• masquenox
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    9 months ago

    or left-center and still support free markets and capitalism.

    Absolutely not. There is no such thing as “leftist capitalism.”

    What is left and right is really simple - you are either for dismantling systems of power and privilege (left) or you are protecting systems of power and privilege (right). The (so-called) “center” is merely politics that performs the latter while pretending to sympathize with the former.

    Believe it or not, it’s possible for a person to hold right and left ideals simultaneously.

    No, it isn’t - you can’t be “half-pregnant.” If your politics protects power and privilege it’s perfectly clear what politics you ascribe to… it doesn’t matter what you may personally feel about this or that irrelevant little disagreement you may have with your fellow travellers regarding the details. A person that believes abortion should only be allowed “in cases of rape” is no less right-wing (ie, misogynist and patriarchal in this case) than a person that wants it abolished altogether.

    • Breezy@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Idk man you can definitely have boyh left and right views at the same time. Like for example i believe in the so called right’s ideology of a smaller government, but i think this should be achieved by stripping away 90% of programs and installing a realistic universal basic income and a nationlized medical system. Which are two leftist ideas. I mean why would there be need so many different programs if everyone had their basic needs met.

      Now that would indeed cause a ton of people to lose their jobs. It would also point out the most truely hopeless people who take what they are given and screw up constantly. Our current system trys to stem the amount of abusers by making everything so convoluted which ends up harming people really in need, along with cost so much money.

      • masquenox
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        9 months ago

        Which are two leftist ideas.

        Neither of these…

        realistic universal basic income and a nationlized medical system.

        …are leftist ideas at all. A government having to shoulder the burden of dealing with the consequences of capitalism isn’t leftist (UBI). Neither is a state doing the bare minimum of what states have always been supposed to do (state-run healthcare).

        But this…

        Our current system trys to stem the amount of abusers

        …ie, focusing on the miniscule amount of “abuse” done by the people without power and privilege in a society as opposed to the gargantuan amount of damage caused by those with power and privilege - now that is textbook punch-down-kiss-up right-wing ideology speaking.

        So far, the only ideological understanding you have expressed here (so far) is a right-wing one.

        • remotelove@lemmy.ca
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          9 months ago

          So, by your logic, everyone that holds any left wing principles should actually be full-blood communists and all right wingers are, by default, Nazis.

          I just wanted to clear that up because that is how people seem to be interpreting your hard-line stance.

          • masquenox
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            9 months ago

            everyone that holds any left wing principles

            Ther is only one left-wing principle of any relevance to this discussion - the challenging and dismantling of systems of power and privilege. There is also only one right-wing principle of any relevance to this discussion - the protection and expansion of systems of power and privilege. Whether the systems of power and privilege go full-Nazi simply depends on how insecure said systems are at any given moment.

            I just wanted to clear that up because that is how people seem to be interpreting your hard-line stance.

            It’s not a hard-line stance at all - it’s just one with all the clickibait fairy tales stripped away. No, they’re interpreting it that way because a lot of right-wingers are quite shocked when they find out that they are, in fact, pro-status quo right-wingers and not the (supposed) “enlightened centrists” they believed themselves to be. We call right-wingers reactionaries for a reason.