Liberal is used differently in different places, which causes a lot of the confusion. Kind of like how conservative sometimes means resistant to change and sometimes means regressive depending on who has adopted the label.
The oversimplified pattern that I see for a linear political spectrum, which is too simplified to be accurate when one gets into the weeds but easier to explain conceptually is:
Leftist – Liberal – Centrist – Conservative – Far Right
In the US liberals are called leftists by the conservatives who are actually the far right because our overall spectrum is shifted pretty far to the right. Centrists aren’t really in the middle as much as they are trying to appease both sides. Again, this is very oversimplified but when you hear that liberals aren’t really leftists they are basically saying that liberals are not nearly as far left as they claim to be.
The right-of-center factions seem far more definitionally fleshed-out in the public mind. (In the US at least.)
I’m in my 30s, and a news and politics junkie (a very cursed special interest to have in 2025) and I’m still trying to figure out where the dividing lines are on the left. It also seems like right-wingers either get slowly pulled right with the Overton window, or just stay where they’re at for life. Whereas us lefties can have a tendency to hop around, trying on different ideologies like they’re Linux Distros.
There’s nothing innately wrong with that (unless you get sucked into problematic beliefs/behavior). We just tend to be perennially unsure about “correct” beliefs, which may contribute some to the division and the somewhat blurry lines between factions on “the left”.
For being so anti-US, tankies keep.on repeating the us-centric, capitalist rebranding where neoliberals, democrat party, right wingers who have no support for liberal principles of emancipation, rights and freedoms etc as libs. It’s like they want to surrender what leftists strive for and support right wing newspeak.
Liberal is used differently in different places, which causes a lot of the confusion. Kind of like how conservative sometimes means resistant to change and sometimes means regressive depending on who has adopted the label.
The oversimplified pattern that I see for a linear political spectrum, which is too simplified to be accurate when one gets into the weeds but easier to explain conceptually is:
Leftist – Liberal – Centrist – Conservative – Far Right
In the US liberals are called leftists by the conservatives who are actually the far right because our overall spectrum is shifted pretty far to the right. Centrists aren’t really in the middle as much as they are trying to appease both sides. Again, this is very oversimplified but when you hear that liberals aren’t really leftists they are basically saying that liberals are not nearly as far left as they claim to be.
The right-of-center factions seem far more definitionally fleshed-out in the public mind. (In the US at least.)
I’m in my 30s, and a news and politics junkie (a very cursed special interest to have in 2025) and I’m still trying to figure out where the dividing lines are on the left. It also seems like right-wingers either get slowly pulled right with the Overton window, or just stay where they’re at for life. Whereas us lefties can have a tendency to hop around, trying on different ideologies like they’re Linux Distros.
There’s nothing innately wrong with that (unless you get sucked into problematic beliefs/behavior). We just tend to be perennially unsure about “correct” beliefs, which may contribute some to the division and the somewhat blurry lines between factions on “the left”.
For being so anti-US, tankies keep.on repeating the us-centric, capitalist rebranding where neoliberals, democrat party, right wingers who have no support for liberal principles of emancipation, rights and freedoms etc as libs. It’s like they want to surrender what leftists strive for and support right wing newspeak.