They were just champing at the bit for an excuse to get more racist. I can't believe the utter heel turn with their border rhetoric
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1bauos4/biden_says_he_regrets_using_term_illegal_as_trump/?sort=controversial
Dems: stop attacking your own guy what. The. Fuck???
These are the people who insist that the GOP are a cult because their members aren’t allowed to criticize the leadership.
I got banned from /r/politics for a week today because I said being a genocide denier is a bad look. I didn't even call anyone a genocide denier. The user picked up the badge and pinned it to their own chest
I don't know what's worse. The drive by glibness or the verbose "smarter than you" adult in the room shit
In any case they tend to be pretty condescending and incurious. There’s also a distinct bombastic writing style that I find pretty grating.
What, you don't appreciate all of them commenting like smug Marvel characters that got ahold of a thesaurus beforehand?
It's hilarious that these liberals are surprised that Cuban immigrants to the United States are right wing and support Trump. Are they so racist that they think that all Latinos are the same and automatically vote Democrat? Do they realise that many of the Cuban immigrants to the US were part of the land owning bourgeois class and were always very right wing, in the same way that many "immigrants/expats" from global south countries that had a revolution or change of government are? South African immigrants/expats after 1994 are another perfect example of this phenomenon.
Are they so racist that they think that all Latinos are the same and automatically vote Democrat?
Yes, and it's quite funny too. When you get down to it there's all sorts of latin american migrants in the US. And the ones likely to vote Democrat probably won't get the right to do so.
I tried to make the point that the sort of person that has the money to migrate to the US in a way that they get to vote is likely a wealthy person whose only connection to the home country is exploiting its health care system. Not to mention that countries in Latin America are a) amongst the most religious conservative in the world; and b) becoming less catholic and more puritan because the pope is too woke for them. I was told I was racist against latinos.
I think there's also a counterpart to this as a bet that Republican's notion of whiteness can't expand to include 'mexicans and other latinos'. Which is only true in so far as it bars potentially democrat migrants from voting. Right wingers do not care that the right wing hates them on the grounds of race or culture. A gay man who's a right winger will keep voting Republican because they know they are protected by their wealth and/or class. Likewise for the white passing Latino that moves from 'Communist Homeland' to Miami. They voted for the 'Tropical Trump' before, and they'll vote for the real deal as soon as they are able.
Also to do with your last paragraph, Latino isn't even a racial group as most US citizens understand it, quite a few Latinos are just straight up white, like most people from Uruguay and Argentina for example. And then obviously you get Afro-Latinos as well. But I guess that's too complicated for US citizens, who just view all Latinos as impoverished Mexican immigrants.
"Do they realise that many of the Cuban immigrants to the US were part of the land owning bourgeois class and were always very right wing, in the same way that many "immigrants/expats" from global south countries that had a revolution or change of government are?"
Of course they don't. Liberals don't understand or even bother to learn history. That is precisely why they are liberals.
Liberals don't consider things like class or material analysis
The people coming to the US are part of an ethnic minority group, so liberals believe that they 'should be' voting liberal because liberals are slightly less openly terrible to non white people. Then they become shocked when
A. The people coming in are not some homogenized mass of liberal voters and
B. Being 'slightly less terrible' isn't really a selling point
I'm not seeing many liberals in these comments. When I look at their comment histories they seem to be garden variety conservatives. The liberals I do see defending Biden are more doing the standard "Trump is worse, stop attacking Biden" which is shitty but not mask-off racism imo
Unfortunately you just stepped into the Hexbear trap. Below you will find a hundred correct comments about how conservatives are neoliberals and that neoliberalism is just another arm of fascism anyway.
I hope you stick around and read and learn in good faith though it'll be good for ya.
Below you will find a hundred correct comments
As proponents of (small r) republicanism, constitutionalism, rule of law (which they refer to as 'law and order'), free markets, and private property, American 'conservatives' are indeed Liberals. They just advocate for shittier public policy. There is nothing inherently progressive about Liberalism. The United States was simultaneously a slave plantation oligarchy and a Liberal Democracy.
The presence of universal suffrage and civil liberties are concessions which took centuries to extract from the Liberals, by social movements with many Communist organizers at their core. And yet under Liberal Democracy, we still have legal slavery, lack universal sufferage (felony disenfranchisment along with a vast legally constructed underclass of undocumented workers), and civil liberties which only exist if you can afford a well connected Harvard-educated lawyer.
