In Europe and Latin America, liberalism means a moderate form of classical liberalism and includes both conservative liberalism (centre-right liberalism) and social liberalism (centre-left liberalism).[26]
Liberalism essentially encompasses the entirety of what is broadly considered acceptable within western politics, which is why you’ll sometimes hear the term ‘western liberal democracies’, but for our purposes we are usually referring to the less immediately fascist end of the spectrum (liberalism always eventually decays into fascism due to the utter disempowerment of any force with material interests in resisting the pull of fascism, but nevermind that for now) that like to consider themselves progressive because they engage positively with identity politics.
They aren’t truly progressive because they don’t fundamentally challenge the systems and power structures that enable these kinds of political developments (loss of bodily autonomy, marriage equality, affirmative gender care, etc) and the proliferation of the “culture war” in the first place, and are very often minimizing and hostile towards those who do take a principled stance against these systems. The extent of their political understanding is largely bound by establishment liberal media which has a clear stake in the continuation of that very same system that is threatened by any real material social progress. This contradiction often leads liberals into defending those systems and power structures even at the expense of the marginalized groups that a liberal would purport to defend, and lashing out against those to the left of them for not “knowing their place” in a system that has for a very long time been ratcheting itself towards fascism.
I have news for you
Yes they are.
Liberalism essentially encompasses the entirety of what is broadly considered acceptable within western politics, which is why you’ll sometimes hear the term ‘western liberal democracies’, but for our purposes we are usually referring to the less immediately fascist end of the spectrum
(liberalism always eventually decays into fascism due to the utter disempowerment of any force with material interests in resisting the pull of fascism, but nevermind that for now)that like to consider themselves progressive because they engage positively with identity politics.They aren’t truly progressive because they don’t fundamentally challenge the systems and power structures that enable these kinds of political developments (loss of bodily autonomy, marriage equality, affirmative gender care, etc) and the proliferation of the “culture war” in the first place, and are very often minimizing and hostile towards those who do take a principled stance against these systems. The extent of their political understanding is largely bound by establishment liberal media which has a clear stake in the continuation of that very same system that is threatened by any real material social progress. This contradiction often leads liberals into defending those systems and power structures even at the expense of the marginalized groups that a liberal would purport to defend, and lashing out against those to the left of them for not “knowing their place” in a system that has for a very long time been ratcheting itself towards fascism.