[augustus0]

I think that used to be more true 30 years ago or so, but isn't anymore. As a person from a liberal western country living in the US now, Americans (and specifically certain regions like the Bay Area) now hold all the most extreme positions on the spectrum.

"Extreme" left used to be about worker rights, universal health care, sheltering the poor, or reducing global strife (say the anti-war movements of the 60s/70s).

Bay Area left is now about grievance politics, defunding the police, being anti-tech (represented as being anti-gentrification, or anti-billionaire, but the deeper issue is usually anti-tech, which is seen as what made living in SF/Oakland unaffordable, as opposed to say, obstructionism), etc. It's gotten a lot more extreme in recent years, and I hesitate to even call it "left" because it's more like they've branch off along a new dimension on the axis. You get some of that in Europe too, but it's nowhere near as radicalized.