It'll be awhile before we get to 100. Some of us are working our dog walking jobs and others are waiting for our xibux to clear. Give us a minute
With China being on the edge of collapse, you're damn right I'm waiting for my xibucks to clear.
theres are plenty of sane commenters, they just seem to be downvoted every time.
Hexbear doesn't have downvotes. The difference in votes is just from the massive weight of your shitty opinions.
Liberalism, the primary political ideology of capitalism, includes conservatives and "moderates" and "progressives" in the United States' alleged political discourse. It can include conservatives because liberalism has been around long enough that every family member a person can remember has been some kind of liberal and they want to keep things "their" way going forward. To be conservative is to resist change.
However, plenty of self-described progressives do all the things you describe. They're pretty damn racist, for example, they just use their own "acceptable" language to describe it. Their opposition to Palestinians, for example, is frequently predicated on:
- Calling them terrorists
- Calling them Arabs
- Reducing their identity to Muslim and their struggle to the person's islamophobia
- White supremacist rhetoric like "Israelis made the desert bloom" and "a people without a land for a land without a people"
- Recycled settler-colonial rhetoric that was used (and still is) against indigenous Americans
Progressive and "moderate" liberals call themselves non-racist and a foil to the style of racism that those to their right explicitly spell out and embrace, but they still harbor racism for the exact same reasons: to justify violence done to people they should otherwise sympathize and have solidarity with.
Also some of them aren't even subtle and are basically klan members.
I am aware of the different meanings of liberalism; it just makes no sense to me (in this context) to interpret "libs" in that way. Who cares if conservatives are doing mask-off racism in a political thread? They always do that. And of course I agree that progressives are racist in "acceptable" ways, but that would be another way of saying mask-on racism. And while progressives sometimes do straight up mask-off racism, that's not something I saw in the comment thread. In any case, just because someone identifies as progressive or espouses progressive beliefs in one area does not mean all of their beliefs are progressive or hold in line with what most other progressives think.
I also just think it's misguided --- except in specific circumstances --- to use the term "liberal" to mean something different than it is commonly understood to mean. But I should have been more aware that on hexbear people are more likely to mean it in the academic sense.
Friend the definition we use is not simply an "academic meaning" IT IS THE DEFINITION
Anything else is political illiteracy, no doubt reinforced through pop culture or Internet memery. Do you see how you've twisted yourself into knots trying to divide and catalog the mindsets between those so-called conservatives, "liberals", and progressives? It's pointless they're all subspecies of the same ideology, the liberals in that thread are not violating some sacred progressive liberal value with their racism, nor are they tapping into some inherent conservatism that invalidates their liberalism, it's all tactical differences not fundamental ones
They are simply liberals doing what liberals have always done, dividing and demoralizing the working class in defense of a pro-capitalist status quo and racism has always been a favored tool; of course many of them are also politically illiterate and are simply doing it out of a sort of social muscle memory, but end of the day they're still liberals
Friend the definition we use is not simply an "academic meaning" IT IS THE DEFINITION
Words almost always have multiple definitions and are context dependent. "Liberal" fits the bill on both counts.
Clarifying what definition you're using is fine, but it's silly to claim that's the only definition, especially when the vast majority of U.S. political discourse uses a different one.
What you're arguing is "I know there is an actual meaning used in political discussions, but I have chosen to ignore that in favour of the alternate colloquial meaning that doesn't make sense contextually". Just shut up.
Pedantic redditbrain bullshit
The OP links to r/politics, which like the rest of U.S. mainstream political discussion takes "liberal" to mean "aligned with the Democratic Party." Someone from midwest.social drops in to say "these look like conservatives, not liberals," referencing the same context.
Then a bunch of Hexbear posters trip over themselves to say
"uhh ackshually these are all liberals in the classic sense," a point that adds nothing and that the midwest.social user already knows. Even after that user clarifies they already get this, and are referring to the partisan split in the U.S., people here still have to show how smart and correct they are instead of a simple "ah I see we're on the same page."This is the way normal people interact with others and will bring the revolution any day now
I guess I don't get what we're doing here if we aren't going to discuss politics the way this site was meant to. If you want to use the pop culture definitions to defend the status quo, I recommend clicking the link, signing up for reddit and turning off your brain.
We're trying to learn and make a difference here.
We're trying to learn and make a difference here.
Agreed -- but education involves stuff like assessing people's current understanding, clearly communicating items that may be new to them, and thinking about how what you're saying is being received. A lot of folks are failing at all three here.
