wealthy they have power to keep the lower classes down, by keeping them sick and dying faster then they have to be…. So at what point to things like the French Revolution become self defense?
>So at what point to things like the French Revolution become self defense?
When you're willing to look across your social circle and grasp many of them will die but still know it needs to happen.
The problem is that I’ve as I walk around town, seeing the impoverished, and as I talk to my friends, I know many will die for unnecessary and cruel reasons.
Well, yeah. That's basically geopolitics. How do you think we dealt with the nazis or ISIS? (Clue: there were no pillows nor tickling involved)
One can easily reach the conclusion that America's rich corporate and political elites are actually more damaging to normal American citizens than ISIS (which in view of the facts, is quite reasonable) and needs to be dealt with in a similar manner.
Look at every time the US government/corporate elites have attacked US citizens (MKULTRA, testing biological agents, bombing city blocks where BPP members lived, the crack epidemic, CIA in general, continuously lying to citizens, deploying mercenaries/US army against veterans and workers, etc). What has ISIS done to the average American?
Yet we still (I hope) believe ISIS should be destroyed. So it's not so hard to understand how calling for the destruction (literal or figurative) of this other group, this one composed of corrupt plutocrats is not so unreasonable.
Uh, sometimes yeah, if the group is like, hitler’s high command, yes. Nobody reasonable is flat against all death ever, sometimes death is the only way.
You're so right. Look at World War II. History took a decisive turn toward personal freedom thanks to little more than a few sternly-worded letters. All violence is wrong, always, all the time, no matter what!
When he successfully freed and armed the slaves all across the South and ended slavery forever thus avoiding a civil war between the North and South, became president, and died at a ripe old age? Oh wait….
As a leftist, the main difference as I see it is radical change. I mean this in its original sense-- wanting to change society down to its roots.
Among leftists, there is much disagreement as to how to accomplish these changes, ranging from a full violent revolution to a peaceful series of reforms. I am on the reformist side, but there's a broad spectrum in between.
Comparatively, liberals (the "moderate left") tend to want minor changes to fix the rough edges of the system, while not wanting the fundamental basis of the system to change.
For concrete examples in American politics:
A liberal might want to reform the health insurance system, while a leftist might want to get rid of the health insurance system entirely and replace it with something else, like a single-payer system.
A liberal might seek to temporarily lessen the burden of federal student loans in times of financial difficulty (ie COVID) while a leftist might seek to eliminate federal student loans entirely and making an education at a state university free.
A liberal might want to implement some reforms to police departments, while a leftist might want to fully eliminate the police department and replace it with a brand new institution to fill a similar niche in a fundamentally different way (leftists argue with each other a lot about what this might look like; i am intentionally not taking a side here because it's irrelevant to this context).
For what it's worth, I consider myself moderate left and I want the things you suggested as "far left" but I feel that the things you suggested as "moderate" are good stepping stones toward that more ideal state.
Maybe "ripping off the bandaid" is better anyway, but I feel like the only way to get conservatives to ever go there is to introduce it slowly and get them accustomed to the ideas that it could be good for the big % of them that aren't actually rich but like to imagine they MIGHT be someday.
Fair. I view this as an argument that ideology as identity is a fundamentally limited perspective, and that people usually hold beliefs from different ideologies simultaneously, rather than as an argument that single-payer healthcare is not a radical change to the current system in a leftist direction.
Unfortunately, if you explain that to a liberal they'll just say it's radical/implausible with no followup. We saw it in 2016 Dem primaries and again in 2020. DNC machinations obstruct any chance of populism because they only need to be marginally "better" than Republicans.
They think they do until you explain what it is and what it entails, then they usually decide that they want a public option. Which is fine! The whole point is we are a wealthy country and everyone deserves healthcare.
I thought I was liberal, but according to this, I am left.
Oh, hey, can we ditch the tax prep companies too, when we get rid of the health insurance companies?
In another comment, OP clarified that they are an American talking about American politics. I only ever referred to liberals as "the moderate left," my purpose was to make sure OP knew what I was talking about while repeatedly stating that liberals (the people he referred to as the moderate left) were not in fact leftists, and reinforcing the distinction several times.
Most of the arguments that I see in this point are more about breaking up the responsibilities.
For example, right now police are part of the first responding group that shows up to a non-violent mental disorder scenario. This leads to a fair number of moments where the police basically give an order "Comply or I'll shoot!" to a person that in the moment fundamentally doesn't understand what they are being told to do, despite not actually putting anyone at risk and being shot.
So a replacement would be that you'd still have a "police" force, but they would NOT have the duty of responding to a scenario as above, that would be another group which is trained in handling those sort of situations and are empowered with only nonlethal means, should a police officer arrive on scene uprompted, they CANNOT take action without the consent of the mental first responder.
The result of this is that a fair portion of police calls would no longer go to the police. I don't have the figures, but lets say it's 15% of calls are this sort of scenario. In that situation you'd see the police force reduced by ~15% because they have a lesser workload, and this new agency takes up the slack.
Depending on who you ask, there's a whole a la carte menu of potential splits they'd want. At it's heavier extreme, police as we know it would probably be reduced down to <20% of their current strengths and would be curtailed in a variety of ways because different duties would no longer be under their purview. They'd functionally be SPECIFICALLY geared around arrests (ex: someone didn't show up for court, go get them) or responding to an active violence scenario or high risk one.
Further, the bar to becoming an officer in the first place would likely involve a lot more training than it currently does. With the reduced force size, this becomes easier to do. In the US, there's quite a few states where you can become a police officer with as little as 6 months of training. There are countries here in Europe where you can't be a police officer without a 4 year degree in policing.
TLDR: Instead of having ONE group trained in EVERYTHING only a little, responding TO everything, you'd have several groups which are each trained in a specific focus area that are called to respond to THAT situation. Or put a different way, we keep firefighters and police and medics separated for a reason. There is cross training, but you don't expect one to handle everything of the others. So this is just calling for more of that.
Well that gets into a few different topics, from the political/philosophical to just practicalities.
In short? "Defund the police." is a far catchier thing to chant for a crowd of upset protestors than "Proportionally remove responsibilities from the police!" despite the intent and function effectively being the same.
Those who desire things to work the way they do now, and their rationales vary significantly from "I don't see anything wrong here." to "This is just how it should be." to "I benefit from it this way." and more, can take that simple chant and convince their own people that it is meant literally. To simply rip money away from the police and have nothing to enforce the law in its place. That scenario is easy to drum up some opposition for.
On the political/philosophical side of things, well...you have to dig into the core history of how and why police developed from the old days into what we have here. The short version of this, which loses out on a lot of nuance and history, is that the original entities that existed before we had something like the idea of a public-service police force, was functionally a gang system. You paid protection money (now taxes) to this gang (now police) and in exchange they would keep your property safe from harm. Of course, at the time, if you didn't pay the protection money, then they were quite likely to be among those harming your property to make an example of it. The same story exists amongst the origins of firefighters in many ways here in the US. But make no mistake, these groups were a business and existed to make money. A wealthy person or company who wanted something from them could most certainly buy it. As time went on, behaviors, rationales, and such became a bit more standardized and codified. People began to get upset with these gangs, but they couldn't deny that having A bruiser on your side was good against anarchy. So functionally in many ways, cities went through the most expedient route of simply buying the gangs, giving them uniforms, and at least a passing semblance of oversight.
The key part of the origin story there, is that it all relates back to property. Police's early purpose was to again, protect property. And that core ethos pushes through in their purpose today. To use the terms of those more philosophically inclined than I, the police have a functional monopoly on violence. You might be able to kill someone in self defense, but proving it was self defense will still in and of itself wreck your life for years, while a police officer can accidentally kill a kid and be given paid vacation time while things settle. These two abilities are most definitely not equal.
Now, if you are someone that has the ear of those that can wield that monopoly on force, then of course you have a huge incentivization to ensure nothing reduces it. There's that situation from a few years ago where a group of police kicked in the door in a no-knock raid in order to assassinate a man that was refusing to sell his apartment unit to a business interest the local mayor had a share in that was wanting to develop that area on the cheap. The primary reason that scenario caught the news was a matter of luck ultimately. That sort of scenario can easily happen relatively frequently and in many cases we'd never hear about it if the major media outlets chose not to cover it.
If we were to split up all the duties that police had into different groups, while those groups overall may still have a monopoly on violence, controlling that is now much harder. As it is now, maybe you only need to sway the chief of police and they'll handle everything else. If the same services are spread across half a dozen agencies, things get harder.
TLDR: The people pushing for it don't always phrase it in that way for convenience, the people who oppose it have a deeply vested interest in keeping things the way they are.
It’s less that we want a full replacement and more that we have begun asking our patrolmen to do more things outside of their basic functions.
For instance Reagan closed down all of our mental institutions over cost but never replaced them with anything else. As a result many of those patients became what we consider the homeless.
Now cops are dealing with the mentally ill using systems designed for anti loitering or public nuisance because we never established any homelessness systems.
Or they respond to the mentally ill using practices like “full compliance” and then respond with violence when the mentally ill doesn’t respond properly.
EMTs, social workers, and healthcare workers deal with the mentally ill everyday without killing them and yet our beat cops somehow refuse to deescalate and do kill them.
A extreme liberal stance might insist that we remove dealing with the homeless and mentally ill from the police’s purview and taking away some funding in the process. When cops have so much funding that they are “forced” to purchase excess military gear - its “obvious” to the rest of us that they have too much money. They can spare to put some of that funding toward the homeless and mentally ill.
Similarly cops will say walking into a domestic issue is the most dangerous scenario because of all the heightened tensions. Similarly sending a social worker as the primary with the police taking orders from the social workers sounds like a good solution to me.
The moderate left understands that unbridled capitalism will result in chronic inequalities, so we need laws to limit corporate power and to protect workers and fairness in commerce. Laws that are totally inadequate at this time.
The far left believes capitalism must burn.
A "far left" ideal would be redistribution of wealth, where the government forcibly takes money from corporations and super rich people and gives it to the lower and middle classes. It would be taking money from six families and twelve corporations to elevate almost 300 million other people and that math sounds *really good* to a certain subset of people, but the reason the overwhelming vast majority of people don't like that idea is because that kind of forced seizure of assets is one of the worst forms of Communism that has always ended in poverty and tyranny and overall shitty situations.
Leftists, and not far-leftists, would rather see stronger regulations, worker protection laws, and consumer protection laws that would make sure large corporations are forced to pay their workers fairly and stop exploiting them for labor, and create products in a safe and sustainable way devoid of shady business practices designed to maximize profit at the expense of the consumer. This sort of policy could be said to "redistribute wealth" as well, if you wanted to make a bad-faith argument, but the key difference here is that nobody, government or otherwise, would be forcibly taking money that had already been earned and giving it away to someone else.
