this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2025
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I'll say it again, in the United States the term "liberal" is used to refer to liberal social ideas NOT liberal economic ideas. To the average US citizen left and liberal are synonyms. This doesn't mean your definition isn't correct for academics and the entire rest of the world. But this meme, and this left vs liberal argument for this post, are US based.
We know that, which is why we’re trying to deprogram Americans from the Orwellian newspeak they’ve been mistaught so they can develop class consciousness.
I'm not sure how colloquial vocabulary usage prevents developing class consciousness. I'd potentially argue refusing to accept the evolution of language and refusing to communicate to people in the terms they use and understand inhibits said deprogramming.
Again very US centric in this definition but it's who needs deprogramming.
Sometimes the evolution of language isn’t so much organic as it is a political project, such as a century of red scares and socialist purges.
Americans believe Sanders when he calls himself a socialist because they’ve lost a vocabulary for socialism itself. And they think Sanders’ centrism is “the left,” because the Overton window has shifted so far right that there is no left left.
We can’t simply use their terms, because their terminology is both muddled and lacking.
Ok. But regardless of the cause, organic or political project, it doesn't change the fact that the language has moved on correct?
But there's the rub. You/we ARE using their terms and the message is muddled and lacking BECAUSE OF the difference in perceived definitions. And as the past couple decades have shown there is zero chance of getting the American people to learn things, or unlearn as the case may be.
I assume very few people this far down a thread into a political discussion, on Lemmy, don't know what the Overton windowS are and how fucked the US is because of the current far right position on the left/right scales. I find it lacking and dislike it's libertarian origins. We are even now discussing the difference of a word being used for social vs economic ideas and these two scales do not necessarily overlap.