[j4coh]

I guess it speaks more to his utter lack of social skills than anything how he has managed to convince both the far left and far right he is simultaneously an Elder of Zion super-Liberal enemy as well as a white supremacist fascist enemy. Comments supporting both readings keep popping up as replies and then get insta-flagged.

[orwin]

You have almost no far left in the US. You have extreme ID politics (that are distributed on the far right, the right, the "extreme center" and socdems) and a bastardized radical center[0] that include almost every politicians, even those who appear socdems or far-right. And here i'm using far-right to designate people who want to come back on minority rights, and i separate it from the right.

(Because when supposed "far left" organizations use the word "empowerment", i just facepalm, that's "third way" bullshit imho)

I think Musk doesn't really understand his politics, and that's what hurt him. He should be in the extreme center (with Hillary, or Bush), but he was caught in ID politics for a long time.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_centrism

[paulddraper]

> You have almost no far left in the US.

Overton window.

Obviously "left" vs "right" depends on the geography and time period. Otherwise, it becomes very hard to talk about politics.

[orwin]

Not really, historically far-left is the revolutionary left, the one you see organize global strikes (they don't believe in representation democracy, only in direct democracy, bottom up, so it is _very_ rare to see them participate in elections). Since global strikes are forbidden in the US, you'll have to define it by its negative: anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist always, anti-globalist sometime.

You have some groups who have a far-left affects in the US, but honestly since the BPP and the Rainbow Coalition they are either ideologically weak or ineffective.

[paulddraper]

So I can understand the distribution of this definition, what % of governments in world history have been far-left?

[orwin]

Practically, no government, at least not long-lasting one. Far leftist see the state (and government) as innately oppressive. So some will say Russia from 1917 to 1921, I kinda disagree. Some communes were far-left though (communes are a better echelon for far-left ideas in general), the oldest were the platformists in Ukraine, they fought against Germany (Lenine sold Ukraine to them, Ukrainian anarchists disagreed), then the Russian white army, then lost to the Russian red army. Way more recently, some far-left adjacent communes debuted in Mexico, because Mexico constitution allows them to exist, but they're still within a state (they mostly self-organized to repel cartels extortion). Think Israeli kibbutz.

Imho this is 'normal'. Far-left ideals do not seem to work at large scale.

[wqaatwt]

> only in direct democracy,

I thought far-left is typically vanguardist and doesn’t believe in any type of [real] democracy? Dictatorship of the proletariat and all that stuff..

[orwin]

Dictatorship of the proletariat is supposed to be in theory a transition period. In practice, once you get the power, you keep it.

Other on the far left will rather go a more local route, destroying state structure (as state is oppressive by nature) in the beginning to create a collective bottom up.

I'm not saying any of this is a good idea btw, it's just that far-left has fled the US a long time ago. If you aren't revolutionary, you aren't far-left.

[j4coh]

I am not in the US but thanks for the info.