I don’t get lib as an insult. Seems like pretty much everyone on Lemmy is on liberal side of center. I’ve seen some hexbear users use it to refer to anyone who isn’t as tankie as they are, but I don’t get it.
The US uses lib to mean socially liberal, in opposition to the cons. The rest of the world uses it to mean fiscally liberal, as in support of not regulating capitalist markets, which is an anti worker position.
People often get pissy that a word can have more than one definition.
Meanwhile im an American and spending so much time online with Europeans and internet leftists has resulted in my wife having to remind me not to insult libs at social events because people will think I’m talking about the left not capitalists.
I’ve also converted to metric which annoys everyone at work but they respect my reasoning too much to stop me
On the point of metric, my partner is more used to Imperial measurements so I’ve just put up little hand drawn conversion charts around the house, mostly the kitchen.
On the point of lib bashing, that’s harder. You can really only have those more nuanced conversations with open-minded people in smaller groups (or just find your local socialists).
Yeah, fortunately as an engineer I just have to say “I’m the one who has to do the math on these numbers so I’m doing my layouts in metric rather than converting between x/2^n inches and feet fifty times per layout” and people are sympathetic
Progressive really isn’t the catch all that people think it is. The existence of progressive conservative movements and self professed progressive christian Democrats in the past should be enough to prove that. It’s a nice label to state the aspirations of your political ideology(and your results focused method) but not a way to describe your ideology.
One of America’s most historically popular progressive politician who used government power to bust trusts and fight for “a fair deal”, for example, was still an economic liberal, a conservative American exceptionalist and a warhawk.
And even more generally, Western liberal democracy which most flavors of anarchism and socialism view as a system that is neither based on securing liberty or particularly democratic.
I’m an anarchist socialist. We hate tankies, we hate libs. Libs are capitalists. Tankies are authoritarian. We hate both of those. Eh not hate but you know what I mean. Not ideologically compatible, therefore not allowed in the commune and you aren’t allowed to hurt others, and if I hear a lib say how they’re going to employ someone or a tankie talk about a vanguard state I’m gonna be upset
Tangent topic, but how does an anarchist system prevent popular leaders from gaining authority? Also, how does it defend against an aggressive authoritarian neighbour that wants to annex territory?
I like the idea of anarchism in theory, but I just don’t see how it could be possible to get there from here where every existing power would see it as an ideological threat to their own power (similar to how capitalist powers reacted to communism), or how it would maintain stability if it was realized.
And as much as I don’t like the monopoly on violence system because it seems to encourage corruption on the side with more access to violence, I can’t help but think it would eventually devolve into a lot of in-fighting.
Like power constantly rises from nothing more than physical strength, charisma, or good strategic thinking in groups of humans. Some primates other than humans go to war with their neighbouring groups. Egypt became a kingdom when one tribe conquered the rest, and that one wasn’t the first to try. Countless empires have risen and fallen, most of the time despite violent resistance of those who would rather be neighbours than subjects. The Vikings sailed around raiding for their own benefit and then later conquered regions like in France, Britain, Sicily, and Kiev. The Mongols did the same except using horses instead of boats. Then European powers did it. Then America started pretty much puppeting anyone who went against corporate interests while a cultural movement in Russia and China started out trying to move power out of the hands of their ruling class only to see even more authoritarian powers take over.
History is full of cases of “I don’t care what you want, this is what I want and I’ll just kill you if you don’t go along with it.” How could that change?
Of course there’s no easy answers, but your post reminded me of the following:
Hannah Arendt’s essay ‘On Violence’. Power stems from people collectively working towards change, strength etc. is violence. Anarchism requires a collective desire which is anti-coercion and anti-violence. Arendt was partly inspired by Rosa Luxemburg’s views on spontaneous revolution.
Graeber’s ‘Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology’ and le Guin’s fictional novel ‘The Dispossessed’ give some insight into what is required for maintaining anarchist ways of organizing. In brief: you leave, divorce yourself from oppressive systems and start over elsewhere.
