#anyways the longest conversations ive had ab politics since my classes ended

[mariaiscrafting]

I saw your post about the someone calling Dream a lib, and I saw it myself too, so uh, if it's not much of a bother, and because you really seem to know about this, since I think you study polictics (? (based on your posts), what does it mean to be liberal? and to be radical? and why people wan to radicalize Dream? /gen

Aight, so there's like a hundred different meanings of libs but I assume that what Dream and that person meant is the typical definition of lib that Gen Z tends to use these days. I'm gonna preface by saying I'm not the most knowledgable on this shit, and I haven't taken a political theory course yet, so I'm going off of my own, limited knowledge.

So, liberalism, as it's used in the classical sense, means advocating for economic freedom and civil liberties to do as you please > the govt controlling you. So, classic liberals are against high taxes, the social welfare state, business regulations, etc. They believe in increased individual control over your own life, which I personally do not agree with because classical liberals tend to disregard the fact that, in an oppressive state, it is impossible for their to be true equality under capitalism. But let's not get into that.

Most people nowadays don't use liberal in the classical sense. They mean liberalism as Wikipedia describes it: "Modern liberalism includes issues such as same-sex marriage, reproductive and other women's rights, voting rights for all adult citizens, civil rights, environmental justice and government protection of the right to an adequate standard of living." When conservatives call people liberals as an insult nowadays, they mean that person is supporting abortion, or gay marriage, or BLM, or something. All of these are seen as "liberal." I assume this is what Dream meant when he called himself liberal-leaning, like every fucking person that fits his demographics likes to do because they think it marks them as universally non-bigoted (non-misogynistic, non-racist, non-homophobic, etc). Imo, people have to stop calling this liberalism and start callling it social progressivism, because that's what it fucking is, but that's neither here nor there.

What I assume people mean when they use "liberal" derogatorily, and they're a leftist, is a neoliberal. A modern liberal is derided by leftists for not being radical enough in their progressivism. This comes in many forms. Many modern liberals draw the line at where their social progression stops; this can include supporting binary trans people but not non-binary/non-dysphoric trans people, claiming to be non-racist but still believing undocumented immigrants or refugees logically don't have a place in the US, believing women deserve worker's rights and don't just belong in the home but not believing patriarchy exists in the US in the 21st century, supporting gay people and same-sex marriage but criticizing gay people for openly/publicly showing affection, etc. This could be what OP meant by saying a liberal needs to be radicalized. On the other hand, they could be referring to the fact that many modern liberals are actually only socially left-leaning. They might be so anti-statist to the point of being against the social safety net, like many ancap-leaning people are (ancap = anarcho-capitalism). They might simply be fiscally conservative. To radicalize a liberal is to essentially turn them into a full-blown leftist, and to radicalize a liberal in the modern American sense usually means to turn them into an ancom-leaning leftist (ancom = anarcho-communism).

I assume people want to radicalize Dream because most of this fanbase is a leftist. Most of us are anti-capitalist, vehemently pro-LGBTQ+, feminist, anti-racist, etc. Most of us consume content on Tik Tok, Twitter, and Tumblr that taught us not to be complacent and that every structure we live under is oppressive. But most of us are queer, or women, or POC, or ND, and that's kinda what's come to be expected among Gen Z, marginalized people. Personally, I think trying to radicalize every CC we love, who is most likely an upper-middle class, white, cishet, and/or male streamer, is an impossible and futile endeavor.

Anyways, idk if any of this made sense, and I hope it's mostly right (please politiblr don't come at me, I'm just some idiot trying to explain politics to Minecraft fans, don't take this seriously).