Can you help explain to me what left and right means in politics?

[BellaTrixie]

Who are leftists and how can you know/spot when someone is a leftie

And who are the rights and how can you know/spot one

What`s the big deal with all of this? i don`t understand any of the conservatism or democratism or whatever..

I always see a ton of bashing and hatred towards the left, but who are the lefts? and what is it that they are doing that they are being so disliked, or vice versa

[Anonymous]

No, because it's not that simple, and the chart above shows why.

Communism and anarchism are really different, for instance.

The old 'left' versus 'right' comes from just after French revolution, and described where various parties sit.

The challenge is that there is more than one 'axis' that describes ranges of political thought. On a given axis, you can sometimes describe right versus left wing.

The most clear is on economic redistribution. "Right' on the economy means less government involvement, less redistribution, more capitalist. "Left" means more government involvement, and more redistribution of income. More socialist.

We can also look at how culturally open versus closed they are. In this case I will use the word 'progressive' to describe openness to gay marriage, sexual liberation, drug decriminalization etc., and 'conservative' to describe those who prefer more enforced social conventions, based on either religion or tradition.

Now in countries like the U. S. (also Canada, Uk, Australia, etc.). Parties need to appeal to a lot of voters, so instead of having 9 different parties with every possible combination of the above, you'd see 3 or more commonly two main parties. The 'right' party like the republicans was more economically capitalist, and more socially conservative. The 'left' parties like the democrats or in many countries the liberals or labor party, were more socialist, and more socially progressive. So those tend to be viewed as 'right' and 'left' in those countries. But that left/right breaks down when you stray too far from those parties. Fascist parties are typically culturally conservative, nationalist/nativist or race driven, and economically … fairly centrist. Libertarians are socially progressive and economically capitalist. Plenty of voters in the U. S. are socially moderate but economically socialist - think of traditional blue collar workers.

Those on the left in many countries act like racism or nationalism are 'right', but tbh, this is pretty absurd. If you look at the last French election, Marine Le Pen's party is often called 'far right' which means 'cares about race', but on every economic measure, was to the -left- of Macron. Essentially, the French nationalists look like Bernie Sanders + racism. So called "trump voters' are not very right wing by traditional standards...

[Sucram]

The left are the nice guys helping others, the right are the egoistic dudes looking for themselves.

Now, if you always give money away to the poor until they have as much as the working people, most would just stop working waiting for government money, and the government would collapse due to debts and less people paying into the system.
They want everyone to be happy, let immigrants in so they can get a part of the cake as well, free medical treatment, financial security for it's people, less pollution and other nice things for it's citizens.
That are the lefts. It's not good, because if you're always nice, others will abuse your friendliness, and walk all over you.

The left want to spread the money amongst all, reducing the discrepancy between poor and rich.

The rights value free market, if you earned money, you should get to keep it, if you were born rich, you get to keep it. If you have a monopoly on something and can push any competition into bankruptcy, that's fine.
No protection of the weak.
Right wing is better for a countries economy, protection from outside threats, for big companies. The biggest problem with the right wing is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The biggest pro ist that it will have a good, stable economy (until the poor are too poor and start revolting)

In the end, neither extreme is good, we need both, economical stability for the country and for all its inhabitants. That's a mix of left and right.

At the moment the left and the right drift further and further away from the center, more towards the extremes, so people are less at ease and pushed towards the extremes as well. It's a vicious circle until all hell breaks loose and then people start at the center again, only to drift apart again.

[Sucram]

The left want to make more rules what you can say and do, taking freedom away in exchange for more security, to make sure you get treated fair. They are overdoing it at the moment, resulting in more injustices instead of less.

The rights want to give you more freedom, and guns so you can protect these freedoms yourself. Again, the strong get stronger, the weak are fucked. More freedom, less security.

In short, the left are on their way to a police state, the rights are on their way to the wild west, everyone to fight for themselves.

[Anonymous]

left is progressive, right is typically traditional.

lefts are mainly lower class people, those who face discrimination, or intellectuals who want change.

right is the wealthy upper class, who are well off and hold very traditional values and want to earn more $ and shit

[Guardian45]

Attributing socioenomic class to right and left is false herring. For example, Kim Philby (left) was was wealthy and a commumist spy. Hitler (right) was dirt poor, and a Nazi fascist.

[Anonymous]

Leftists in the modern western setting are famous for pushing an agenda of racism against whites, and are themselves pushing for extreme identity politics and censure of others based on a fundamentally insane concept called intersectionality.

Intersectionality assigns people value based on thier victimhood status as seen through a comunoanarchist anti white racist lens.

The goal is that of undermining society though entryism, with a communist police state as the ultimate endgame. The whole concept is is called the long march through the institutions, and is a documented communist doctrine.

They've been pushing this ever since the soviet union fell and it became clear that revolutionary communism was a failure.

The real problem lies in the moderates who join the movement without fully understanding it. Sold on things like equality for women and minorities, and believing they can get it by tearing down white male conservatives.

The only problem with that, is that they are only trying to tear down the establishment, without explaining the impossible future state, because ultimately communism can't work. Time and time again we've just watched it devolve into dictatorship.

As for the white men and the systems they built being torn down, these are pro democracy, pro egalitarianism Conservative moderates being attacked.

The fact that the left leaves out is that hard working, honorable white male Christians, whatever else they have done, have given rise to almost all that is good in the modern world, and shared their knowledge. Yes colonialism and slavery were horrible, but that's not our only legacy, and everyone was pretty awful in the pre enlightenment era.

