The effects of propaganda in America
In the US “Conservative” means you worship billionaires and just do whatever the politicians that serve those billionaires tell you to do.
There is no difference here in Germany… 🥺
same people fund the propaganda outlets for all of em
Conservatism in the US nowadays mostly features some degree of cultism. In a lot of people’s cases, that means a cult to cruelty, unfortunately.
I was talking to a Polish friend about Polish politics. He said in Poland, like in the US, they had both conservative and liberal parties - but that the topics for debate were different. In Poland, the conservatives agreed with the liberals on things like healthcare funding, supporting higher education, and funding transit projects. All these things were non-issues in Polish politics.
“Well,” says I, “Then I’m confused. If the conservatives and liberals agree on all those things, then what makes them different? What makes the conservatives, conservative?”
“Ah, you see,” he says, “They’re racist. That’s the whole thing - they’re just racist.”
I’m convinced the reason the US doesn’t have universal anything is because “but then the blacks would get it.”
That’s honestly it. Right wing Americans don’t want other people to get access to things. They think rights are a pie. If ‘they’ get a slice, I’ll end up with less of it. Rather it’s actually a bakery… You pay into it and you just get pie.
No they want to grow the pie, but just for themselves.
They want the whole pie to themselves.
The idea of sharing is the problem. Conservatism is an “All for me” mentality.
Happy pi day btw
Historically, yes. But in 2026, if you think that you better hide it. Even in MAGA crowds, although there it can be less well hidden.
In eastern Europe there isn’t really centuries of troubled race relations to look back at, so you might just hear “all blacks out”.
Europe has had troubled relations with Muslim neighbors for centuries. See Siege of Vienna and Ottoman colonization of the Balkan.
Also lots of conflict with European neighbors.
Many racists in Europe don’t consider all Europeans to be the same race. Slavs are looked down on and discriminated against in Western Europe. Southern and Northern Europeans also have animosities going on.
Racism and xenophobia is different in Europe than the US.
Now it’s hidden as consumer choice or something.
Or actually everyone else is discriminating against whites somehow, or vague “cultural identity” which is definitely about being white, but they have the one brown person as their spokesperson so they can deny it. Dog whistles will probably be everywhere, but if one in specific is pointed out it was “a mistake”.
There’s a few tricks, and enough racists kicking around they get used a lot. But yeah, you’ll never see the actual thing come out completely in any public forum, or even causally with other white people who might not be in the club.
Ah, you see," he says, “They’re racist. That’s the whole thing - they’re just racist.”
That’s fundamentally the same everywhere, much the same in Australia but to an extent only part of the story
Gets fuzzier around womens, LBQTI rights, lot of religious shit baggery there, as there is in Poland, Hungary etc
They don’t want universal healthcare in the US because brown skinned people might use it.
“Healthcare funding, supporting higher education, and funding transit projects [unless you’re a foreigner]”
Welfare is a given in Europe. Now, ask him what he thinks about _ Putin, immigration, role of Bruxelles and the EU commision, AfD. Now, don’t do that, but to give you an idea, most far right parties are using the healthcare card with nationalistic tones.
- Do you think everyone should have access to health care?
Versus
- Do you think Muslim immigrants should be able to take German healthcare?
Exactly. Do that and watch how “everyone” suddenly means “white Germans” or at the very least “white Germans FIRST because we’re the ones who paid for it.”
Everything is a zero sum game to them and it’s so predictable it isn’t even funny.
At this point thinking that mass murder is a bad thing appears to be far left radical in america.
Now ask him if Christianity should play an official role in the German government. Or if he objects to people practicing cultures other than German in Germany. Both of those would be radically far-right in North America, but are pretty standard in Europe.
What’s going on here is that people tend to arrange themselves along a left-to-right line, but where exactly in the multidimensional space of viewpoints that line cuts through varies dramatically between times and places. It even inverts - your Prussian conservative would have taken a much dimmer view of free markets than a contemporary to their political left.
You’re full of shit. Those things are very far right in Europe.
Also, remind me what’s written on the american Dollar, or what the north american anglosphere has to say about Quebec’s secularism?