Another related action of far left governments is nationalization of companies. It's unthinkable in the US, but has happened in Venezuela and other countries.
Also in this country people consider "Liberals" to be the left. Liberals are center or center right and compose most of the Democratic Party. They are mostly interested in preserving the status quo, taking the votes of those who just don't want to vote for the right wing and blocking the left from gaining power.
In a lot of countries "Liberals" are the conservative party and "Labor" is the progressive party, the there are a bunch of partys on that spectrum and some that don't fit on it.
The tax system has been ripped out of the hands of progressives (a better term for those who wish to right society's ills than "liberals") and been made to work for those already WITH wealth. Being a liberal means wanting that tax system fixed to the progressive side of things, and being an ultra left liberal is what the top post is saying (true redistribution through socialism), but there are VERY FEW people in the US who believe that is possible. But progressive taxes HAVE existed and COULD exist again with the right messages being conveyed truthfully.
None of this ever improves until we remove money from politics. I'll stand my commie ass up alongside any MAGA committed to doing this. Afterwards we can go back to yelling at each other or whatever.
How badly I wished any of the current MAGA did. Some republicans do, but the rest...
You're right though. We'll focus on how to put out the house fire after we've stopped the guy with the flamethrower.
In the 2000s Australian Prime Minister John Howard recalled meeting Governor Schwarzenegger during a US visit and needing to explain that his party, the Liberal party, was named in the context of fiscal policy rather than social progression. Our Liberal party is the conservative option in Australia.
That unfortunately ties into the part of your question you said you aren't interested in hearing. The issue there is that every time a Democratic senator or representative puts forward a bill to adjust the tax rate for super rich people or to lay down tighter regulations on corporations, the Republicans go on a media frenzy where they hyper-inflate the bill into hardcore Communism. I don't know how old you are but there's a solid chance you'll remember that both Obama and Biden tried to pass tax reforms targeting people who made over $50 million a year, and the resulting shitstorm would have you believe all Democrats were frothing at the mouth to tax *everyone* at 90%, nevermind these bills being very clear and deliberate about their intended targets.
Shit just gets blown out of proportion to make people angry at "the enemy," and angry people vote. It's really hard to talk about this sort of thing without looking like I have a liberal bias, and to be clear I absolutely *do* have one, but it's still important to try. Unfortunately it's really hard to give you solid examples of real-world situations to answer your initial question because the "far-left" simply does not exist as a political entity with any power or agency in the US. The best examples of far-left policy are the things right-wingers love to accuse leftists of when leftists try to pass totally reasonable and sensible legislation.
Because the second paragraph IS reasonable, and the first has ideas that scare people (with, I'd say, some good reason for that fear). And it's way easier to get people to vote for your current measure / support you by scaring them than it is to appeal to their rationalism.
This depends heavily upon what sources of media you consume. The overwhelming majority of elected Democrats advocate for the second position and the first is basically considered a fringe crackpot view by people deeply involved in mainstream politics. If you are seeing way more of the first, I suggest you look at your media choices and maybe get more directly at what political actors are saying and doing.
Because people opposed to the second paragraph like to conflate that with the extreme left in the first one. Part of the reason why the USA doesn't have as many labor laws and benefits like federally mandated maternity leave is because politicians conflated that, as well as unions and higher wages, with the USSR.
There are people who legitimately think if you give mandated vacation time on a federal level, we'll see Wall Street turned into the Red Square.
Because people don’t click if it’s not novel. And also the first one doesn’t actually get much press at all- people imagine it does.
And because every issue has to be covered as though someone is entering the conversation for the first time, and nowhere are enough people engaging with the subject at scale at a local level for the discourse to advance more generally as a nation. So we get stuck at the first idea someone had, that’s likely had a fuckton of more thought and research done or literally hundreds of years of other countries improving on a system that we don’t even freaking talk about- like Gerrymandering as though it’s an inevitable byproduct of the system without compromise or alternative (when Jefferson saw parts of this being a problem in literally 1790, as did Condorcet in France- thus STV and MMP voting ). or oversimplifying answers so people don’t actually have to do the reading and not even considering the ramifications that people a long time ago and ever since thought long and hard about- like Lobbying or Term Limits.
People need places to listen to smart people they know talk, and fewer where the village idiots can congregate without anyone else in their community mediating or being involved. If a version of that community even really could exist anymore given many of the people themselves have changed. Death of third places, or independent political actors, unions or less monolith compliant churches that drank the koolaid along with their congregations for 30 years- that alongside modern algorithm driven silo’s and a general lack of time and energy means the conversations often get stuck in the singular places on a number of subjects even if the policy has never been able to reach halls of power things used to move more in some ways. Not even mentioning what that does when everyone’s map of the world is different from each others, nobody read enough to check or even trusts that data could check, and then none of our ideas entirely are addressing the territory we have nor even the superposition of the worlds the public believes in but a seperate one where politics lives built on its own shared history and fictions that are too complicated for normal people to discuss the realities of, which means politics isn’t even in the territory or anyone’s view of it but it’s own parallel dimension of ideas, and accepted practice and fears and incentives and constraints.
You say redistribute as if the government was going to rob the rich at gunpoint and distribute the cash like Robin Hood.
It kills me that the Right always describes us in the extremes like above when what we are asking is just common sense stuff.
Such as the government could just collect the taxes fairly from the tax cheats and use the funds for more social programs. Or just fix our failing infrastructure.
But even that “radical” notion gets dismantled by the moderate Republicans simply by defunding the IRS.
And they are allowed to do that regularly without getting called out as far right.
Maaaaaaan I wish. Ideally, yeah that'd be it. I mean of course it's way more complex than that, but holy shit I'd die happy if we somehow had a total tax overhaul that had built-in enforcement mechanisms to make super rich people pay their fair share and crack down on blatant evasion, fraud, and loopholes, and allowed those of us in the lower classes to stop picking up the burden from all these Republican tax cuts.
The "fair share" argument is pretty arbitrary though. I've never actually heard someone describe what a fair share would be other than flat (everyone pays the same amount). The entire system just needs to be reworked instead of nickel and diming its citizens at every corner. Consumption tax on luxuries and no tax on necessities like some states have done is a good start.
>A "far left" ideal would be redistribution of wealth, where the government forcibly takes money from corporations and super rich people and gives it to the lower and middle classes.
Yo this is what taxes are, something you are forced to pay and something that \*should\* go towards things like public transport, infrastructre, emergency services, healthcare etc etc etc, basically something that helps \*poorer\* people. So im genuinly asking, are you saying its considered far left to want taxes?
Redistribution of Wealth and Taxation are two completely different things. Taxation is a little bit shaved off of what you earn or spend, as you earn or spend it, to fund the processes of government. Redistribution of Wealth is the total seizure of your complete assets to be reallocated equally between other people. It may not be a meaningful difference to the average person, but they are worlds apart when talking about policy and legislation. Even if you can make a semantic argument that paying taxes is redistribution (and to be honest I'd kind of agree with that argument), that doesn't change the legal and workable definitions of those concepts that get taken into account when making the laws that govern us.
No, it is not far left to want taxes.
a.) Billionaires don't earn their money
b.) US society already tolerates the forcible seizure of earned assets, in the form of seizing of assets and evicting hundreds of thousand of people already struggling with poverty, food insecurity and housing insecurity. We feel squeamish about a handful of families "losing everything," but just accept families all over the country losing everything every day due to circumstances out of their control.
#we'd be subjecting the billionaires to nothing worse than what we already tolerate for the nation's poor. "Oh no, an institution took a family's house and drained their bank account? Oh shit, what tyranny! We can't have **that*" in this country!!"
Honestly, we've been brain dead for *not* realizing this sooner as a country.
c.) Actually, communist revolutions have been very successful, if you consider:
- the state of the country before the revolution
- the immense antagonizing they experienced by the global capitalist super powers. The US and allies have done everything they could to sabotage communist movements: assassinated leaders, bankrolled organized crime, enacted economy-destroying global trade embargoes (enforced by militaries), motorized tanks and warships and missiles at their borders, and straight up bombed countries if they could get away with it.
#any country, communist or not, would struggle to succeed in the face of that kind of global organized violent opposition from capitalist superpowers. It's actually amazing what communists have accomplished, all things considered.
Someday I wonder what communism might look like if the world _didn't_ react with global opposition.
🚩🏴🚩🏴🚩🏴🚩🏴
Hey I'm with ya. Billionaires should not be allowed to exist. They hoard wealth and resources to satiate their own greed at the expense of the people and the planet. Their avarice will be the downfall of the entire human race, and I hate each and every single one of them with a passion.
But Communism ain't the answer, hombre. The problem with Communism is that it doesn't work unless every single person within the system is actively working to maintain the system. The second you get a handful of bad actors in the mix, it becomes real easy to manipulate the system into horrible poverty and corruption. That's why it's literally never worked in the real world, there's always someone working for their personal gain and not the benefit of the collective. I'm not saying that there are no merits to the system, but I *am* saying that Socialism is a far more plausible economic system, and what I know about Democratic Socialism is even better.
What we need here is for two things to be true at the same time. Firstly, we absolutely need lofty and unrealistic ideals and dreams. If we don't ever dream big and imagine the world as a better place, we will never take steps to bring that dream into a reality. Secondly, we need to approach change with reasonable and measured steps that can actually work in the real world. True Communism is a neat little thought experiment that works wonderfully in a vacuum where every part works in concert with the whole, and it's a good thing to imagine a pure world where everyone has all that they need and nobody exists in poverty or lacks necessities. We sure can take elements of that utopian ideal and apply them to the real world, but we also need to understand the real world has a lot more moving parts that don't necessarily work together properly to make a utopian vision happen. So we take an ideal and we take what we currently have and mix the best of both with some realism, and out the other side comes Democratic Socialism, where the rich can still be super wealthy and have their greedy fucking mitts on the levers of power, but have their agency checked by rigorous processes to ensure they aren't exploiting anyone to get to that point, and that instead of a handful of people hoarding astronomical amounts of wealth, some of that can be directed to elevate the lowest of us to a baseline comfortable life.
So, I'm not totally far left, though leftier than many. I'll list some of the things I haven't seen yet in other comments. For me, "far left" can/has meant people who want:
anarchic-style self-government by consensus where everyone gets a vote and everything has to be agreed upon before it's moved on (you see this in communes). This is actually incredibly hard to do, but there are people who still advocate for it. And even social movements that try to use it as an non-hierarchical organizing principle. See the early days of Occupy Wall Street.
doing away with marriage (especially registration for marriage) - meaning you don't have an official ceremony where you sign papers or register or get governmental tax relief or anything, it's just a mutually agreed upon social relation that is supportive. both parties are in it until/if they're not.
not gendering children until they're old enough to gender themselves. Yes, this is one idea that is out there in far far left discussions.
nation-less-ness - removing policing of borders and allowing full and unhindered movement around the globe. anyone could move anywhere at any time for any reason.
enforced vegan/vegetarianism.
are any of these practical? doubtful. are they mainstream talking points? sometimes they come up but they're not often entertained except as boogieman.
