• Optional@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    If you’re one of those people who use “liberal” to mean a very bad no good corporate genocder, then no.

    If so, where are you anyway? The only people I know who use it that way are college kids, people in the PNW and anyone outside the US.

    • NewDark@lemmings.world
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      2 days ago

      Liberalism is a pro-capitalist ideology, which is center right at best. There’s an untenable tension with that part of the ideology and the civil rights aspects.

    • JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      I am none of those things and had to sit a good friend down and calmly as possible explain to them that calling me a liberal is very insulting despite their good intentions, and helped them understand that they themselves are also not an “American Liberal”.

      One thing Conservatives and Leftists can agree on is how much liberals suck. We just have to pretend to get along with them.

      • Optional@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Yeah okay well, person from not the US, here’s the thing - “liberal” here, doesn’t mean what it apparently does there. So if you’ve convinced someone that it means something else there, then great - but here - if you go around shouting “Liberal!” at people you come off as a MAGAt fuckwit despite your no doubt bona fides lefty certifications. Because language is like that.

        And it’s really, really, annoying. Because liberal is a good thing. For us. For our entire lives, liberals were the progressives, the people who made the world better.

        Now a shit ton of people who don’t live here are screaming at us about being liberals. It’s a PITA. If you have to have a disclaimer for your bon mots it’s pretty self-defeating. Which is actually not a bad metaphor, really.

        • Almacca@aussie.zone
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          1 day ago

          The American right seem to use ‘liberal’ and ‘leftist’ interchangeably, because they don’t know how words work.

        • Mesophar@pawb.social
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          1 day ago

          Look, as someone who also grew up in the USA with the terms liberal and leftist being used synonymously, it’s us who use it the wrong way. I also have a tinge of offense when liberal is used as an insult or with negative connotations, at least at first. Then I remember what liberal actually means, what the people using it are probably saying based on context, and carry on. We can’t expect the whole world to use a word the way we’re used to it when the entire rest of the world uses that word in a different, agreed upon way.

          • Optional@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            Dunno what to tell you, but I do know when someone starts saying I’m a “libtard” it doesn’t really matter - they sound like a MAGAt and their support is unwarranted.