I certainly agree that historically leftists were very concerned about class, but that hasn’t been the popular analysis among American leftists for a decade.
Maybe ironically, as one of them I wouldn't say "centrists" center anything. We tend to see the whole thing as a milieu. Not that economic issues aren't super important, but there's no serious way to analyze the US without taking both economic and identity issues into account.
> Clinton and Obama might’ve capitalized on their identities in pandering to the progressive wing
If you look at where Hillary Clinton’s support was vs. Bernie’s , Bernie’s was on the economic left, Clinton’s was with all the identity-politics factions. (Not just what is predictable by “exploiting her identity” as straigh cisgender heterosexual white woman.)
It can be confusing, because there is also a leftist/progressive identity politics which is highly intersectional and also highly integrated with class politics, but the dominant neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party has long been deeply dependent on the very different bourgeois identity politics which rejects the class struggle, as what distinguishes them from the more moderate fringes of the Republican Right (this was especially true during the period of the neoliberal consensus, less so since Trump replaced corporate capitalism with a side order of culture war social politics to energize the base with White nationalist culture war populism as the center of the Republican Party.)
> Do you think Warren, AOC, Omar, etc are really “moderate Democrats” or do you disagree that they are committed identitarians?
I think all of them (even Warren, who remains overtly pro-capitalist and is more centrist than the others) center economic/class issues more than identity politics, and all but Warren do so fairly explicitly because the kind of identity politics they engage in are precisely the progressive/left kind, not the bourgeios kind.
The right-wing propaganda machine is very hard on ambitious women (as a former Hillary staffer I can attest to this), and it's definitely part of the plan to smear these folks in particular. I think we should be asking why there's a concerted, well-funded messaging effort against these women and not against people saying similar things like Hakeem Jeffries or Bernie Sanders. My personal view is that it's raw misogyny. And, frankly, I think you're repeating a lot of it here. In particular your use of the word "cheerleaded" is a pretty gendered criticism.
We're all misogynists, we're all racists, we're all homophobes, because of the culture we grew up in. But by introspecting on this, we're able to fight against it and create a fairer society.
It feels like you missed Sanders' entire campaign then [0] [1] [2].
The main differences between Warren and Sanders is that Warren's policies are better, and Sanders is a Jewish man (I feel like potentially being our first Jewish president didn't get enough play, but it would have been a powerful moment for the US and humanity as a whole).
> it seems pretty sexist to imply that men oughtn’t be cheerleaders
If you use phrases structured as "[stereotype] [people the stereotype is used against]", that's a stereotype. If your excuse is that the stereotype isn't absolute, it's a tacit admission that you used a stereotype against people. Own it or don't, up to you.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3mvbxeA1UA
[1]: https://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-racial-justice/
[2]: https://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-womens-rights/
Anecdotally, I've known these kinds of folks for a while through FOSS and IRC. I'm also dating an actual leftist.
Liberal doesn't have any consistent meaning in the US. (Like, nearly every point on the spectrum uses it differently
> Similarly, “leftist” means something different in an American context than it does in your “global” context
Not particularly. Except in the propaganda of the American Right, where it is one of a pile of indistinct labels like Marxist, liberal, Communist, woke, critical race theory, etc., applied indiscriminately to everything they disagree with.
It does seem like there's a split on this thread about
- whether the US progressives relate to global progressives in any way except by name
- how the right views the political spectrum by name of everything to the left of it
Exactly.
> Folks on the US left exhibit similar symptoms when talking about the right.
Yeah, for a good while there, everyone who wasn't a staunch progressive was described as uniformly "far-right".
> I responded initially because I think distinctualizing US progressives and global progressives is important. I don't want to see US progressives, their policy, or their values gain more traction; I am on board for a party that reflects global progressivism, it's policies, and it's values.
I disagree with your politics, but I agree on the importance of this distinction.
> whether the US progressives relate to global progressives in any way except by name
I think US progressives are roughly "global progressives" plus identity stuff. Some US progressives care more about identity than economics, but there aren't any US progressives who flat-out reject left-wing economics even if they don't care as much about it, and there are relatively few US progressives who flat-out reject left-wing identity doctrine even if they don't think it's terribly important (e.g., Sanders).
> how the right views the political spectrum by name of everything to the left of it
The right generally doesn't distinguish between different "bands" (in the sense of a frequency band in a frequency spectrum) on the left of the spectrum any more than the left distinguishes between different "bands" on the right of the spectrum. Some right-wingers use "leftist" for everyone left of center and others use "liberal" for left-of-center, but in both cases they're using a single term for "left-of-center" and thus failing to distinguish. You see the same thing with people on the left referring to the right homogeneously as "conservative" or "right-wing" or "far-right". Few on either side recognize the nuanced beliefs on the other side.
I agree with the last paragraph. Anyone that does not understand the various striations of politics but attempts to speak on broad groups negatively without that understanding does immeasurable damage to discourse.
I think we agree here. Most "progressives" outside of the US are a lot more likely to focus on class distinctions while US progressives are preoccupied by identity.
Yes, it does.
Because of the electoral system’s strong pressure to duopoly, there isn’t a substantial real leftist party in the US, but there is a real leftist ideological group.
> progressives are not that for certain
US progressives overlap with, but are not the same as, the left.
> To the right, however, a leftist is a US progressive.
To the American Right, a leftist is a Democrat, including a center -right neoliberal corporate capitalist democrat.
The left doesn't thing of privilege as even primarily racial or gender privilege. (The people that do are centrists; the actual left centers class privilege, though there are leftists who see race/gender issues as important secondary/connected issues to class issues.)