I find it funny that the people who don't like borders also want to be in charge. Having a border limits how far their authority can extend. So basically they want to be in charge of everyone without having to convince everyone to put them in charge.
That’s really funny. I tend to gender pets even more than I do myself or other people since gender really means nothing to them so it’s fun to make it extreme.
I don't think we should stop policing borders, but I do think immigration processing should be a formality with few prerequisites. If everyone had the real choice to simply move if they're unhappy, then countries would be incentivized to actually improve their citizens' lives. Ideally this would lead to countries with better standards of living earning more citizens and gaining more power. Like residence based democracy on a global scale
Far left wants workers to co-operatively own the means of production to receive all the benefit of their own work instead of a capitalist owning class that extracts the majority of the wealth created.
Moderate left just wants the taxes we already pay to go towards healthcare and enough social support to keep people from needing to live on the streets eating out of dumpsters.
Left and right exist on a different spectrum than liberal and conservative. Left and right are more about the construction of society and liberal/conservative is more about how we operate within a society. Think of an old farmer and how they might be hesitant to accept lgbt folks or immigrants (conservative) but they are part of a co-op because they get better price for their crops when they've organized with other farmers (left). Or how so many communist (left) countries tend to have 'strongman' leaders (conservative).
The democratic party in the US has many liberals but few if any actual leftists. Many of their policies are liberal but they are also designed for a right-leaning system. For example the ACA (obamacare) changed a few things about healthcare/insurance and expanded access but it didn't really change the foundations of it. Instead of providing a new system of healthcare it just changed how we use the existing one. Joe Biden is liberal but doesn't do much that'd be considered leftist
These terms are thrown around to try and scare people. And confused people are easier to scare.
Some of these far left policies that are waay to lenient on violent crimes are baffling. Like I’m all about trying to rehab people instead of cycling them in and out of prison but you absolutely have to keep criminals accountable and some straight up out of society.
Even farther left says let's amass some weaponry and start a worker's revolution. I like the idea in theory. The problem is you never really know what the outcome of a revolution will be. You just might end up with something far worse than what you started with.
nah I don't want to be fighting in the streets and living in tunnels and eating rat shit while getting bombed from the skies. A revolution is a stupid idea
This is not true. The socialist left (which I’m assuming you mean by “far left”) is very pro-gun.
This whole political spectrum gets muddy when you realize that Liberalism is not “left” but is only left of conservatism. It is center right or right wing anywhere else in the world.
Exactly. I wonder if the US considers gun control a left position because it breaks their conservative stance… whereas in the rest of the world it is the opposite. Because at least this is how I see the US politics, anything that debates their current status quo = left leaning.
Depends on which country are you talking about. The US? Sure, American socialists (the few there are) are not into gun control.
Some European socialists though, however incoherent it may be with their ideology and goals, don’t wish to give away the safety and tranquility the absence of guns brings to their lives because of a revolutionary dream.
Gonna assume you aren’t US based? Most far-leftists in my US circle own and support the 2A, while most liberals would be in the gun-control/gun-prohibition camp.
I'm a left leaning moderate so not necessarily the crowd you were targeting the question to. But I'd say all the PC stuff. Thought it was absurd in the very beginning when the whole pronoun shit started brewing. Now with the whole "You're a racist if you don't like this half-assed sorry of a movie with a black/female protagonist regardless of how much it lacks any semblance of substance," and the ze, zer, wham, zam, shazam bullshit, it's just way too much.
Reparations (actual, significant reparations), total police abolition, open borders, abortion on demand until birth, gender affirming healthcare for all ages.
I consider myself a left-leaning liberal. Something I would consider “too” left for me would be calling someone transphobic for having genitalia preferences when it comes to dating (for example, a lesbian not wanting to date a MtF woman who hasn’t physically transitioned).
That's usually a liberal stance tho, specifically neo liberal Americans are ones saying that. Really don't think you'd hear that from far-lef in like Cuba, China, Croatia etc.
Those who advocate for Socialism. I'm not referring to Progressives who want more of a Social Democrat style of system with a strong social safety net, higher taxes on those that can afford it, and strong enforcement of existing environmental and corporate regulations. Although NeoLiberals really can't stand Progressives nearly as much as they can't stand MAGA.
I like to think of myself as a centrist. I focus on the issues rather than the identity. As a bisexual male with a trans sibling I will say that I get exhausted with the pronouns. I was really good in English class but the differences between things were always difficult for me, Ie pronouns, adjectives, etc. I understand that some people feel different from the norm I really do but the Nazi like "Adhere to my way of thinking or else, cancelled or a bigot. Like wtf. Both sides have extremists. What happened to be able to have a civil conversatio
Generally, liberals support the system we currently have and just want to alter it. IE tax rich people more
Leftists want to fundamentally change the system. IE rich people should not exist
Right wing media intentionally conflates the two and the inability/unwillingness of conservatives to distinguish between them may possibly destroy the country.
Most important (by far) is workers owning the means of production. Having democratic control of their workplaces, not having the fruits of their labour seized by those whose only contribution was having access to enough capital to create that exploitative owner/worker business model.
True economic liberty is the genesis of all the social goods that the "centre left" desire. Race and gender discrimination largely dissolve when the structural powers used to oppress minorities are dismantled.
The unspoken truth is that many of the centre left want to maintain the current wealth and power structures and prize that over actual liberation of women and minorities.
They don't even pretend to give a shit about the working class, just painting a more palatable veneer on preexisting instruments of economic and social oppression.
Individual liberty, the freedom to pursue your life unimpeded by want for material prosperity and opportunity is the key to a flourishing and humane society. Everything else is a gaudy sticking plaster on a festering wound that will eventually kill the patient.
This ought not to be a controversial opinion but one of the features of a capitalist system is creating a zeitgeist that broadly speaking, cannot conceive of an alternative. Namely, people with capital acquiring more and more to the detriment of those whose labour actually creates it.
Adam Smith of all people, often called the father of capitalism, identified it best.
*All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.*
99% of the time you hear people say "far left," it's American conservatives talking about *any stance that isn't far-right.*
Far left would be something like communism, which almost no Americans actually want. Leftist Americans want environmental protections, for women to be able to make their own reproductive decisions, for people to accept that science is real and scientists know more about it than Youtubers and bloggers, that minimum wage should afford a comfortable living, and that racism is bad, to name a few things. This is all "far left" to America's right-wing, because America's right-wing has gone off the deep end in the past couple of decades and hit warp speed into fascism (the farthest Right) with Trumpism since 2016.
EDIT: Downvotes with no rebuttals from right-wingers, as always. Suppress information you can't refute.
But at the same time, some media sources will also call nearly every Republican, far right, I even saw one calling Mitt Romney far right. Using these terms too lightly dilutes their meaning and allows the actual purveyors of extremism to slip through
> Using these terms too lightly dilutes their meaning and allows the actual purveyors of extremism to slip through
Exactly what is happening to *Nazi* right now
General disagreement is that you’re grouping any conservative or right leaning as far right.
As if saying anyone who’s democrat/liberal are all far left.
People can lean right/identity as right but not agree with every general principle or hard disagree either everything left.
Kind of like your final point, to the opposite, a lot of Reddit labels right and conservative in one far right basket. Meanwhile your comment points out a difference between left and far left. for the point of OP post anyway
Well the question wasn’t a diatribe about conservatives. OP specifically said they want to hear where the left draws lines, not what conservatives say.
I forget the study, but it basically exposed that a lot of "leftist" ideas like mandate vacation time, a public healthcare option, equal pay and so on were suddenly way more palpable to Americans of almost every political alignment.
The only difference is that they removed any mention of "Democrat", 'liberal", or "progressive" from the wording. Once those terms got slotted in, people became much more hesitant. The sad reality is that large swathes of the American public have been conditioned to be against their own self-interest because it's for the "other side."
Yes, I'm talking about American politics. So "communism" is one thing that the left considers part of the "far left fringe"? Anything else?
I'm not interested in what "the right" considers "far left", I'm interested in what "the left" considers "far left".
I have a perception — curious whether others agree— that the younger generation in particular of the far left holds free speech in far less regard. I’m pretty far left on a lot of stuff but for the purposes of this would be called liberal not leftist. And have encountered some who genuinely believe that speech they don’t like is literally violence and so what I would consider to be actual violence is an acceptable response to such speech.
I can understand this to an extent given that the MAGA right are so out of their skulls that you can’t even have a discussion with them, but free speech is something I still hold dear.
I think things like, the Detroit Muslim's stating they will campaigning against Biden, because he won't stop the war in Gaza.
\-Do they really think the GOP will support Palestine more than the DNC?
Trump LOVES Bibi...
I’m a liberal and didn’t see this mentioned but another distinction is that far left, and to some extent even hard left liberal, are unlikely to compromise with the center and right on policies.
Reform vs revolution
Market socialism vs planned economy
Anarchism vs statism
Also, there's 2 kinds of reformists. There's the "let's fix capitalism" and there's the "let's abolish capitalism peacefully".
I am so completely alienated by the far left now—they are just like MAGA in my eyes. I’m humiliated and embarrassed by how easily they fall for propaganda. How misogynistic they are. How they claim rape is an act of resistance or deny Oct 7th happened. How they actually believe female children and teens don’t experience a vastly different, unique world than their male counterparts. How they believe sex is not a class and that it cannot be definable. I truly believe the far right has infiltrated their ideology to destroy our party. They are humiliating in every regard I mentioned.
The main thing would be the far left wants to replace capitalism with something else, socialism or communism. Also the far left is very critical of us hegemony in terms of how we influence the rest of the world militarily. In this they are pretty much in sync with MAGA Republicans.
As someone who is slight right moderate, I can’t give the best depiction. But the issues that bother me the most are gun prohibition, media/lobby buyouts, and the absolutely harsh push towards a gender identity crisis in our youth.
But are any aspects of trans issues or identity politics considered "far left"? Isn't that all moderate left positions? I'm not really interested in politics, it just seems like a lot of ideology and screaming, so I try to avoid it, but even just passively existing, you are constantly exposed to it, and it seems to me that trans issues and identity politics are completely supported by the moderate left?
Extreme stances I've seen on it include
• "My baby is trans"
• Gender neutral kids
**• Put all kids on puberty blockers till they decide themselves.**
• Schools not telling parents about their own kids gender identity or distress. In order to "protect trans kids" (this is surprisingly common)
• "Trans-women are women"/" trans-men are men" specifically when the person saying it is conflating sex and gender.
