Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

Jeremy Corbyn is a Socialist, not a liberal.

Tony Blair is a liberal.

What exactly *is* a 'socialist'? That term is no less capacious than 'liberal'.

Of course 'creepy liberalism' surely does exist as well, especially at the libertarian/expansionist end of the liberal spectrum (hi there, Tony Blair!), but it can be differentiated from other forms of liberalism without sacrificing too many leftist points, surely?

Would you not say Corbyn is a social liberal? He believes in, for example, LGBT rights a lot more than most politicians - it's one of the reasons I like him so much.

having a mare here, certain user

Boris Johnson is a 'social liberal', so what?

xp said other user without contributing anything to the discussion

Who isn't a social liberal apart from some Sir Bufton Tuftons on the Tory backbenches and Tim Farron?

Shall we look up Johnson's voting record on issues of freedom, such as for immigrants, LGBT people or the poor? Somehow I feel his liberal credentials will shrivel a little

The poor don't count for 'social liberals'

No, they don't count for creepy libertarians (who always turn out to be reactionaries of some stripe anyway). I won't allow the entire liberal tradition to be done over like this.

any def of liberalism that excludes mainstream social democrats like corbyn and bernie is way more narrow than what i was talking about

Would you not say Corbyn is a social liberal? He believes in, for example, LGBT rights a lot more than most politicians - it's one of the reasons I like him so much.

― imago, Monday, July 13, 2020 11:02 AM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

being in favour of lgbt rights is not an invention of "liberalism".

?

I think this has been linked to on ilx before, but this article is pretty convincing imo - arguing that Corbyn is a better liberal than the supposed 'liberal' centrists he is sometimes unfavorably compared to

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/12/jeremy-corbyn-defender-of-liberalism

Speaking of which, what are your alternatives, my fine anti-liberal friends? I never do hear how we're going to bring about full communism, or what price there is to pay

I'm not a liberal, but that doesn't make me a communist. No interest in that either

what year is this

Sheffield Liberal vs Sheffield Communist (KO 7.30pm)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srh97TbXN8A

xp

I think this has been linked to on ilx before, but this article is pretty convincing imo - arguing that Corbyn is a better liberal than the supposed 'liberal' centrists he is sometimes unfavorably compared to

I'm sure he is but I'm also sure he would bristle at being called a liberal.

tbf Oxford vs Wycombe is like a battle between two distinct forms of conservative liberalism

Points deductions are the preserve of authoritians and wokescolds both. Its a conundrum

I'm not a liberal, but that doesn't make me a communist. No interest in that either

This is it pretty much, don't call me a liberal, even if it's for the possibly feeble reason that my entire life we've had a shitty party of that or similar name that exists largely to give a home to 'nice' Tories.

Dude, party names mean fuck-all. Have you seen Australia's Liberal Party??!

That said, the Lib Dems are assuredly liberals, yeah - some (most?) of them pretty creepy

Did you miss the discussion on why 'liberal' means different things in the US and the UK?

I didn't miss where ogmor added an extra couple of definitions which I subscribe to more than either of the initial faulty offerings

Which means it can be a good time to let the tight grasp of identification and subsription go a little bit. You can still wear the jersey but it doesn't have to be quite so tight

Ogmor is generally right about most things but, in this case, I can't remember what he actually said.

xp Well, indeed. I can define myself as a liberal leftist and you can define me as whatever but what matters are my (and your) beliefs about how society should operate, and how these beliefs modify when placed beside one another

uk pol profs will talk about the liberal left to mean yr progressive left that supports identity politics and so on

― rumpy riser (ogmor), Monday, 13 July 2020 13:23 (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I also think liberal has less pejorative sting amongst some religious ppl for whom it's the de facto opposite to fundamentalist

― rumpy riser (ogmor), Monday, 13 July 2020 13:41 (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not seeing a slam dunk of any description there tbh.

it doesn't need to be a slam dunk, it can just feel more right

you can define me as whatever

I've never defined you as anything! Its best not to get too caught up in labels, other than as generalities

When I see the words liberal and religious in the same sentence I can only think of one name - Tim Farron (LOL).

the creepiest

"What I took from Kate's post is not that she doesn't want to apologize but that it feels to her like when people apologize for misgendering her they're actually asking for some sort of absolution from something much bigger, they're asking her to pronounce them Good Persons.

― Daniel_Rf"

yeah, i meant to make that more explicit in that last post but i forgot. when i fuck up, which i do, often, what i try to do is accept responsibility, apologise to anybody i've hurt, accept the consequences, and move on. what i was trying to convey is that misgendering someone is a normal and common thing to do, it's something i still do all the fucking time, and of course i feel bad about doing it, but feeling ashamed of my mistakes, i've found, doesn't really help me to fix them, is more likely to send my spiraling into self-judgment, into the notion that i am a Bad Person, like lj says.

