NYT is quite right of center on many issues. They're not as conservative as WSJ, but they're definitely not a leftist publication.
And Africa has about triple the population of Europe. So what makes Europe the default point of comparison? (More reporters having done a semester abroad at Barcelona than Lagos is not a valid answer.) Heck why restrict ourselves to the present? How about by the standards of all of human history? Even Fox News would be left wing in 1750.
The simple answer is that it’s very dumb to arbitrarily compare against a different society, with a different history and different culture. American institutions should benchmark on American mores, not grasp at politics from entirely different continents.
In the US, "left" tends to be centered around social and cultural issues, such as racism, sexism, immigrant rights, abortion rights, affirmative action, or increasingly things like white privilege - what is sometimes derisively called identity politics.
In Europe, "left" tends to be centered around the economic sense of the term, that is, socialism, communism, redistribution of wealth, social safety nets, etc.
By US standards, many European politicians are on the far right because of their social and cultural views. By European standards, most US politicians are on the right or even far right because of their economic views, whereas they're to a European perspective absolutely extreme on the social politics scale.
In general, while they're handy for bandying about in a very general sense, I don't think political axes between countries can be compared in a very meaningful way. There are all kinds of bizarre mismatches even in the same domains - for example, the VAT would be considered a very regressive tax favored only by the more extreme libertarian-conservative types in the US, but it's hardly seen that way in Europe.
It means something different to you. The US is a big country, and your understanding of the left is pretty shallow and certainly doesn't speak for the whole country.
That you say the left is centered on ID politics is evidence that you're out of touch with leftist politics. I would venture to say because there's not a loud leftist voice in the mainstream media.
Although I am leery of placing myself on a political axis for the same reason, I think most people would consider me a leftist. Certainly they would think so based on my voting record, with a couple of exceptions.
Firstly, it may be - and I think is probably - the case that the average self-described liberal or independent in the US does not prioritize most culture war issues, or identity politics issues. They might instead be more concerned about conventionally leftist economic policies, like raising the minimum wage or improving safety nets.
But that's not, by-and-large, what political campaigns, politicians, or the news media focuses on. Cultural issues and (increasingly) identity politics surrounding specific issues take up an immense amount of bandwidth in the US to a degree they do not in Europe - or if an analogous issue does, the battle lines are drawn and the conversation is framed in a totally different way. Even issues that are the 'same' are often downstream of US politics.
I don't think this is an argument that there's no loud leftist voice in the mainstream media. That is maybe true, in the conventional sense. But it's not because the media is conservative or reactionary in some sense - there's a similar problem on the right; if anything, this was strongly illustrated by Trump's success - Trump brought to the forefront issues like immigration restriction that had wide support among the voting base but very weak to no support in the conservative political and media establishment. It's because the "leftists" who are actually in power, and control large 'leftist' institutions, care more about identity politics and culture war issues than they do about conventional leftist economic policies. US politics on both sides is charged along different lines than in other countries.
There's no doubt similar phenomena in Europe - it's not as though politics as represented by politicians and in the news accurately reflects the desires of the people there, either. Nor is Europe a unified block either, so we're being a little sloppy. But this is still a substantial difference.
At any rate, there's still other issues I mentioned like VAT - VAT would never fly in the US even if the "left" took complete power because liberals would consider it horrifically regressive!
It's all relative. From a communist perspective, most of Europe is a laissez faire free market. Private control of the press!? Hah!
From Europe's mildly-socialist perspective, America is a laissez faire free market. Private control of healthcare and education!? Hah!
I'm not making value judgements. Just pointing out its a spectrum.
That’s because you’re using the term incorrectly: right-wing authoritarian states were just as perilous for those who disagreed – imagine being a left-wing business owner under Hitler or Pinochet! You’d much prefer living in “left-wing” Sweden unless you were very right-wing.
The mistake is trying to use a single term to compare multidimensional properties. The degree to which power is centralized in the state is independent from economic and social policies, and you can find examples of many combinations depending on which characteristics you’re interested in (for example, the Soviet Union was good for the perspective of opening career paths for women and terrible for gay rights while Nazi Germany was bad at both, and no single term comparison is going to cover that).
Is this true, though? With full socialism isn't control supposed to be pooled by citizens? If anything, it's more akin to libertarianism, just that instead of citizens self-organizing in groups to manage bits and pieces they self-organize in groups managing everything.
You would have a better analogy if you used "socialism" rather than "communism".
The problem is they are treating politics like fashion, where it's super specific and constantly changing. And they are bullying (or cheering it on, at least) anyone who doesn't conform.
Whether these specific fashions they promote are "left" or "right" or "center" was immaterial to my decision to cancel.