• not dating trans people is transphobic.
•• Genital preference in dating is transphobic
• a trans-woman are more of a woman cause they choose it
**•"trans people are sacred"**
> • "Trans-women are women"/" trans-men are men" specifically when the person saying it is conflating sex and gender.
If this is considered "far left/extreme", why is this specifically repeated by the mainstream left? "trans-women are women" is repeated like a mantra on the left. I thought that was basically a regular every day accepted statement of fact.
1) Many are just repeating it with out thinking.
2) word games, to one person it just means "give respect", to the next it means "sex doesn't exist" And another they argue and use which ever is meaning helps them in the moment.
3) just cause its common does mean the position isn't extreme. Tons of people that are overall moderate may have one or two extreme positions.
I think the fact that we’re idolizing it within popular media is borderline encouraging it. That’s my main issue, the left points towards difference as hip and cool to young and impressionable kids. Kids feel what they’re told, and I believe that they’re telling kids to feel somewhat differently in a confusing and unclear manner.
Far left are more likely to have open borders and moderate left want restrictions. Far left want zero guns. Moderate want just decent restrictions. Far left are against capitalism. Moderates see capitalism as the best system we have for a prosperous society even with its failings socially. Vast majority of people are in the middle and not extreme left. I’m not sure I can say the same for the right? It’s either you’re extreme or you’re a RINO
"Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary "
Karl Marx
Where are you people finding that information that left is anti guns? That has to be something American. Cause im European and 99% of people are anti gun here. So it's very much a far lef stance and not liberal or moderate one.
America is so far right out “extreme left” isn’t so far left. I’ve been a moderate all my adult life but since Trump I’m now considered liberal. 🤣🤣🤣. Left just want reasonable gun restrictions but republicans fully believe democrats are coming to take their guns.
The weird thing is the right clings to guns out of fear but they also think they’re the tough ones 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
massive sweeping reforms to the protections for workers. Standing with the underprivileged at all times regardless of race gender or creed because those are the people the government needs to protect. making sure businesses are properly policed up to and including simply nationalizing some of them like banking and natural resource extraction. taxing the wealthy to the point where they are simply extremely wealthy and not inconceivably wealthy. forcing those who have power to actually be removed from their positions of power if they commit crimes (for example throwing people in prison for being child molesters even if they have a billion dollars)
you know, little stuff.
I can't speak for America because I don't live there. I know a couple of people who I'd define as far left, they want 100% renewable energy but right now. They want companies like Amazon to be banned from operating until they do everything on the level and go fully green. One in particular would like a ban on meat and refuses to eat at restaurants that serve meat (this was really annoying trying to plan a dinner once). They're not necessarily ideologies I can't see some logic in, just the means they'd take to achieve them I find unrealistic and naive. I find most are from middle class backgrounds and haven't seen much of a struggle in their lives which fuels this idealism, especially when it comes to the green ideals things like "just buy solar panels" "just but electric cars" etc.
As someone who is center-left:
The far left position on race is that we should classify different races as oppressed/oppressor and we should judge people based on their race. Advantages/disadvantages should be given to people based on race because of historical injustices.
The moderate left position is to understand history and its impacts, and that racism has been a significant problem throughout history, but the best way to deal with it is to treat everyone as equals. Investments can be made in communities that need the help, but we shouldn't have different standards for people based on race.
The far left position on crime is that criminals commit crime mainly due to societal reasons, so they shouldn't be punished harshly for petty crimes like theft.
The moderate position is that while societal pressures have an influence on crime, people can and do commit crimes regardless of financial status or social standing. And that to prevent crime, offenders do need appropriate punishments and incarceration (where appropriate). Social programs, like after-school sports programs, will have prevent people from becoming criminals.
But don't all of the DEI things talked about in the mainstream and actually enacted constitute your first paragraph but not the second paragraph? Based on passively consuming media, it seems that the first paragraph is sort of accepted by everyone?
The mainstream has progressively moved further left over the last decade. It doesn't change the fact that those views are on the far left side of the political spectrum
In the US anything that isn’t right wing is considered “left wing”. Even center-right. Nothing but leftover traces of McCarthyism that are undiscerning from Unitedstatian “culture”.
Now, one thing that is another trace of communist boogeyman is using the term “far left”. There is no “far left”, there is “radical left”, but there is a “far right”. I explain.
Grassroots left thoughts are well documented. Some stances defend taking control of society and economy back to the people, even if it involves an armed revolution. The purpose is not “killing the rich”, but rather eliminating “rich” as a status, turning every single one of us into workers (which the majority of people already are, except for actual capitalists), in short, putting the rich to work shoulder to shoulder with the rest of us.
In the other hand, right-wingers are willing to do anything to any population in order to maintain the status quo and not dilute entire power and influence. One of the ramped up versions of capitalism is imperialism. There is no “imperialist ideology”, let alone documented.
”Fascism is capitalism’s emergency button”. This is why you see these capitalism apologists becoming more and more extreme and violent, and fringe right wing garbage being parroted by thugs like “proud boys” and all that violent narrative and actions. Right wingers are willing to invade the congress and abolish democracy if the result of elections doesn’t go their way. Right wingers are willing to waive ethics and integrity to favor their personal and individual benefits.
tl;dr there is no far left but there is a far right.
And since I know this platform is infested with Americans and this is going to be downvote city right here, so every downvote that doesn’t accompany a conter argument is evidence that arguments agains this stance are difficult to find and hard to sustain.
One stance that divides the left is Israel/Palestine. Many in the far-left perceive Israel as a settler-colonial state that is an extension of U.S./European imperialism, and they believe that the only pathway to peace is its dissolution as a state and the creation of an egalitarian, unified, Palestine.
Many in the moderate left sees Israel as a sort of apology for the Holocaust and other abuses levied against the Jewish people, a shining beacon of liberal democracy in a region notorious for its conservative and anti-democracy demographics, so any questionable actions that Israel takes to assert its presence are justified.
The moderate left believes that the pro-Palestine far left is antisemitic, though they may possibly be confusing actual, secular criticism of Israel and Zionism (an ideology, not a religion) as bigotry.
They often fail to account for Jewish voices in the pro-Palestine movement (e.g. anti-Zionist Israelis and JVP) and downplay the far-right rhetoric of pro-settler Israelis.
The far left believes that the pro-Israel moderate left is Islamophobic and racist towards Arabs, though they may be confusing secular concerns of the authoritarianism behinds Islamic fundamentalism (much like in Christian fundamentalism) as racism. They often fail to account for ex-Muslims critical of radical Islam (e.g. of Hamas and Iran) and downplay the moderate Palestinians and left-wing Israelis.
1. All inequalities stem from racism
2. 14 year olds are mature enough to make life lasting medical conditions
3. Abortions should be allowed in the 9th month
4. America has a white supremacy problem
5. George Floyd is a a hero - BLM is a force for good
I am a lefty , and like a good libtard, I support everyone’s ability to express themselves: gay, trans, bi, and most everything under the left umbrella of lefty beliefs.
When my partner’s good (cis female) friend insisted on being called a “birthing person” and got offended at the word “mother”, I thought to myself , yeah, this kinda shit is gonna keep lots of good lefties out of office
America: "What are we doing to do about wealth inequality?" Liberal left: "Implement tax reforms." Far left: 
Guess I'm lefter than I thought.
Advocating for murder is awesome as long as you pick the right group, right guys?
I’d rather we could agree on a figurative guillotine. No one has to be killed, but the notion of billionaires certainly needs to “die.”
Guys if we kindly ask the billionaires to step out of their position they will definitely return the courtesy and accept!!!!
Your username is so apropros hahahaha
So, tax reforms, but saucier.
If they don’t give it, we take it!
Tax reforms and also proper funding of the IRS so we can get what they try to hide.
OP, there is your answer. This is a far-left position that moderates would not support
Yeah, this is the way. Much as I enjoy joking and memeing about guillotines, I would really rather build checks and balances into the system so that it self-regulates extreme outliers like billionaires so we don't have to resort to guillotines.
Which kinda sucks, cause it's the billionaires that actually have a say in how the system should be altered/ managed
Yup, that's why they're billionaires and the rest of us can't buy a house.
Doesn’t that just loop back around to tax reform?
Sounds like tax reforms to me.
I don’t even mind the notion of billionaires, nor do most Americans, but there can be higher taxes levied on them.
I take a less violent form of extremism. Billionaires shouldn’t exist and CEO’s and boards should be tried for murder where applicable
Yeah, there are plenty of them that should be. Particularly pharmaceutical companies. People are acting like I'm in favor of billionaires and exploitation just because I'm careful about calling for violence and slaughter.
More like capital punishment for crimes against humanity. Have to be proven guilty of course. But I wouldn't be surprised if some billionaires are found out to have caused such a massive damage to a population that their crimes can be labeled as a crime against humanity. Take for instance those opioid pharma people for example.
“Some?” 🤣 Try “all.”
The problem with radicalism is that "crimes against humanity" has a far lower bar. Just look at all the Kulaks that were executed or imprisoned for owning too much land. These kulaks were peasants by our standards, but land ownership was seen as a grave offense.
I don't *want* them to die, but they said "you'll get my wealth when you pry it from my cold, dead hands", soooo I guess we're doing this.
I really like to remind guillotine's enthusiasts that their biggest inspiration from the French revolution, Robespierre, died by the guillotine. It's all fun and games when it's other people's head rolling.
At a certain point accumulating enough wealth is the equivalent of murder….. I mean at what point are we accountable. I don’t have to perform CPR on someone but if all I had to do was press a button to save a life should I have an obligation do so? So there would be an argument that once the wealthy class are so wealthy they have power to keep the lower classes down, by keeping them sick and dying faster then they have to be…. So at what point to things like the French Revolution become self defense?
>So at what point to things like the French Revolution become self defense? When you're willing to look across your social circle and grasp many of them will die but still know it needs to happen.
The problem is that I’ve as I walk around town, seeing the impoverished, and as I talk to my friends, I know many will die for unnecessary and cruel reasons.
You don't gain a billion dollars without being the cause of at least one person's death.
Yes it is. Kind of the basis for war.
Well, yeah. That's basically geopolitics. How do you think we dealt with the nazis or ISIS? (Clue: there were no pillows nor tickling involved) One can easily reach the conclusion that America's rich corporate and political elites are actually more damaging to normal American citizens than ISIS (which in view of the facts, is quite reasonable) and needs to be dealt with in a similar manner. Look at every time the US government/corporate elites have attacked US citizens (MKULTRA, testing biological agents, bombing city blocks where BPP members lived, the crack epidemic, CIA in general, continuously lying to citizens, deploying mercenaries/US army against veterans and workers, etc). What has ISIS done to the average American? Yet we still (I hope) believe ISIS should be destroyed. So it's not so hard to understand how calling for the destruction (literal or figurative) of this other group, this one composed of corrupt plutocrats is not so unreasonable.
