Social Media and the American "Left"

Woohoo, everyone's favorite topic. I'll get this right out in the open: I identify as a Social Democrat. I still hold onto Capitalism, but with regulation on corporations and social safety nets (focus on Keynesian economics.) I also believe that most social issues should be handled by people via direct-ballot boxes rather than by governments. Some may call me a "leftist," a "liberal," or even a "communist," but I assure you I am not any of these things. Frankly, I'm not all that interested in policies today. Rather, I'd like to explore the use/misuse of the terms given above.

Some basics to get out of the way before we start, I'd like to define some of the most common terms to be used throughout this post when naming ideologies.

1. "Leftist"- Someone who holds a post-capitalist ideology, usually some variant of Socialism or Communism. A rejection of Capitalism in favor of a more horizontal hierarchy. Almost always pairs with social justice, but recognizes class struggle.

2. "Liberal"- Although there are two definitions to liberal, I'll refer to a common American description. Someone who is largely fine with the economic system, but longs to see social and/or environmental issues dealt with. Largely does not understand in terms of class struggle, but rather along demographics.

3. "Socialist"- Someone who rejects Capitalism as an economic system in favor of one of redistribution of some sort, usually through a state.

4. "Communist"- Someone who rejects Capitalism as an economic system, instead abiding by a system where everyone produces the maximum they can and in turn receive what they need + leftover, usually without a state

Easily the most debatable definition here is the term "liberal." Liberal has been used to describe practically every ideology left of the standard American right. In essence, it's a catch-all term that can either be used to describe or undermine a person's political ideology, regardless of what it actually is. However perhaps more interesting than the term liberal are the other terms on this list whenever used as insults on the internet.

"Leftist," "Socialist," and "Communist" are also commonly used against people who don't prescribe to those ideologies, and is often paired with the term "Liberal." My question is this: if these terms have fairly clear-cut meanings, how can they be used so interchangeably and why is it being done? I argue that the utter polarization of our political system, decades of propaganda, and social media usage has caused not the lines between these ideologies to blur, but rather our ability to perceive them.

Propaganda and polarization has been happening long before social media. For most of our lives, there's been some politician or news network that's tried to frame any sort of activism that's remotely left of the right wing as being "socialist;" abusing the mythology of the USSR and other Socialist states to discourage support for such policies being implemented. Not only did this help to divide people to more neat boxes (the left and the right,) but it also started to obfuscate the meanings of these words.

I think it is social media that has utterly destroyed our ability to perceive the differences in these ideologies. Whereas before most people might have connected the ideologies but understood some innate differences, the overuse of the terms has caused meanings to blur into one another until they started to resemble the world's least helpful color wheel.

Overusage of these terms as insults has been an issue, especially in recent years, on social media. Instead of understanding ideologies and critiquing it, many people have instead taken to propaganda and group-think to understand the American "left" as one nebulous mass; a swarm of people with little discernable identity or an identity that deserves to be wiped out. The political divides fostered by Cambridge Analytica, online political bubbles, and increasingly divisive rhetoric has helped to fuel a tribalistic mindset: where all the right has one ideology, and all the left has theirs. Also, with the constant exposure to misuse of terms stemming from groupthink, the popular understanding of diverse ideology has started to cloud as well.

The American "Left," then, is barely a descriptor at all; it's a terrifying amalgamation of misinformation, divisive rhetoric, and a lack of political knowledge that manifests itself as a strange but omnipresent entity.