The original post isn't at all clear about how it's defining "liberal" (and the context it links to uses the most common definition in the U.S.). No one recognizes that the person who came in and used that common definition is doing so because of the way it was communicated. Even when that person states they already understand the different definitions, they're met with further detail on a definition they just said they already know, and are firmly told they are wrong, which itself is wrong.
Even when that person states they already understand the different definitions, they're met with further detail on a definition they just said they already know, and are firmly told they are wrong, which itself is wrong.
Except they clearly did not understand the "different definitions" and did require further detail on the ACTUAL definition, we do not need to get bogged down in the million-and-one specific personalized and incoherent configurations of liberalism, we instead look at the common characteristics of liberalism as it dwells in Existing Power and how it structures and molds the society we live in
I was describing the Titanic, you want us to describe the specific personnel arrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic, in education an accurate perspective and a sense of scale is critical for full comprehension
we do not need to get bogged down in the million-and-one specific personalized and incoherent configurations of liberalism
The most common definition of liberal in the U.S., by far, is "broadly associated with the Democratic Party." This is the definition used by every mainstream media source, and even throughout much of academica.
It's ridiculous to simply ignore the reality of how people commonly use words.
The most common definition of liberal in the U.S., by far, is "broadly associated with the Democratic Party."
Again, that has no useful content, it can cover anything from demoralized social liberalism, to ecstatic neoliberalism and every crank liberalism in between, while simultaneously and incorrectly excluding those liberals aligned with the Republican Party or nonaligned at all ex. "I'm not a liberal I'm independent" absolute gibberish that has no bearing on American liberalism let alone global liberalism
Which is why it's better to zoom out and take into account the actual contents of liberalism, which is its reification of capitalist property relations and the atomization of the working class, which the reality of how people commonly experience liberalism politically, especially in the US
that has no useful content
The useful content is I can say "liberal" to about anyone in the U.S. and they will know I'm referring to a set of policies broadly under the umbrella of the Democratic Party. If I say "liberal" while referring to the GOP, most will not understand my usage.
The fact that there are other definitions that (in the right context) are more precise, or useful, or coherent, does not mean the common definition isn't real, or is incorrect. It's how people use it; it's a real definition. There is no reason to refuse to acknowledge it.
they will know I'm referring set of policies broadly under the umbrella of the Democratic Party
You mean the set of policies that's anti-immigration today but was pro-immigration five years ago? That was anti-queer 15 years ago but is now kinda indifferent to queer people today even tho it was more pro-queer five years ago? The set of policies that was racist sixty years ago and is still pretty racist today, but people colloquially think it's not anymore, unless you're the wrong kind of POC?
Yeah that's a useful and coherent definition that totally isn't hiding the true nature of liberalism behind a veneer
I mean hey 75 million plus Trump loving dipshits believe liberalism under the Democratic Party is the new communism so it must be true. It's how people use it, right? So it's a real definition; like orks from 40k we can shift reality with our collective will, but apparently we still can't shift the set of policies
I am not arguing that Democrats are good and have consistent politics.
I'm also not going to argue any more on the premise that words are defined in part by how people actually use them. That's just how language works.
75 million Trump supporters believe liberalism is communism, go argue with them about "how language works" since you know it's according to you just a numbers game
What's your argument here then? That they were being willfully ignorant? You're accusing me of redditbrain, but your comment is incoherent holier than thou "but technically" whinging. Just shut up.
What's your argument here then? That they were being willfully ignorant?
The argument is that they very obviously, very understandably used a common definition of "liberal," and the response of "let me explain something that you already know and then insist I'm right" is reddit brain.
Just shut up.
Are you five?
They used a US misconception of the definition of liberal that didn't make sense in context - what psychic powers do you have that you managed to deduce that actually, they totally do know the normal definition, which is why they were so confused by us calling what they think of as conservatives "liberals"? For fuck's sake, even while claiming they know the definition they still can't make sense of republicans being called liberals.
To hear incorrect views without rebutting them [...], but instead to take them calmly as if nothing had happened. This is a sixth type.
Now stop being a lib and shut up.
"Me and my few friends have the One True definition of this word, that's totally how language works, and you're wrong and stupid for using the word how most people do"
Tell me more about how connected to the masses you are and how good you are at educating them
Damn, you had so many chance to back off and still decided to shoot your stupidest possible shot.
