Why YSK: I’ve noticed in recent years more people using “neoliberal” to mean “Democrat/Labor/Social Democrat politicians I don’t like”. This confusion arises from the different meanings “liberal” has in American politics and further muddies the waters.
Neoliberalism came to the fore during the 80’s under Reagan and Thatcher and have continued mostly uninterrupted since. Clinton, both Bushs, Obama, Blair, Brown, Cameron, Johnson, and many other world leaders and national parties support neoliberal policies, despite their nominal opposition to one another at the ballot box.
It is important that people understand how neoliberalism has reshaped the world economy in the past four decades, especially people who are too young to remember what things were like before. Deregulation and privatization were touted as cost-saving measures, but the practical effect for most people is that many aspects of our lives are now run by corporations who (by law!) put profits above all else. Neoliberalism has hollowed out national economies by allowing the offshoring of general labor jobs from developed countries.
In the 80’s and 90’s there was an “anti-globalization” movement of the left that sought to oppose these changes. The consequences they warned of have come to pass. Sadly, most organized opposition to neoliberal policies these days comes from the right. Both Trump and the Brexit campaign were premised on reinvigorating national economies. Naturally, both failed, in part because they had no cohesive plan or understanding that they were going against 40 years of precedent.
So, yes, establishment Democrats are neoliberals, but so are most Republicans.
Watching from a far (The Netherlands), it always amazed me how the political scale in the US is described. Even the democrats in the US feel more to the right, then positioned in the US. Some people go as far to call democrats communist, but I don’t think these people know what communist really is, in the same way that Americans don’t seem to know what (neo)liberal actually is. It is both entertaining and concerning to watch.
Yeah, the idea that Democrats are center-left is hilarious - by the standards in most of Europe, they’re not even center-right, just plain rightwing, whilst the Republicans are pretty much far-right (given their heavy religious, ultra-nationalis, anti-immigrant and warmongering - amongst others - rethoric).
The Overtoon Window has moved to the Right everywhere but in the US it did way much further than in most of Europe.
As for the whole neoliberalism stuff, it’s pretty easy to spot the neoliberal parties even when they’ve disguised themselves as leftwing or (genuine) conservatives: they’re the ones always obcessing about what’s good for businesses whilst never distinguishing between businesses which are good for people and society and those which aren’t: in other words, they don’t see businesses (and hence what’s “good for businesses”) as a means to the end of being “good for people” (i.e. “good for businesses which are good for people hence good for people”) but as an end in itself quite independently of what that does for people.
The Democrats are more socially left wing than the vast majority of European parties.
Don’t confuse Identity Politics, aka “We care only about that inequality which doesn’t involve the priviledges of wealth” as leftwing.
Those who disregard the biggest inequality of treatment there is by a HUGE margin (that of wealth) and only care about those inequalities which can be “fixed” without putting their own inherited priviledges (usually from being born in the high middle-class and above) at risk aren’t lefties as they’re not really fighting for the greatest good for the greatest number.
The kind of liberalism that ignores the power of money and ownership to constraint others’ freedom of action is incompatible with getting the greatest outcome for the greatest number because they see restrictions of accumulation of wealth and resources and anti-freedom and it’s been painfully obvious for decades that maximization of the greatest good for the greatest number is the exact opposite of the direction of concentration of wealth and ownership we have been travelling on.
Turning the other way while migrants drown in the Mediterranean isn’t “Identity Politics” and the insistence on cultural homogenization and labeling plurinationalism “Identity Politics” is very typical of European right-wing social ideology that pervades the parties in power.
Now you’re just using an “appeal to emotion” falacy.
A person who genuinelly wants to help others LOGICALLY starts by the ones most in need, and those are mainly those living in horrible conditions in refugee camps, not those who have a few thousand dollars to pay a trafficker.
Your barelly disguised neoliberal take on Equality with “oh so obvious” late XXth century marketing shaped appeals to emotion and eternaly repeated unthinking slogans which are fashionable within certain tribes (and hence social tokens of group membership amongst that crowd, who really are just in it for the sweet social ego-stroking) isn’t left-wing, it isn’t even a genuine want to do good by others, since it doesn’t obbey even the basic logic of “to do the most good you start by those in most need” something which would force looking at wealth inequality.
The internal-inconsistencies needed to exclude wealth inequality from that bundle of easilly parroted marketing slogans that portrays to be a political theory that fights Equality are so large, that even the idea that help should be allocated by need not by “insert easilly visibly characteristice people were born with” is seen as a threat.
Caring about migrants’ lives isn’t an appeal to emotion.
You’re seriously misguided if you believe that.
Tell me how Romani are treated in Europe
I think our country is starting to look like the US more and more which is scary.
Yeah agreed. Last elections I wasn’t really sure what to vote on anymore, the political landscape is becoming to extreme for my taste. There are virtually no center parties anymore, especially when you exclude the religious related parties. With the recent election and the debates, the media is also trying to create a left versus right, which is a very strange thing to do in our system.
In the end, it would be nice to just have a government that cares about its people and future, they have made way too many mistakes over the past decade, mistakes that were avoidable if only they had listened. Cases in point: reversing the student grant system, pushing important government tasks to local governments (while reducing their budget) and the whole childcare debacle. Literally for all of these f*ups, the government was warned by experts…
You need to understand, our two party system is not part of the actual government as it was designed. They are basically a pack of oligarchs running a good cop-bad cop routine on the electorate.
Our voting system naturally favors this dynamic. Anywhere you see “first past the post”, ask if the people feel like they’re voting for the leaders they’d prefer, or against the candidates that scare them the most. Oligarchic duopoly is the dominant game theoretic strategy inherent to FPTP.