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Why do they say "there's no true Left in the US"?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024
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To an extent. They might artificially thrust some people into the game, and the system is clunky, but as far as votes go when votes are offered, they are listened to. If the person in charge was a cheat, it would technically prove my point even more, because it would imply it's not a true game of representation and that those of us who may be considered adherents to "left" streams of thought are on more street corners than the "they're a demographic minority" view might suggest.
The only options people have to vote on are what are offered to them. The problem is, that in the US, you need money to become an option. That money comes mainly from corporations. Corporations won't back a left wing party or politician.
I can name several examples to the contrary. Google is the most successful business in the entire nation, and they've been 100% consecutively in favor of "left" choices, often even promoting logo imagery of people whom a decade ago would be considered radicals. Don't forget corporations in the modern era have sacrificed face to make completely meaningless changes to their marketing that they knew would put them in the path of the opposition to cancel culture (Aunt Jemima, Budweiser, etc.). The idea that corporations don't have at least a little sense of "left" is false.
Nothing Google does or supports is actually a leftist anything. You're making the same mistake all Americans make - buying into the propaganda that left/right is about social permissiveness. It's actually an economic spectrum, and every meaningful company or organization is either far right, or extreme right.
So Marxism isn't left? Alrighty then.
You think Google doodles are advocacy? Yeesh.
Doodles from a very long time ago too lol
Where would you draw the line between a gesture that implies advocacy and a gesture that doesn't?
A gesture is meaningless. Advocacy is action and is intended to generate meaningful change. A corporation does everything for money. The only actual advocacy a corporation like Google is doing is to benefit its bottom line. Y'all look at giant corporate entities who provide some meaningless lip service to a marginalized community and think that means they are on the side of the left? That's some truly delusional pea-brained shit right there. If you'd quit getting your panties in a wad about this dumb-ass culture war crap, you'd realize that class solidarity is the only meaningful way any of us can actually change society for the better, but all the right wing chucklefucks are too busy trying to punish some group or another for some trumped up crusade created by rich dudes to keep y'all busy. Pea-brained shit.
So literally attempting to flip voter turnout... is meaningless? Why do you think I asked where a line was? It's not some deflection.
First off, Democrats are not leftists - this is literally capitalism in action, and supporting a moderate right wing party over an extremist right wing party makes sense for many businesses. Second, those claims all come from an entirely biased source - the Media Research Center is a partisan organization with an axe to grind. Actual studies by researchers don't show the same bias.
All you're doing here is exposing how propagandized you are.
Also, if Democrats were anywhere remotely close to being marxists, I would actually support them. Anyone claiming that Democrats are leftist marxists doesn't legitimately understand any of the words they are using.
Marxists =/= ideological Democrats =/= People in the Democrat party =/= Right wing =/= Objectively defined =/= Capitalism
There were a number of sources there. I wasn't saying Democrats are Marxists (all the things listed above are unlike each other), we were talking about Google's inner mechanisms. For the same reason though, none of the entities mentioned are right wing. The influential ones are arguably more left than Humanists (who aren't associated with America), and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone well-studied who sees Humanists as right-wing even despite their own monetary connections. But anyone who speaks in wings thinks in a more linear way anyways, especially when they draw the line where capitalism starts/stops supposedly being capitalism, which ignores the three-dimensional range of ways capitalism can befall a political entity.
Google and other major corporations will try garner goodwill by supporting ideas that they want people to think of them as. Its the same with pride support and green washing.
If you as an American ( I assume) believe that Google is positioned to the left, l'd say you basically proove the point of there not being a left in the US
Even though Google knows it's facing backlash for said views? It's been a decade and they still flagship "left" streams of thought, posting videos about them on YouTube every two instances, typically with the comments/ratings disabled as a defense mechanism. What is that garnering? On at least three occasions they had a Google doodle of people who outright celebrated terrorism and 9/11 as steps in the right direction. Definitely not typical PR.
Could you share exambles of these? Also could you link to the youtube videos of them promoting left orientated thought and actions?
Consider it done.
Holly f*ck man! Celebrating Karl Marx' birthday (or any other socialist, communist or left orientated personality) does NOT make Google left orientated! It's like I said, them trying to appeal to a wider customer range, just like supporting LGBT+ and environmental activists
You asked for examples and I gave some, did I not? They extend said support to presidential candidates on the same part of the spectrum as the celebrated individuals, is that not "left", or is it only "left" when a certain group at the very end of the spectrum (by whose standards?), who ironically would be necessary in the population for Google to even be incentivized to make those drawings in the first place, is raised up? Maybe it's worth asking at this point, how big is the spectrum? Do you see any other groups with a reputation on that part of the spectrum (e.g. anarchists, green adherents, anti-natalism, etc.) having this discussion? If you lived in a monarchy like many people in the world still do, would the same mode of thinking not posit there is neither "a true left" nor "a true right"?
As mentioned earlier, they will try to appeal to as wide a customer range as possible. As long as it doesn't cost them too many from the opposite side.
I can't even handle that we are sitting here discussing if Google is oriented to the left, simply because they occasionally celebrate individuals from the left! come on!
The whole point of some of what I mentioned (aside from the fact it goes deeper than the last line in your reply just now) was that it goes outside what anyone would do if that described what all of this was about. They are too far down the road of costing them, but being the same Google that is immortalized as the absolute lord of household names in the developed world, it's nothing more than a scratch on them. Go to their official YouTube channels if you don't believe me, tell about the comments sections there. If they were, as many say, "for the people", then they wouldn't be handling the actual people how they are.