Which is of course difficult if not impossible on a planet which has been near entirely colonized. Somewhat more philosophical, anarchism requires the dissolution of notions of property. Agamben writes on monastic forms of life, which seem rather anarchist to me, in ‘The Highest Poverty’. Graeber and Wengrow mention the ‘sacredness’ of objects in ‘The Dawn of Everything’, which is a terribly deep anthropological and philosophical rabbit hole, but there’s some interesting connections between sacred objects and possession.
All books mentioned are worth the read of course, imo.
In Lemmy, and I would say in the Fediverse in general, the population skews left. That means there are more terms to describe the spectrum. Mainstream media and social media label anyone centrist and towards the left as liberals. And of course the Far Right labels the same people as socialists scum.
My rubric for here in the fediverse is as follows. Liberals are generally referred to as capitalists and/or believe capitalism is still the best economic system that only needs minor reforms, along with social justice reforms. Tankies are generally the ones that want to enforce the social and economic reforms with an iron fist, even against the populace at large if necessary. Leftists are generally anarcho-something (socialist/communist), and believe major change is needed beyond the system we have in place now.
Again, that’s my rubric, and I’m sure other people have their own.
Pretty spot on observation! I’ve been on the fediverse since 2015 (mastodon) and leftists and libertarians were definitely the original fediverse folk. I was more right leaning back then, wasn’t as averse to calling ancaps anarchists but now I am definitely not holding that view anymore. 2020 changed shit. Ancaps aren’t here to help anarchists.
I don’t appreciate your condescending tone telling me that I don’t know what the words I use to describe myself mean. You can kindly fuck off with your misplaced elitism.
No, like, you don’t know what that word means, dude, being a socialist is quite literally antithetical to being a liberal, what the fuck are you on about???
Interesting. You sound like an American on Reddit confidently telling someone, “That’s not a chicken burger, it’s a chicken sandwich!” Different countries and groups can have different words for things.
There are a bunch of folks in some of the skeevier corners of the fediverse that think Liberalism means Capitalism, which does have some truth as the ability to own and sell goods would be a right Liberalism might protect, which they in turn view as the source of all evil.
Nevermind the fact that their political ideal has no real world equivalent aside from maybe Bhutan where the vast majority of people live like medieval peasants and their entire system of government exists to enrich a few elite off of the world’s most expensive tourism.
Yes, we typically consider liberalism (you all may know it as classical liberalism as well, it, too, counts as liberalism) equivalent to capitalism
We (I’m speaking for anarchists and socialists) are leftists. This is what we stand against: Capitalism and the ownership of the means of production being held by the owner/capitalist class. We wish property to be held by the working class—the laborers. We are socialists. This means property goes bye bye—Property is Theft!! (thank you Pierre Jospeh Proudhon :)This is the socialist ideal, it is incompatible with liberalism and its capitalist necessities. It’s this thinking that makes liberals and tankies hate anarchist socialists—we go against the order they seek. They, too, realize it’s incompatibilities.
The great irony there is that the Tankies love anarchists. They want the west to burn themselves down.
It’s honestly hard for me to believe there are more than a handful real Anarchists on the fediverse and not just a bunch of masquerading Tankies, because at the end of the day Anarchy will just bring any currently existing state one step closer to an Authoritarian taking complete control.
The real nail in the coffin is that there is a political party in the USA, in Canada, in Australia, and in the UK who would absolute regulate government and industry, keep courts clean, and protect and expand the rights of citizens: but anarchists more often side with the deregulating authoritarians.
I don’t get lib as an insult. Seems like pretty much everyone on Lemmy is on liberal side of center. I’ve seen some hexbear users use it to refer to anyone who isn’t as tankie as they are, but I don’t get it.
The US uses lib to mean socially liberal, in opposition to the cons. The rest of the world uses it to mean fiscally liberal, as in support of not regulating capitalist markets, which is an anti worker position.
People often get pissy that a word can have more than one definition.
I didn’t even know the second definition existed at all. Ty for sharing.
Given the number of Americans on here it’s now starting to make sense why I keep seeing commenters get snagged on the word “liberal.”
Liberals are not progressive. At least not except incidentally. I think that’s true everywhere…?
