However I find myself being disagreed with quite often, mostly for not advocating or cheering violence, “by any means possible” change, or revolutionary tactics. It would seem that I’m not viewed as authentically holding my view unless I advocate extreme, violent, or radical action to accomplish it.

Those seem like two different things to me.

Edit: TO COMMUNISTS, ANARCHISTS, OR ANYONE ELSE CALLING FOR THE OVERTHROW OF SOCIETY

THIS OBVIOUSLY ISN’T MEANT FOR YOU.

    • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      Liberals have never been leftists.

      This isn’t really a new thing. You can read about leftists a hundred years ago denouncing liberalism.

      • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        I mean, academically speaking you’re totally right, but because Americans discuss politics in extremely simplistic terms a lot of people use the word “liberal” when they mean progressive or socialist or just anything to the left of center, so it would probably be helpful to define these terms a bit

      • davidgro@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        In the United States, in the general public (not talking academia here) both ‘liberal’ and ‘leftist’ currently mean ‘not conservative’. There’s really not much more to it than that. Before reading Lemmy comments about it, I wouldn’t have been able to name a distinction between the two terms.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          2 years ago

          Yes, but OP is deliberately asking Leftists on a platform built and maintained by Communists, not the general American public.

          • davidgro@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            OP may be American and genuinely not know what answering yes to “do you consider yourself a liberal?” implies to said communists. I still don’t have a firm grasp on it myself.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              2 years ago

              What don’t you understand? Liberalism is a Capitalist ideology, ergo it is right wing. Socialists, Anarchists, Communists, etc. would be left wing.

              • davidgro@lemmy.world
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                2 years ago

                Yeah, wildly different language. Here pretty much anything short of trying to put women back in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant, with the minorities out in the cotton fields, is left wing. Left-right is much more about social policy than economic, although the conservatives claim to want smaller government and lower taxes. (While building a giant military, etc.)

                So ‘Liberal’ means ‘left wing’ here, and those other terms don’t even have a collective word that comes to mind besides stuff like ‘extremist’. (Also most of us Americans probably conflate socialism and communism anyway)

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                  2 years ago

                  It depends on if you’re referring to the Overton Window, which is essentially a Tower of Babel sitiation, or if you’re referring to global structures.

      • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 years ago

        That’s a bit of a red herring, since “liberal” is not exactly a term that means the same thing to everyone.

        It’s a semantics game, and a very ignorant or disingenuous one at that.

                • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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                  2 years ago

                  Okay but you are ableist though, which reads as pretty liberal. Unless you are somehow a monarchist or fascist on lemmy? Which is funny for other reasons.

                  • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                    2 years ago

                    Okay but you are ableist though

                    Yeah, I’ve been trying to get better.

                    which reads as pretty liberal

                    Uhhh what?

                    Unless you are somehow a monarchist or fascist on lemmy?

                    My country is an actual monarchy. Almost everyone is a monarchist. Not me, but it’s not directly correlated with ableism, other than people in general being garbage.