Gabriel Attal becomes France’s youngest and first openly gay prime minister | CNN ( edition.cnn.com )

flora_explora , 4 months ago

Unfortunately not really worth anything if he's following Macron's neoliberal politics...

Fitik OP , 4 months ago

I'm liberal(or neoliberal according to leftists) myself so I'm not so sure, however I posted to this community because it talks about him being queer, not his ideology.

flora_explora , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

I understand why you uploaded it.

My point was that one gay token prime minister that continues the oppressive politics won't change anything for the queer people living in France. It's a bit like Caitlyn Jenner, a trans woman who makes oppressive politics affecting queer and other minority communities. I don't think we gain anything from people like Caitlyn Jenner or the gay prime minister of France.

flora_explora , 4 months ago

Regarding your self-identification as liberal I am not sure if we both mean the same thing. The definitions vary a lot depending where in the world you are. Where I live (Germany), liberalism is the "liberation" of the economy of any state control and has hardly anything to do with progressive politics. Leftism on the other hand is the politics of liberating people and distributing power to all people more equally. So liberalism and leftism are pretty different concepts resulting in different politics. One is peak capitalism exacerbating inequality, the other socialism trying to increase equality. And according to Wikipedia, neoliberalism is used to describe the historical reappearance of liberalism similar as is done with neo-fascism or neo-nazism. (Neo)liberalism is tightly connected to capitalism and thus also to conservatism and fascism.

Fitik OP , 4 months ago

I mean market liberalism. You can read about it on Wikipedia. And have you checked out the article you linked? It doesn't have to do anything with neither conservative nor fascism.
It does however support free market(capitalism), but I don't see how it is relevant to other ideologies you listed, it's actually progressive.

flora_explora , 4 months ago

I guess market liberalism is just what I described, no? The liberation of the economy. And sorry if I phrased the wiki-link confusingly, this was just about how the label "neo" gets slapped onto political ideologies that have a comeback. Just like in neoliberalism, neofascism and neonazism.

Later on I argued that neoliberalism goes hand in hand with conservatism and fascism because that's often been the case. Just look at US politics for example. The liberal party in Germany was made up of a large group of Nazis just after the war. Basically all over Europe or countries like Brazil and Argentina you can see the neoliberal politics of fascist parties and the fascist tendencies of neoliberal parties. Both work together to claw back at the democratic infrastructure and human rights. Sure, both also have different goals in the long run. But they frequently team up and support each other. And both are threats to democracy and human liberation.

Fitik OP , 4 months ago

I am sorry I am not sure I understand you
I can't imagine a liberal party entering a correlation with Neo-Nazi or ultranationalistic party even in very rare cases of a big tent. Actually the opposite in the political landscape left leaning and progressive parties like socdems are natural allies of liberal parties while normies usually consider them centrist or leftist. I am not sure what you are talking about to be honest, are we talking about the same liberalism? Because ultranationalism and liberalism don't go together in democratic governments at all, and completely contradict each other on every issue, from equity and rights of minorities to free press.

Ultranationalistic parties tend to ally with populist and conservative parties, not liberal ones.

Do we live in the same world? Or do you mean theoretically?

flora_explora , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Well, that's exactly why I pointed out that definitions of liberalism vary. I don't see in how far market liberalism or neoliberalism are in favor of equity, rights of minorities, human rights or free press. (Neo)liberalism is about freeing the market and leaving everything to capitalism to sort it out. And this automatically leads to inequality because the accumulation of power is baked into capitalism. There are also many controlling mechanisms capitalism utilizes to maintain its power like police and the division of the lower class. Patriarchy and racism are the pillars of capitalism and without them capitalism wouldn't function like it does. So, although (neo)liberals argue for "freedom", they actually want to maintain the oppressive status quo and just argue for freedom of the market. Sure, as I said before some goals of fascists and neoliberals don't align very well. And the Nazis were in fact against the free market because of their antisemitism. But they did actually apply many capitalistic principles and the Holocaust was so horrific explicitly because of the industrialized torture and killing of people. And as I said before, many of high ranking Nazis later were part of the liberal party of Germany. In short, neoliberalism stands for maintaining and exacerbating our capitalist society without regard for people. By maintaining the status quo neoliberals are natural allies of conservatives and in extension also fascists.

ETA: as pointed out in this article, various Latin American countries have seen the rise of fascist, neoliberal politics. Also, what would you call Donald Trump if not a neoliberal fascist??