this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
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In any other nation, they're far-right.
Edit: Amerikkka is the only nation, apparently
Interesting. Which "other nation" has a party the is left enough for you and regularly hold power?
Vietnam
What are you trying to say? That anytime a country gets too far left for business interests a certain country throws a coup party?
unexpected item in bagging area
The democrats actually trend left of major labor and social democratic parties around the world but why let actual policy comparison get in the way of the narrative?
TFW Europe doesn't exist
Europe =/= whole world
Shocking, I know
It's like... most of the developed world outside of North America & Australia. Japan and SK's "left" ruling parties might both seem fascist in comparison to the US Democrats, and the UK's may be about on par if not worse, but the same can not be said about most of first-world Europe, or even Australia and Canada really. Even in many less developed countries – like Argentina, Syria, Palestine, and much of Africa – you'll generally find that the "left" parties are actually left, socialist or syndicalist or some other anti-capitalist, and not liberal. But I'd say developed countries are a lot more relevant to comparisons with American politics than ones which are not developed.
China, India, Saudi Arabia? Russia?
Ah yes, the pinnacle of developed democracies. China, India, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. You managed to pick some of the most corrupt authoritarian countries I could think of. A one-party "democratic dictatorship", a theocratic absolute monarchy, and a regular dictatorship.
The only somewhat relevant comparison might be India but it's still not part of the developed world and it's known for its fascist corruption, comparing its politics to developed countries' doesn't exactly work. Even then, their only left-wing party is the Communist Party of India (obviously more leftist than the Democrats) – the AAP leans left I suppose, so they're comparable to Democrats maybe, but AFAIK they're far more "leftist" in their policies and anti-crony-capitalism than American Democrats even though they consider themselves centrists.
I also somehow doubt that the CCP is more right-wing than the American Democrats. Somehow. Either way, when it comes to states without competing parties it becomes kind of hard to have a "left" party and a "right" party. This also applies when the non-ruling party has its politicians jailed, killed, or otherwise purged whenever they challenge the ruling party. So basically all of them except India...
No shit, Sherlock, that was the whole point
No shit Sherlock, that was the whole point
When people say "Democrats are actually right wing compared to most other countries in the world", they mentally exclude almost every country except European ones. So what they really mean is "compared to Europe".
No, just compared to the developed world and the democratic world. There are developed countries outside of Europe, you know like Australia, Canada, NZ. There are very few developed countries it doesn't apply to – like previously mentioned Japan and SK and some in Europe. A majority of democratic countries also have left-wing parties – ones far more left than the democrats – like, again, many in South America (Chile, Argentina, etc.) and even India as you mentioned. Even most democratic Middle Eastern & African countries have at least one leftist party that is undeniably more left than the Democrats, as well as ones which aren't fully democratic but still have competing parties or factions (like Jordan, Syria, and Palestine).
Authoritarian/fascist countries are irrelevant to the conversation, I'm not sure why you thought to bring something like Saudia Arabia or Russia in.
Europe with extra steps lol
Most countries don't have a first past the post voting system, so there's a profusion of parties. A fairer comparison would be powerful coalitions (which is arguably what the Democratic party is anyway, a coalition).
🙄
Yeah, in Europe there are also right wing parties and Nazis. Not sure how this would prove that Europe's left wing parties are not to the left of american Democrats, although very small. The existing of more than 2 parties and the historical political tradition makes this quite a natural fact to be honest. Besides, a lot of left politics is anti-imperialist and it's hard to be left when you are governing an hegemonic country like US...
All in all though I would agree that the mainstream socdem parties in Europe are very similar to the Dems, also because of 30 years of influence, policies, pushes for "two party system to get stability" and so on.
I would like to see what exactly you're referring to. Outside of the UK and Japan/SK, there's not a whole lot of supposedly "leftist" parties which are right of America's Democrats when it comes to the developed world.
