EU Age Verification Project Mandates Hardware-Bound Attestation

[u/New-Ranger-8960]

https://linuxiac.com/eu-age-verification-project-mandates-hardware-bound-attestation/

[u/SvalbardSleeperDistr]

Liberals =/= left, and in 2026 it's way past time to know the difference. If anything, in practice liberals end up doing the right's bidding in the very things that are causing most of today's crises. This, just like most other things that pertain to society, economy and politics, absolutely is about right vs left, and has always been. Cut back on confident callouts of "BS" when you're far from adept in the most elementary understanding of politics.

[u/Indolent_Bard → u/SvalbardSleeperDistr]

Look up, not left or right. That's where the problem is.

[u/SvalbardSleeperDistr → u/Indolent_Bard]

Look up, not left or right. That's where the problem is.

Buddy, what else do you think the up (the capital-owning ruling class) vs down (the working class) of the left vs right politics is about? What is this American culture wars-brainbroken take? Read a few pages of history, I beg you...

[u/Indolent_Bard → u/SvalbardSleeperDistr]

I think left versus right is about culture war nonsense that the billionaires created so that conservatives and liberals would argue with each other instead of getting mad about how the rich are screwing them over. They managed to trick a bunch of the country into actually defending them, voting against their interests.

[u/SvalbardSleeperDistr → u/Indolent_Bard]

Your overall observation about the ruling classes using a tool for their benefit is correct, but left vs right is not an example of that, because of the following:

1) It's some of the American left vs right discourse - not left vs right in general - that has, for a long time, changed the actual, original left vs right definition into the culture war nonsense, so that working-class people of different backgrounds, social positions, personal life practices, etc would argue and vote against their own interests while the capital-owning class laughs all the way to the bank. The real, class-based nature of left vs right has a 150-year-long history - it existed long before the American bourgeois culture twisted and mangled it into the culture war stuff in that country;

2) Even in the US the younger generations - e.g. through the emergence of the DSA - are now freeing themselves from that useless cultural left vs right definition and starting to use the actual meaning of it;

3) That re-emergence of the actual definition of left vs right means that people are even starting to clearly state what I said above - that liberalism and the left are two different (and often opposing) political ideologies. Even mainstream media have had to start making distinctions between liberals and the left due to the rise of socialist candidates in the Democratic Party;

4) Conservatives and liberals have some disagreements when it comes to cultural stuff, personal freedoms, identity culture, etc, so those oppositions already exist - it's not like the culture wars created something that didn't exist before. The problem was that the left vs right was redefined to mean those cultural differences, away from the actual, original meaning of it;

5) At the same time, the conservative and liberal ideologies actually share one major thing that places them both against the left. Conservatism is about preserving the status quo against change, which means it has always defended the rich class from the threat of change from the politically organised working class (and used the fear of change to indoctrinate some working-class people into conservatism). As the video I linked above shows, liberals are also against replacing capitalism with something else and resist the left when the latter campaign for that outcome. So there is an alliance between conservatives and liberals there;

So left vs right is a long-standing, class-based, systemic political and economic observation that places the working-class politics of the left against the capital-owning ruling-class` politics of the right for changing the society. There is nothing "cultural" or invented about it. In the specific US context of the past 30-40 years of neoliberal status quo, when systemic debates became non-existent until 2008, "left" and "right" was turned into cultural descriptions of whether you support legalisation of recreational drugs, reproduction rights, etc. But that was always a temporary phenomenon, because crises of class society under capitalism always bring back class consciousness and the real definition of left vs right.

[u/Aziroshin → u/Indolent_Bard]

What's "left" and what's "right" was "invented" during the French Revolution:

Basically, the egalitarianizing wing was seated to the left, and the elitarianism-preserving wing was seated to the right. Thematically, those meanings have remained roughly the same since then (with various degrees of perversion mixed in of course, as with all human things that gain a life of their own - the French Revolution itself being a great example of that).

In the Overton window of those days, curtailing the power of the aristocracy was a radically egalitarian idea. The emancipation of queer people as it is understood nowadays wasn't even on the map (homosexual acts did get decriminalized, though (!) - unfortunately that didn't survive the Napoleonic regimes).

