I recently watched videos of Bernie Sanders, who americans call left-wing, and maybe compared to other american politicians he is, but compared to russian opposition he is very like Boris Nemtsov and Alexey Navalny. First is literal founder of Union of Right Forces, second is considered to be center-right.
Settler-Colonialism, the highest reaches of Imperialism in the modern era, the latest stages of Capitalism in decay, and a century of Red Scare Anticommunism.
American politics are primarily shaped by corporations who have an economic incentive to keep the Overton window exclusively center right to far right.
Bourgeoisification smdh 😞
Decades of anticommunist propaganda, destruction of the careers of communists via McCarthyist red baiting, and in the worst instances outright murder of prominent leftists. Like if I went to a communist rally with my face uncovered and it got sent to my employer I would probably lose my job.
We’re talking about the democrats though, the “left” party with actual power, but the most radical among them are social democrats at best with most being centrist technocrats. There are genuine leftists and even left parties in the US but none with any power.
The simplest explanation is that the American “left” is rightwing, because they’ve been told that actual leftism is bad.
We’re only told about leftist ideology or politics in the context of “these bad people in the past did bad things”, and many Americans refuse to actually tackle those lies. because of this, no one in the American “left” is willing to be anti-capitalist in any way that actually matters. Nor are they willing to use materialism in their dialectics, because their political education comes from Liberalism, so they’re more willing to listen to right-wing talking points and integrate them into their views.
This is why you’ll see Americans who’ll call themselves “leftists” pair a statement for working rights with a statement against immigration. Or you’ll see them decry the horrors of fascism, then support whatever new war NATO has wrought.
Because the left has been beaten, suppressed, and assassinated out of existence. Sanders represents a small handful of congresspeople that are reform socialists, and for us that’s radical.
As someone who was raised evangelical in the very evangelical southern states, I think the American Christian religion has quite the part in pushing things for the country both further right and further capitalist. The evangelical work ethic combined with late stage capitalist propaganda create an environment that is toxic to notions like ownership of the means of production going to the people or the state being responsible for many things at all.
There’s a lot of contempt bred in working class people toward the government generally due to capitalists destroying its capabilities to actually make things better. This function is creating a feedback loop that is actively pushing us even further toward a blatant fascist oligarchy (as opposed to the secret fascist oligarchy that has been functioning for at least half a century)
With all that said, as everything for our country is pushed further right the left has been dragged in that direction due to the goalposts being further and further dragged in the opposite direction.
Americans are deeply awash in right wing propaganda and silly little founding mythologies. It also killed or blacklisted its left several times.
American political education is that being left means being a conservative liberal that is okay with the gays and being right is being, more or less, a “respectable” civil Nazi, and everything else is vague extremism.
This isn’t an American only thing. You’re comparing to Russia, the former leading Communist power. Not many places would rival Russia in this respect, especially countries that fought tooth and nail against communism.
It is
I already explained why it is not, so I cannot take your rejection into consideration without a sound argument.
Well I already made up my mind too so I just better stick to it
The US is the model for settler-colonialism in the modern era, itself being explicitly based on the Roman empire, with a slave-holding aristocracy holding political power, and granting free land and status to those willing to participate in its imperial project.
There have been challenges throughout US history against this rule by aristocracy, but all of them lost at various points, and are now on life support. It genocided its indigenous inhabitants and stole their land. The Civil war was a challenge between two right-wing systems: capitalism and slavery, although slavery was reinstated during the reconstruction era. Its communist-left was purged and eliminated by the 1960s, its union movement predictably died soon after in the 1970s, the anti-war left died in the 1980s.
There has never been the equivalent of a “red-scare” but for the right-wing, because the US is a right wing country and does not permit a public platform of left-wing views. Its a one-party state where both parties are “fluid”, one acting as the “foil” / controlled opposition against the one which currently reflects the more overt interests of its aristocracy.
I highly suggest reading Settlers, an Indigenous people’s history of the US, and Zak Cope - Divided world divided class, for some of the underpinnings of the US’s “master-race democracy”.
Its a one-party state where both parties are “fluid”, one acting as the “foil” / controlled opposition
You know, you made me thinking. After seeing this describtion, Sanders reminds me of Furgal - member of LDPR. “Tea and bun. But there are screams for entire country, that bad governor decided to slightly reduce expences on ourselves[regional goverment]. 11 billions. 11 billions we spend on ourselves, but all kids get is tea and bun”. For context LDPR is puppet-party.
There is no Leftist party active in Congress.
So, when you read/hear some USA politician being called “on the left” it should be taken as literally as possible. They are literally standing just to the left of whatever they are being compared to.
So a person who says, “Hey, shouldn’t we all have healthcare that you don’t have to pay out of pocket for?” is to the left of “If you can’t pay, just die.” and will be considered “left”. Even if the person wanting everybody to get healthcare is fully on board with “The Global War On Terrorism.”
Its probably best to view somebody’s opinion/action on an individual issue as being labeled “left” and not the person themself. Even when a person in the USA is describing somebody else in the USA as “of the left.”