"They're probably just really afraid of being (or being seen to be) bad people! I suffer from it too; it's natural. It's why I sometimes fly off the handle when my insecurities are provoked in just the right way

― imago"

this is good. this is really insightful and thoughtful and i totally agree with it. the bit after this that i didn't quote, i feel like you kind of go into problem-solving, which i wasn't asking for and i don't need. i have problems, i do the best i can with them, which includes asking for help from other people when i need it, and i don't really think i did that in my last post.

i know very well, very well indeed, that fear of being Bad, and it was not healthy for me. i lived in constant fear of judgement, holding myself to impossible standards, never allowing myself to make a mistake or running away from the mistakes i did make.

re: your thought on my use of the word "liberal" - i think those are, again, some really good perspectives, thoughtful, and in some respects valid. i did, on consideration, go a little bit into polemic mode there, and i try not to do that. so thank you for holding me accountable for that.

to the extent that liberalism can admit to its inadequacies rather than seeking to exculpate them, well, to that extent i would agree with you that liberalism hasn't failed, but the whole history of liberalism is so dogged by that drive to exculpate that sometimes i find it hard to not see it as all-encompassing.

a song that i find really personally inspiring to me, even though it's not about me, not about my struggle, is nina simone's "mississippi goddamn". i can relate to the frustration she voices. and that was what, fifty years ago? and have things gotten better for people of color in america? for fifty years liberals in america have counseled patience, tolerance, and at the risk of being called "paranoid" again it really seems to have benefited said liberals a lot more than it's benefited the people they have so counseled.

i have a really, really, really hard time trusting liberals. i feel like when they make promises, and lately they're not even really adequate _promises_ anymore, that either they are lying to me or they are lying to themselves, and it really doesn't matter to me which.

and then you close off by going into this whole thing here:

"Speaking of which, what are your alternatives, my fine anti-liberal friends? I never do hear how we're going to bring about full communism, or what price there is to pay. Will your life and the lives of those you care about be made better by liberals like Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn, or by an armed struggle in which you'll probably die?

― imago"

i mean, this is what i fucking mean by invoking fear of the other. it's not enough for liberals to point out an injustice, a wrong, a failure. we have no right, no standing, to complain about a problem unless we also bring to them, tied up in a neat little bow, an infallible solution. from my youth i have heard this lousy defense of capitalist democracy - "yeah, it sucks, but everything else is worse. i mean, have you seen the other guy?"

how much worse do things have to fucking get, lj? look, i'm white, all of this shit is theoretically being done for my goddamn benefit, and i'm fucking miserable. everybody around me is half-mad with anguish and fear. and that's your answer? it could be worse? lj i've already got a perfect score on the GAD-7, you can't make me more afraid than i already am!

and please, please, please, quit with the tokenizing, quit using people who as far as i know have never written you a personal letter of recommendation to support your disingenuous misrepresentations. that last sentence of yours? that is terrible. absolutely terrible! it doesn't make you look better and it makes it really hard for me treat you with the kindness and respect you deserve.

(in many cases "half-mad" is putting it charitably, tbqh)

i will cop to slipping into disgruntled polemic at the end there; sorry about that. obviously there are a shitload of terrible problems with society in the US, UK and many other places, and it isn't really my place to bumptiously ask how people plan to solve them given how borderline impossible they've proven to solve over many generations; it's flippant and not needed

but then again, we are going to need solutions. maybe not armed ones. that was silly of me. but i do want to talk solutions!

Not being nice to liberals is part of the solution

Jeremy Corbyn is a Socialist, not a liberal.

― The Fields o' Fat Henry (Tom D.), Monday, 13 July 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Clueless bantz from Louie aside Corbyn was more of a mixed bag. How much of a socialist can you be to get to the top of the Labour Party? If anything his open to all views liberal-ish points were his undoing. He should've totally stuck the knife in and taken the whip from the worst wreckers, for a start!

The mix comes in with his anti-imperialist viewpoints (which included solidarity with the likes of Cuba that provoke havoc in the liberal mind), anti-war, anti-militarism in the whole nuclear weapons debacle.

which included solidarity with the likes of Cuba that provoke havoc in the liberal mind

Depends:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada–Cuba_relations

(You'll need to copy/paste that link, obv.)

uk pol profs will talk about the liberal left to mean yr progressive left that supports identity politics and so on

― rumpy riser (ogmor), Monday, 13 July 2020 13:23 (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Since ukpolprofs are worse than scum on twitter I am thinking ogmor was saying that liberal left is mislabelled by them as progressive left, because the liberal left often walk right past identity politics?

good work defining liberalism everyone. maybe we can decode "and" soon, that'll get is 2/5ths of the thread title

'And' is just 'cum'.

Pom - from that article it seems the reason for Canada to play nice with Cuba is to use Cuba to differ themselves from the US.

That isn't really an anti-imperialist mindset to me, which would mean backing (with words if not arms, and certainly not cutting off trade relations) Cuba right through its involvement in the Angolan civil war.

then why did we elect Castro's kid huh??

'And' is just 'cum'.

I think this has been linked to on ilx before, but this article is pretty convincing imo - arguing that Corbyn is a better liberal than the supposed 'liberal' centrists he is sometimes unfavorably compared to

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/12/jeremy-corbyn-defender-of-liberalism

― soref, Monday, 13 July 2020 bookmarkflaglink

The Corbyn labour party was said to be a compromise solution. While I partly agree I think the British state in Corbyn's hands would've meant solidarity with the likes of Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela, the need for dialogue in almost all circumstances, a reckoning with the legacy of Empire (with opening of the archives) and -- post Prince Andrew -- even a reckoning with the Royal Family as they are run.

And looking at Covid that would've given license to go even further in restructuring much of the British state. And finally really opening the floodgates to a potential left-wing hegemony, with the likes of BLM being listened to by a black home Secretaary!

Poor Louie would have struggled with all of this!