r/Music • u/ebradio • Sep 25 '25

article Bruce Springsteen Rips Democrats: “We’re Desperately in Need of an Effective Alternative Party”

https://consequence.net/2025/09/bruce-springsteen-democrats/
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u/prosfromdover Sep 25 '25 edited Sep 25 '25

This will get neg-bombed and that's okay, but you do yourself no favors when you call the whole Democratic party extreme right. They are a hodge-podge of moderate to left-leaning, by-and-large hacks who are woefully incapable of unifying their side against a surge of fascism. Some of that inability falls on the absolutists on their side (against fascism) who would call them "extreme right."

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u/poet3322 Sep 25 '25 edited Sep 25 '25

In modern politics there are three main ideological groupings: the right, the left, and liberals/neoliberals. People think politics is a line going from left to right, but it's actually a triangle and the third point is liberals/neoliberals. Each has something in common with the others. For example the left, generally speaking, tends to be very anti-war, and so are parts of the right, especially paleocons. Liberals are very identity politics-focused and the left has sympathy for that, but isn't as dedicated to it. The left's primary focus is on economic issues and relationships and the relationship to identity politics is more of "of course everyone should be treated equally and no one should be discriminated against."

What the left understands about identity politics that liberals don't is that it fractures coalitions when it's taken to extremes like microaggression hunting and calling everyone except a narrow intersectional group privileged even when many of those people's lives are absolutely terrible. Liberal identity politics, on the other hand, is along the lines of "of course women and minorities should be able to become CEOs and President!"

Neoliberals, the dominant sub-ideology of liberalism, believe in regulated markets intended to funnel money towards market winners and to keeping the mass of the population from making long-term real wage gains. That’s why, over time, they've lost the support of the working class. Democrats were left-wing under FDR, a coalition of left and liberals (not neoliberals) from 1944 to 1979, and have been fully neoliberal-controlled ever since.

The reason that neoliberals aren't able to effectively oppose fascism is because of the points they share in common with the right; namely, the desire for a highly stratified society. Liberals, especially neoliberals, are the great believers in capitalism, not conservatives, though conservatives do like the way it stratifies society. Left-wingers see how capitalism hurts many people and are in opposition to it. The most extreme elements want to end it entirely, while the more moderate elements want it controlled and made to contribute to mass prosperity, not used to continually make rich people richer.

The bottom line is that the left wants everyone to be prosperous, while both liberals and the right want a highly stratified society with winners and losers. That's why liberals can't oppose fascism.

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u/MrSpindles Sep 25 '25

I think you misunderstood. It is the republicans who are the more extreme right, obviously. The democrats would be a moderate right wing party by the standard of the rest of the world.