You:

Wikipedia agrees with me

Wikipedia:

Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy as a whole or certain social hierarchies…Ideologies considered to be left-wing vary greatly depending on the placement along the political spectrum in a given time and place…In addition, the term left-wing has also been applied to a broad range of culturally liberal social movements, including the civil rights movement, feminist movement, LGBT rights movement, abortion-rights movements, multiculturalism, anti-war movement and environmental movement as well as a wide range of political parties.

Anyway, we’re done here.

You are welcome to disagree with it, but your definition is not shared by Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com, or Wikipedia. The Encyclopedia Britannica comes closest to agreeing with you by saying that, “Socialism is the standard leftist ideology in most countries of the world,” but it does not limit its definition of the political left to socialist and communist ideologies, and it certainly doesn’t say, “Left wing means ending Capitalism, not just 'reigning it in.” So maybe next time, before you jump into someone’s comments to tell them they’re using a word wrong, check if they’re actually using it wrong or simply using it in a way that doesn’t align with your personal beliefs.

I’ve run out of ways to say this, so I’ll just reiterate it one more time and be done with it; the meaning of left-wing is not that rigid and will vary based on context. It does not specifically mean revolutionary or anti-capitalist. It generally means a set of social or economic principles aimed at creating a more egalitarian society, but what that means in terms of policy will depend greatly based on the culture and system of government in place. Do I think it sucks ass that the American liberals are considered left-wing in the U.S.? Yeah. Do they meet my definition of left-wing? Fuck no. But I don’t get to define that broad term based on my personal standards.

Right. So, you want to take the term, “left-wing,” which has held different meanings in different contexts over more than two centuries and redefine as exclusively anti-capitalist, so you can tell liberals that they’re not actually left-wing. Now that’s an attempt to shift the Overton Window.

Left-wing has always had a loose, relative meaning, and arguing otherwise isn’t attempting to stop the Overton Window from shifting. It’s just an attempt to gatekeep who gets to be a, “real,” leftist.

…and Sanders himself defines Democratic Socialism as the completion of the New Deal reforms, not a gradual transition to a socialist economic system. There’s a difference between the Overton Window shifting and a gradual change in definition over generations, but if you want definitions to remain entirely static, then we’re both using left-wing incorrectly, as it’s, “real,” definition is opposing monarchy’s veto power over parliament.

“Left-wing,” is a very broad term. In the Weimar Republic, yes, the left-wing alternative to right-wing populism was communism. In America today, Democratic Socialists like Bernie Sanders are the left-wing alternative. If that doesn’t fall in line with your definition of, "left-wing,’ that’s fine, but it most people wouldn’t define it as exclusively anti-capitalist ideologies.

Then you’re a good person, which is a statistical minority. Most people will never intentionally vote against their economic self-interests by raising their own taxes (although you can trick them into voting against their economic self interests; Republicans have been doing that for years by using racist dog-whistles to attack entitlement programs and pushing discredited trickle-down economic theories).

Actually, youth turnout is pretty high right now, with record turnout being set recently for both midterms and presidential elections. In 2020, turnout for the under thirty crowd was 50%, a possible new record, and it was 30% and 27% in 2018 and 2022 respectively, which are 30 year highs. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party leadership prefers centrist candidates, and frequently puts its thumb on the scale to ensure that moderate candidates win, so that turnout isn’t translating into progressive politics.

Funny enough, just after I made the original comment, I read an article about how the youngest U.S. voters are starting to lean further right than before, so it’s possible the ship has sailed on this all together. Given how aggressively the right wing has been to trying to indoctrinate young voters, who are watching Democrats successfully suppress left-wing populism while Republicans embrace right-wing populism, it’s possible the youth are deciding that the far-right offers them only chance for change. I hope not, though, because then we’re screwed.

Oh yeah, that’s definitely why older folks are socially conservative, although usually when I hear people say this (and definitely in the context of this meme) they’re talking about becoming fiscally conservative.

Honestly, that makes sense to me. It seems like when economic systems start breaking down for people, they turn to populism. It’s either left-wing populism, which argues for reigning in the excesses of capitalism, or right-wing populism, which scapegoats minority or immigrant groups. Right now, the youth in the U.S. are interested in left-wing populism, but right-wing populism (AKA Trumpism) is the only thing making it into the political mainstream.

Whenever people say that you grow more conservative when you get older, they’re working from the premise that you’ll grow more affluent and comfortable later in life. For Americans, that just isn’t true anymore. Wages are mostly stagnant, home ownership is much less attainable, and cost of living is at an all time high. Yet for some reason, pundits just can’t figure out why millenials aren’t getting more conservative as they age, or why zoomers appear to be following this trend.

Most people are referring to the fact that boomers were born into the strongest social safety net in American history and then allowed Regan to gut it for short-term gains. The original aphorism may not be true, but I can’t think of a generation it applies to more.

I mean, the point of a mermaid isn’t that it’s a sexy looking fish, it’s that other than its tail, it looks like beautiful human women. In some stories, sailors don’t even realize they’re taking to mermaids because their tails are underwater. Also, mermaids were generally considered bad omens or malicious entities, and when they did seduce humans, it was usually to kill them, so it’s not like the folklore was very pro-mermaid sex.

…or you don’t start a public community on a public website if you don’t want input from the public? Also, the other mods on /c/Vegan removed the Mod responsible for this ban wave, so it seems like they agree with me that downvotes aren’t grounds for community bans. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Alright, well I didn’t realize creating a private community was such a hassel, but I still don’t see why I’m expected to hide from this community when they post antagonistic shit. If they want to insult people who eat meat, fine, but then you have to deal with the fact that the people you just insulted might downvote you. It’s not my job to help them insulate their echo chamber.

I guess I could, but I don’t feel the need to turn my feed into an echo chamber. I’m not going to go to the community to pick a fight, but I’m not going to hide from content I don’t agree with. I’ll just downvote it and move on. Besides, the OP is right; if the mods don’t want their community to get downvoted, it’s their responsibility to make their community private, not my responsibility to block their shitty content.

Bullshit. I’ve never once commented in your community, but you banned me today, probably for downvoting the obnoxious, self-righteous memes that your sub periodically dumps in my feed. And surprise, surprise, now that you’ve banned this, “carnist rhetoric,” your downvote percentages don’t look so bad! You went from only getting 40% to 70% upvotes on posts to 80% to 90% in the last 8 hours. You’re not giving people a, “well deserved time out,” you’re gaming the numbers to manufacturing consent.

The worst part is I actually defended you guys during the catfood debacle, saying that no matter what you thought of the content, the admins were way out of line to override your moderating decisions. If I’d known you were going to be as petty and manipulative as they were, I would have kept my mouth shut. On the bright side, your naked attempt to make your community look less unpopular is the best argument I’ve seen for anonymizing voting on Lemmy.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure I just got banned from that community and I’ve literally never posted in it. I’ve downvoted some posts, but they’re all pretty antagonistic, so what else else am i gonna do when it shows up in my feed?

It looks like you squeezed him real hard in the middle trying to get all cat out of him.