Every time I see someone go on about how, apart from social issues, US liberals (or even US leftists) would be center-right in Europe, it's like ... damn is "social issues" doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
I've been thinking about this, and I'm not sure whether I would or wouldn't ... a generally conservative communist is an odd enough concept to me that I'd probably at least try to find a different term. I do think our politics are similar otherwise, though :)
What you say about Australia vs the US is really interesting, because in some ways, it reminds me of the corner of the US where I live, which is majority ~progressive but also very white (around 80% iirc). My best friend (who moved to a much more diverse area) often talks about how people here will pride themselves on how they're not racist to Black people ... and then it turns out they've never interacted with any, mainly because of historical anti-Black and anti-Indigenous policies that led to the region turning out the way it is, and meanwhile, their takes on Latinx people are ... whew. It's less the case than it used to be, though, or at least people are talking about it in a way that's closer to the rest of the country.
But yeah, more broadly, it has often seemed like a lot of people who go on about how conservative or center-right the US is by their standards a) have stunningly conservative views on race and immigration by contemporary US progressives' standards, and/or b) don't see those issues as very important, when they're defining issues for so many people. It's not that white US progressives deserve much credit for the differences, to be sure, but the discourse from a lot of more-progressive-than-thou types can make the claim pretty questionable IMO.
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2021-12-23 12:47 am (UTC)What you say about Australia vs the US is really interesting, because in some ways, it reminds me of the corner of the US where I live, which is majority ~progressive but also very white (around 80% iirc). My best friend (who moved to a much more diverse area) often talks about how people here will pride themselves on how they're not racist to Black people ... and then it turns out they've never interacted with any, mainly because of historical anti-Black and anti-Indigenous policies that led to the region turning out the way it is, and meanwhile, their takes on Latinx people are ... whew. It's less the case than it used to be, though, or at least people are talking about it in a way that's closer to the rest of the country.
But yeah, more broadly, it has often seemed like a lot of people who go on about how conservative or center-right the US is by their standards a) have stunningly conservative views on race and immigration by contemporary US progressives' standards, and/or b) don't see those issues as very important, when they're defining issues for so many people. It's not that white US progressives deserve much credit for the differences, to be sure, but the discourse from a lot of more-progressive-than-thou types can make the claim pretty questionable IMO.