GollumMar 14

The radical left

https://feddit.org/post/27090117

Show threadCanadaPlusMar 14

Now ask him if Christianity should play an official role in the German government. Or if he objects to people practicing cultures other than German in Germany. Both of those would be radically far-right in North America, but are pretty standard in Europe.

What’s going on here is that people tend to arrange themselves along a left-to-right line, but where exactly in the multidimensional space of viewpoints that line cuts through varies dramatically between times and places. It even inverts - your Prussian conservative would have taken a much dimmer view of free markets than a contemporary to their political left.

Show threadJubilantJaguarMar 14

My mental model of the right-left dichotomy:

  • “right” = cynical + evil
  • "left" = good + naive

Anything more complex and the labels hit their limits.

Show threadCanadaPlus

I don’t know. I mean, it’s pretty easy to find uncontroversially evil people on the left as well. Jim Jones had some pioneering takes on racial harmony, and did not get along with the right of his day. Or cynical people on the left - ask Lemmy about if climate change is going to kill all humans in the next few decades.

The term itself comes from the French revolution, with the revolutionaries sitting on the left. Since then, you’ve had ship of Theseus things happen where a classical liberal might end up on the right, because they follow a chain of intellectual forerunners tracing back to someone opposing the French revolution. In other cases some kind of analogy is made, like the Japanese wartime government being right-wing because many of the dynamics were shared with the European right of the day. Or how Cato the Elder was “conservative” because he promoted a traditional way of life, even if that tradition was being bi and not reading.

All in all, left and right might be great names, because they’re directions that always exist, but depend completely on where you’re standing.

Mar 14 at 9:40pmWeb
Show threadJubilantJaguarMar 14
Good exposition of the problem.