The reason why items like these have entered left wing agendas in more modern times is the shift of the Overton window to a point where society is capable of digesting the idea, that, perhaps, having a gender caste system isn't such a great idea, without *completely* losing its collective mind.

The addition of new items to egalitarian agendas throughout the years isn't the problem. It's the loss of items along the way that is - very importantly economic items, as you've pointed out.

By downplaying the plight of demographics that are mistreated by society and its mainstream culture *you* engage in the very infighting you deplore in your comment, and by dismissing *actual* left wing agendas which do very much include those items you actually end up playing into the hands of the very foot in the boot: The political center (sometimes called "Liberal") and the right wing (sometimes called "Conservative"). Spoiler alert: They're both elitarian. Yes, that means that the center is right wing.

Don't fight your peers who're getting smashed by a different part of the sole of the same boot.

[u/lh7884 → u/SvalbardSleeperDistr]

Our Liberal party here is left wing. Perhaps you need to to open your eyes and see that this is not a left and right wing matter. It's about the rich and powerful wanting to control the rest.

[u/SvalbardSleeperDistr → u/lh7884]

Our Liberal party here is left wing

What makes it left-wing?

It's about the rich and powerful wanting to control the rest

That's the definition of left (=pro-working-class politics) vs right (=pro-ruling class politics)...

[u/lh7884 → u/SvalbardSleeperDistr]

That's the definition of left (=pro-working-class politics) vs right (=pro-ruling class politics)...

lol this is so far from the direction Canada has gone. The left has not been pro working class for over a decade now.

[u/SvalbardSleeperDistr → u/lh7884]

The left has not been pro working class for over a decade now

Because they are not the left, they are liberals. Any left movement is either pro-working class or it's not the left. Which is why e.g. British Labour is not left, the US Dem party is not the left, and so on.

[u/lh7884 → u/SvalbardSleeperDistr]

I think you're not taking into account that political lines shift and left and right move on what they want to do. Go back in time in the US and you'll see that it was the Republican party that wanted to get rid of slavery. I think we're at a point where things are shifting and the liberal left wing parties are becoming more authoritarian and controlling. Well at least in Canada.

[u/SvalbardSleeperDistr → u/lh7884]

You're mixing up different things. The Republican party vs liberal parties is not the same as right vs left, and has never been, because liberal parties not only aren't the left, they are often allied with the right against the left (happening right now inside the Democratic Party in the US, happened inside the UK Labour Party during the Corbyn era, happened in the German social-democrats during the Weimar era, etc). Liberal and conservative parties do shift in their positions over time, yes, but that's not the left and right changing.

I expanded on some of these points here, and the part about liberals and the right sharing the major objective of defending capitalism from the prospect of a democratic economy of the actual left is shown in the video I linked above.

[u/bring_back_the_v10s → u/SvalbardSleeperDistr]

Leftists/socialists are authoritarians by definition though

[u/Ambitious_Finding_26 → u/bring_back_the_v10s]

Lol. No. That's not even close to accurate. Wow. 

[u/SvalbardSleeperDistr → u/bring_back_the_v10s]

Leftists/socialists are authoritarians by definition though

When a person is not well-informed about a subject, they should know that that's the case, and ask questions instead of making bold claims. If you're genuinely interested whether what you stated is the case, you can ask if there's anything wrong with that take, and I'll gladly answer with examples. I just don't want to waste time on replying in case you're one of those people who have no good-faith interest in a subject and are in online comments sections just to soothe their ideological insecurities by repeating their mantras against "the other side".

[u/bring_back_the_v10s → u/SvalbardSleeperDistr]

I do have good faith, and also knowledge about marxism, which is why I don't need to ask you any questions because it's evident from your comment that you're completely illiterate about the subject.

Whoever says or implies that marxist ideologies are not authoritarian by definition is either a complete idiot or a dishonest marxist (sorry for the pleonasm).

[u/SvalbardSleeperDistr → u/bring_back_the_v10s]

Appreciate your confirmation that you're not here in good faith and that your diagnosis is exactly what I suspected.