I recently watched videos of Bernie Sanders, who americans call left-wing, and maybe compared to other american politicians he is, but compared to russian opposition he is very like Boris Nemtsov and Alexey Navalny. First is literal founder of Union of Right Forces, second is considered to be center-right.

  • TootSweet@lemmy.worldEnglish
    30·
    3 days ago

    To add to what everyone else is saying, the right wing really controls all the narratives. As Zeppo said, communism/socialism have been demonized for years (starting maybe in the 1950s or so?) And if the right wing doesn’t like anything, they call it “socialism.”

    Single-payer healthcare? Nope, that’s socialism. UBI? You damned pinko commie. Rainbow flags? You’re one of those neo-Marxist postmodernist scumbags!

    And, left wing politicians who don’t want to appear too socialist shrink away from such things so as to not appear socialist.

    In one recent election, the Democrat/Liberal candidate’s slogan was “they go low, we go high.” The slogan acknowledged that the right wing in the U.S. cheats constantly to keep what power it has. The majority of right-wing presidents lose the popular vote – that is most right-wing presidents get less than 50% of the total number of votes in the country – but still get to be president by virtue of gaming the “electoral college” system we have in the U.S… Trump broke tons of rules during his (first? 😬) term. The Republicans cheated to get a dispurportionate number of right-wingers on the Supreme Court (the highest court in the U.S. government). Just as a few examples.

    That’s what the “they go low” part means. The “we go high” means that the Democrats intend to be the adult in the room. The Democrats will stick to the rules. They’ll follow the proper procedures for doing things. They won’t “stoop to the Republicans’ level.” And that approach didn’t start with that slogan. That’s been the Democrats’ approach for a very long time.

    But in practice what “we go high” means is “we’ll roll over and ask them to kick us in the ribs again.” More apt would be “they go low and we… do nothing at all.”

    The Republicans “shut down the government” (long story… they basically prevent funding broadly for most of the federal government to grind the government to a halt – hold the federal government hostage) over random bullshit like building a wall at the southern border between the U.S. and Mexico. And the Democrats let them. Republicans filabuster and the Democrats let them. Republicans overturn long-established legal precedent and the Democrats let them.

    And the Democrats have no plan to change this dynamic. And, who knows. Maybe they like it that way. It’s not like the Democrats aren’t owned by the special interests just like the Republicans are. Really, the big businesses allow the Democrats to exist and continue to make popular noises and very slightly slow our rapid decline toward total dystopian hellscape while not actually letting them do anything that might appreciably threaten the industries’ unrealistic profit margins.