In god we trust was added by the American right during the frenzy of the 1950’s, with the argument was that it doesn’t specify which god, so it’s okay. Like, there are factions there, and to a degree in Canada that want to make Christianity official, but they’re kind of radical.
Separation of church and state is embedded in the US constitution, even if they’ve always thought of themselves as a Christian nation. This is because it was founded by the day’s radical left. Meanwhile, the German conservative might vote CDU.
or what the north american anglosphere has to say about Quebec’s secularism?
Nobody has a bad word to say about the quiet revolution, actually.
There was a bill written about Muslims and hijabs specifically, which was unpopular outside of Quebec and found to be illegal. And then a bunch of similar bills but with “no oversized crosses” added on. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of.
Which goes back to the thing about multiculturalism. In Anglo Canada the mainstream debate is literally whether less integration is always better (postnationalism), or if there’s some kind of common Canadian identity that you should have even if you’re Muslim and speak Arabic at home. In Europe that would be radical, and the debate seems to be about whether the domestic culture should be allowed to mix or change at all.
Edit: If you yourself are French, that might be the one exception. There was a revolution around the same time as in America, and it left some of the same legacies.
My mental model of the right-left dichotomy:
- “right” = cynical + evil
- “left” = good + naive
Anything more complex and the labels hit their limits.
I don’t know. I mean, it’s pretty easy to find uncontroversially evil people on the left as well. Jim Jones had some pioneering takes on racial harmony, and did not get along with the right of his day. Or cynical people on the left - ask Lemmy about if climate change is going to kill all humans in the next few decades.
The term itself comes from the French revolution, with the revolutionaries sitting on the left. Since then, you’ve had ship of Theseus things happen where a classical liberal might end up on the right, because they follow a chain of intellectual forerunners tracing back to someone opposing the French revolution. In other cases some kind of analogy is made, like the Japanese wartime government being right-wing because many of the dynamics were shared with the European right of the day. Or how Cato the Elder was “conservative” because he promoted a traditional way of life, even if that tradition was being bi and not reading.
All in all, left and right might be great names, because they’re directions that always exist, but depend completely on where you’re standing.
Good exposition of the problem.
I think a better one is acceptance of change.
- Right: Resistant to change
- Left: Accepting of change
Sometimes change is good, sometimes the world is not ready. I think this aligns closely with “cynical” and “naïve” but just makes it more abstract.
Some change is actually bad.
The trouble being that this possibly makes the Nazis left wing, which nobody contemporary with them saw them as.
In school this was taught to me as reactionary-conservative-progressive-radical and contrasted with left vs. right.
Not bad but might apply more to liberalism IMO. I think the word “accepting” (of change) is doing a lot of work when you consider revolutionary communism, whose whole mission is to force change at any cost.
The left-right dichotomy is almost completely useless IMO. “Almost” because for some mysterious reason everybody can situation themself on it. I think it’s more about identity than anything else. Football teams.
That’s because “conservative” isn’t an ideology, and it never has been. Conservativism has two core beliefs: “conservatives” refers to a specific group of people defined by common traits, and those are the good people. Each tranche of conservatives defines their own identity, and then they define whatever they want as “conservative values.”
This German guy on the train probably is very conservative. He is not more progressive than an American conservative. He has simply defined his group of conservatives to include the people who benefit from universal healthcare. He sees the value to his own group, and so he supports it.
USA as a whole is much more conservative than most advanced democracy, thats why our govt is more right wing than most of EU, even if we have a DEM in power. thats why thiers no UBS, or healthcare universally, and LGBTQ+ AND POC rights are continually trampled on EVERYDAY. class warefare is also more severe here too even in the same demographic.
They’d also be able to express how they believe an immigrant doesn’t deserve healthcare. Either that they deserve the healthcare of their homecountry, or that they aren’t a part of ‘everyone’, be that German, or otherwise.
Without any congitive dissonance.
Another take is that they believe in inherit hierarchy that must be conserved.
In this situation, being German is very high on the ladder, so even if they accept immigrants, they would only do so because there are plenty of foreigners that would be lower.
It’s less about where you draw the exclusion line, and more about that their entire worldview is a pyramid in which only a few groups can have a good life if that is built on the shoulders of a larger, lower group.
