Just an FYI, you and the person that's responding to you are talking about the same people but use two different words for them. A real leftist ideological group doesn't exist in the US; progressives are not that for certain. To the right, however, a leftist is a US progressive.
Progressives and leftists are approximately the same thing in US politics, not just among the right (the American right doesn’t even distinguish between liberals and progressives—it just calls everyone left of center “liberals”).
You’re observing that political labels vary semantically between political systems. “liberal” in the UK has a different meaning than in the US. Similarly, “leftist” means something different in an American context than it does in your “global” context (although I suspect “global” here is really only accurate for Europe, but that’s a debate for another day).
> “liberal” in the UK has a different meaning than in the US.
Liberal doesn't have any consistent meaning in the US. (Like, nearly every point on the spectrum uses it differently
> Similarly, “leftist” means something different in an American context than it does in your “global” context
Not particularly. Except in the propaganda of the American Right, where it is one of a pile of indistinct labels like Marxist, liberal, Communist, woke, critical race theory, etc., applied indiscriminately to everything they disagree with.
It's a word salad all around. Folks on the US left exhibit similar symptoms when talking about the right. I responded initially because I think distinctualizing US progressives and global progressives is important. I don't want to see US progressives, their policy, or their values gain more traction; I am on board for a party that reflects global progressivism, it's policies, and it's values.
It does seem like there's a split on this thread about
- whether the US progressives relate to global progressives in any way except by name
- how the right views the political spectrum by name of everything to the left of it
> Folks on the US left exhibit similar symptoms when talking about the right.
Yeah, for a good while there, everyone who wasn't a staunch progressive was described as uniformly "far-right".
> I responded initially because I think distinctualizing US progressives and global progressives is important. I don't want to see US progressives, their policy, or their values gain more traction; I am on board for a party that reflects global progressivism, it's policies, and it's values.
I disagree with your politics, but I agree on the importance of this distinction.
> whether the US progressives relate to global progressives in any way except by name
I think US progressives are roughly "global progressives" plus identity stuff. Some US progressives care more about identity than economics, but there aren't any US progressives who flat-out reject left-wing economics even if they don't care as much about it, and there are relatively few US progressives who flat-out reject left-wing identity doctrine even if they don't think it's terribly important (e.g., Sanders).
> how the right views the political spectrum by name of everything to the left of it
The right generally doesn't distinguish between different "bands" (in the sense of a frequency band in a frequency spectrum) on the left of the spectrum any more than the left distinguishes between different "bands" on the right of the spectrum. Some right-wingers use "leftist" for everyone left of center and others use "liberal" for left-of-center, but in both cases they're using a single term for "left-of-center" and thus failing to distinguish. You see the same thing with people on the left referring to the right homogeneously as "conservative" or "right-wing" or "far-right". Few on either side recognize the nuanced beliefs on the other side.
imo, being so caught up in identity is what makes US progressives so toxic. Once you go deep into identity it becomes an abstraction that replaces the root cause, which is class distinctions. Identity is useful in solving specific problems, like systemic racism, but US progressives are practically blind to class problems which makes them especially problematic when they can't recognize how rural areas have class overlaps and alienate those constituents and problems. Hence, US progressives are so volatile and wildly different from the global landscape. Whether or not you believe the basis of global progressivism starts with class distinctions or not and how the US perspective based on identity erodes that is likely where we differ. I'll admit that my bias doesn't favor US progressives because I belong to an identity that's frequently ignored, if not mocked in various ways, by progressives (I'm a vet) and there's little in the way of a future reckoning for that.
I agree with the last paragraph. Anyone that does not understand the various striations of politics but attempts to speak on broad groups negatively without that understanding does immeasurable damage to discourse.
> Whether or not you believe the basis of global progressivism starts with class distinctions or not and how the US perspective based on identity erodes that is likely where we differ.
I think we agree here. Most "progressives" outside of the US are a lot more likely to focus on class distinctions while US progressives are preoccupied by identity.
> A real leftist ideological group doesn't exist in the US
Yes, it does.
Because of the electoral system’s strong pressure to duopoly, there isn’t a substantial real leftist party in the US, but there is a real leftist ideological group.
> progressives are not that for certain
US progressives overlap with, but are not the same as, the left.
> To the right, however, a leftist is a US progressive.
To the American Right, a leftist is a Democrat, including a center -right neoliberal corporate capitalist democrat.
