Political compass memes eh? Good old times. Today we're gonna talk about the undermining of left wing parties by their vocal right wing members and the role of opportunist centrists in this landscape.
It is no secret: I see myself as a person with left wing politics; I believe in compassion, togetherness, love, democracy, fair taxation, redistribution of wealth, healthcare and education as a human right, and I condemn violence where it isn't necessary. If we were to map out the political compass that would place me somewhere here in the "Good Zone" on the bottom left:
Terminology: Left vs. Right, Liberalism vs. Authoritarianism
Of course I am just a silly goose with only my own opinion and I only see the world from my perspective, although I also try to assume the perspective of others. But I cannot claim to have all the wisdom of all the world. Nonetheless I can definitely say, no zone on this compass stands for love and togetherness as much as the bottom left, and no zone for as much violence and hatred as the top and right sides.
The political compass takes place on two dimensions:
- 1.
Liberal vs. Authoritarian - The common people have freedom to do what they please as long as they don't infringe on the freedom of others vs. The country employs surveillance and violence to control the population, and there is no freedom.
- 2.
Left vs. Right - Community and solidarity vs. Competition and everyone for themselves
Often, people try to project all of politics onto the single dimension of left versus right, but this fails to represent the nuance of politics in it's entirety.
Here are some common things associated with each of these four "directions"
Left:
High taxes, especially for the rich
Free and accessible healthcare
Accessible public transit
Labor rights: fair treatment of every worker, no matter how high the social standingnof their profession
Investing into society: Green politics, public services, social justice, i.e. everyone deserves basic human respect
Cheap housing
Right:
Low taxes, especially for billionaires and large companies
Discrimination: you can be born into a luckier class or into an unluckier class; you can be discriminated based on arbitrary biological markers that you didn't choose to have; bigotry in all its forms; sexism, racism, queerphobia, etc.
Poor people are not given any chances to rise into a higher standing class
Workers get exploited (see Amazon and UPS or the term "modern slavery")
Public services are underfunded or dismantled entirely. There is no usable education or healthcare. The lack of a public education will leave many children susceptible to their parents unquestioned propaganda. This makes right wing politics a dangerous self sustaining downward spiral.
Liberalism:
Freedom of choice of religion
Freedom of gender expression
Freedom of living your sexuality
Low barriers to starting your own enterprise
Low control of the country on your or your companies affairs
Low barriers to education
Freedom of information
No surveillance - everyone is assumed innocent until proven guilty
Authoritarianism:
No freedom of information - high reliance on propaganda
High barriers to forming any group, including a company, or god forbid an opposing party
High regulations on your every decision and action
High surveillance - everyone is suspected to be a criminal
What stands out to us about this: There are some things in liberalism that mesh well with left wing politics: many freedoms for the people and a wish for social equality. There are some things in liberalism that mesh well with right wing politics: focus on economy and low regulations on companies.
How does one become aligned on this chart?
How does one become political? That is a good question dear reader!! Have a snack on me!
Out of personal conviction due to experience: If you experience injustice toward minorities, you will probably have a reaction to it. Wait, that cop beating a child to death isn't fair! This will make you more liberal. Wait, assuming Jean Michel is a rapist because he is an immigrant isn't fair! This will make you more left. However, experiences can also drive a person who doesn't quite think things through to being more right wing. If they do witness someone from a minority acting out they will apply this to the entire minority, as if the actions of one individual speak for their entire demography. Propaganda exploits this mercilessly: because a few leftist individuals are resorting to violence to end the oppression from the right, Trump labels the entire antifascist movement as a "terrorist organisation", when this factually could not be further from the truth. Trump also mass deports legal citizens with migration backgrounds under the guise of deporting criminal immigrants because they typically vote against him. Anyway the point is: experiences, even if second hand through propaganda, shape your politics. It is however up to you to break through the propaganda noise, fact check everything, and make your decisions based on facts and not assumptions. Assumptions are a handy shortcut but also easily exploitable by fascism. Pay attention and think for yourself!
Indoctrination through trusted people: This happens naturally to a degree. Parent child relationships will definitely facilitate a certain kind of indoctrination. Your parents think they have it all figured out and want their child to thrive, so they teach their child what they need to know. Maybe your parents are right, maybe they aren't. Maybe it will even have an adverse effect if the child turns out to be the rebel type who wants to piss their parents off. But overall, your parents infulence your politics for sure. Now there is also a lot of talk about schools being indoctrination centers. If the school is correctly run, this is no problem. Schools are supposed to teach facts and these facts do lean a certain way. If society is productive for humanity, a good school will teach the lessons of togetherness. So yeah. It is probably no coincidence that higher educated folks tend to vote more left wing. Which is not to say that uneducated folks are stupid - but they do not have the same access to information and they are often working in structures that facilitate indoctrination by oral tradition. Which is very susceptible to a lack of fact checking. You hear your boss say immigrants steal your jobs, and you respect your boss, so you believe it. Even though the reality is that modern society would crumble without immigrants.