This is why it’s not about healthcare, it’s about equality. Even if you convince them that everyone deserves healthcare, they would automatically believe that since they are in the top group, they have to get a better kind of healthcare.
This is also why they would never see someone that is fully integrated as true Germans, cause even within the top group, there is a structure.
And of course, their worse fear is being in the bottom group.
Sounds cruel but most people cut other people off. Otherwise there would already be global socialism. Why does the immigrant deserve healthcare but not their family at home? German migrant worker laws once granted that.
The question is how everybody can expand their cut off limit until we are ready to make the world nice for everybody.
This is actually a good demonstration of what I mean, yes.
Just by using the word immigrant a divide between ‘everybody’ is made and then people are free to start cutting each other off from healthcare, exactly as you put it. The cruelty is perfectly rationalized. Away, even.
Suddenly national borders and individual locale are valid opposition to a concept of healthcare for ‘everybody’.
The tricky part comes when resources are limited. Should the old native receive treatment to live five more years or the young immigrant who can gain a full life?
Resources are only limited due to resource hoarding. The scarcity is artificial to ensure a working population.
The rich arent driving around to all the stores and buying up all the lawn mowers, they arent buying all the food at your local diner, what kind of hoarding are they doing?
They generally just hold stocks as far as I’m aware, which are then used as collateral and lower borrowing rates, leading to more production and someone else consuming that wealth.
They hoard the money, brother
I really don’t think this is an accurate description of what an average ageing conservative German is.
Conservative means what it means - people who want to conserve rather than change, and are comfortable with how things are and, in their opinion, have always been. It’s a naïve world view based on a lacking understanding of how society changes. The people who hold it tend to be of privileged groups who can afford to be blind to injustice. That doesn’t mean they are fans of it - their privilege has just left them with a blind spot, and when injustice is pointed out to them they tend to blame those showing it to them for creating it in the first place. Again, they are not brilliant people, but they’re generally not evil, just a bit dumb.
When American self-proclaimed conservatives storm the Capitol building and make an active effort to fuck up their country as much as humanly possible they are not conservative in the same way some Günther riding the Deutsche Bahn is conservative. Similarly, I’m not a socialist in the same way Pol Pot was a socialist.
American fascists have intentionally stripped the word “conservative” of meaning, and if we accept their narrative we allow them to make us dumber.
I’m not saying CDU and CSU are brilliant parties, but the fundamental idea of German conservitivism is not the idea of “conservatives” as a select group of people for which society should work. If anything this is a description of populism.
I appreciate you taking the time to write all of this, but you’re buying the bullshit. The question that you haven’t answered is the crux of my point. “Conserve what?” And the answer is always the same, for every conservative, everywhere, since the first conservative: “Whatever I think is important.” That’s why they are constantly shifting their positions, why they seem hypocritical or paradoxical when they say one thing and do another. It’s how they criticize their opposition for the same choices they make themselves. They rail against abortion and have abortions. They complain about immigration but demand freedom to travel where they like. They want low taxes for themselves, government spending on their preferred programs, and strict regulations that benefit their businesses.
It’s not ideology, it’s narcissism. And there are zero exceptions.
I’ve never met anyone who called themselves conservative who wasn’t actually a radical extremist. They don’t want to conserve, they want to destroy the current institutions and somehow “return” to a dreamt up idolised past that never existed.
I feel like this is a good attempt at a description of what conservatism is, but I’d like to share my own - conservatism is the natural political philosophy of people living in danger and scarcity.
Hence -
- Valuing stability, order, and predictability. When the outside world is violent and chaotic, you want your home and society to be as non-chaotic as possible. So, strict gender roles, supporting police and military, sacrificing individual expression for social predictability.
- Deference to authority and strict heirarchy. In times of crisis, having an obvious chain of command makes it easier to get things done. So, patriarchal family structures, authoritarian governments.
- An emphasis on practical or traditional knowledge over theoretical knowledge. Anyone who has done hands-on work can tell you how often theory falls short of practice. So, distrust of academics and dislike of book-learning.
- Belief in a higher power. When you have no control over your life, you try to find that control by believing in god(s) and prayer.