German Social Democrats are going anti-refugee, Melanchon is hardcore putin supporter on the grounds of realist geopolitical policy, which until it was useful to say America bad was rightly decried by the left as just a rhetorical justification for continued western imperialism, even breathe of gender neutral language use in most European countries and you'll be treated like a pariah if not outright accused of trying to destroy the culture, Greece's actual goddamn socialist party is one of the most corrupt organized parties in the world, the NDP in Canada are lead by a man who says all the right things until you ask him about that plain hijacking by a terrorist organization founded on the interests of a racist class of landed elites, Russia's still active communist party is a captured opposition for the fascist Putin regime, Erdogan's rise to power in Turkey was paved by how wildly islamophobic the system of secularism was that the social democratic party Ataturk founded lifted from France (remember the shitstorm over Burkinis?), and oh yeah, all over the english speaking world and in much of western europe the guillotine is regularly held up as a symbol of revolution of leftist power while everywhere else mostly recognizes it as the preferred means of criminal execution of the Nazis.
That doesn't necessarily make them less left than American Democrats. I mean many Democrats literally are supporting the genocide of countries some of those refugees may be coming from right now. Immigration policy & treatment of refugees, although having some correlations with the left-right divide in the modern day, don't wholly decide whether you're left or right.
Calling Melanchon right of the Democrats is certainly... something alright. He is literally a socialist, or borderline socialist depending on your view. Democrats don't even come near socialism. Having shitty views on international politics and diplomacy doesn't exactly qualify you as "less left".
Based off of context I can only assume that you're referring to when people who have no idea about how linguistics works try to go to speakers of other languages and tell them to just chop off part of their grammar (in this case, noun class) because they think "grammatical gender" is actual gender, or that it's comparable to pronoun use in English. But regardless, language features on its own doesn't necessarily mean anything when it comes to political leanings, and you can find gender neutral language use all across Europe, even in comparatively backwards places like Italy (sorry Italians).
Greece itself is unfortunate in every meaning of the word, but being corrupt doesn't say anything about its political leanings.
I don't get your point here. Although racism is usually right-wing, the lead guy being a racist doesn't change the fact that the NDP still favors far more leftist policies than the US democrats, including on peace, the environment, transportation infrastructure, and (obviously) healthcare. Half of the stuff that the NDP pushes for would be absolute crazy talk to US Democrats.
I wouldn't exactly call Russia a developed democracy, it's very clearly a far-right authoritarian country.
... secularism is islamophobic? Keeping religion out of government, including government buildings, isn't exactly right-wing, in fact I find it perfectly fits much of leftist thought throughout history. Keeping all religion out of government isn't "islamophobic", even in a majority muslim country.
Not exactly sure how this is relevant as to whether or not the US Democrats are actually more leftist than real leftist parties.
Most of your arguments seem to be about nationality/religion, and while stance on things like immigration or Ukraine are relevant, they don't overshadow being a socialist, which US democrats are far from.
Democrats reject socialism, they fear being labelled a "communist", they don't like being "leftists". I find it silly comparing them to actual socialists or parties/people which border on being socialist, maybe with a few positions uncharacteristic for socialists but in general still being socialists, and then saying that the Democrats are more left-wing. I mean Biden literally said that he wouldn't sign a universal healthcare bill, he's giving Israel a ton of aid, he still fully supports capitalism even if he has made advancements on making corporations less powerful. He, and the institution he represents, are NOT leftist, even if we say position on healthcare is irrelevant and position on foreigners is very relevant.
Man that's just a whole wall of someone who'd definitely respond to someone mentioning Roma folks with "That's different they deserve it!"
I pointed out that most of the stuff you said is mostly irrelevant to Democrats' leftness relative to worldwide political parties. I'm sorry that you're so immature that your immediate response to someone pointing out that you're wrong is randomly calling them racist against Roma for whatever reason.
You can't take literal socialists with socialist policies, and compare them to US democrats, and say "yea capitalist liberals are more leftist than socialists/syndicalists/social democrats". It goes against the entire divide of left and right. Even if they have an immoral stance on immigration or Ukraine or something, leftism is still leftism.
Unless you wanna argue that Lenin was actually more right-wing than US Democrats or something for some shitty beliefs he held (although he was generally a pretty good guy when it came to racism, actually he was a pretty good guy in general usually). Or Che Guevara (now he has some far more spicy views). Or Tito. In fact, there are many notable leftists throughout history with problematic views, who are still quite undeniably leftists. "Leftist" doesn't just mean "good person". It, broadly, means anti-capitalist but can encompass some bordering ideologies which still exist within capitalism yet lean heavily into the worker's democracy stuff and are strictly anti-corporatism. That kind of stuff has no place in America, and Democrats definitely don't even come close despite being "the better choice" for workers.