Comment on If a leftist ran for president, would liberals support him?
CitizenKong@lemmy.world 4 weeks agoThe word “liberals” means something else in Germany than in the US. The closes analogy would be Democrats=SPD and Republicans=CDU, which are the two biggest parties. When Hitler took over, the CDU fell in line while the SPD resisted. The SPD then was also a lot more leftist than it is now. It’s pretty much centrist now and only slightly more to the left than the conservative CDU.
The SPD back then had real Politicians with a Backbone made of Steel!
Hitler tried to intimidate the Politicians by having the SS and SA surround the Building (Krolloper) which worked mostly but Otto Wels and the SPD voted against the “Ermächtigungsgesetz” (Enabling Act) and said in his famous Speech “You can take away our freedom and our lives, but not our honor.” Many of their Members paid the ultimate Price after that and Otto Wels died 1939 in his french Exile.
GhiLA@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
My headcanon:
Leftist: One who supports the general ideas of the Democratic party and supports the people at the head and their usual goings-on, voted Harris, enjoy the color blue.
Liberal: A Leftist, but they don’t think their party speaks for them enough, or aren’t extreme enough on certain issues they don’t think are represented enough, so they think the party has abandoned or doesn’t speak for them. These can be anyone from lgbtq+ activists to worker unions to Bernie Sanders.
Liberal(2nd definition): Someone who’s into traditionalist communist ideals, Lemmy calls them “tankies”. These tend to… not be what most people are talking about when they say liberal, despite arguments to the contrary.
Correct me if I’m wrong, this is in the context of the USA.
BadmanDan@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
You got liberals and leftist mixed up
CitizenKong@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
In the context of Germany, “liberal” means being for capitalism unbridled by the state but still generally progressive policies culturally, with more rights for minorities and such. And corresponding party is FDP. Someone considered “left” would be for more social policies and government control of capitalism (traditionally SPD), extreme left would be following tenants of communism, opposed to the US and friendly with Russia (The party The Left and the new Sarah Wagenknecht party) Someone considered conservative or “right” would be against social policies and try to reduce control of capitalism (CDU) extreme right would be plain fascists (AfD), ironically also aligned with Russia now. The Greens are a special case, since they were originally a single issue party comcerned with environmentalism, but since the SPD has largely vacated their social policies since Schröder was chancellor, they have become more and more the new “social” party.
Dragonstaff@leminal.space 4 weeks ago
I don’t at all understand how you got your definition of “liberal”. I think anyone who could conceivably be called a “tankie” would bristle at being called liberal.
Both of our American parties are liberals. However, most Americans use the word to mean “progressive”.
I think “Leftist” starts at anti-capitalism and goes from there. I half jokingly say a progressive is someone who thinks the system is broken and must be fixed. A Leftist is someone who thinks the system is working exactly as intended and must be destroyed.
adespoton@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
To throw one more into the mix:
“Left” and “Right” came from the UK parliamentary system where the representatives of the two major parties sat on the left and right side of the speaker of the house in the House of Commons.
It just so happened that the ones on the right had conservative values (keep things as they are, don’t spend what we don’t have, local economy first, preserve traditional values) while those seated on the left had liberal values (let’s make things even better, spend for the future, improve the global economy, make life better for all our constituents).
That was the starting point for what it’s all morphed into today.
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
…m.wikipedia.org/…/Left–right_political_spectrum#…
The left–right political spectrum is a system of classifying political positions, ideologies and parties, with emphasis placed upon issues of social equality and social hierarchy. In addition to positions on the left and on the right, there are centrist and moderate positions, which are not strongly aligned with either end of the spectrum. It originated during the French Revolution based on the seating in the French National Assembly.