Meanwhile im an American and spending so much time online with Europeans and internet leftists has resulted in my wife having to remind me not to insult libs at social events because people will think I’m talking about the left not capitalists.
I’ve also converted to metric which annoys everyone at work but they respect my reasoning too much to stop me
Be the change you want to see in the world.
On the point of metric, my partner is more used to Imperial measurements so I’ve just put up little hand drawn conversion charts around the house, mostly the kitchen.
On the point of lib bashing, that’s harder. You can really only have those more nuanced conversations with open-minded people in smaller groups (or just find your local socialists).
Yeah, fortunately as an engineer I just have to say “I’m the one who has to do the math on these numbers so I’m doing my layouts in metric rather than converting between x/2^n inches and feet fifty times per layout” and people are sympathetic
Progressive really isn’t the catch all that people think it is. The existence of progressive conservative movements and self professed progressive christian Democrats in the past should be enough to prove that. It’s a nice label to state the aspirations of your political ideology(and your results focused method) but not a way to describe your ideology.
One of America’s most historically popular progressive politician who used government power to bust trusts and fight for “a fair deal”, for example, was still an economic liberal, a conservative American exceptionalist and a warhawk.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt
Thank you, that makes more sense.
If you don’t know what liberal means, sure.
And even more generally, Western liberal democracy which most flavors of anarchism and socialism view as a system that is neither based on securing liberty or particularly democratic.
This is the american bastardised version of the word, a liberal has more context then centrist.
I’m an anarchist socialist. We hate tankies, we hate libs. Libs are capitalists. Tankies are authoritarian. We hate both of those. Eh not hate but you know what I mean. Not ideologically compatible, therefore not allowed in the commune and you aren’t allowed to hurt others, and if I hear a lib say how they’re going to employ someone or a tankie talk about a vanguard state I’m gonna be upset
Tangent topic, but how does an anarchist system prevent popular leaders from gaining authority? Also, how does it defend against an aggressive authoritarian neighbour that wants to annex territory?
I like the idea of anarchism in theory, but I just don’t see how it could be possible to get there from here where every existing power would see it as an ideological threat to their own power (similar to how capitalist powers reacted to communism), or how it would maintain stability if it was realized.
And as much as I don’t like the monopoly on violence system because it seems to encourage corruption on the side with more access to violence, I can’t help but think it would eventually devolve into a lot of in-fighting.
Like power constantly rises from nothing more than physical strength, charisma, or good strategic thinking in groups of humans. Some primates other than humans go to war with their neighbouring groups. Egypt became a kingdom when one tribe conquered the rest, and that one wasn’t the first to try. Countless empires have risen and fallen, most of the time despite violent resistance of those who would rather be neighbours than subjects. The Vikings sailed around raiding for their own benefit and then later conquered regions like in France, Britain, Sicily, and Kiev. The Mongols did the same except using horses instead of boats. Then European powers did it. Then America started pretty much puppeting anyone who went against corporate interests while a cultural movement in Russia and China started out trying to move power out of the hands of their ruling class only to see even more authoritarian powers take over.
History is full of cases of “I don’t care what you want, this is what I want and I’ll just kill you if you don’t go along with it.” How could that change?
Of course there’s no easy answers, but your post reminded me of the following:
Hannah Arendt’s essay ‘On Violence’. Power stems from people collectively working towards change, strength etc. is violence. Anarchism requires a collective desire which is anti-coercion and anti-violence. Arendt was partly inspired by Rosa Luxemburg’s views on spontaneous revolution.
Graeber’s ‘Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology’ and le Guin’s fictional novel ‘The Dispossessed’ give some insight into what is required for maintaining anarchist ways of organizing. In brief: you leave, divorce yourself from oppressive systems and start over elsewhere.
Which is of course difficult if not impossible on a planet which has been near entirely colonized. Somewhat more philosophical, anarchism requires the dissolution of notions of property. Agamben writes on monastic forms of life, which seem rather anarchist to me, in ‘The Highest Poverty’. Graeber and Wengrow mention the ‘sacredness’ of objects in ‘The Dawn of Everything’, which is a terribly deep anthropological and philosophical rabbit hole, but there’s some interesting connections between sacred objects and possession.