- Distrust of outsiders. Your family and tribe can be trusted - outsiders should be kept at arms length until proven trustworthy. And along with this - hostility towards members of enemy tribes. So, racism, xenophobia
- Lack of empathy for outsiders or social “parasites”. When resources are limited, you must ration them, and giving away resources to people who give you nothing in return will hurt you and your tribe. So, hostility towards immigrants and the homeless.
And of course, the conservative response is driven by belief, not reality. So if someone believes that the world is dangerous and their way of life is precarious, they will quickly adopt conservative attitudes. So it doesn’t matter if you yourself are actually safe and your way of life is quite robust - if you get sucked into a fearmongering news cycle, you can become conservative.
Interesting thoughts. Though I’d be curious whether its just an ebb and flow of economic cycles that change peoples political leanings. Such as growing debts and a debt crisis from a progressive governments leading to the pendulum swinging right, and then a period of muted growth and feelings of inequality lead to the pendulum swinging left. Not counting modern republicans as conservatives here of course.
What happened in the 60s and 70s to turn a large number of “great society” voters towards Reaganomics?
What happened in the 60s and 70s to turn a large number of “great society” voters towards Reaganomics?
To be super broad with it: Nixon, an Oil embargo, and Civil Rights.
The Great Society was predicated on the New Deal, which relied on an alliance with segregationist conservatives who resonated woth infrastructure and an industrial war economy. When it came time to extend the gains of the Great Society to non whites, they ultimately rebelled in practice.
It was also Carter who adopted the precepts of what became Neoliberalism to try and sustain the political alliance. So the oil embargo of 1979 after Iran kicked us out for doing imperialism is a huge component that crushed the party leading into Reagan.
And so Reagan followed with his conservative plans to squelch the economic futures of those guaranteed civil rights, sealing the deal by offering a solution to those threatened economically.
But finally it was Nixon before Carter who broke the trust between the American public and government. Nixon came with the prestige of being Eisenhower’s VP for 8 years. His resignation was an admission of defeat that the GOP learned to never repeat at any cost, the effects we see today.
This is all brushing past the assassination of JFK that put LBJ in his position to begin with.
I don’t think things like debt actually make people more conservative. I think that effect has to flow from things which actually impact peoples lives - so if the government takes on too much debt, and then cuts public services to manage that debt, which makes people feel more economically precarious, then people will statistically become more conservative. But if the debt isn’t impacting people directly, then it isn’t increasing conservatism. Instead, existing conservatives are predisposed to care about increasing public debt and see it (rightly or wrongly) as a threat to their way of life. But if conservatives constantly talk on the internet about how increasing debt is going to collapse the government, then more neutral people might feel threatened, and will start adopting more conservative stances.
As for what caused the shift towards Reaganomics - I’m sure we could come up with a just-so story. But I don’t know if I’m the one to do it
Well the original conservative liberal divide was whether you supported the french revolution or preferred the gradual change of england. That was really it, conserve institutions and gradually change over many decades or have a revolution and install democracy immediately. The US founding fathers were all fully in the liberal camp, obviously.
It’s a naïve world view based on a lacking understanding of how society changes
Or they dislike how things have changed. Like the Ron Paul types who think medical costs, housing bubbles, university prices, etc… are due to government interference and control of the money supply. Theres a lot of believers in austrian economics as well, and they arent unsympathetic to the poor, they just believe the good things in society are due to technological progress and overwhelmingly more bad things due to government involvement.
Which isnt illogical or crazy, its very probable. Its also very probably we need more government intervention. In the end there are far too many variables to be definitive, and our economy isnt flexible enough to even change, as every tweak rewards one group and punishes another. Which I think is why we have bailouts after every recession, attempting to quell changes to the status quo and existing wealth distribution, which then leads to further moral hazard.
I’d also say many people think we can simply take money from the wealthy and distribute it with no side effects, without taking into account the velocity of money or interest rates. If you taxed the rich 90% and distributed it you’d obviously have massive inflation, rising interest rates, and people with a mortgage would default like they did during the Volcker shock. We arent on the gold standard, fiat moneys value is dynamic, the wealthy are only nominally wealthy given the current velocity of money.
Conservative means what it means - people who want to conserve rather than change, and are comfortable with how things are and, in their opinion, have always been.
One might argue it is about maintaining constants through change.
