lmao what is it with people trying to map abstract political concepts onto geometric and spacial shapes?
The colloquial meaning of “liberal” used by some Americans does not align with how it’s used in political theory. That’s okay, words have different meaning in different contexts.
“Left” and “right” stem from the French Revolution (of 1789!) where the left were progressives that supported the revolution and the right were conservatives that wanted to preserve the old system. Liberalism (as defined in political theory, not colloquially) is the dominant global ideology and thus is no longer progressive or radical. It may have been progressive when monarchy was the main form of government, propping up feudalism as the main economic structure. But that’s obviously not how the world works 200+ years later
I don’t think it’s baseless at all. But things aren’t binary nor static, they’re flows and tensions in a constant state of flux.
Western individualism takes third worldist thought and transforms it into “there’s no hope, only options are escapism or adventurism”. Rather than taking it to mean class consciousness isn’t a given in the imperial core, it’s something we must fight for and cultivate.
It’s also a good temper to the Trotskyist chauvinism I’m growing ever more tired of.