[swiley]

>The "extreme left" is not even a fraction as represented

A good democratic country will swing between extreme polls but if you look around you'll see many strongly leftist ideas (extreme gun control, censorship, minors consenting to sex reassignment surgery etc.) getting quite a lot of support and becoming laws in many countries. I certainly wouldn't argue that they're being ignored.

[kwinten]

Idk if you're still talking about Germany specifically or more global trends. Regarding Germany: gun control is a non-partisan issue and not even remotely part of the public discourse. Censorship of various degrees is written in German law especially when it pertains to racism, hate speech, and Nazi language and symbolism. Regarding the last, I'm not aware of the state of Germany on that point.

However, none of the points you named are anywhere even remotely near "extreme left", even by US standards. Those are all Democrat party talking points, which is anywhere from slightly left of center to center-right.

The "extreme left" (no, US Democrats are not socialists) has no political representation anywhere in the Western world and barely registers in public consciousness at all.

[sofixa]

> The "extreme left" (no, US Democrats are not socialists) has no political representation anywhere in the Western world and barely registers in public consciousness at all.

That's false. In France there's a far left party ( France Insoumise, which has or has had stuff like redistribution of wealth and nationalisation of infrastructure, increasing the minimum wage in multiples in their programme, and regularly works with the Communist party for elections ) which is pretty mainstream, and their candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, was 4th with 19.6% in the last presidential elections. ( For reference, 3rd was with 20%, 2nd with 21.4%, first with 24%)

Isn't there a far left party in Spain as well? And Italy?

Western world != US, Canada, UK.

[caslon]

Are any of those "strongly leftist" ideas in reality? When I think of the most famous book burnings and censorship, I think of this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_book_burnings), or this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism), or pretty much any case on this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_destroyed_libraries

Something I notice is that, whether it's nationalist Italians burning Communist literature, Germany (WWI-era) burning Catholic writings, or the Nazis burning Soviet books, it's...almost exclusively the right-wing that supports censorship, at least on the list for destroying libraries. When I think of who's actually achieved anti-censorship in the United States, I think of people like Allen Ginsberg, the reason the First Amendment actually began to mean something in the US for the first time in its history. Now, I could be wrong, but I think Ginsberg was...a leftist going against the right-wing?

The left seem to have a certain libertarian bent if anything: They seem to want private enterprise to be able to host what they want. It makes sense from a free market perspective.

[swiley]

>The left seem to have a certain libertarian bent if anything

My understanding was that the "left and right" is more or less orthogonal to the "authoritarian vs libertarian" dimension. The authoritarian forms of both are absolutely terrible, that's why we have democracy: so they can do their best to cancel each other out.

[opheliate]

Do you see why presenting "extreme gun control, censorship" (authoritarian ideas, not "leftist" ideas) might therefore not be considered a good argument for the idea that left-wing policy is gaining popular support?

[esyir]

This is a common misunderstanding in another group I converse with. Left in his context refers to the American one, which refers to an overarching field that is represented by the American progressives and includes the moderate dems (center left) progressives and socialists /communists, amongst others. You're coming from a European left right split, which means something different.

[bitwize]

The first two are moderate positions. They are only "strongly leftist" in a far-right banana republic (i.e., the USA). Giving people the right to physically match their gender identity is a human rights issue.

[dragonwriter]

> They are only "strongly leftist" in a far-right banana republic (i.e., the USA).

Even in the US, they are, at least some of them, more prominent in the more centrist faction of the Democratic Party than even the Democratic “left”, much less the actual (for the USA) “far left”. Remember that one of the establishment arguments early on against Sanders was that he had a historically weak voting record on gun control.

The American Right tends to confuse the degree to which a position is associated with the Democratic Party with how far “left” it is.

[swiley]

I'm curious how you think the third is consistent with the idea that minors can't consent to sex. Do you justify it pragmatically or is there something deeper?

[klyrs]

No, kids getting gender confirmation surgery is little more than a right wing talking point. WPATH recommendation is to put kids on puberty blockers 'til they're old enough to consent. Sure, some trans kids probably want that, but some cisgender teens want plastic surgery, too (and, a gal in my high shool had rich parents who paid for that, and they had to fly somewhere because american surgeons can't or won't)

"Extreme gun control" is interesting. By that criteria, Australia is extremely leftist! As is the UK and almost all of europe! Or... maybe the US is the extreme one here.

No. Extreme leftists use guillotines to bring literal class war to the rich. Sieze the means of production and all that. You get the job the state gives you, you get what the state gives you. Collectively somehow even though everybody disagrees with the fundament?

Moderate leftists write laws to tax profits in order to provide infrastructure and services to people to increase the baseline of wellbeing in the state. Biden is actually quite conservative in that regard