Democrat, republican or centrist??

Post Reply New Topic

This is why I cant subscribe fully to the left.

In all fairness, there Are plenty of people who think of themselves as centrists who belong on the left. Don't give up on your bothers and sisters on the left just yet!

Equal rights certainly isn't something you'd frequently find associated with the far-right.

One thing to remember is that most talk about the "left" and the "right" is basically rhetoric and reflective of the speaker's own biases. Attempts at rigour and scholarship are comparatively rare.

Consequently, terms like "left" and "right" are used quite loosely. We can usually identify someone as "belonging to the left" or "belonging to the right" in broad terms, but there is a great deal of diversity within both these groups. We use "left" to variously talk about commitment to political freedom, economic equality, and social justice, while the "right" is used to talk about people with a commitment to discipline, economic freedom, and tradition. But of course, you can be interested in political freedom AND tradition, or social justice AND economic freedom, or discipline AND economic equality. (Note that in all cases I've tried to use terms that are generally positive and are probably how advocates of that ideology would be happy being described - they might not turn out that way in practice but that's the ideology underlying them)

I don't think either of the definitions you've given for the "far left" or the "far right" either accurately identify active political groups today, nor do they align with widespread colloquial or academic uses of those terms.

I think I already said, but the "neatest" explanation I've seen that maps onto the left-right axis is that the left are interested in flattening hierarchies, while the right are interested in preserving them. This goes right back to the origins of the term after the French Revolution and holds pretty well today. While a libertarian may have some progressive views, ultimately we say they're "of the right" because they're extremely relaxed about economic hierarchies. And while communists may enforce very strong social hierarchies, we say they're "of the left" because the whole underpinning of Marxism is to try and destroy the economic worker-owner axis.

The far-right, therefore, usually refers to fascists and similar. They're generally extremely relaxed about economic inequality, and may even want to further it. They want to give their nation a "favourable" position through autarky, which tends to be a bad idea but regardless is at odds with economic equality as well as economic freedom. They are in favour of rigid social hierarchies. They fanatically want to preserve traditional structures like the nation state. And they're prepared to enforce all of this using military might and by creating scapegoats (be they ethnic, religious, national, linguistic, or cultural). The whole of society, including the state, should be given over to service of their nation.

The far-left usually refers, as you suggest, to people who are so committed to the ideal of "economic equality" that they're prepared to sacrifice the economic freedom we associate with the free market. This ranges from authoritarians in the mould of Stalin, really nasty people, to people who are very nice but either have very strong alternative views about economics or who know that their ideas would lower living standards but think it would be worth paying if we could achieve some other goal (usually preventing some sort of impending catastrophe).

On commitments to rights - while people from across the political spectrum support equal rights, I think it is fair to say that until very recently, the push for equal rights has been very strongly associated with the left and the liberal centre. Even the liberal right tends to be quite bad at this. Take same-sex marriage, for example. While we saw some right-wing politicians commit to it at a late stage, the energy all came from the left and from liberals. Theresa May is one of the few right-wing politicians globally who can take any credit for same-sex marriage (and even then, liberal Lynne Featherstone played a much bigger role), and in her parliamentary career she has made several anti-LGBT votes (for example, voting against schools being allowed to provide information about sexualities other than heterosexuality).

Personally I find libertarian perspectives on this quite fascinating. Libertarians, generally speaking, would define themselves as committed to economic freedom (supporting business and low taxes), social freedom (e.g. gay marriage, abortion), and political freedom (free speech, open elections, etc.). They're generally classes as being "on the right" because they tend to talk the most about their economic views, which are often their most extreme views - they'll want to shut down whole services like state education, which most regular conservatives are absolutely fine with. Libertarians themselves try a couple of rhetorical tricks to avoid being associated with the far-right (fascists):

- Some point out the similarities between libertarian views and left-wing views from a hundred years ago, and so claim that libertarians are the "real" left-wingers. The most obvious flaw with this is that it ignores all the events of the past hundred years.
- Some try to claim that actually, the right wing is the wing of freedom. Again, this isn't really borne out by how other people use the words. People who self-identify as left-wing are rarely advocating for fascism (though you'll find notable exceptions on YouTube). And while people on the right also like to identify with freedom in Western societies, it would be difficult to make much of a case for it in general. Regardless, "everyone else is wrong about what the word means" is a dodgy philosophy of language.
- And of course there's the old "national socialism" trick i.e. Hitler was a socialist and so should properly be placed on the left. This, of course, falls right into Hitler's own rhetorical trap, trying to present himself as left-wing to make himself seem more acceptable to the population at large. Hitler was not a socialist, although his commitment to autarky is something that many of the worse socialists could probably get behind.

Fascists today still use this tactic "I'm a socialist btw" tactic; it's common to see someone who publicly identifies as a "classic liberal" or "moderate libertarian" or "centrist" spouting racist rhetoric. A great giveaway is "centre left classic liberal", which is incoherent. People are rarely genuinely "centrists" either, and when they are they usually don't identify as such - they'll tend to call themselves "social democrat" or "liberal" or "one-nation Tory" (unsure what the American equivalent would be, but maybe "moderate Republican" would do it). People who vote "third party" in the US aren't torn between the Democrats and Republicans, they tend to vote for fringe parties like the Greens or the Libertarians who are in no sense "in between". And people who do identify as centrists tend to have quite nationalistic views, often quite xenophobic, etc. In the UK, people who feel like neither of the major parties represents them tend to think that the parties are too socially liberal rather than too "far from the centre".

That ended up being quite long... short version: lefties are broadly committed to equality, righties are broadly committed to order (including emerging order).

Agree, I consider myself left in the original/historic meaning of the word. I'm in favor of equal rights and I'm pro second amendment.

Based on things you've said here on the past, I think it would be fair to define you as "far left" unless your views have moderated significantly in the last few years.

Economics: Far left by America's standards, probably center left by the world's because I'm not a hardcore communist. More a social democrat or market socialist type. My politics are best represented by people like Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang.

Social: Center left. I am left of center and largely agree with progressive causes but the virtue signallers tend to annoy the crap out of me and there are some issues like immigration where i trend toward the center and a more pragmatic ideologically mixed approach.

Foreign policy: For less intervention overseas.

I'm generally speaking a progressive. Pretty much your stereotypical "bernie bro", except i like basic income and also have an affinity toward andrew yang.

Economically, I'm center-right with the world, but slightly to the left by U.S. standards, mostly out of necessity. Socially, I'm all over the place, I'd say I'm probably moderate overall with a far-right and a far-left leaning on one topic each.

When it comes to this social justice/identity politics stuff however, I show more of my conservative side. Again, out of necessity. I don't belong to any of the "privileged" on the other side and I'm constantly harassed for my looks and it's left me pretty much a hermit because of it. Geez, this is turning into more an ASD topic than a political one so I should stop now lol.