[amradio1989]

I’m starting to think political definitions only have use as propaganda. Definitions are definite, yet political definitions are anything but.

In the US, much is made about “the left” and “the right”, but we can hardly describe what these things mean. “The left” is simply more liberal than I, while “the right” is more conservative than I. On what issues, no one knows, because we hardly ask.

The point, I think, is simply to label the opposition while hiding any commonality or points of agreement. Useful for propaganda, but useless for substantive political discourse; you know, the kind that underpins a healthy democracy.

[bilbo0s]

the kind that underpins a healthy democracy

To be fair, this kind of presupposes that all actors in a polity actually have as their goal, "healthy democracy".

Pretty sure that's not the goal of most people in power nowadays. (At least in the US it's not the goal of people in power.)

[Jensson]

> “The left” is simply more liberal than I

What is "liberal" here? Seems like that term has gone obsolete as well, what Americans call liberal is not what I call liberal, to me they are pretty authoritarian.

[bee_rider]

“The left” and “the right” are, IMO, useful terms in the sense that they are explicitly meaningless (unless you are in charge of some seating arrangements in France).

“Liberal” and “conservative” are not good words for describing the teams in the US. These words have more conventional meanings. Liberalism is a political philosophy based mostly on personal freedoms. Conservatism describes how fast you are willing to change the system. The US was founded on Liberalism, and most Americans would probably be best described as liberal conservatives.

[vmchale]

> These words have more conventional meanings.

Kondylis disputes the typical interpretation of "conservatism." Historically it was a backwards justification of feudalism. Easy to see why someone would talk up "history," "tradition" when they're at the top of the social order and an upstart comes on to stage.

[OkayPhysicist]

Left and right are useful labels, and while the exact border may be somewhat ambiguous or perhaps arbitrary, they do identify a useful spectrum. Ultimately, left vs. right-wing thought boils down to views on hierarchical power structures. On the extreme right, there's the view that hierarchies are good and natural, and should be reinforced and expanded. On the extreme left, there's the view that hierarchies are evil and unnatural, and should be abolished. In between you have a whole spectrum of views like "some hierarchies are a necessary evil", "some hierarchies are good", etc.

Individual issues sometimes unambiguously map onto this spectrum: Supporting slavery (a pretty obvious hierarchical construct) is further right than wanting to abolish it, for example. Other times, issues occupy some certain space on the spectrum, with opposing viewpoints on both sides of it: a left-leaning individual might oppose free-market Capitalism because it forms a hierarchy of wealth, while a further right-leaning individual might oppose Capitalism because it gives the "wrong" people higher standing than they should (according to some other "better, more natural" hierarchy).

[vmchale]

> only have use as propaganda

Propaganda helps you ascend to power and then constrains what you do with that power.

Ultimately if you want to look objectively, you have to look at the concrete, at history. But propaganda matters: history would unfold differently without it!

[jrm4]

:)

Definitions are rarely definite if we're even discussing them.

[dijit]

I'm not sure I agree here.

There are "right wing issues" and "left wing issues" and there is friction between them.

What concerns me most is political "slurs" where everyone forgets the meaning of the term but constantly throws it around as if it's just a bad word. Then the conversation just goes off the deep end as soon as they're invoked.

"You're a wokie" or "you're a fascist"; as if either of the people using those terms even knows what they're referring to primarily, they just decided it's bad and because the person they're talking to is bad they must be whatever bad word I have in my vocabulary.

PS: I will say that "woke" has a more concrete definition than fascist to many, but I don't want to be accussed of being for (or against) any particular side when writing this comment, and I can't come up with many off the top of my head that the right wingers use against the left wingers... so, sorry.

[jrm4]

"Woke" is perhaps the freaking platonic ideal of what this article criticizes.

I'm black. It once was just a mostly fun little word that meant "Hey man, are you paying attention to the world around you?"

And today it is completely without concrete meaning. For the left, it's kind of whatever, because it's responding to what it is for the so called right -- literally nothing more concrete than "what I don't like right now that might be associated with any group possibly considered a minority."

[amradio1989]

Let’s talk about it. What are “left wing issues” and what are “right wing issues”?

We can probably agree on what an issue is. But I’m not sure we have any idea what right wing or left wing are.

How far right is right wing? And right of what, exactly? What about the left? Where is the center point?

Here’s a fun one. To whom belongs the issue of racism? Is that a right wing issue or a left wing one?

It’s neither of course. It’s a human issue. And you have victims of racism across the entire political spectrum who care deeply about it. Yet discourse would have you assume it’s a “left wing” issue, when it’s anything but.

[1718627440]

> "woke" has a more concrete definition than fascist

Fascist is a very concrete definition, as it is a comparison to a concrete existing historical movement. It's kind of the same as with Nationalsocialists. It is a term for a very concrete party, but is sometimes used as a slur.