Me after creating a meme and starting a political debate on memes sub “what have i done”.I HATE MY CREATION for the record.
If in America then it’s all right wing.
my biggest pet peeve in the world is when people equate liberalism (a right-wing ideology) with the left, solely because the american baseline is so far right compared to europe. the closest shot the US have had of pivoting to proper left-wing is bernie sanders (at least as far as i’m aware, and i’m too scared of further rotting my brain by consuming more american politics)
Trump and the republicans are right winged. Biden and democrats are the left.
Thanks fam that’s what i wanted to know.
Just be aware that that answer is very over-simplifying things. “Left” and “right” are supposed to signify political ideas, not certain parties or politicians. You could say that Biden is to the “left” of Trump, but most people who would call themselves “left-wing” would consider Biden a “centrist” (between left and right) at best, maybe even skewing right-wing.
Typical left-wing ideals would be working towards freedom and equality for everyone by solidarity and cooperation, whereas right-wing ideas usually focus around preserving your own privileges by suppressing whomever you consider “outsiders” or “inferiors”.
Good for you.
Now what will the rest of the world do with this info?
I’m just saying that the answer is centred on American politics. The definition of right is Republicans and left the Democrats doesn’t apply anywhere else.
Literally most of history since the black plague has been about this, so like, yeah exactly. What you gonna do?
Right and left are an illusion produced by the people who are sucking up the profits of our labour to pit us against each other.
Especially the US two party system seems to be a racket that lets you choose between conservative corpo shills and science denying fascists. All to extract the maximum amount of money from all people involved.
Words to live by, OP, “scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds”
Fascism, a far right wing ideology, is often described as “capitalism in decline,” and is what happens when capitalism desperately clings to any hope of maintaining itself, normally by calling itself back to some mythologized, fictional version of a perceived golden age.
Its also worth noting that we use the terms left and right to described to describe relative position within the overton window (the narrow stretch of “acceptable” politics within a given society) of our current politics, as in, biden is left Bush is right, et cetera, but in a larger view of the political spectrum both the democrats and republicans are right wing parties. There isn’t an objective defintion of who is left/right, but for a lot of people, the dividing line is capitalism itself. If you support capitalism, you’re right wing, if you’re a socialist, communist, or anarchist, you’re a left winger. If, by some miracle, capitalism were to die out tomorrow and every country was some flavor of socialist the dividing line would change to some new metric, and x would be left while y would right. It’s a short hand expression not a hard and fast rule.
I think you are wrong to a degree.
The problem is not that the left is an illusion and more that there just is no left wing party in the US.
Like you said there is a right wing party in line with most conservative parties in Europe and there is a protofascist party in line with Putin, American Oligarchy and religious extremism.
That doesn’t mean that an actual leftist movement or party can’t possibly exist or is a mere illusion.
The political system in the US is just purposefully designed not to allow a successful party on the left.Elections are decided in big parts with money, which inherently favours those with money (and corporations are people in the US for some fucked up reason).
This is by design and not something that is natural or automatic.I guess our positions are not that different, I just wanted to add some nuance.
I agree. We mean pretty much the same. I‘m just saying it different.
In my opinion the thought of cleaning your own doorstep before meddling in foreign affairs (one argument of the actual conservatives in opposition to fascists) actually makes a lot of sense to me.
The same goes for treating all people (and even animals, and plants to a degree) the same regardless of anything that doesnt harm others is not an idea of the „radical left“ imo but the opposite is a pure fascist idea and not conservative at all.
The ideas of what conservative or progressive mean are open to interpretation and using it the way modern populists (others call them politicians) do is just to help them get or stay in power.
Actually, representative democracy is a problem in that regard. We should go back to direct democracy in a lot of topics. Go back to the normal person educating themselves in national and local issues instead of voting for „the guy“ because they lie anyway.
That means making time for this education instead of wageslaving 8-16 hrs a day for all mature people on the household. Living with a small family on one full time income is the way it has to be in my opinion. Which partner goes to work or if both so half a day is inconsequential to me.
You’re probably better off not knowing. This stuff never makes a person happy.
“you’re better off not understanding systems of power that have a huge impact on your lives”
A dumb and sort of wrong version would be:
- Politically Left: “Society combine for everyone”
- Politically Right: “Freedom for everyone at all cost”
Unfortunately, left and right are rather coarse terms within the political spectrum. Consider looking for some easy explanations to understand the finer details.
Fun Fact: The emergence of the “left” / “right” distinction in the political sense is attributed to the original seating arrangement at the Constituante, the constituent national assembly of 1789 in France.
Politically Right: “Freedom for everyone at all cost”
Lmmfao…
They don’t give a shit about freedom for anyone but themselves (and especially not that of people who aren’t white, Christian, cis, straight and abled), their actual motives are having as much power and money as possible.You are right about most points, but the right is not and never was about freedom, but about cementing a hierarchical order in society.
It used used to be about Aristocrats in France.
Today it is about keeping the rich in power and by extension to rile poor people against even poorer people (often immigrants).If you look at politics through that lense so many more things start to make sense.
Old money hates new money.
Right wing middle class people hate poor people.
Right wing poor people hate immigrants.
They want to look down on somebody.That’s not “sorta” wrong, it’s hella wrong.