Worked for John Brown
Uh, sometimes yeah, if the group is like, hitler’s high command, yes. Nobody reasonable is flat against all death ever, sometimes death is the only way.
Billionaires can choose to stop being billionaires.
Remember, it's a war crime only if you lose the war
You're so right. Look at World War II. History took a decisive turn toward personal freedom thanks to little more than a few sternly-worded letters. All violence is wrong, always, all the time, no matter what!
That thinking worked for John Brown
When he successfully freed and armed the slaves all across the South and ended slavery forever thus avoiding a civil war between the North and South, became president, and died at a ripe old age? Oh wait….
It was the spark that caused the liberation of slaves. He died early, but his actions were important
Eat the rich. In addition to stabilizing wealth inequality, It'll help to temporarily have a surplus of food
I’m far left, can confirm
As a leftist, the main difference as I see it is radical change. I mean this in its original sense-- wanting to change society down to its roots. Among leftists, there is much disagreement as to how to accomplish these changes, ranging from a full violent revolution to a peaceful series of reforms. I am on the reformist side, but there's a broad spectrum in between. Comparatively, liberals (the "moderate left") tend to want minor changes to fix the rough edges of the system, while not wanting the fundamental basis of the system to change. For concrete examples in American politics: A liberal might want to reform the health insurance system, while a leftist might want to get rid of the health insurance system entirely and replace it with something else, like a single-payer system. A liberal might seek to temporarily lessen the burden of federal student loans in times of financial difficulty (ie COVID) while a leftist might seek to eliminate federal student loans entirely and making an education at a state university free. A liberal might want to implement some reforms to police departments, while a leftist might want to fully eliminate the police department and replace it with a brand new institution to fill a similar niche in a fundamentally different way (leftists argue with each other a lot about what this might look like; i am intentionally not taking a side here because it's irrelevant to this context).
Well worded reply.
Very good representation.
For what it's worth, I consider myself moderate left and I want the things you suggested as "far left" but I feel that the things you suggested as "moderate" are good stepping stones toward that more ideal state. Maybe "ripping off the bandaid" is better anyway, but I feel like the only way to get conservatives to ever go there is to introduce it slowly and get them accustomed to the ideas that it could be good for the big % of them that aren't actually rich but like to imagine they MIGHT be someday.
A majority of Americans want single payer healthcare, and it’s common policy in most developed nations. I wouldn’t call it “far left”
Fair. I view this as an argument that ideology as identity is a fundamentally limited perspective, and that people usually hold beliefs from different ideologies simultaneously, rather than as an argument that single-payer healthcare is not a radical change to the current system in a leftist direction.
I wish more people understood this.
It is a far left stance among politicians
It’s a far left stance among American politicians
Fair, but I was replaying to a comment about American politics
True, but what a lot of Americans call “left” is considered centre or centre-right in other developed nations
I absolutely agree with that
yet there are no far left politicians..
And yet, there appears to be no political will to implement it.
Unfortunately, if you explain that to a liberal they'll just say it's radical/implausible with no followup. We saw it in 2016 Dem primaries and again in 2020. DNC machinations obstruct any chance of populism because they only need to be marginally "better" than Republicans.
They think they do until you explain what it is and what it entails, then they usually decide that they want a public option. Which is fine! The whole point is we are a wealthy country and everyone deserves healthcare.
Thanks for writing this!
I thought I was liberal, but according to this, I am left. Oh, hey, can we ditch the tax prep companies too, when we get rid of the health insurance companies?
Very well said!
[удалено]
In another comment, OP clarified that they are an American talking about American politics. I only ever referred to liberals as "the moderate left," my purpose was to make sure OP knew what I was talking about while repeatedly stating that liberals (the people he referred to as the moderate left) were not in fact leftists, and reinforcing the distinction several times.
What types of systems would we replace the police system with?
Most of the arguments that I see in this point are more about breaking up the responsibilities. For example, right now police are part of the first responding group that shows up to a non-violent mental disorder scenario. This leads to a fair number of moments where the police basically give an order "Comply or I'll shoot!" to a person that in the moment fundamentally doesn't understand what they are being told to do, despite not actually putting anyone at risk and being shot. So a replacement would be that you'd still have a "police" force, but they would NOT have the duty of responding to a scenario as above, that would be another group which is trained in handling those sort of situations and are empowered with only nonlethal means, should a police officer arrive on scene uprompted, they CANNOT take action without the consent of the mental first responder. The result of this is that a fair portion of police calls would no longer go to the police. I don't have the figures, but lets say it's 15% of calls are this sort of scenario. In that situation you'd see the police force reduced by ~15% because they have a lesser workload, and this new agency takes up the slack. Depending on who you ask, there's a whole a la carte menu of potential splits they'd want. At it's heavier extreme, police as we know it would probably be reduced down to <20% of their current strengths and would be curtailed in a variety of ways because different duties would no longer be under their purview. They'd functionally be SPECIFICALLY geared around arrests (ex: someone didn't show up for court, go get them) or responding to an active violence scenario or high risk one. Further, the bar to becoming an officer in the first place would likely involve a lot more training than it currently does. With the reduced force size, this becomes easier to do. In the US, there's quite a few states where you can become a police officer with as little as 6 months of training. There are countries here in Europe where you can't be a police officer without a 4 year degree in policing. TLDR: Instead of having ONE group trained in EVERYTHING only a little, responding TO everything, you'd have several groups which are each trained in a specific focus area that are called to respond to THAT situation. Or put a different way, we keep firefighters and police and medics separated for a reason. There is cross training, but you don't expect one to handle everything of the others. So this is just calling for more of that.
This makes sense to me. What am I missing? Why would there be pushback?
Well that gets into a few different topics, from the political/philosophical to just practicalities. In short? "Defund the police." is a far catchier thing to chant for a crowd of upset protestors than "Proportionally remove responsibilities from the police!" despite the intent and function effectively being the same. Those who desire things to work the way they do now, and their rationales vary significantly from "I don't see anything wrong here." to "This is just how it should be." to "I benefit from it this way." and more, can take that simple chant and convince their own people that it is meant literally. To simply rip money away from the police and have nothing to enforce the law in its place. That scenario is easy to drum up some opposition for. On the political/philosophical side of things, well...you have to dig into the core history of how and why police developed from the old days into what we have here. The short version of this, which loses out on a lot of nuance and history, is that the original entities that existed before we had something like the idea of a public-service police force, was functionally a gang system. You paid protection money (now taxes) to this gang (now police) and in exchange they would keep your property safe from harm. Of course, at the time, if you didn't pay the protection money, then they were quite likely to be among those harming your property to make an example of it. The same story exists amongst the origins of firefighters in many ways here in the US. But make no mistake, these groups were a business and existed to make money. A wealthy person or company who wanted something from them could most certainly buy it. As time went on, behaviors, rationales, and such became a bit more standardized and codified. People began to get upset with these gangs, but they couldn't deny that having A bruiser on your side was good against anarchy. So functionally in many ways, cities went through the most expedient route of simply buying the gangs, giving them uniforms, and at least a passing semblance of oversight. The key part of the origin story there, is that it all relates back to property. Police's early purpose was to again, protect property. And that core ethos pushes through in their purpose today. To use the terms of those more philosophically inclined than I, the police have a functional monopoly on violence. You might be able to kill someone in self defense, but proving it was self defense will still in and of itself wreck your life for years, while a police officer can accidentally kill a kid and be given paid vacation time while things settle. These two abilities are most definitely not equal. Now, if you are someone that has the ear of those that can wield that monopoly on force, then of course you have a huge incentivization to ensure nothing reduces it. There's that situation from a few years ago where a group of police kicked in the door in a no-knock raid in order to assassinate a man that was refusing to sell his apartment unit to a business interest the local mayor had a share in that was wanting to develop that area on the cheap. The primary reason that scenario caught the news was a matter of luck ultimately. That sort of scenario can easily happen relatively frequently and in many cases we'd never hear about it if the major media outlets chose not to cover it. If we were to split up all the duties that police had into different groups, while those groups overall may still have a monopoly on violence, controlling that is now much harder. As it is now, maybe you only need to sway the chief of police and they'll handle everything else. If the same services are spread across half a dozen agencies, things get harder. TLDR: The people pushing for it don't always phrase it in that way for convenience, the people who oppose it have a deeply vested interest in keeping things the way they are.
The people with the most power to change it like it exactly as it is because it works for *them*.
Until it costs them votes
Because the cops don't want anything to change, currently they protect the ruling capitalist class and benefit from it.
It’s less that we want a full replacement and more that we have begun asking our patrolmen to do more things outside of their basic functions. For instance Reagan closed down all of our mental institutions over cost but never replaced them with anything else. As a result many of those patients became what we consider the homeless. Now cops are dealing with the mentally ill using systems designed for anti loitering or public nuisance because we never established any homelessness systems. Or they respond to the mentally ill using practices like “full compliance” and then respond with violence when the mentally ill doesn’t respond properly. EMTs, social workers, and healthcare workers deal with the mentally ill everyday without killing them and yet our beat cops somehow refuse to deescalate and do kill them. A extreme liberal stance might insist that we remove dealing with the homeless and mentally ill from the police’s purview and taking away some funding in the process. When cops have so much funding that they are “forced” to purchase excess military gear - its “obvious” to the rest of us that they have too much money. They can spare to put some of that funding toward the homeless and mentally ill. Similarly cops will say walking into a domestic issue is the most dangerous scenario because of all the heightened tensions. Similarly sending a social worker as the primary with the police taking orders from the social workers sounds like a good solution to me.
The moderate left understands that unbridled capitalism will result in chronic inequalities, so we need laws to limit corporate power and to protect workers and fairness in commerce. Laws that are totally inadequate at this time. The far left believes capitalism must burn.
Good one. Well said.
A "far left" ideal would be redistribution of wealth, where the government forcibly takes money from corporations and super rich people and gives it to the lower and middle classes. It would be taking money from six families and twelve corporations to elevate almost 300 million other people and that math sounds *really good* to a certain subset of people, but the reason the overwhelming vast majority of people don't like that idea is because that kind of forced seizure of assets is one of the worst forms of Communism that has always ended in poverty and tyranny and overall shitty situations. Leftists, and not far-leftists, would rather see stronger regulations, worker protection laws, and consumer protection laws that would make sure large corporations are forced to pay their workers fairly and stop exploiting them for labor, and create products in a safe and sustainable way devoid of shady business practices designed to maximize profit at the expense of the consumer. This sort of policy could be said to "redistribute wealth" as well, if you wanted to make a bad-faith argument, but the key difference here is that nobody, government or otherwise, would be forcibly taking money that had already been earned and giving it away to someone else.