All books mentioned are worth the read of course, imo.
We’re apparently not speaking the language. I’m a liberal, and I’m a socialist.
In Lemmy, and I would say in the Fediverse in general, the population skews left. That means there are more terms to describe the spectrum. Mainstream media and social media label anyone centrist and towards the left as liberals. And of course the Far Right labels the same people as socialists scum.
My rubric for here in the fediverse is as follows. Liberals are generally referred to as capitalists and/or believe capitalism is still the best economic system that only needs minor reforms, along with social justice reforms. Tankies are generally the ones that want to enforce the social and economic reforms with an iron fist, even against the populace at large if necessary. Leftists are generally anarcho-something (socialist/communist), and believe major change is needed beyond the system we have in place now.
Again, that’s my rubric, and I’m sure other people have their own.
Pretty spot on observation! I’ve been on the fediverse since 2015 (mastodon) and leftists and libertarians were definitely the original fediverse folk. I was more right leaning back then, wasn’t as averse to calling ancaps anarchists but now I am definitely not holding that view anymore. 2020 changed shit. Ancaps aren’t here to help anarchists.
Because
You
Don’t
Know
What
Either
Liberal
Or
Socialist
Means
Literally.
I don’t appreciate your condescending tone telling me that I don’t know what the words I use to describe myself mean. You can kindly fuck off with your misplaced elitism.
No, like, you don’t know what that word means, dude, being a socialist is quite literally antithetical to being a liberal, what the fuck are you on about???
That makes no sense. So liberals are capitalists then conservatives are what… Socialists?
Liberals are capitalists, conservatives are, economically, liberals.
I’m flabbergasted, Americans really don’t know what liberal means lmao. Pull up Wikipedia dude.
Interesting. You sound like an American on Reddit confidently telling someone, “That’s not a chicken burger, it’s a chicken sandwich!” Different countries and groups can have different words for things.
Do you wish to end capitalism? If your answer is no, you are, in fact, a liberal—completely agree
There are a bunch of folks in some of the skeevier corners of the fediverse that think Liberalism means Capitalism, which does have some truth as the ability to own and sell goods would be a right Liberalism might protect, which they in turn view as the source of all evil.
Nevermind the fact that their political ideal has no real world equivalent aside from maybe Bhutan where the vast majority of people live like medieval peasants and their entire system of government exists to enrich a few elite off of the world’s most expensive tourism.
Yes, we typically consider liberalism (you all may know it as classical liberalism as well, it, too, counts as liberalism) equivalent to capitalism
We (I’m speaking for anarchists and socialists) are leftists. This is what we stand against: Capitalism and the ownership of the means of production being held by the owner/capitalist class. We wish property to be held by the working class—the laborers. We are socialists. This means property goes bye bye—Property is Theft!! (thank you Pierre Jospeh Proudhon :)This is the socialist ideal, it is incompatible with liberalism and its capitalist necessities. It’s this thinking that makes liberals and tankies hate anarchist socialists—we go against the order they seek. They, too, realize it’s incompatibilities.
OK, libshit
/s
I got the joke;p
The great irony there is that the Tankies love anarchists. They want the west to burn themselves down.
It’s honestly hard for me to believe there are more than a handful real Anarchists on the fediverse and not just a bunch of masquerading Tankies, because at the end of the day Anarchy will just bring any currently existing state one step closer to an Authoritarian taking complete control.
The real nail in the coffin is that there is a political party in the USA, in Canada, in Australia, and in the UK who would absolute regulate government and industry, keep courts clean, and protect and expand the rights of citizens: but anarchists more often side with the deregulating authoritarians.
You’re a fucking dumbass who is confusing dumb ass libertarians with actual anarchists.
Banjo is always good for a laugh though
Yeah I only took the first bit of bait. Good to know the dude is a bad faith asshat
If you want to prove me wrong then start a poll. My money is that Anarchists at the polls are just “both sides bad” centrists.
Sure, I’d just only heard lib as an insult by them before.