- Left: Dismantle existing power hierarchies with the aim of equality.
- Right: Strengthen existing power hierarchies.
Bro, the left and right are originally French, not American, and they’re applied worldwide throughout various systems.
Long story short, in the original National Assembly in 1789, people with similar opinions ended up befriending each-other and sitting nearby during the session, so at one point you had all those who thought the revolution ought to go further (give more rights to more people, decrease the power of the king or outright depose him, etc…) sitting on the left, and all those who thought the revolution had gone to far already and ought to slow down sitting on the right.
Of course, by this metric, the very concept of a republic is far left, but the idea is that no matter what system you’re in, once it’s established enough, wanting to maintain the status quo is being a centrist, wanting change that puts more power in the hands of common people is left wing, and opposing such changes or wanting to undo them to “restore order”, often concentrating power in fewer hands, is right wing.
This “power” I speak of was at the beginning just political power, but through the 19th century, the focus shifted towards economic power. Therefore, since the late 19th century, a right wing policy a policy that favors the rich, and a left wing policy one that places restrictions on the right and welfare policy for the poor to decrease inequality. This is why liberals were initially left wing, but neoliberalism is now mostly regarded as a wing ideology. These are policies that want a weaker state, but more rights/powers for rich individuals.
I am very surprised that there is only one legitimate reference to the original coining of these terms from the beginning of the French Revolution so far in this thread asking what these terms mean.
It’s not exactly relevant to a modern conversation, even if the history does highlight the Overton Window and how being the “left” or “right” is still different from being a “leftist” or a “right winger” as left or right wing is usually relative to local politics and “leftist” vs “right winger” refers to broad ideologies.
I can’t stop recommending the youtube channel what is politics. Seriously: it’s perfect if you’re represented by this meme.
It’s a simple series of videos that explains in digestible terms what right and left are and why everyone should care.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Those who wank off with left hand are left wingers and those that wank off with right hand are right winger. And none of them are gonna care about your privacy or freedom.
that helps, i guess im in the center then, since i care about the privacy and freedom
There’s a hockey joke in there too.
There is ?
Something about the Forwards. The Left Wingers and Right Wingers if you will.
Possibly a rugby joke too
You can just make up a name for whoever you don’t like and use it to dehumanize them. “Lib” is a popular stand-in when you don’t have even a tenuous grasp of global politics.
Left wingers want collective ownership of the Means of Production, right wingers want individual ownership of the Means of Production.
What follows from that are generally a bunch of interconnected, intersectional views. Leftists tend to oppose hierarchy, rightists tend to support hierarchy.
In regards to said ownership. It seems like…
…left wingers generally like to point out how the current individual owners arrived at their ownership and any injustices which paved the way. Often pedantically focusing on minor details and making a mockery of their own position.
…right wingers like to point out how anyone can arrive at the top, but prefer to discard evidence of the percentage of folks who are able to do it, instead focusing on exceptions as the rule.
Both are unreasonable in their own ways.
To expand, left wingers analyze current events as a historical process and as an actionable future plan, considering current ownership itself unjust regardless of historical context, though certainly not made any better when combined with it. I don’t really see many making a mockery of their own position.
Right wingers do falsely claim that anyone can arrive at the top, they typically do so through some failed idea of meritocracy.
Good additions. I actually struggled to find a good way to criticize the left because I am extremely left-leaning myself. I caught myseld writing a “cons bad” post and decided to attack the weaknesses I see in left-wing politics as a bit of a self-challenge, tho admittedly with only about two minutes of consideration. Judging by the points on the post my perspective is not very popular.
Tbh I should give this more thought, finding flaws in your own positions is a harder exercise than I realized. I’ll have to explore and flesh out these ideas a bit more.
In Empire (aka USA) as there is no true opposition, they’re the same picture, the same lobbyists and so on
Some people enjoy walking on the wings of passenger planes. For some reason Americans are really hostile about which wing is better to stand on while in flight.
Ah good for them . I personelly prefer sitting in the centre to balance everything .
You like to sit in the middle of the alley? I prefer a seat personally…
It’s actually a pretty good metaphor. People sitting on the left side and the right side of the plane are actually taking a seat whereas people sitting in the aisle are just in the fucking way.
Political “debates” are useless, but I always like to watch different conceptions from different countries.
When I see USA politics right-wingers have some speeches and actions that left-wingers have in my home country and vise-versa.
Like, leftwingers in my country usually attack a former rightwing president because he supposedly fomented immigration, specially illegal immigration. (Although, here rigwingers also have more hate against the inmigrant, just like US) 1 (sorry for the language, didn’t find an english version of it)
Or a former leftwing president that mobilized our army to Haiti to protect their democracy 2
Same with labels: In US “liberal” is a left wing label, in my country is a righ wing one.
Same apply in other countries, like I see Spanish news when “republicans” are the radical ones, usually left-wing, because they oppose monarchy, and the “republican” flag is a left-wing symbol for spaniards.
That’s why political labels are pretty useless too. Republican means literal nazi or revolutionary against monarchy depending where you are lol.
Left wing and right wing are like political vibes. They only make sense when you have more understanding of what the issues are. What they mean can change over time.
I think it’s easier to understand what the individual issues are and why people want them or don’t want them. Then you need to figure out what your ideology is and pick what things you want to support to further your political goals.
