[pc86]

You can be liberal / on the left and not be a leftist. Being extreme on the left should be viewed as negatively as it is to be extreme on the right. Extreme opinions of any kind are not conducive to living with people whose beliefs differ from yours.

I mean in another comment you refer to yourself as "a radical leftist" so that sort of proves my point. The points above can be held by liberal, left-of-center politicians who have a chance at holding national political office in the US. Mainstream Democrats, or at least what used to be a mainstream Democrat 10 years ago.

[runarberg]

So lets zoom in on point 5 on your list:

> There are root causes to the disproportionate incarceration of African Americans that do not boil down to "the system is racist."

To claim that there are other root causes then systematic racism behind mass incarceration of black people, is placing a lot of heavy lifting on the other. It is reasonable to assume that a person holding this belief means “cultural” or, worse, “biological”. In either case, it is a racist view to hold. A conservative democrat can hold this belief, and many indeed do, however, they cannot claim to be leftists at that point, and most actually don’t. They may call them selves “moderate democrats” but I’ve never heard them call them selves “moderately left” (I’m willing to admit I’m wrong here if shown otherwise).

The leftist belief here is that systematic racism exists, and is the reason black people are disproportionately incarcerated. To reject this belief, isn’t a moderate version of the traditional leftist belief. It is counter to it. Therefor, if you reject the existence of systematic racism, you are not a moderate leftist, you simply aren’t a leftist.

[pc86]

I never claimed a leftist could or would hold any of these views. To the contrary I'm pointing out that leftism is such a fringe minority belief structure in the US that you can be a wildly popular mainstream Democrat, have a change at being elected President, and have the types of beliefs above and still have most of the country be more conservative to you.

From the very first comment:

> > > > I can think of a handful of things that the moderate American left would do / agree on that the more extreme elements would not

> > > > any of [these beliefs] ... would get you ostracized from [a] leftist group.

You prove both of my points beautifully in this thread as well as my new one that leftism is a radical fringe belief system when you say even suggesting there might be any other cause than racism for #5 is itself racism.

I never said anything was "a moderate version of a leftist belief," I'm not sure where exactly you got that.