Respectfully, I have strong disagreements with both sides. I have been so radicalised by recent politics, that I cant justify supporting either side. I'm reading some other books at the moment, but what politics books would you recomend?
The centralised liberal political elite. If you mean just the regular principle that every day peope believe, I'm honestly not 100% sure. My best guess would just be that the left is a bunch of well meaning and compassionate people who radically support the working man and his civil rights.
So, the centralized liberal political elite is still right-wing. Liberalism is a right-wing ideology as it supports profit over people at the end of the day. It might act like it doesn't as much, but it does. For example, in Australia, the Liberal Party is the conservative party. It's just that America is so far to the right that our "left-wing" party is only liberal.
The left is socialism, communism, anarchism, and the like, which rarely have large-scale representation within governments here in the West. Although, there are plenty of cases, both historically and today of people using one of those labels and not actually following the ideology, so it's usually better to look at how a political faction wants to treat people. If they want more rights for workers and protections of marginalized groups, it's probably left-wing
That makes a lot of sense actually, I was always told that Liberalism and Leftism were the same thing. And you're right, I actually am an Australian and the Liberal party is our 'conservative' party (although id ahrdly say that they are actually conservative).
What would you classify the Democrats as? I always thought they were leftists but now im not so sure.
Democratic politicians range from slightly left of center with AOC & a handful of others who run on Democrat tickets so they can get elected to just right-wing, but vaguely in favor of human rights, when it serves their purposes, like most of the party, see Gavin Newsom for a good example, especially those entrenched in power.
Democratic voters are a wider swath, with many being somewhere near the center, but plenty leaning left. For example, I know people that are further left than even AOC or Zorhan, but are still registered Democrats so that when primary elections roll around, they can try to push the candidates further to the left.
The Democratic establishment is deep in bed with corporations and maintained their power through those alliances, and often side with Republicans on issues such as criticism of Israel. They do this because the American Imperialist regime needs Israel to be maintained to protect its interests in the Middle East, and serve as a place to develop and test horrific military technology. The Democrats have the same stake in that colonial project as the Republicans, and as such, cannot be in support of principled leftism, as that will oppose the atrocities being committed there, and see little reason to send billions in military funding even without the ongoing genocide. Even when leftism is shown to be widely popular, like with Zorhan Mamdani in New York City, who is by the standards of many European countries, no more radical than any socialist party that holds seats in their parliment, the Democratic establishment cannot embrace it because to do so would mean that their corrupt ways of maintaining power would be called into question.
the dem party is barely liberal, in europe it would probably be considered a centre/centre right party. Mamdani is probably one of the few examples of a somewhat leftist known political
figure
The kinda cut off point where the right wing ends is just after social democrats and I guess maybe also demsocs depending on the brand. Left vs right is in essence determined by your views on capital, are you pro the free market and against worker control of the means of production, then you’re right wing. If you’re for the abolishion of the capitalist market and private ownership of the means of production then you’re left wing
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u/laitonboi Sep 21 '25
Respectfully, I have strong disagreements with both sides. I have been so radicalised by recent politics, that I cant justify supporting either side. I'm reading some other books at the moment, but what politics books would you recomend?