>> The left wants to own online political discussion in the US, and they are very bothered that the right finds a ready audience when they are allowed to compete.
> That's a very odd definition of "left" floating around down there in the US. What is being called "left" in that context is nothing but neo-liberal centrist politics, and it has wanted to own political discussion in the US in some form or another for over a century.
I don't think that's the "left" the GP was referring to. I think were most likely talking about the "culture war" left.
> I remain flabbergasted by the increasing number of people who can somehow in the same breath complain about "radical socialists" and "cultural marxists" while at the same time somehow equating those people with "corporate elites" and "silicon valley" -- the two are the enemy of the other.
It's because we don't always get to control definitions, even ones we care a lot about (ask me about "crypto" sometime). IMHO, those are both fashionable (in some circles) new terms for the "culture war" left, somewhat inflected by plutocratic interests that harness opposition to it to further their own agenda.
Edit: IMHO, I think a flag-waving socially-conservative socialism could be surprisingly successful in America, if someone could get it off the ground.
I think I agree with you (and actually prefer not to use the term "left" myself in general for this reason), but I still think it's worth underscoring the points about the incoherence of the use of these terms. Someone on a hobby group I am on the other day started ranting about how rising fire insurance rates for farmers were "Just another step to push out the middle class and independent owners to make way for big corporate ownership." [ok fine, whatever] and then suffixed it with "The United Socialist States of America" [W the actual F? Makes zero sense].
I see this kind of talk from people with Q & Trump-inflected politics all the time. It's bizarre.
> That's a very odd definition of "left" floating around down there in the US. What is being called "left" in that context is nothing but neo-liberal centrist politics, and it has wanted to own political discussion in the US in some form or another for over a century.
I don't think that's the "left" the GP was referring to. I think were most likely talking about the "culture war" left.
> I remain flabbergasted by the increasing number of people who can somehow in the same breath complain about "radical socialists" and "cultural marxists" while at the same time somehow equating those people with "corporate elites" and "silicon valley" -- the two are the enemy of the other.
It's because we don't always get to control definitions, even ones we care a lot about (ask me about "crypto" sometime). IMHO, those are both fashionable (in some circles) new terms for the "culture war" left, somewhat inflected by plutocratic interests that harness opposition to it to further their own agenda.
Edit: IMHO, I think a flag-waving socially-conservative socialism could be surprisingly successful in America, if someone could get it off the ground.