The Settler-Colonialism
To add to what everyone else is saying, the right wing really controls all the narratives. As Zeppo said, communism/socialism have been demonized for years (starting maybe in the 1950s or so?) And if the right wing doesn’t like anything, they call it “socialism.”
Single-payer healthcare? Nope, that’s socialism. UBI? You damned pinko commie. Rainbow flags? You’re one of those neo-Marxist postmodernist scumbags!
And, left wing politicians who don’t want to appear too socialist shrink away from such things so as to not appear socialist.
In one recent election, the Democrat/Liberal candidate’s slogan was “they go low, we go high.” The slogan acknowledged that the right wing in the U.S. cheats constantly to keep what power it has. The majority of right-wing presidents lose the popular vote – that is most right-wing presidents get less than 50% of the total number of votes in the country – but still get to be president by virtue of gaming the “electoral college” system we have in the U.S… Trump broke tons of rules during his (first? 😬) term. The Republicans cheated to get a dispurportionate number of right-wingers on the Supreme Court (the highest court in the U.S. government). Just as a few examples.
That’s what the “they go low” part means. The “we go high” means that the Democrats intend to be the adult in the room. The Democrats will stick to the rules. They’ll follow the proper procedures for doing things. They won’t “stoop to the Republicans’ level.” And that approach didn’t start with that slogan. That’s been the Democrats’ approach for a very long time.
But in practice what “we go high” means is “we’ll roll over and ask them to kick us in the ribs again.” More apt would be “they go low and we… do nothing at all.”
The Republicans “shut down the government” (long story… they basically prevent funding broadly for most of the federal government to grind the government to a halt – hold the federal government hostage) over random bullshit like building a wall at the southern border between the U.S. and Mexico. And the Democrats let them. Republicans filabuster and the Democrats let them. Republicans overturn long-established legal precedent and the Democrats let them.
And the Democrats have no plan to change this dynamic. And, who knows. Maybe they like it that way. It’s not like the Democrats aren’t owned by the special interests just like the Republicans are. Really, the big businesses allow the Democrats to exist and continue to make popular noises and very slightly slow our rapid decline toward total dystopian hellscape while not actually letting them do anything that might appreciably threaten the industries’ unrealistic profit margins.
A very appropriate video from Innuendo Studios, “You Go High, We Go Low”: https://youtu.be/MAbab8aP4_A (19 minutes)
Democrat/Liberal candidate’s slogan was “they go low, we go high.”
The thing is, this is largely kayfabe. The Democrats aren’t that dumb: they lose on purpose. It’s a big good cop, bad cop club, and you ain’t in it. Recent blatant examples under the Biden administration:
- 2021: Senate Can’t Vote On $15 Minimum Wage, Parliamentarian Rules
- 2022: Rail Workers Betrayed By Biden & The “Squad”
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The Democratic Party’s deceitful game They are willing to bravely support any progressive bill as long as there’s no chance it can passThe primary tactic in this game is Villain Rotation. They always have a handful of Democratic Senators announce that they will be the ones to deviate this time from the ostensible party position and impede success, but the designated Villain constantly shifts, so the Party itself can claim it supports these measures while an always-changing handful of their members invariably prevent it.
Others have already given adequate answers, but another angle from which to view the US is as the very core of the imperial core. You can’t maintain that level of global imperialism and a kayfabe democracy at the same time without massive amounts of propaganda and the suppression of any effective left-wing organizing. The most impressive part is that most USians don’t think they’re even being propagandized.
- List of Atrocities committed by US authorities
- A Detailed Chronological List of US Interventions, Invasions, Destabilzations, and Assistance to Oppressive Regimes (ending in 2002)
- The U.S. Did Not Defeat Fascism in WWII, It Discretely Internationalized It
- Shock therapy (economics)
- World Incarceration Rates If Every U.S. State Were A Country
- Infographic: US military presence around the world The US controls about 750 bases in at least 80 countries worldwide and spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined.
- Are We The Baddies?
- Michael Parenti: Africa is Rich
Thanks for reading material
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Thanks, but this is genuine question. I heard him being called socialist and even communist, but what I see is very similar to Yashin, Boyko, Nemtsov and Navalny. Except not being sent in prison, outlawed or(and) killed by Putin.
Navalny was seen as a hero by US liberals, because that’s how the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Endowment for Democracy wanted them to see him, so that’s how US corporate media portrayed him.
so that’s how US corporate media portrayed him.
To this day I don’t read US media ouside of articles linked in some discussion about them. And year ago I didn’t do even that.
Video: Alexei Navalny Compares Muslims to Cockroaches
Man, this title is SO misleading. Well, most of Kadyrov’s militants (and Ramzan Kadyrov) do call themselves muslims, but the title is manipulative. It’s like saying Saders/Biden/InsertYourPolitician hates atheists/muslims/christians because that politician said something about someone with personal army, which just so happens to consist of atheists/muslism/christians. Nobody says that everyone who say “Putin is bunker rat” “compare christians to rats”.
For context Kadyrov has multiple pocket armies: 1, 2(no translation), 3(no translation). Also english wiki for some reason confuses military regiment Ahmat and special forces Ahmat.
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