Moderate conservatives, just attempt to weather the storm with faith and hard work, and in the hope that logical common sense will win the day. And normally it would.

The funny part is when you examine who is funding the radical left, it's actually far right billionaires that don't give a damn about equality, and are the actual white oppressors the left pretends all white men are.

They fund those leftists to divide and rule.

When white men are always on the defensive, they forget to do things like unionize, demand better wages and working conditions, and a higher standard of living for everybody. See how the billionaire might like that?

It's just the rich trying to keep the pot at a low boil to control it.

[esotericstory]

The right and left emerged during the French Revolution during the Enlightenment Era. Left wingers called themselves liberal and are left because they sat on the left wing of the parliamentary building. Conservatives are right wing because they sat on the right wing of that building. Liberals had revolutionary ideas such as individualism, materialism, universalism, liberty, equality. While conservatives would want to remain unaffected by these ideas, in other words liberals wanted to get rid of the traditional way of life while the conservatives wanted to keep it. In the USA conservatives have their own meaning and definition, it changes from country to country but is always in the context of the history of that country.

Conservatives either base their belief system on nature and natural law, or on belief in god, or a mixture of both. Liberals typically form their beliefs according to what they believe should be a right. Womens rights movements for example have always been revolutionary and liberal while conservatives have typically opposed this. Conservatives want tradition and continuation of way of life while liberals want to change that to create equality or give more rights to people etc.

[Someguynamedbob]

That picture is so wrong, it’s not one line from left to right it’s a graph with four quadrants, lib right lib left authoritarian right and authoritarian left, when people bash the left and call them all commies they usually mean the authoritarian left when people bash the right they usually mean authoritarian right, right and left wing just mean free market or socialism based economy, libertarian and authoritarian are government control on everything else, ex North Korea is authoritarian left and they control every aspect of the citizens lives so they are authoritarian and they also control the economy entirely (no private business) so they are left

[Other_Tommy_Wiseau]

your description is wrong; there's left authoritarian, right authoritarian, left anarchism and right anarchism... after that, i didn't read

[Someguynamedbob]

I’m no it’s left libertarian and right libertarian, anarchism is just a extreame version of libertarian right but ok

[HereIbe]

First, the spectrum is all messed up. Anarchism is neither inherently left nor right. Indeed, anarcho-capitalism is becoming more popular. There is also Christian anarchism. Now, that being said, again, the rest of the chart is a mess. Who is the braindead idiot who created it?

Anyway, back on topic: What matters is not right or left. What matters is authoritarianism vs. individualism. Authoritarians want governments to be very strong and force people to "be good". The definition of "good" depends on the specific flavor of authoritarianism. Individualists want government to be small (or gone) and let individuals make their own decision. If we were all demons, we would need authoritarianism. If we were all angels, we could live under individualism. We are neither demons nor angels.

[Chromekids]

There is no left or right anymore. All of the old political ideals have gone out the window. Now it’s just the Braves vs the Yankees. The right think the left want the country taken over by monster due to being hippies. The left think the right are nazis who only want rich white men to have rights.

[wankiam]

i can tell you that diagram is utter bollox... all centrist politics does is allow the corporations to rule everything so no freedom there. true freedom comes when you realise the whole system is fucked and there's nothing you can do about it

[6942Dom]

That chart is so incorrect. Nazi stands for National Socialist German Workers' Party. And Fascism is another branch off of socialist next to communism. Monarchism isn't left or right. It's a complete separate system of governing.

[Sucram]

The chart is incorrect, but...
The name doesn't necessarily needs to reflect the real position of left and right.
The modern political parties that have similar ideologies as the Nazis are right-wingers.

A monarchy is completely different, but monarchism can be a party in a democratic system with the main goal to bring back said monarchy. This party has to be somewhere on the left to right axis, depending on the rest of their topics. But I don't know where exactly.

[6942Dom]

No, Nazi are hard left. They steam from socialism and are on par with communism and fascists. It's the left that hate races. That's why they are always trying to get the "races" (it's the human race, skin is ethnicity) to fight. Republicans fought and voted against slavery and freed the slaves.

[Sucram]

In Central Europe, where the Nazis were, former Nazis voted right after the war, Neonazis Vote right. Politicians of right wing parties are discovered regularly to be active in nazi groups. Tell me why, if it's supposed to be left.
Yes, it originated from a social party, but as I wrote, today it's typically right wingers that support these ideologies in Europe. What the Nazis stood for definitely wasn't socialism. They just used hate against minorities to unite the masses and get support from them. Hitler couldn't care less about religion or race, planned to get rid of Christianity in the end as well, he just used it these things to unite people in hate.
I see the same tactics from right wingers nowadays.

[Sucram]

I don't know, maybe in the US it's different, I don't know know exactly about the stances of republicans and democrats regarding slaves, I just looked it up, there wasn't anything definite on a quick search, found evidence for both, also that they supposedly switched ideologies at some point, but I don't see what it got to do with the Nazis in Europe, and I guess it would also lead too far in a random direction astray from the real topic.

[6942Dom]

Not here. Nazi and the KKK are basically the same thing. And many liberals are tied to either group. Senitor Harry Reid was a KKK high priest.

[6942Dom]

He was the Senate's Democrate leader for a while.

[PrettyRegular]

Difference between living free and living in a kindergarten.

[Jager66]

Your political spectrum pic is 100% grad A bullshit.

[Anon-ymous1]

Yeah-- it means nothing. Don't think about political labels. Just analyze evidence, use reason and logic, and make decisions for yourself.

[Shimy]

I depends on each country...

[Pamina]

That graphic makes zero sense.