Being thrown into the chaos: Your authoritarian country is at war and drafts you into the army and sends you to the frontlines. You have been apolitical so far and have not given much thought to the world at a larger scale. Well suddenly you have a gun in your hands and need to kill people from another country. This can happen. Some people are thrown into their political views by happenstance and just have never seen a reason to question them. Apathy towards politics is something that the authoritarians will often exploit.
And last but not least: out of personal conviction: out of generally being good or evil. Some people are just genuinely evil. They are full of hatred. They want to hurt people. We can not assume that all people who disagree are like that. Some of them will be brainwashed into their position. Brainwashed people are not evil and must be saved if anything.
All of which is to say; some people are political by choice, by conviction, by happenstance, or because they never bothered to question the status quo. Some of them are genuinely evil, some not.
Ok that was a long tangent about the basics of politics. Now what about the shift to the right?
Different democracies use different systems, but in many republics we have what is called a representative democracy and we make use of formations of people called parties. The whole idea of democracy is giving power to the people and making sure that no one person extends their power to a degree that exploits others. After a lot of evolution over time we ended up with nations with different parties. These parties consist of many people who congregate together and align thenselves to specific points on the political compass. In theory, each party agrees to a common denominator of policies that they work towards together in unison.
The problems start when either or both of the following criteria occur:
The party gets unreasonably power hungry and is ready to abandon what they stand for just to manifest power.
The party gets so big that there is no common denominator anymore.
Now let's talk about two specific countries; One, Austria, the one I'm from and two, the US, the country which makes a point of making all their problems everyone elses problem.
In Austria we are going to take a look at the Socialist Democratic Party (SPÖ). Historically this party has always been left wing, and mostly neutral on the liberal vs authoritarian scale, and they have been very successful with it for a long long time. Their policies are what made Vienna into the worlds most liveable city many many times. Healthcare, education, housing. All of these domains were excellently handled, because left politics really cares about wellbeing of the people. Fast forward in time: the SPÖ is still a really big party but some people within the party start to embrace right wing talking points. Individual state governours start verbally bashing against immigrants. They still stand for cheap public services so now things start to get complicated. Individuals in the party start showing signs of moving toward the center between left and right. This sews discord within the party and their inner disputes starts appearing on public media. People notice that their party is losing their structure from within, and they also notice the party slowly moving toward the center. This makes them abandon the party. So the SPÖ is starting to lose voters. This causes the power hungry individuals to panic and stress. They turn to right wing politics in hopes to collect more voters there, and they betray their partys values and morals.
Now where do we go from here? The SPÖ is still home to many many left wing idealists and utopians who have not abandoned hope yet. But it is also home to a bunch of nazis who have betrayed their core voter demographic. The SPÖ finds no voters in this accursed political center. The nazis already vote the FPÖ and will never vote SPÖ. The conservatives already vote the ÖVP and have repeatedly shown not to particularly care about morals. So the SPÖ has no power to gain there.
What fascinates me here is that the right wing individuals within the SPÖ refuse to switch to a right wing party, no they have to drag their whole party over to hell, leaving democracy in shambles due to their own stubbornness.
So the next move in my opinion is as follows: The SPÖ needs to split into two parties. In Austria we have many parties and are not just limited to two. Looking at you, USA. A split could reposition the original SPÖ back with their core voters. And the centrist and right wing dissenters can see whatever they end up with. I think a split could work perfectly and reinforce democracy here again. Maybe a split of the SPÖ is exactly what is needed to defeat the right wing extreme FPÖ, who is currently seriously threatening our country.
Now let's talk about the US! They have much of the same problem except that they haven't had a socialist democrat party ever. The ugly reality is that right wing pundits and cultist figures have a massive influence over the Overton window. They shape much of the public debate about what is considered left and right. To a nazi, basic compassion and human decency already looks radical and extremist. US citizens need to work on fixing the Overton window. But I will say, good things are happening over there. Years ago Bernie Sanders paved the way for socialist democratics to take shape in the Democratic Party. And there is still a long long way to go until the US ends up in a comfortable properly democratic position. But the appearance of true socialist democratic like Zohran Mamdani is such a massive move in the right direction for the democrat party. The Democrats always were mostly centrist but now a left wing starts showing and this is exciting! I also notice some Democrats, much like some individuals from the SPÖ, are pushing to the right with calls for policies against trans people, who we must absolutely protect. Human rights die with trans rights.
Make no mistake, the US urgently needs to fix its fascist problem that manifested into Donald Trump. Nonetheless the developments in the Democrats seem overall positive. Who knows if they are fast enough.
The core message is: parties all over the world are turning away from the left and are now wondering where all the voters went. Well, dipshit, we're here where we always were. You moved the window, but you left us here! And we're ready to vote for you when you come back to us.