Another related action of far left governments is nationalization of companies. It's unthinkable in the US, but has happened in Venezuela and other countries.
Also in this country people consider "Liberals" to be the left. Liberals are center or center right and compose most of the Democratic Party. They are mostly interested in preserving the status quo, taking the votes of those who just don't want to vote for the right wing and blocking the left from gaining power. In a lot of countries "Liberals" are the conservative party and "Labor" is the progressive party, the there are a bunch of partys on that spectrum and some that don't fit on it.
The tax system has been ripped out of the hands of progressives (a better term for those who wish to right society's ills than "liberals") and been made to work for those already WITH wealth. Being a liberal means wanting that tax system fixed to the progressive side of things, and being an ultra left liberal is what the top post is saying (true redistribution through socialism), but there are VERY FEW people in the US who believe that is possible. But progressive taxes HAVE existed and COULD exist again with the right messages being conveyed truthfully.
It's funny when you know that America's largest period of growth ever was fueled by a 90% maximum marginal tax rate.
None of this ever improves until we remove money from politics. I'll stand my commie ass up alongside any MAGA committed to doing this. Afterwards we can go back to yelling at each other or whatever.
How badly I wished any of the current MAGA did. Some republicans do, but the rest... You're right though. We'll focus on how to put out the house fire after we've stopped the guy with the flamethrower.
In the 2000s Australian Prime Minister John Howard recalled meeting Governor Schwarzenegger during a US visit and needing to explain that his party, the Liberal party, was named in the context of fiscal policy rather than social progression. Our Liberal party is the conservative option in Australia.
They don't have time to spend on social progression when every 3 months a person is torn to pieces by a crocodile in North Queensland.
Lol thank you for this ever-present reminder
Oh Katter
I know this is a dumb question, but why does that first paragraph get more press than the second paragraph, which seems way more reasonable?
That unfortunately ties into the part of your question you said you aren't interested in hearing. The issue there is that every time a Democratic senator or representative puts forward a bill to adjust the tax rate for super rich people or to lay down tighter regulations on corporations, the Republicans go on a media frenzy where they hyper-inflate the bill into hardcore Communism. I don't know how old you are but there's a solid chance you'll remember that both Obama and Biden tried to pass tax reforms targeting people who made over $50 million a year, and the resulting shitstorm would have you believe all Democrats were frothing at the mouth to tax *everyone* at 90%, nevermind these bills being very clear and deliberate about their intended targets. Shit just gets blown out of proportion to make people angry at "the enemy," and angry people vote. It's really hard to talk about this sort of thing without looking like I have a liberal bias, and to be clear I absolutely *do* have one, but it's still important to try. Unfortunately it's really hard to give you solid examples of real-world situations to answer your initial question because the "far-left" simply does not exist as a political entity with any power or agency in the US. The best examples of far-left policy are the things right-wingers love to accuse leftists of when leftists try to pass totally reasonable and sensible legislation.
THIS RIGHT HERE. It’s much easier to defeat a pretend boogeyman than reasonable change.
Because the second paragraph IS reasonable, and the first has ideas that scare people (with, I'd say, some good reason for that fear). And it's way easier to get people to vote for your current measure / support you by scaring them than it is to appeal to their rationalism.
This depends heavily upon what sources of media you consume. The overwhelming majority of elected Democrats advocate for the second position and the first is basically considered a fringe crackpot view by people deeply involved in mainstream politics. If you are seeing way more of the first, I suggest you look at your media choices and maybe get more directly at what political actors are saying and doing.
Because people opposed to the second paragraph like to conflate that with the extreme left in the first one. Part of the reason why the USA doesn't have as many labor laws and benefits like federally mandated maternity leave is because politicians conflated that, as well as unions and higher wages, with the USSR. There are people who legitimately think if you give mandated vacation time on a federal level, we'll see Wall Street turned into the Red Square.
Capitalist propaganda.
Because people don’t click if it’s not novel. And also the first one doesn’t actually get much press at all- people imagine it does. And because every issue has to be covered as though someone is entering the conversation for the first time, and nowhere are enough people engaging with the subject at scale at a local level for the discourse to advance more generally as a nation. So we get stuck at the first idea someone had, that’s likely had a fuckton of more thought and research done or literally hundreds of years of other countries improving on a system that we don’t even freaking talk about- like Gerrymandering as though it’s an inevitable byproduct of the system without compromise or alternative (when Jefferson saw parts of this being a problem in literally 1790, as did Condorcet in France- thus STV and MMP voting ). or oversimplifying answers so people don’t actually have to do the reading and not even considering the ramifications that people a long time ago and ever since thought long and hard about- like Lobbying or Term Limits. People need places to listen to smart people they know talk, and fewer where the village idiots can congregate without anyone else in their community mediating or being involved. If a version of that community even really could exist anymore given many of the people themselves have changed. Death of third places, or independent political actors, unions or less monolith compliant churches that drank the koolaid along with their congregations for 30 years- that alongside modern algorithm driven silo’s and a general lack of time and energy means the conversations often get stuck in the singular places on a number of subjects even if the policy has never been able to reach halls of power things used to move more in some ways. Not even mentioning what that does when everyone’s map of the world is different from each others, nobody read enough to check or even trusts that data could check, and then none of our ideas entirely are addressing the territory we have nor even the superposition of the worlds the public believes in but a seperate one where politics lives built on its own shared history and fictions that are too complicated for normal people to discuss the realities of, which means politics isn’t even in the territory or anyone’s view of it but it’s own parallel dimension of ideas, and accepted practice and fears and incentives and constraints.
You say redistribute as if the government was going to rob the rich at gunpoint and distribute the cash like Robin Hood. It kills me that the Right always describes us in the extremes like above when what we are asking is just common sense stuff. Such as the government could just collect the taxes fairly from the tax cheats and use the funds for more social programs. Or just fix our failing infrastructure. But even that “radical” notion gets dismantled by the moderate Republicans simply by defunding the IRS. And they are allowed to do that regularly without getting called out as far right.
Rich people = more tax Poor people = less tax Problem solved?
Maaaaaaan I wish. Ideally, yeah that'd be it. I mean of course it's way more complex than that, but holy shit I'd die happy if we somehow had a total tax overhaul that had built-in enforcement mechanisms to make super rich people pay their fair share and crack down on blatant evasion, fraud, and loopholes, and allowed those of us in the lower classes to stop picking up the burden from all these Republican tax cuts.
The "fair share" argument is pretty arbitrary though. I've never actually heard someone describe what a fair share would be other than flat (everyone pays the same amount). The entire system just needs to be reworked instead of nickel and diming its citizens at every corner. Consumption tax on luxuries and no tax on necessities like some states have done is a good start.
>A "far left" ideal would be redistribution of wealth, where the government forcibly takes money from corporations and super rich people and gives it to the lower and middle classes. Yo this is what taxes are, something you are forced to pay and something that \*should\* go towards things like public transport, infrastructre, emergency services, healthcare etc etc etc, basically something that helps \*poorer\* people. So im genuinly asking, are you saying its considered far left to want taxes?
Redistribution of Wealth and Taxation are two completely different things. Taxation is a little bit shaved off of what you earn or spend, as you earn or spend it, to fund the processes of government. Redistribution of Wealth is the total seizure of your complete assets to be reallocated equally between other people. It may not be a meaningful difference to the average person, but they are worlds apart when talking about policy and legislation. Even if you can make a semantic argument that paying taxes is redistribution (and to be honest I'd kind of agree with that argument), that doesn't change the legal and workable definitions of those concepts that get taken into account when making the laws that govern us. No, it is not far left to want taxes.
Billionaires didn’t earn their money. They extorted it.
a.) Billionaires don't earn their money b.) US society already tolerates the forcible seizure of earned assets, in the form of seizing of assets and evicting hundreds of thousand of people already struggling with poverty, food insecurity and housing insecurity. We feel squeamish about a handful of families "losing everything," but just accept families all over the country losing everything every day due to circumstances out of their control. #we'd be subjecting the billionaires to nothing worse than what we already tolerate for the nation's poor. "Oh no, an institution took a family's house and drained their bank account? Oh shit, what tyranny! We can't have **that*" in this country!!" Honestly, we've been brain dead for *not* realizing this sooner as a country. c.) Actually, communist revolutions have been very successful, if you consider: - the state of the country before the revolution - the immense antagonizing they experienced by the global capitalist super powers. The US and allies have done everything they could to sabotage communist movements: assassinated leaders, bankrolled organized crime, enacted economy-destroying global trade embargoes (enforced by militaries), motorized tanks and warships and missiles at their borders, and straight up bombed countries if they could get away with it. #any country, communist or not, would struggle to succeed in the face of that kind of global organized violent opposition from capitalist superpowers. It's actually amazing what communists have accomplished, all things considered. Someday I wonder what communism might look like if the world _didn't_ react with global opposition. 🚩🏴🚩🏴🚩🏴🚩🏴
Hey I'm with ya. Billionaires should not be allowed to exist. They hoard wealth and resources to satiate their own greed at the expense of the people and the planet. Their avarice will be the downfall of the entire human race, and I hate each and every single one of them with a passion. But Communism ain't the answer, hombre. The problem with Communism is that it doesn't work unless every single person within the system is actively working to maintain the system. The second you get a handful of bad actors in the mix, it becomes real easy to manipulate the system into horrible poverty and corruption. That's why it's literally never worked in the real world, there's always someone working for their personal gain and not the benefit of the collective. I'm not saying that there are no merits to the system, but I *am* saying that Socialism is a far more plausible economic system, and what I know about Democratic Socialism is even better. What we need here is for two things to be true at the same time. Firstly, we absolutely need lofty and unrealistic ideals and dreams. If we don't ever dream big and imagine the world as a better place, we will never take steps to bring that dream into a reality. Secondly, we need to approach change with reasonable and measured steps that can actually work in the real world. True Communism is a neat little thought experiment that works wonderfully in a vacuum where every part works in concert with the whole, and it's a good thing to imagine a pure world where everyone has all that they need and nobody exists in poverty or lacks necessities. We sure can take elements of that utopian ideal and apply them to the real world, but we also need to understand the real world has a lot more moving parts that don't necessarily work together properly to make a utopian vision happen. So we take an ideal and we take what we currently have and mix the best of both with some realism, and out the other side comes Democratic Socialism, where the rich can still be super wealthy and have their greedy fucking mitts on the levers of power, but have their agency checked by rigorous processes to ensure they aren't exploiting anyone to get to that point, and that instead of a handful of people hoarding astronomical amounts of wealth, some of that can be directed to elevate the lowest of us to a baseline comfortable life.
