this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2026
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Before Lemmy, I didn't know it was possible to go so left that you hated liberals.
Corporate media didn’t want you to be exposed to any ideas outside of the Overton window.
Sometimes the further left extremes I've heard hear are indistinguishable from conservative Q-Anon. I legitimately need to check users post histories to understand which extreme they are on
They are very clearly distinguishable, just not to you yet. Until recently, you’d only ever heard disagreements coming from your right, so you confuse disagreements coming from your left with them.
Liberalism in fact has more in common with fascism than socialism: they’re both capitalist ideologies. Previously.
If you can't tell the difference between "media companies serve the interests of their owners and managers" and Q-Anon, that might indicate a problem with you rather than with others.
Ain't much difference between MAGA and tankies.
Ain't much difference between nazis and the people who stopped the nazis, apparently. /s
Sure, if you're a moron
Communists and fascists are diametric opposites. Communists seek to collectivize production and distribution to fulfill the needs of everyone. Fascists seek the preservation of private property and the extermination of labor organizers. Lazily equating the two and doing nothing to back it up is just "enlightened" centrism.
Good thing I didn't say communist then
"I said commie, not new deal Democrat!"
Same sentence, new era
"Tankie" is just a pejorative for communist, though. That's like saying you said "commie," not "communist."
It isn't
It is, though. "Tankie" isn't an ideology, it's a pejorative typically used against Marxists that serves as a strawman of Marxist beliefs.
Nah, I don't think Marx would like tankies
Marx was a tankie, lol. Shows you've never actually read him
Why not? Marx supported the Paris Commune, and was critical of them for not going far enough to solidify the revolution. Marx supported communists and revolutionaries, he was an organizer himself.
Good luck. This person is recalcitrant in her position while never bringing arguments or receipts. You’re likely to get nothing but a broken record.
I assume so, but you never know 🤷
Examples?
The comment I replied to vs. this from QAnon page on Wikipedia.
Only difference is that your side is "right"
lmao, you're the perfect centrist. By your standard, "the Holocaust happened" and "white genocide in South Africa happened" are both equally valid statements. Do you see how ridiculous it is to just group statements by superficial similarity and treat them as equivalent regardless of the substance of the claims or the evidence?
I never said those were equal statements
I said "equivalent" and "equally valid", if you're going to make an argument based on the exact word used you should at least get it right.
I literally quoted this sentence where you stated that they were equivalent in my previous reply.
Billionaires/ruling classes owning the media for manufacturing consent is not a new idea, and even then, leftists/QAnon people have very different views on it anyway. Leftists don't believe there is some secret cabal, the ruling class is very blatant. Right wingers believe in some deep state or the rothschilds, who are a jewish family, "control the narrative", they don't care about class struggle. This comparison makes very little sense.
Also-
I'm not seeing the relations to "left extremes" here at all. The horseshoe theory is a ridiculous, centrist concept. @davel@lemmy.ml 's comment has some good links.
I don't believe the horseshoe theory. Far left and far right have a number of stark differences such as religion, economic policy, etc. I just believe that both sides are fringe cult-like environments, particularly when it comes to isolating yourselves and ideology control. Occasionally, I see other similarities.
Imo, far left isn't clearly closer to the far right in most beliefs, except cult-like behavior
Can you explain "cult-like behavior?"
"cult like behaviour"
This doesn't make sense beyond the most cursory vibes based consideration.
You are reducing both sides to an extreme and extracting a single quote from both of them - "corporate media is lying to you to protect politicians preying on children" . You understand that one side is right and the other isn't - where do you think the difference appears? Certainly not at the extreme surface level of a single quote you are picking.
All sides in WW2 were killing people, I literally can't tell the difference!
The statement is that far left makes similarly culty statements like "X entity is hiding evidence that supports our views from the general public". It's the "everyone except us lies" part of the culty belief. My statement is that both far left and far right have fringe beliefs that are culty or close to it.
Again, only because you are picking a very reductive surface level quote.
"People are lying to you, believe us" isn't culty. You are also twisting words, because "we alone tell you the truth" is not part of the discourse you are comparing to QAnon.
Sure. But I'm not going to write an essay to back my position right now with numerous examples.
I respect many of the far lefts beliefs like economic policy, pressure against the right wing, social policies supporting poor. I don't respect the extreme distrust of media, violent retoric (when I see it), ideological purism, because it comes off as culty
Should note that I see less violent retoric from the far left than the far right, hence "when I see it"
It's very easy to distinguish if you actually act in good faith, which you clearly don't
Liberalism is supportive of capitalism, leftism begins at anti-capitalism. What did you think the left was before Lemmy?
Liberalism was the original leftism: see the French revolutionary National Assembly. It doesn't intrinsically have anything to do with capitalism. In general, liberalism is neither left nor right. It promotes individualism. Historically, it progressed from humanism.
Not the political science definition.
General definitions & the historical development of liberalism are academic.
Some of the earliest liberal practices are found in the US Declaration of Independence, which predates the French revolution spreading the practice of liberal ideals throughout Europe. The US declaration pretty much rehashes core tenets of liberal philosophy
Note how capitalism isn't mentioned anywhere: it's nonessential. Capitalism predates & isn't liberalism. Liberalism is moral & political philosophy, not an economic one.
The philosophy is a natural progression of humanist philosophies from the Renaissance through the Protestant Reformation & the Enlightenment that stress the importance of individuality, secular reasoning, & tolerance over dogma & subservience to unaccountable authority. To address unaccountable authority based on dogma & traditions, English & French philosophers defined legitimate authority based on humanist morality pretty much as expressed in the US declaration. They argued that political systems thrive better with limits & duties on authority & an adversarial system of institutional competition whether in separation of powers, adversarial law system with habeas corpus & right to jury trial, competitive elections, dialogue, or economic competition.
Liberalism arose as a bourgeois ideology to use against the feudalist systems, the equivalent in feudalism being the clergy and the church. The mode of production capitalism is based on individual ownership of capital, and claiming the labor-power sold by workers is equal in position to the capitalists buying the labor-power and selling commodoties.
Liberalism was left when feudalism was dominant. Putting it in its historical context, it helped overthrow feudalism. However, there is no "Absolute Idea" of Hegel, what was progressive at one point is still reactionary at a later point. In the era of capitalist decay, socialism is on the left, the progressive ideology.