Most ideological conservatives that I know are well aware change is inevitable (and probably the most constant thing out there). What separates and divides them are what constants they seek to maintain, and some systems are categorically more damnable than others.
What happens when conservatives lose this constant, or are threatened to lose it, is when they become reactionaries or fascists respectively.
EDIT: I misread the comment above, which I completely agree with. I ended up writing a reply about the dangers of allowing the meaning of concepts to change along with dominant narratives. Not really relevant to the discussion, but keeping it below because why not.
I understand this argument from an American point of view - if I were conservative I certainly wouldn’t brand myself as such if I were American.
I have two counterarguments. First, this is a form of surrender, where we accept that the word has lost its meaning and we no longer have the vocabulary to talk about conservativism in its original sense. Language is essential for thinking, and by destroying the language and the words we use to understand concepts the ruling classes can keep us from understanding them at all. Everything becomes meaningless. Fascists, conservatives, nazis, libertarians, libarals, centrists all become the same as concepts are blurred and lose their meaning to the point where we cannot think of anything any more. This type of rhetorical class warfare is common in the US - there has been active efforts to destroy any word associated with socialism for a hundred years now. I think we should insist on the meaning of words and their distinctions because we should insist on thinking. The two are, fundamentally, the same thing.
My second counterargument is that this guy on the train was German. Europe is not America, we don’t want to import your stupid politics. We are better off on our own. Call this a conservative argument if you will.
Please understand my point was a deference towards a more precise and accurate definition of conservatism and an appeal to understanding the difference of when conservatism becomes reactionary or fascist.
It was kind of a corroboration of your point.
…which now I am unsure of since you are so readily disagreeable with it on grounds of American.
Ah, yeah, sorry, I didn’t read your comment carefully enough. Misread it as being a point about constants through change in terms of understanding ideology, and that conservatives are becoming something new that they were not before. My bad! It has been a long day.
Totally agree with your point.
Conservatism is an ideology, and has been one since the time of the French Revolution.
Edmund Burke, the father of conservativism, was a narcissist who opposed the French Revolution, and Louis XVIII was a narcissist who crowned himself king and called the government he liked “conservative.” They did not share an ideology. There was no consistency in either of their positions. They both simply declared the things they like to be conservative values.
They’re both actually great examples of exactly my point.
He is not more progressive than an American conservative
Yes he is. It doesn’t matter how you explain it, the “conservative” here has beliefs considered further left than American conservatives. Can’t dismiss that just because you can explain it some other way also.
I’m not dismissing him, I’m saying that conservativism isn’t left or right. That’s a false equivalency putting the conservative/progressive ideologies on a spectrum. That’s not how conservativism works. There is no left or right, only selfish and principled. Do I want this? If yes, then it is a critical part of our culture and history and must be protected from all change at any cost. If the answer is no, then it is an abhorrent condition that must be stopped at any cost. Did I have a different opinion yesterday? Doesn’t matter, because that was yesterday. Will I change my mind tomorrow? Doesn’t matter, because if I do, then I’ll have a really good reason.
It’s because Germany has fewer “immigrants”, so he thinks German people (everyone) should have healthcare. If there were more “immigrants” then he would say German people (as in German ethnicity only) should have healthcare. That’s what he’s saying about what his group is, well that’s how I break down what his group is.
But one could say that to basically every type of political direction or belief?
I mean there are basically jokes regarding this, about the left, such as: When three leftists meet, the will have four different opinions.
But I would argue, that this is not what the post is about.
No, you couldn’t. Most political ideologies are built on fundamental principles and core values. When ideology is principled, it is consistent even when the believers are not direct beneficiaries of the policies.
Take freedom of speech. People who value free speech will defend it even when they don’t like the speech they hear. That’s a principled belief.
Conservatives will shift their principles when faced with a policy that does not benefit them. Conservatives demand abortions when they need them. Conservatives demand gun control when they feel threatened. Conservatives demand freedom to travel anywhere while closing their borders. They hire undocumented immigrants. They capture regulatory bodies to edge out the competition. There isn’t a single conservative value that is consistent among conservatives and applied equally to others as well as themselves.