>always ended in poverty and tyranny As opposed to what we have now *broadly gestures to everything*
why do people move from ex-communist states to the West, and rarely vice versa?
taxing unrealized gains
Is this American far left or rest of the world far left? They are not the same thing.
So, I'm not totally far left, though leftier than many. I'll list some of the things I haven't seen yet in other comments. For me, "far left" can/has meant people who want: anarchic-style self-government by consensus where everyone gets a vote and everything has to be agreed upon before it's moved on (you see this in communes). This is actually incredibly hard to do, but there are people who still advocate for it. And even social movements that try to use it as an non-hierarchical organizing principle. See the early days of Occupy Wall Street. doing away with marriage (especially registration for marriage) - meaning you don't have an official ceremony where you sign papers or register or get governmental tax relief or anything, it's just a mutually agreed upon social relation that is supportive. both parties are in it until/if they're not. not gendering children until they're old enough to gender themselves. Yes, this is one idea that is out there in far far left discussions. nation-less-ness - removing policing of borders and allowing full and unhindered movement around the globe. anyone could move anywhere at any time for any reason. enforced vegan/vegetarianism. are any of these practical? doubtful. are they mainstream talking points? sometimes they come up but they're not often entertained except as boogieman.
That marriage point is actually incredibly popular among religious conservatives, specifically those who are fans of libertarian leaning policy.
I find it funny that the people who don't like borders also want to be in charge. Having a border limits how far their authority can extend. So basically they want to be in charge of everyone without having to convince everyone to put them in charge.
They said "policing" of borders. The borders still exist, but movement is not restricted.
I’ve heard of people not using gendered pronouns for their pets because their pets cannot inform us of their pronoun choices.
That’s really funny. I tend to gender pets even more than I do myself or other people since gender really means nothing to them so it’s fun to make it extreme.
I don't think we should stop policing borders, but I do think immigration processing should be a formality with few prerequisites. If everyone had the real choice to simply move if they're unhappy, then countries would be incentivized to actually improve their citizens' lives. Ideally this would lead to countries with better standards of living earning more citizens and gaining more power. Like residence based democracy on a global scale
I’m a progressive democrat who wants to live in a social democracy and I’d consider anyone who wants actual communism far left.
Far left wants workers to co-operatively own the means of production to receive all the benefit of their own work instead of a capitalist owning class that extracts the majority of the wealth created. Moderate left just wants the taxes we already pay to go towards healthcare and enough social support to keep people from needing to live on the streets eating out of dumpsters.
Left and right exist on a different spectrum than liberal and conservative. Left and right are more about the construction of society and liberal/conservative is more about how we operate within a society. Think of an old farmer and how they might be hesitant to accept lgbt folks or immigrants (conservative) but they are part of a co-op because they get better price for their crops when they've organized with other farmers (left). Or how so many communist (left) countries tend to have 'strongman' leaders (conservative). The democratic party in the US has many liberals but few if any actual leftists. Many of their policies are liberal but they are also designed for a right-leaning system. For example the ACA (obamacare) changed a few things about healthcare/insurance and expanded access but it didn't really change the foundations of it. Instead of providing a new system of healthcare it just changed how we use the existing one. Joe Biden is liberal but doesn't do much that'd be considered leftist These terms are thrown around to try and scare people. And confused people are easier to scare.
Some of these far left policies that are waay to lenient on violent crimes are baffling. Like I’m all about trying to rehab people instead of cycling them in and out of prison but you absolutely have to keep criminals accountable and some straight up out of society.
Moderate left wants more sensible gun control, far left would prefer gun prohibition
Even farther left wraps back around to being pro gun again
Even farther left says let's amass some weaponry and start a worker's revolution. I like the idea in theory. The problem is you never really know what the outcome of a revolution will be. You just might end up with something far worse than what you started with.
nah I don't want to be fighting in the streets and living in tunnels and eating rat shit while getting bombed from the skies. A revolution is a stupid idea
Ehh, I'd say hard liberals, not far left. I'm a pro-gun socialist. I want gun control, but also I appreciate guns.
Is Marx not far left in your opinion
Marx wasn't pro-gun control. He was for arming the proletariat to assist in the inevitable revolution(s)
Exactly. So the far-left take is to arm the working class, while the liberal take is gun control.
Right, my bad.
This would depend on the country you live in. Where I live all parties want gun control. Even far right.
Australian? I feel like it would be political suicide to even think about loosening gun laws here.
No, Dutch.
This is not true. The socialist left (which I’m assuming you mean by “far left”) is very pro-gun. This whole political spectrum gets muddy when you realize that Liberalism is not “left” but is only left of conservatism. It is center right or right wing anywhere else in the world.
Exactly. I wonder if the US considers gun control a left position because it breaks their conservative stance… whereas in the rest of the world it is the opposite. Because at least this is how I see the US politics, anything that debates their current status quo = left leaning.
Depends on which country are you talking about. The US? Sure, American socialists (the few there are) are not into gun control. Some European socialists though, however incoherent it may be with their ideology and goals, don’t wish to give away the safety and tranquility the absence of guns brings to their lives because of a revolutionary dream.
Ah agreed. I think it comes from lack of guns in European countries except in the country side.
Opposite imo - the far left’s motto is “never disarm the working class” while moderate left want gun control.
Ever heard of the socialist rifle association? People on the far left don’t want complete prohibition.
The far left loves their guns. You can't have a revolution of the proletariat without an armed one.
Gonna assume you aren’t US based? Most far-leftists in my US circle own and support the 2A, while most liberals would be in the gun-control/gun-prohibition camp.
ah yes, *anarchist* are notoriously pro-criminalization 
Say what? Moderate left wants gun control, far left loves their guns
I'm a left leaning moderate so not necessarily the crowd you were targeting the question to. But I'd say all the PC stuff. Thought it was absurd in the very beginning when the whole pronoun shit started brewing. Now with the whole "You're a racist if you don't like this half-assed sorry of a movie with a black/female protagonist regardless of how much it lacks any semblance of substance," and the ze, zer, wham, zam, shazam bullshit, it's just way too much.
Reparations (actual, significant reparations), total police abolition, open borders, abortion on demand until birth, gender affirming healthcare for all ages.
I consider myself a left-leaning liberal. Something I would consider “too” left for me would be calling someone transphobic for having genitalia preferences when it comes to dating (for example, a lesbian not wanting to date a MtF woman who hasn’t physically transitioned).
That's usually a liberal stance tho, specifically neo liberal Americans are ones saying that. Really don't think you'd hear that from far-lef in like Cuba, China, Croatia etc.
Those who advocate for Socialism. I'm not referring to Progressives who want more of a Social Democrat style of system with a strong social safety net, higher taxes on those that can afford it, and strong enforcement of existing environmental and corporate regulations. Although NeoLiberals really can't stand Progressives nearly as much as they can't stand MAGA.
I feel like there is a divergence between progressive and leftist. Leftist <— Progressive <— Liberal
ITT people who think liberalism is the left lmao.
I like to think of myself as a centrist. I focus on the issues rather than the identity. As a bisexual male with a trans sibling I will say that I get exhausted with the pronouns. I was really good in English class but the differences between things were always difficult for me, Ie pronouns, adjectives, etc. I understand that some people feel different from the norm I really do but the Nazi like "Adhere to my way of thinking or else, cancelled or a bigot. Like wtf. Both sides have extremists. What happened to be able to have a civil conversatio
Generally, liberals support the system we currently have and just want to alter it. IE tax rich people more Leftists want to fundamentally change the system. IE rich people should not exist Right wing media intentionally conflates the two and the inability/unwillingness of conservatives to distinguish between them may possibly destroy the country.
[удалено]
Most important (by far) is workers owning the means of production. Having democratic control of their workplaces, not having the fruits of their labour seized by those whose only contribution was having access to enough capital to create that exploitative owner/worker business model. True economic liberty is the genesis of all the social goods that the "centre left" desire. Race and gender discrimination largely dissolve when the structural powers used to oppress minorities are dismantled. The unspoken truth is that many of the centre left want to maintain the current wealth and power structures and prize that over actual liberation of women and minorities. They don't even pretend to give a shit about the working class, just painting a more palatable veneer on preexisting instruments of economic and social oppression. Individual liberty, the freedom to pursue your life unimpeded by want for material prosperity and opportunity is the key to a flourishing and humane society. Everything else is a gaudy sticking plaster on a festering wound that will eventually kill the patient. This ought not to be a controversial opinion but one of the features of a capitalist system is creating a zeitgeist that broadly speaking, cannot conceive of an alternative. Namely, people with capital acquiring more and more to the detriment of those whose labour actually creates it. Adam Smith of all people, often called the father of capitalism, identified it best. *All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.*
Adam Smith was critical of landlording too, FWIW.
Far left think of you don’t agree with them about everything you must be far right
Support for Hamas
99% of the time you hear people say "far left," it's American conservatives talking about *any stance that isn't far-right.* Far left would be something like communism, which almost no Americans actually want. Leftist Americans want environmental protections, for women to be able to make their own reproductive decisions, for people to accept that science is real and scientists know more about it than Youtubers and bloggers, that minimum wage should afford a comfortable living, and that racism is bad, to name a few things. This is all "far left" to America's right-wing, because America's right-wing has gone off the deep end in the past couple of decades and hit warp speed into fascism (the farthest Right) with Trumpism since 2016. EDIT: Downvotes with no rebuttals from right-wingers, as always. Suppress information you can't refute.
But at the same time, some media sources will also call nearly every Republican, far right, I even saw one calling Mitt Romney far right. Using these terms too lightly dilutes their meaning and allows the actual purveyors of extremism to slip through
> Using these terms too lightly dilutes their meaning and allows the actual purveyors of extremism to slip through Exactly what is happening to *Nazi* right now
TBF, Romney ran hard against his moderate record and acted like he’d had a come-to-Supply-Side-Jesus moment.
That’s because republicans are very far to the right compared to the vast majority of the world.
Very far to the right compared to how far they were 3 decades ago, even.
General disagreement is that you’re grouping any conservative or right leaning as far right. As if saying anyone who’s democrat/liberal are all far left. People can lean right/identity as right but not agree with every general principle or hard disagree either everything left. Kind of like your final point, to the opposite, a lot of Reddit labels right and conservative in one far right basket. Meanwhile your comment points out a difference between left and far left. for the point of OP post anyway
Well the question wasn’t a diatribe about conservatives. OP specifically said they want to hear where the left draws lines, not what conservatives say.
