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Jim Lane

(11,175 posts)
10. I'm not very familiar with West. As to Sanders, your charges are ludicrous.
Tue Jun 13, 2017, 10:26 AM
Jun 2017

We've always had people on the left who are so disgusted with the excessive conservatism of the Democratic Party that they denounce it as indistinguishable from the Republican Party. Nader was pitching that line, IIRC.

What's important to note is that Bernie Sanders does NOT make that mistake. He endorsed Hillary Clinton and campaigned for her. Most of his supporters voted for her.

If you complain about people who "often echo the same talking points used by members of the right . . . ," don't include the progressives who support single-payer health care, a $15 minimum wage, etc., unless you can provide a link to right-wing support for those goals.

If "neoprogressive" means a former right-winger who now supports single payer, then I happily welcome the neoprogressives.

As for the other terms you mention, I personally tend to avoid them because they share some of the same characteristics as the more recent "neoprogressive" -- namely, a lack of precise definition and a susceptibility to use as personal invective rather than tools of analysis. You can't really blame Cornel West for that, though. The Wikipedia article on "Neoliberalism" reports that the term was in widespread use before Cornel West was born. I found this paragraph instructive:

The term has been used in English since the start of the 20th century with different meanings,[13] but became more prevalent in its current meaning in the 1970s and 1980s by scholars in a wide variety of social sciences,[14][15] as well as being used by critics.[16][17] Modern advocates of free market policies avoid the term "neoliberal"[18] and some scholars have described the term as meaning different things to different people,[19][20] as neoliberalism "mutated" into geopolitically distinct hybrids as it travelled around the world.[3] As such, neoliberalism shares many attributes with other contested concepts, including democracy.[4]


{end excerpt}

Per the article on "Neo-fascism", that term seems somewhat more narrowly defined, although the article notes, "Allegations that a group is neo-fascist may be hotly contested, especially if the term is used as a political epithet."

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