Found this graph online for anyone who might still be confused. I think this makes it much more clear.
The right-left divide is a fabrication meant to obscure the fact that the actual division is capitalist-socialist. Do you support the owning class, or do you support the working class?
Yeah capitalism isn’t interrupt about free markets and competition or investing in yourself. It’s about the ownership class, and the labour class (those that work for the owner class, make all the money and get proportionally none of it). Companies are mini monarchies where you get no say in the policy, the ownership of the company is usually passed on to descendents, you live half your life abiding by the mini monarchy. You vote outside of work, but not at work, work is not democratic. Even so, governments are not mediators between workers and elite, the people that end up in government are of the elite class and have their own interests in mind. We only have our labour rights and aren’t complete slaves today because of very strong socialist movements during and after the great depression and ww2. They compromised with some socialism to avoid complete socialism, but these movements are of course not too frequently mentioned in history lessons
This 100% - it’s part propaganda.
The funny thing is - to support the working class is to support the owning class. Because when people have more money, they spend more which makes company profits increase and stock go up.
It’s more like “stupid retards who only want to hurt people vs. people who want to help people”.
Personally, I want to help the working class by getting rid of the ruling class and make owning capital a community thing instead of an individual thing.
These memes remind me of my high school religion teacher (I went to Catholic school in Canada, “religion” was what you would call Civics) who introduced the political spectrum. He wrote the usual line across the chalkboard with left/center/right labels, and explained what they were. Then, he extended the chalk line to the right, off the board and onto the wall, and continued past the corner onto the next wall. He was about half way to the back of the room before he started writing down names of any of our political leaders at the time. I don’t remember most of the names from 30 years ago, but Conrad Black was on the back wall.
In other western democracies, the US democrats are seen as the equivalent of the local conservative parties.
There is no real US equivalent for European leftist / social-democratic parties. The US republicans, on the other hand, are like the borderline illegal Nazi / nationalist rightwing parties that Putin built up and strengthened in the last decades all across Europe
The ‘left right spectrum’ is a harmful concept because it makes communism seem like an extremist position even though it’s in the best interest of 99% of people, and only unpopular due to billions and billions worth of red scare propaganda by the 1%.
I am a centrist!
Me 
In a sane world centre would be ‘status quo making decisions based on objective reality’ yet somehow even the idea that we should base our decisions on verifiable data is like super extreme gay communism left by current standards.
No way fr? It’s like being a liberal doesn’t make you a leftist and that you can definitely be a right wing liberal
Yeah in the rest of the world Liberalism is a right wing political philosophy. Just because you believe in the words of Voltaire doesn’t make you a left wing. Liberals aren’t even center left progressives.
I would say that most liberals are right leaning. They’re not willing to stand up for leftist values. When people “accuse” them of wanting open borders they backpeddle like crazy.
You can indeed be a right wing liberal, it is however more difficult to be a left wing conservative
is being a left wing conservative even possible?
If we consider one of the key value of the “left” being progress, I think it is difficult to concillate both.
People who tried to conserve Soviet Union can arguably be called left wing conservatives.
I’d argue they were totalitarian and not conservative. The funny thing about Totalitarianism is that it does not really care about being left or right and seems to share the same values : https://news.emory.edu/stories/2021/09/esc_left_wing_authoritarians_psychology/campus.html
Totalitarianism is a made up word by a CIA stooge (who was an actual anti-Semite, before the word lost all meaning) cooked up to draw parallels between the USSR and Nazi Germany so as to propagate red scare propaganda.
In Hannah Arendt analysis it does not matter for what purpose the tools of state power are utilised, merely that they are utilised. It does not matter if the state has broad support from the population, all that matters is that the state acts. This is an infantile worldview.
The word itself is without any meaning beyond “descriptor of enemy state”. Any definition is either so broad as to describe every nation-state or so narrow that it could just be replaced with the name of the state one is trying to foster fear of.
Depends on the country. The “conservatives” in the late USSR were the people opposing abolishing the union. I think the same descriptor is used for chavistas and Cuban communists.
Not really no, closest is a Moderate Conservative, which is just any conservative with a leaning towards the center
I am of the opinion that green are very often left wing conservatives.
I thought they were communists
Not on lemmy, where being left means you have to absolutely and entirely go along with whatever the others feel should be a leftist belief. Purity tests all day every day, followed up by literal campaigns and concerted efforts by other “leftists” against the offending people.
See the whole online boycott war being fought against .ml because the owners ran afoul of something. Lemmy is just as stupid as other social media but has a different demographic, which makes it at least for the time being more palatable.
A “conservative” leftist would probably be someone who generally agrees on economic theory but has a less open and progressive view towards social issues such as marriage rights or immigration.
What you define is segregation : a society where progress benefits me, but not you, because you are different.
What i define is how most actually socialist or communist countries of the past were organized though. See for example the GDR, socially just as conservative as most other countries at the time; to the point that the formerly GDR part of germany is now a breeding ground for far right political power.
My point is not that socially conservative ideas have merit, but that they are not inherently ideologically incompatible with wanting a not-capitalist economy. And that we do ourselves little good by constantly falling back into the old leftist trope of never being able to achieve political power because everyone only agrees on like, 90% of issues.
You are mixing a lot of things here : capitalist vs anti capitalist regime is not this same as progressive/conservative politics.
If you believe social progress should benefit only you and not me, you are not progressive.
And I’d like to point out that all regimes you mention are not different from any other : they all had a ruling class. This is, again, not progressive.
And as I pointed out in an other comment: studies suggest that Totalitarianism is not about left or right, because they use the same concepts to validate their ideologies.
Damn you’re hilarious, any more jokes in there?
Never have been.