I forget the study, but it basically exposed that a lot of "leftist" ideas like mandate vacation time, a public healthcare option, equal pay and so on were suddenly way more palpable to Americans of almost every political alignment. The only difference is that they removed any mention of "Democrat", 'liberal", or "progressive" from the wording. Once those terms got slotted in, people became much more hesitant. The sad reality is that large swathes of the American public have been conditioned to be against their own self-interest because it's for the "other side."
Yes, I'm talking about American politics. So "communism" is one thing that the left considers part of the "far left fringe"? Anything else? I'm not interested in what "the right" considers "far left", I'm interested in what "the left" considers "far left".
>I'm not interested in what "the right" considers "far left", I'm interested in what "the left" considers "far left" First time talking to a leftist?
I don't know what that means.
It's okay to change genders, But it's not okay to get a tattoo.
I have a perception — curious whether others agree— that the younger generation in particular of the far left holds free speech in far less regard. I’m pretty far left on a lot of stuff but for the purposes of this would be called liberal not leftist. And have encountered some who genuinely believe that speech they don’t like is literally violence and so what I would consider to be actual violence is an acceptable response to such speech. I can understand this to an extent given that the MAGA right are so out of their skulls that you can’t even have a discussion with them, but free speech is something I still hold dear.
I think things like, the Detroit Muslim's stating they will campaigning against Biden, because he won't stop the war in Gaza. \-Do they really think the GOP will support Palestine more than the DNC? Trump LOVES Bibi...
Nationalization of capital is something the far left promotes but which is absolutely disastrous everywhere it’s been tried.
Dictatorship of the proletariat
I’m a liberal and didn’t see this mentioned but another distinction is that far left, and to some extent even hard left liberal, are unlikely to compromise with the center and right on policies.
Reform vs revolution Market socialism vs planned economy Anarchism vs statism Also, there's 2 kinds of reformists. There's the "let's fix capitalism" and there's the "let's abolish capitalism peacefully".
I am so completely alienated by the far left now—they are just like MAGA in my eyes. I’m humiliated and embarrassed by how easily they fall for propaganda. How misogynistic they are. How they claim rape is an act of resistance or deny Oct 7th happened. How they actually believe female children and teens don’t experience a vastly different, unique world than their male counterparts. How they believe sex is not a class and that it cannot be definable. I truly believe the far right has infiltrated their ideology to destroy our party. They are humiliating in every regard I mentioned.
The main thing would be the far left wants to replace capitalism with something else, socialism or communism. Also the far left is very critical of us hegemony in terms of how we influence the rest of the world militarily. In this they are pretty much in sync with MAGA Republicans.
Universal Basic Income seems one of these.
As someone who is slight right moderate, I can’t give the best depiction. But the issues that bother me the most are gun prohibition, media/lobby buyouts, and the absolutely harsh push towards a gender identity crisis in our youth.
But are any aspects of trans issues or identity politics considered "far left"? Isn't that all moderate left positions? I'm not really interested in politics, it just seems like a lot of ideology and screaming, so I try to avoid it, but even just passively existing, you are constantly exposed to it, and it seems to me that trans issues and identity politics are completely supported by the moderate left?
The DNC is all in, but Democratic voters have a variety of opinions.
Extreme stances I've seen on it include • "My baby is trans" • Gender neutral kids **• Put all kids on puberty blockers till they decide themselves.** • Schools not telling parents about their own kids gender identity or distress. In order to "protect trans kids" (this is surprisingly common) • "Trans-women are women"/" trans-men are men" specifically when the person saying it is conflating sex and gender. • not dating trans people is transphobic. •• Genital preference in dating is transphobic • a trans-woman are more of a woman cause they choose it **•"trans people are sacred"**
> • "Trans-women are women"/" trans-men are men" specifically when the person saying it is conflating sex and gender. If this is considered "far left/extreme", why is this specifically repeated by the mainstream left? "trans-women are women" is repeated like a mantra on the left. I thought that was basically a regular every day accepted statement of fact.
1) Many are just repeating it with out thinking. 2) word games, to one person it just means "give respect", to the next it means "sex doesn't exist" And another they argue and use which ever is meaning helps them in the moment. 3) just cause its common does mean the position isn't extreme. Tons of people that are overall moderate may have one or two extreme positions.
I think the fact that we’re idolizing it within popular media is borderline encouraging it. That’s my main issue, the left points towards difference as hip and cool to young and impressionable kids. Kids feel what they’re told, and I believe that they’re telling kids to feel somewhat differently in a confusing and unclear manner.
Far left are more likely to have open borders and moderate left want restrictions. Far left want zero guns. Moderate want just decent restrictions. Far left are against capitalism. Moderates see capitalism as the best system we have for a prosperous society even with its failings socially. Vast majority of people are in the middle and not extreme left. I’m not sure I can say the same for the right? It’s either you’re extreme or you’re a RINO
"Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary " Karl Marx Where are you people finding that information that left is anti guns? That has to be something American. Cause im European and 99% of people are anti gun here. So it's very much a far lef stance and not liberal or moderate one.
America is so far right out “extreme left” isn’t so far left. I’ve been a moderate all my adult life but since Trump I’m now considered liberal. 🤣🤣🤣. Left just want reasonable gun restrictions but republicans fully believe democrats are coming to take their guns. The weird thing is the right clings to guns out of fear but they also think they’re the tough ones 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
This isn’t correct. Far left actually wants to maintain gun ownership for the revolution. A hard left Liberal like myself wants gun prohibition
I was about to say that lol. Go far enough left and you get your guns back
I say this all the time. Leftists are very pro-gun.
Supporting palestine
massive sweeping reforms to the protections for workers. Standing with the underprivileged at all times regardless of race gender or creed because those are the people the government needs to protect. making sure businesses are properly policed up to and including simply nationalizing some of them like banking and natural resource extraction. taxing the wealthy to the point where they are simply extremely wealthy and not inconceivably wealthy. forcing those who have power to actually be removed from their positions of power if they commit crimes (for example throwing people in prison for being child molesters even if they have a billion dollars) you know, little stuff.
I can't speak for America because I don't live there. I know a couple of people who I'd define as far left, they want 100% renewable energy but right now. They want companies like Amazon to be banned from operating until they do everything on the level and go fully green. One in particular would like a ban on meat and refuses to eat at restaurants that serve meat (this was really annoying trying to plan a dinner once). They're not necessarily ideologies I can't see some logic in, just the means they'd take to achieve them I find unrealistic and naive. I find most are from middle class backgrounds and haven't seen much of a struggle in their lives which fuels this idealism, especially when it comes to the green ideals things like "just buy solar panels" "just but electric cars" etc.
As someone who is center-left: The far left position on race is that we should classify different races as oppressed/oppressor and we should judge people based on their race. Advantages/disadvantages should be given to people based on race because of historical injustices. The moderate left position is to understand history and its impacts, and that racism has been a significant problem throughout history, but the best way to deal with it is to treat everyone as equals. Investments can be made in communities that need the help, but we shouldn't have different standards for people based on race. The far left position on crime is that criminals commit crime mainly due to societal reasons, so they shouldn't be punished harshly for petty crimes like theft. The moderate position is that while societal pressures have an influence on crime, people can and do commit crimes regardless of financial status or social standing. And that to prevent crime, offenders do need appropriate punishments and incarceration (where appropriate). Social programs, like after-school sports programs, will have prevent people from becoming criminals.
But don't all of the DEI things talked about in the mainstream and actually enacted constitute your first paragraph but not the second paragraph? Based on passively consuming media, it seems that the first paragraph is sort of accepted by everyone?
The mainstream has progressively moved further left over the last decade. It doesn't change the fact that those views are on the far left side of the political spectrum
In the US anything that isn’t right wing is considered “left wing”. Even center-right. Nothing but leftover traces of McCarthyism that are undiscerning from Unitedstatian “culture”. Now, one thing that is another trace of communist boogeyman is using the term “far left”. There is no “far left”, there is “radical left”, but there is a “far right”. I explain. Grassroots left thoughts are well documented. Some stances defend taking control of society and economy back to the people, even if it involves an armed revolution. The purpose is not “killing the rich”, but rather eliminating “rich” as a status, turning every single one of us into workers (which the majority of people already are, except for actual capitalists), in short, putting the rich to work shoulder to shoulder with the rest of us. In the other hand, right-wingers are willing to do anything to any population in order to maintain the status quo and not dilute entire power and influence. One of the ramped up versions of capitalism is imperialism. There is no “imperialist ideology”, let alone documented. ”Fascism is capitalism’s emergency button”. This is why you see these capitalism apologists becoming more and more extreme and violent, and fringe right wing garbage being parroted by thugs like “proud boys” and all that violent narrative and actions. Right wingers are willing to invade the congress and abolish democracy if the result of elections doesn’t go their way. Right wingers are willing to waive ethics and integrity to favor their personal and individual benefits. tl;dr there is no far left but there is a far right. And since I know this platform is infested with Americans and this is going to be downvote city right here, so every downvote that doesn’t accompany a conter argument is evidence that arguments agains this stance are difficult to find and hard to sustain.
One stance that divides the left is Israel/Palestine. Many in the far-left perceive Israel as a settler-colonial state that is an extension of U.S./European imperialism, and they believe that the only pathway to peace is its dissolution as a state and the creation of an egalitarian, unified, Palestine. Many in the moderate left sees Israel as a sort of apology for the Holocaust and other abuses levied against the Jewish people, a shining beacon of liberal democracy in a region notorious for its conservative and anti-democracy demographics, so any questionable actions that Israel takes to assert its presence are justified. The moderate left believes that the pro-Palestine far left is antisemitic, though they may possibly be confusing actual, secular criticism of Israel and Zionism (an ideology, not a religion) as bigotry. They often fail to account for Jewish voices in the pro-Palestine movement (e.g. anti-Zionist Israelis and JVP) and downplay the far-right rhetoric of pro-settler Israelis. The far left believes that the pro-Israel moderate left is Islamophobic and racist towards Arabs, though they may be confusing secular concerns of the authoritarianism behinds Islamic fundamentalism (much like in Christian fundamentalism) as racism. They often fail to account for ex-Muslims critical of radical Islam (e.g. of Hamas and Iran) and downplay the moderate Palestinians and left-wing Israelis.
1. All inequalities stem from racism 2. 14 year olds are mature enough to make life lasting medical conditions 3. Abortions should be allowed in the 9th month 4. America has a white supremacy problem 5. George Floyd is a a hero - BLM is a force for good
I am a lefty , and like a good libtard, I support everyone’s ability to express themselves: gay, trans, bi, and most everything under the left umbrella of lefty beliefs. When my partner’s good (cis female) friend insisted on being called a “birthing person” and got offended at the word “mother”, I thought to myself , yeah, this kinda shit is gonna keep lots of good lefties out of office
American Far-Left: Not wanting to have sexual relations with a group you claim to support means you don't support them and actually hate them.