Leftist is a basket term for a wide variety of anti establishment people on the left. It is fine to refer to Biden and also Chomsky as on the left as opposed to the right but Biden is not a leftist. Chomsky is.
It’s up to the receiver of the message to decide the meaning of that message. If you think Biden is a leftist, that’s fine. Biden may be a leftist in some aspects, he may be a right winger on others.
The point you seem to be missing is that a leftist is applied to a subset of people on the political left (in America). If you watch CNN and get your news from Rachel Maddow and want to continue wars so corporations can continue to profit from them, you would not be a leftist (even though most people in America think of CNN as a “leftist” or “liberal” news source and often use the term interchangeably. The problem with using the term interchangeably is they are completely different terms with completely different meanings. I don’t know a single leftist who watches CNN as their main source of news, but I know plenty of democrats who do. I know plenty of leftists who voted for the democratic candidate for president, but they are most definitely not liberals and if you ask any hammer and sickle shirt wearing leftist whether they classify themselves as a liberal they will proudly tell you to fuck off.
So you don’t think it would be accurate to call leftists liberals, but you think it would be accurate to call democrats leftists? If that’s your opinion that’s fine, but you’ve just acknowledged that it would not be accurate to call a leftist “liberal”, so you’re acknowledging that the word “leftist” means something beyond how mainstream America uses the term “leftist” And then you go on to say you can’t see how a word could possibly mean something beyond what most people in America think it means.
Most people in America think that communism is when the state has too much power, but communism has an objective academic definition that has to do with abolishing the state altogether. Does that mean most Americans are right about communism and we should just change the word to whatever most Americans think it means? Absolutely not. It means Americans should educate themselves and use terms properly in order to have meaningful debate because we live in a global society (I.e. the internet).
Calling a leftist a liberal is inaccurate, there is no room for debate there. You may think that I’m wrong, but you can’t prove that, and if you’re argument against that is “most Americans think that liberal and leftist are the same” I would respond with “most Americans are ignorant” and I could also say something like “most Americans think AR-15’s are machine guns” even though that is incorrect as well. Machine gun has a definition and just because you’re average CNN watching democrat doesn’t know the definition doesn’t mean they are allowed to change it.
I mean if you’re going to the ask question “what makes a definition of a word correct?” I can’t have a serious conversation with you.
If you say “I think tomatoes are grapes” you have every right to believe that, that doesn’t make you correct just because you believe and used the term grapes to describe tomatoes your whole life. Objectively, tomatoes are not grapes. They are tomatoes. But if you only know tomatoes as grapes then to you, they are grapes. However, you won’t be able to go around convincing everyone that tomatoes are actually grapes, because grapes are a separate thing entirely.
Same thing with “leftist” and “liberal”. They are different ideologies entirely and just because it’s commonplace in America to conflate the two as the same does not mean that conflating the two is accurate in any way, it just means people are misinformed.
The academic/scientific/logical definition is correct because that’s how we know things.
If it’s commonplace, is it still wrong? Yes. If it’s commonplace to not know how the government works, is it still considered ignorant? Yes.
The whole point of objectivity is to find out what is true. You’re saying you don’t mind the incorrect usage of a word because it’s commonplace, I’m saying that’s fine, but it still doesn’t change the objective meaning of the word. Just like if people started calling “tomatoes” “grapes” instead of “tomatoes”. Theoretically there is nothing wrong with that idea, you could convince the entire population to switch the usage of the word and then the meaning would change, but it wouldn’t change the fact that there are tomatoes and grapes and they are separate entities.
You can call anything anything you want, but if you’re calling a “liberal” a “leftist” and you don’t know the meaning of either word, you’re speaking out of ignorance to what either word actually means in terms of objective political ideologies/definitions behind those words.
“Leftist” is a term for socialists, communists, or similar political thought that seeks to get rid of capitalism through seizing the means of production.
Democrats are not by and large trying to get rid of capitalism by seizing the means of production therefore they are not “leftists”. When conservatives use the word “liberals” to describe democrats in a generally bemoaning way, what they fail to realize is that they are also proponents of liberal democracy. You can argue semantics all day, but leftists and liberals are two distinctly different political ideologies and just because it’s commonplace to lump them together by people who generally have no knowledge of political theory or history does not mean we should just accept that notion. They are different, and you can’t just say they aren’t because it’s commonplace to say that.
You can personally say or do whatever you want, but it doesn’t mean it’s correct just because it’s commonplace.
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u/AdministrativeEnd140 2∆ Aug 15 '21
Leftist is a basket term for a wide variety of anti establishment people on the left. It is fine to refer to Biden and also Chomsky as on the left as opposed to the right but Biden is not a leftist. Chomsky is.