The true irony being that anyone who ever thought the upper version was the US political spectrum also likely has no idea about a century of Dixiecrats and how Southern conservatives after the Civil War all aligned as Democrats as a “Fuck you” to Northern Republicans - Lincoln in particular. IIRC, it was post-LBJ era and push to get Nixon elected that finally flipped the labeling back, which should tell you all you need to know about him and the conservatives.
Who is this guy in right side from Trump?
Stephen Miller
Peewee German, the Nosferatu
Bernie on the wrong side of centre.
Could someone clarify the watch this space part?
Entering that space is risky. For politicians it means endless primary challenges from the right with bottomless campaign funding.
For individuals it means being fairgamed by right wing watchdogs. Online harassment campaigns, doxxing, swatting, squealing or falsifying info to ICE, etc.
Pretty obvious but what this country needs is a surge of real leftist politicians. Not that a far left loonie is more moral than a far right loonie. What we need is balance. Its what is missing from every bill and every law.
Chasing “balance” is how we got here in the first place.
Ha ha ha ha.
Thanks mate.
Well you see, it’s going to do a trick.
Now watch Schummer fall in line with Trump, now that the Iran war has begun. This is how we know he was never a lefty!
fuckin’ Schomer Yssrael ass dork. the fact that all us ashkenazi are as related as we are means he’s probably my cousin makes me want to slap him so fuckin’ hard. acting like israel speaks for me, and he speaks for israel, therefor he speaks for me? unacceptable. what a huge fuckin’ dork
Id say biden is center and bernie is left. Bidens policies were often more left than obamas. But its also hard to but them on the same scale that was made for european politics. Biden actually had a few policies which msde trans peoples lifes better while on other fronts supporting policies that would be pretty far right in europe. Europe is generally more economic left while the us is maybe more left socially but idk its quite complicated. Also mamdani isnt on this but same with him. Id say hes center left. Definitely not full left or how trump likes to call him a radical leftist.
Being more left wing than a right winger does not make you a centrist.
The annoying thing here is that there is a relative and an absolute notion of leftism, and it’s really hard to get a good grasp of what actual centrism and actual leftism looks like when your entire context consists of people who consider anything slightly left of full blown fascism “centrist” or even “left wing”.
he’s center-left in the context of american politics. his policy positions would basically be in alignment with Germany’s FDP which is centre-right
In some respects. The FDP would never subsidize green technologies on such a scale though.
“We have to be open to all technologies, so strategically advancing those that make sense and aren’t scams would lead to an evil planned economy!”
funny thing is, it wasn’t even all that subsidized
some grants and a tax break, the next administration eliminated that practically overnight
Bernie “both sides” Sanders is left-wing? Hardly. The guy is a sheepdog for grassroots movements that can disrupt the DNC and that’s basically it. Had he had a political career in a country with a welfare state then he’d be busy dismantling it. His foreign policy is right wing. His domestic barely clears.
Certainly feels that way
Who’s the guy between Joe and Mitch?
I think its Jeb Bush. Not 100% sure though.
Yeah that’s 100% jeb
Who is Joe and Mitch
Biden and Mitch McConnell
This graph needs updating tbh. Bernie is not centerleft lol. And Obama and Hillary are far right as well. Tax cuts, dronebombings, imperialism and so on. The atrocities in Libya, the coup in Ukraine and all the other heinous shit. Don’t let pinkwashing fool you
Them cutting ACORN or giving bailouts to banks in 2008… It’s incredible what good PR does to the perception of these monsters.
Bernie Sanders is center left by all standards. You never had contact with left, or far left.
He is center right by the standards I have put forth, so definitionally not all standards.
Regarding your second point, I’d like to say it sounds like you haven’t had much interaction with leftists or left-wing political theory, considering your response.Edit: And by the most basic standard of “pro-capitalism or anti-capitalist?” He is, by his own admission a social democrat, which is an ideology that believes in reforming capitalism. So by the most foundational definition of what forms the left- and right wings in modern politics, he is right wing. However I’d say he’s centre right, rather than a hard right.
My grandpas were partisan, my father in Democrazia proletaria, police have pics of me at 4 in a general strike. We occupied schools and fabrics. I grew in a trozkjist family. My friend, you have no idea was it is the left.
Neat! I hang out with communist guerillas and a friend of mine carried out some sabotages when he was young and now he’s a union organizer. Also my dick is larger than yours. Also also you’re not my friend, fuck off with the condescension and, once again, educate yourself. Having family that has been politically involved does not mean you suddenly have an integral understanding of politics.
Considering the many Eastern European chuds I’ve met, it’s honestly more likely the opposite is the case.Edit: I cannot imagine being proud of associating with trots lol. Does explain your lack of political understanding though.
And again by definition Left-wing is anti-capitalist. That is what left vs. right is about. By definition. You being the type to have grown up among some vocal idiots does make a lot of sense for your behaviour.Tou are nist probabky american. One can tell. Never occupied a school, never occupied your work of place, never been in permanent assembly or auto managed context. That is why u understood nothing of what I said. You system is failing you and damaging the world thanks to trotzijist and communist parties in europe we have 36 hours, medical leaves, vacations and worker rights. You guys go bankrupt for an ambulance. That’s why im proud of coming from a certain background. I would suggest YOU to study something. Start with Marx, cowboy.
Not american. A friend of mine did all the stuff you mentioned, and more too. You keep being wrong.
You keep condescending because you can’t get it through your thick head that you are wrong and some education would do you good. One can tell you are of the type of chuddy Eastern European I talked about. Heritage does not create understanding, and you severely lack any understanding. Bernie simps for a genocidal ethnostate. Bernie believes in reforming capitalism. Bernie breaks up strikes. Even trots, as warped as their worldview is, usually have enough clarity of mind to understand that strikebreaking genocidal capitalists aren’t near any form of leftism.