Me and my few friends have the One True definition of this word
Yes, we're only using ONE definition, we haven't mentioned any alternative definitions like the one Mao uses in Combat Liberalism, and certainly haven't said that the issue isn't with multiple meanings, but the specific one they're trying to use.
for using the word how most people do
Most Americans. I already pointed this one out, but the American use barely extends into other parts of the Anglosphere, nevermind the actual majority of the world - if you started talking about liberals over here in Britain people would be asking who even cares about the Lib Dems after 2012. You are not the centre of the world. Nobody cares if you say you're doing it on purpose, you are misuing the english language.
Tell me more about how connected to the masses you are and how good you are at educating them
It's extremely sad that you honestly consider Hexbear.net, a site with less than 1000 daily users from around the entire world, to be the vanguard of the revolution. That you're sitting behind your computer in the honest belief that coming here connects you to the masses and spreads political education. Go outside, touch some grass, and join an org if you actually want to work on outreach, whinging in one of the most obscure possible corners of the internet is not going to achieve anything.
There is no content or coherence to the "colloquial" definition, the ideology we call liberalism has a history, a set of a priori assumptions of the world, a roster of multiple internal schools of thought (none of which mesh with the colloquial understanding), and most important an actually existing record of real world policies that define it's true function and scope in the world
You can claim a million billion people think liberalism is sunshine and roses, that still wouldn't make it true
You can claim a million billion people think liberalism is sunshine and roses, that still wouldn't make it true
Words mean what people think they mean. The vast majority of Americans use "liberal" and "conservative" interchangeably with Democratic and Republican policies, so in that context (which is the context of the r/politics thread) "liberal" is fairly read as "aligned with Democrats." That's a valid definition because it's how most people actually use the word.
Claiming that your preferred definition is the only real definition, and the hundreds of millions of people who use the most common definition are all wrong, is nonsensical and will get you nothing but endless semantic slapfights.
Words mean what people think they mean.
Yeah if those people had power, a political education and sustained control over the levers of knowledge production
so in that context (which is the context of the r/politics thread) "liberal" is fairly read as "aligned with Democrats." That's a valid definition because it's how most people actually use the word.
Except our non-hexbear friend asserted those liberals in that thread aren't liberals because they sound like "garden variety conservatives" but they're not (according to the colloquial definition), they're "democrat aligned" Biden supporters pissing and moaning about people upset over Biden's anti-immigration stance (oh look anti-immigration from the liberal dems, another violation of the vaunted colloquial definition)
So that tells us not only were you not paying attention to what op was saying, but that the definition that you're holding up as the gold standard (because millions of American don't have a political education) can't even hold up in the thread you gave as an example
Which is why political education is important and colloquial understanding that isn't even colloquial is not
I'm not seeing many liberals in these comments. When I look at their comment histories they seem to be garden variety conservatives. The liberals I do see defending Biden are more doing the standard "Trump is worse, stop attacking Biden" which is shitty but not mask-off racism imo
This is very plainly drawing a difference between "liberals defending Biden" and "garden variety conservatives."
If you have examples of Biden supporters in that thread endorsing the racist term "illegals," citing those would have been infinitely more productive than pretending the common definition of "liberal" doesn't even exist.
This is very plainly drawing a difference between "liberals defending Biden" and "garden variety conservatives."
I'm well aware what they tried to do, I'm saying they failed because they don't know what liberalism is because they have a bullshit mangled colloquial understanding of it that doesn't accurately describe reality
Aaaand he caved in to the hysterical activists. Wonderful. +10
The ones that had a fit because he used a word. I'm guessing. +19
Biden gets a ton of shit for this even though Trump uses Nazi rhetoric to discuss immigrants. +3
"Biden appoligizes to murderer for being not politically correct, while Trump visits and helps the family of the victim mourn". Quite a great headline to garner support, makes Biden seem like a complete asshole that cares about being Politically correct over the death of an American.
Calling the murderer an illegal shouldn’t be considered a mistake
Biden just delivered an all-time state of the union address, and bozos from his own party are getting worked up about a word that most Americans are comfortable using, but pissed off the progressives. +8
If Biden’s team was smart, they’d name a bill after her to control the border by hiring more agents and installing border surveillance in the hot spots. Let republicans shoot the bill down…again. I’m not a Trump supporter. I hate him. The border does need to be controlled better though. I’m not preaching hate. I’m just saying we all lock our doors and cars at night. It’s the same thing. We’re just trying to keep bad people out, not everyone. +6
Nah bro these totally aren't Biden supporters, absolute "garden variety conservatives", lmao hey happened to the fuckin colloquial definition, I can't seem to find it?