Prost!
tbh I dk the context of the person who made the post. By this writing and her adding “in America :(” could be both a classic case of shit an American sad as well as commenting on America. Btw as a radical Left German i heard enough people say the healthcare here is to generous but they had the money to afford privet.
Luckily for the rest of the world noone cares what would count as far radical left in dumbfuckistan.
Okay so out to the people here, am I a conservative based on the following information?
Things I like: Free healthcare, pro-choice, strong military, 2SLGBTQ+ rights, properly vetted immigration, freedom of speech/religion/belief SO LONG AS it doesn’t hurt/oppress anyone, free trade, higher taxes on wealthier people irrespective of whether their wealth is cash or assets, SENSIBLE gun control, investment in education/science, capital punishment in very rare circumstances, lower taxes if possible, environmentally conscious decisions, nuclear power.
I have always considered myself a conservative, though I have been voting Liberal. I just can’t stand that little shit stain running the Conservative party in my country.
am I a conservative
It really depends on which country you are in, and what the local ‘Overton window’ is.
In my country, the supposedly ‘right-wing’ government supports free healthcare, green energy and strict regulation of gun ownership. The supposedly ‘center-left’ main opposition party supports a strong military, thorough vetting of immigrants and free trade. So yeah.
Why do you consider yourself a conservative if you don’t actually support the goals of the conservative movement?
There is a reason “liberals” are strawmanned as wanting free open borders to let in rapists and drug dealers, and then to actively protect the rapists and drug dealers in lawless sanctuary cities.
It’s often the only thing left for “conservatives” to find viscerally disagreeable.
INB4 someone chimes in saying: “I DO want no borders and no restrictions whatsoever”.
Progressive.
Centrist
Labels are useless as their meanings keep changing across time and contexts, and as soon as you adapt one for yourself people will either resent you for your choice of label or for not being holy enough (you’re a progressive but you believe people should be allowed to own guns and you honestly think free trade isn’t killing the planet and you believe in death penalty? Blah blah blah).
It’s more useful to think in terms of ideological cleavages. On the scale of authoritarianism to personal freedoms you believe in LGBTQ+ and women’s rights to control their own bodies. Properly vetted immigration could mean many things but is generally indicative of being on the right. Believing in death penalty and emphasizong strong military further pushes you to the right on this scale. Sounds like somewhere centre right on that dimension.
Along the economic dimension you believe in taxing the rich and providing universal welfare, placing you left of centre. “Lower taxes if possible” I guess then goes for low income folks, and is very much in line with taxing the rich in a society like the US - the “if possible” is key, as it seems you’re willing to prioritize the wellbeing of your neighbours. Investment in education and science is also left on this dimension.
Another useful dimension is secular/religious, where you appear to be pretty secular. I guess that explains your opinions about abortion and LGBTQ+ in spite of being more on the authoritarian spectrum, as the religious parts of conservativism seems less important to you.
If the word “conservative” hadn’t been ruined I’d say you’re closer to a conservative than a progressive. But in the political climate of current-day America I guess you’re a dangerous far-left radical.
If they have you convinced that’s conservative, they’ve fooled you.
Screw lazy labels. I differ on two of your points, and another three I would need more details on to be able to say. We think, and therefore our views are nuanced, as they should be. We believe that articulating our views in detail is worth the effort because we know that like it or not, our opinions shape the world for everyone, not just ourselves.
Make a reply for each value and let people upvote for progressive and downvote for conservative. Then people will participate.
“Access” is the weasel word there. You and I both have “access” to a yacht.
In germany “healthcare” usually implies “public healthcare”, which implies “free”. Private healthcare is a strong exception, and public health care is the default.
It would be very unusual, if the person in the tweet was referring to “private healthcare” when they said “yes”.
The question would be kinda nonsensical when you assume it was about paying for healthcare. “Should people be allowed to pay money to receive usual healthcare services?”
He might even be classified as a “domestic terrorist” at this point. (partially joking).
Given that this is Germany, I think you’d get a pretty conservative answer if you were to ask him if we should support the genocide in Palestine. But then, if you’d ask this to Die Linke members early on in the genocide you’d get the same answers, so not sure what this says about the conservative. Germans and genocide, name a more iconic duo.
Funny. True. Profoundly sad.
