I am used to Cuba, Venezuela, Kerala as examples of places where far-left ideologies can be found. CNN has a materialist capitalist free-market POV as far as I can tell but since it became the missing child network with Nancy Grace I stopped ever watching it because its annoying, not because its far left.
Besides your comment being some broad generalization, it fails to assert the reality of the 'world' and in its place takes a group of progressive first world countries which align with liberal politics.
The world includes such places as India, Pakistan, Africa and China, oh my, where liberal ideology is a far cry from what you are describing
or...from the perspective that much of Europe views it. American politics is bunk, bought and sold by corporations that think of nothing but profit, by design. literally a country where bribery is legal and encouraged
Is one on the "radical left" if they think LGBTQ people should be able to get married, that the non-religious / non-Christians should have equal rights? This is a serious question, not a troll. I ask it because the "conservative" party in the US explicitly is against such things in their platform documents.
It's rather strange to me that it is so hard for the term "radical left" to be defined in any sort of objective way, often it seems no definition is available at all which makes discussions about the topics hard to have.
LGBTQ people can get married federally, and there is no serious effort to reverse that. It is disingenuous to use marriage rights as a litmus test because whether one morally supports it is irrelevant under the law.
>Is one on the "radical left" if they think LGBTQ people should be able to get married, that the non-religious / non-Christians should have equal rights?
Globally, supporting marriage equality puts you in the minority, both in terms of # of countries as well as per capita. [0] Personally I think it's an obvious right, but that doesn't make it popular.
> Is one on the "radical left" if they think LGBTQ people should be able to get married, that the non-religious / non-Christians should have equal rights? This is a serious question, not a troll.
No, that is not “radically far left.”
In 2019, according to Pew Research, 44% of “Republicans and Republican leaners” supported same-sex marriage.
As for your question about equal rights for “non-religious / non-Christians”, I’m not sure what you’re referring to. Can you elaborate?
> I ask it because the "conservative" party in the US explicitly is against such things in their platform documents.
I assume you’re referring to the Republican Party platform document? It’s quite large; can you identify the portions you’re specifically referring to?
P18 in the PDF (p11 as per the included numbering) condemns and calls for the reversal of both US vs Windsor & Obergefell v Hodges as well as calls for marriage to be between one man and one women only.
P 19/12 calls for special rights to worship "God" which is the Christian god in this context, it doesn't call for the same rights for other religious beliefs. It all calls out for special rights to display the Ten Commandments but not other religious artifacts / documents.
Polling doesn’t seem to suggest that the positions you’ve represented are held by moderates, so no, I wouldn’t label opposition to them as “radically far left”.
I’d suggest this recent piece as a very cogent breakdown of the lost ascendancy of the religious right in conservative politics:
How about letting men takeover woman's sports?
Forcing people to pretend that men are woman or one of 86 other things.
Reparations is now a thing?
Forcing people promote things they don't believe in.
Grooming 5 year olds with deep sexual content.
Schools taking away basic rights of parents.
Or the last few years where random government agencies can just make up whatever rules they want to fully control peoples lives.
Constantly attacking anyone that disagrees on any topic.
It’s telling that when the favored side has protests fraught with arson, destruction, violence, and even multiple deaths, it’s “mostly peaceful” and “the vast majority didn’t commit crimes”.
Whereas when a single act of violence occurs on the disfavored side, that’s used to paint the entire protest as violent, and indeed, the entire disfavored political demographic as irredeemable.
"Far left" in America is "center right" in a sane country.
Card-carrying communists sit in the parliaments of some Western democracies. Yet they somehow still get on as democracies, without many of the problems that plague the USA like wars of resource appropriation, rampant racism, and school shootings.
Since you are talking about western democracies, I assume you are referring to Europe? In which case, I'm sorry but what? Racism is as much of a problem in europe, if not more. The difference is that it's not really seen as an issue in Europe, and is swept under the rug.
The mainstream rhetoric around North Africans, Africans and Roma people in europe would be totally unacceptable in the US and make the American right look downright tolerant in comparison. Remember, "blood and soil" political parties such as the FN in france that literally advocated for kicking back north Africans and openly calls for discrimination against Muslims can get up to 40% of the vote. Prejudice against the Roma people is so insanely prevalent and violent too that it's just disturbing. So much so that it would be worthy of an entire thread on its own.
The difference is that American issues get worldwide coverage and tons of internal debates. That's not the case in europe, especially on the internet where there's a weird complex of inferiority that pushes people to reflexively downplay or deny local issues whenever they get brought up.
As for resource appropriation, I guess the Libyan war never happened? And maybe you should look up what Francafrique is. Neocolonialism is still a very European hobby.
Yes exactly. The US is also at the forefront of Western discussion about colonial repartitions (yes the British Crown still owns the biggest diamond in the world, the Kohinoor, from India) and discussions on sexual minorities.
The only context where GP's sentiment makes sense is a purely economic one. Left economic parties, like social democrats and communists, do a lot worse in the US than in Europe. But this Europe good, US bad meme by folks who identify as progressive is an incredibly shallow reading of politics and history.
Sorry to slow down the AMERICA BAD train, but this seems pretty naive. These are incredibly complex, long running issues, and comparing the US with much smaller and less diverse countries is pretty pointless.
Every country falls somewhere on the political spectrum, implying that they are all insane because the aren't Sweden or something is revealing some heavy bias.
Definitely not on social issues, the vast majority of Europe consider American left wing identity politics batshit insane just like your christian fundamentalists.
From economic side probably yes, but that's not straightforward either. Conservatives in Eastern Europe often hold power by generous social programs and benefits while liberals want to cut it down.
I’m a (non-American) outsider unfamiliar with either of those, but a quick reading leads me to believe that your description is so reductionist as to be intentionally misleading. There’s more nuance to it than “attempts to overturn civil rights”.
Just my opinion.
Also, it’s not clear from the links (or I missed it) but are you calling these “Democratic” initiatives because they were the official position of the Democratic Party or simply because they are occurred in mostly left leaning states?
> There’s more nuance to it than “attempts to overturn civil rights”.
These are repealing civil rights laws in order to recreate government bigotry. Factually, that is what they do.
You can feel that institutionalizing racism is a good idea — the “nuance” you say I’m omitting — but that doesn’t change that these are attempts to repeal civil rights laws which ban discrimination on the basis of protected class.
> are you calling these “Democratic” initiatives because they were the official position of the Democratic Party
Yes — re-creating institutionalized racism is part of the Democrat party platform, using euphemisms like “equity”.