Nah bro these totally aren't Biden supporters
I'm not arguing about this. I'm saying you should have brought up this actual substantive stuff right away rather than posting multiple paragraphs about the definition of a word
...the original post was a link to the content. You shouldnt have commented unless you clicked the link to see what we were even talking about.
You don't have to know shit about the underlying post to point out that dogpiling someone for using the most common definition of "liberal" is a poor way to communicate with them.
I read the underlying post, anyway.
You can't break out "aren't we trying to learn here" on one hand and then drop reddit shit like this on the other
Everyone else already made my point for me, and you have at least dodeca-ed down
If the pattern I've noticed on hexbear persists, we are about three more back and forths away from your mask slipping and you getting banned, so I'm just gonna leave it at this comment and call it a day.
Lmao what kind of horseshit is this? "You did not submit to my obviously superior intellect, so you must be some secret reactionary whose mask is just a hair from slipping?"
we are about three more back and forths away from your mask slipping and you getting banned
Lol
Haha nice edit, too
Look, you’re not going to find any support here with this take.
I once made a thread asking Hexbears to tone down their rhetoric so it’s more welcoming to the vast majority of the outside people, and 99% of the responses were a firm no.
People here aren’t going to give up using the materialist definition of liberalism just to pander to the libs.
I see the same thing happening -- it's a fast track to an ultraleftist dead end.
It's also worth noting that recognizing what non-leftists mean when they speak is not pandering, but a prerequisite to effective communication. We're abandoning talking to people out of eagerness to dunk on anything that moves.
This thread shows how we need more accessible, as in memes, political education for left-curious folks. This stuff has to meet people where they are if we ever hope to build a popular revolutionary movement.
Prescriptivism is bullshit, the definition of a word is how it is used and how the word is used is its definition. Even if it isn't, the dictionaries I've looked at give multiple definitions for the word.
you’ve twisted yourself into knots trying to divide and catalog the mindsets... It’s pointless they’re all subspecies of the same ideology
Maybe I'm just so indoctrinated that the knots and twists don't feel all that knotty or twisty. I just disagree that it's pointless to make note of these divisions. Some people are trying to make the world a better place, and some people are trying to make it worse.
Some people are trying to make the world a better place,
Communists
and some people are trying to make it worse.
Liberals
Some people are trying to make the world a better place, and some people are trying to make it worse.
Both types of liberals fall into the latter category.
"The most progressive president since FDR" is adopting Trump border policies, calling undocumented immigrants "illegals" that are dangerous to you and yours, and abetting a genocide of Palestinians. Dems are happily falling in line and are already gearing up for their attempt to shame each other into holding the line despite it obviously meaning nothing every four years.
No twists and turns?
It's not prescriptivism, you're misusing that word, what's actually happened here is that you've fallen for a political misnomer or a series of political misnomers
Liberalism has a basis in historical socio-economic practice that runs into the present day, its multiple schools of thought from; social liberalism, ordoliberalism, neoclassical econ, Keynesianism, the Austrian school etc. define and shape not only the contours of higher learning, but the whole political matrix of the entire earth, and all those schools make a mockery of the common "colloquial" understanding
The so-called "presciptivist" definition is the one that accurately describes the liberalism in the heads of the powerful, the wealthy, the influential, their mentors, their brokers, their guard dogs, their scientists, their theorists, their planners.....basically it's the liberalism that has actual power and acts as the software for capitalism's hardware; and I'm telling you now friend, you won't find that info in a dictionary
Maybe I'm just so indoctrinated that the knots and twists don't feel all that knotty or twisty.
Really? You think it's worthwhile to play No True Scotsman with a half-dozen different flavors of liberalism? It doesn't matter what you or those people claim to be or believe; it's the ideas, values, epistemology, and actually existing political structures that they defend that truly define who they are
It's what liberal means everywhere except the incoherent myopia of American political illiteracy where people like to pretend that Reagan and Obama had different political ideologies.
Re: racism and liberals, every example I gave is mask-off racism and you'll find they're very common among liberals, including "progressives". They just normalize it to each other and tell themselves they aren't racist, happily living with the contradiction. Mask-on vs mask-off racism is about hiding racism that someone acknowledges, which is a different thing.
I bet if you revisit the thread with a critical lens you'll find some lib racism.
