[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."

[ziml77]

It has been obvious to me for a long time that the people using the term woke now don't even have a concrete definition of the term, but I was still blown away by the sheer stupidity and obliviousness of one of those right wing people posting about how they are not woke, they are awake [to the world around them].

[1718627440]

I use the term to describe the need and moral entitledness of modifying language as a reaction and treatment to injustice and to the intended normalization of every sexual practice existing.

As such I don't see these two examples as contradicting.

One side uses woke (awake) as acting to the world in "ingesting" it in language, while the other side thinks of being awake in seeing that the world doesn't actually work that way. They both think they are "awake", they just disagree how and what "the world" is.

[jrm4]

This is either an epic troll or an excellent bit of evidence in favor of my point. :)

[1718627440]

> This is either an epic troll

That wasn't my intention. :-) I just wanted to point out that it is not "sheer stupidity and obliviousness", but a useful distinction.

> It once was just a mostly fun little word

I think part of that issue is, that the term didn't exist here when it only meant that. Was it a "in black subgroup" thing? Or was this known to a wider audience?

> excellent bit of evidence in favor of my point

Can you explain this to counteract my obliviousness? So you see ziml77 as an example of left and me of right, or what?

[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.

[thrance]

Right wing issues: deport brown people, remove rights from minorities, cut essential government programs, undo social progress, give tax breaks to the rich, spend government money on military contracts.

Left wing issues: socialized healthcare, tax the wealthy, unionize workers, equity before the law, social progress.

[dijit]

Right wing issue: National Identity, community building, trust and safety (high trust society), belief that governmental power corrupts (though obviously they weigh this against the trust mentioned earlier and put a lot of merit in armed forces and police).

Left wing issues: Equity and fairness, individual identity but mandatory collectivism and the belief that government is likely to be more fair than a charity or company (I am on this end of things, but I can sympathise with the other).

Its sort of ignorant to throw up your hands here, at least in the US the stances are pretty well defined. The abortion debate is a good example where one side believes fully that its murder, and the other side believes fully that forcing people to care for children they don’t want will lead to misery (I am personally on this end of the spectrum so forgive any bias in my wording).

All issues are human issues, thats like talking about COVID and then bringing up Aids because they are both “human conditions”: these points are disperse, and everyone thinks they know whats best for society.

[1718627440]

Well spoken.

I consider myself on the other end of things, but I experience, that for people with an active political stance, it's pretty obvious who is who (unless somebody is in propaganda mode).

Unless you are on an extreme side, you can always sympathize with the other side for most issues, which is why we are able to find compromises and vote on laws at all.

As for the example you mention (abortion), this is one where I can't sympathize with your side. To me living is a human right that is never moral to be violated, especially for personal selfish interests. Yes, I do consider being too poor for a child or not wanting a child to be selfish.

This:

> forcing people to care for children they don’t want will lead to misery

to me seams like a strawman. That's why we have baby flaps and foster homes for centuries. Even at the end of the roman empire people have brought babies to monasteries, because they didn't want to care for them. Yes they are more miserable then having good parents, but no amount of misery of the living is worth justifying a kill.

[giardini]

1718627440 says " no amount of misery of the living is worth justifying a kill[i.e., an abortion]."

So abortion is murder for you, and the ban against murder is usually based on the Bible's Old Testament for people in the USA (stemming from the 6th commandment "Thou shalt not kill.").

Assuming so, yet another specific religious belief has been dragged into our politics despite the fact that we have a clause in our constitution "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,...", the First Amendment, allowing freedom of religion.

Seems we have a basic problem here. I disagree with you for a number of reasons:

- I don't believe in any spiritual entities (e.g., a soul, God, Jesus, Satan, St. Peter, angels, djinn, souls, sin, etc.)

- for morality I have the universe and my fellow men as the elements, no more, so saints, souls, angels, devils, gods and heavens fall away from reality for me,

- And so my backstop is the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do to you.").

Man has progressed. Much of what you claim would be fine except we now have

- birth control,

- largely safe (for the mother) abortion, and

- I am unwilling to tell a woman that anyone other than her has the right to make medical decisions about her body.

IOW science has rendered the traditional morality no longer applicable TO A CERTAIN DEGREE. That does NOT mean that science has rendered traditional morality irrelevant b/c evolution still applies and will dominate future generations:

- Humans will still be driven to have offspring,

- it remains safest to avoid unnecessary sex (b/c of disease) and

- it is best to be careful of the partner you choose b/c (s)he will contribute to the offspring's genes and (s)he will likely tend your offspring.

In summary, we got a problem: you have a religious belief (abortion is murder, perhaps based on another religious idea - that of a soul) that I do not accept. For me it's like the song says:

Queen - Fun It Lyrics

"Hey everybody everybody gonna have a good time tonight

Just shakin' the soles of your feet

Everybody gonna have a good time tonight time tonight Time tonight

That's the only soul you'll ever meet."

[1718627440]

I don't think most people use religion to define basic rules in the society nowadays. I don't think I have indicated this in my comment.

> we now have

> - birth control,

> - largely safe (for the mother) abortion

What does the fact that we can do something has to do with its morality?

> - Humans will still be driven to have offspring,

Demography in modern countries begs to differ, but that's only tangent to the topic.

> anyone other than her has the right to make medical decisions about her body.

Yes I agree. Everyone can make decisions about anything that is his/her as long as it doesn't affect others. Do you accept DNA to determine boundaries of bodies? Does the body that stops living by the medication have the DNA of the mother?

Would you find it moral, if your mother had killed you?

PS:

> spiritual entities: Jesus, Peter

Yeah I guess the Romans killed some non-physical ghosts.

[zzo38computer]

In my opinion, many people who are pro-abortion or anti-abortion are not very good at it due to various things. They call them "pro-choice" and "pro-life", but often they are not real pro-choice and not real pro-life. (It is better to be a real pro-choice and a real pro-life.)

Sometimes, they attack people for having an abortion or helping someone else to do so, but that is not a real "pro-life". Sometimes, people only care about human birth, not any non-human life or how well the human life is otherwise, and that is not a real "pro-life" either. Sometimes, they will not consider if the life of both the mother and child are at risk if they do not have an abortion, so that is also not a real "pro-life".

Sometimes, people will try to bring someone to abortion clinics to force them to have an abortion even if they do not want to do, and that is not a real "pro-choice". Or, a doctor or government or someone might try to force or coerce an abortion or not abortion, and either way it is also not a real "pro-choice". If the woman wants to take the risk of having problems if it is not an abortion, that is her choice to do or not to do.

(Fortunately, not everyone is that bad at these things. But, these are examples of some of the bad stuff that results from either approach.)

There are also other issues involved when it is involved with legislation, such as: excessive spying, lack of free speech (and protests), etc. But, these can happen whether they are pro-abortion or anti-abortion. There is also the case of encouraging abortion if it is legal, and in my opinion, that would be immoral.

I do consider abortion to generally be immoral, although the alternative might be (and often is) even more immoral; for this and for other significant reasons, it should always be permitted, although should not generally be encouraged. However, people should understand the consequences, and hopefully the doctor might be able to help (if they are unbiased; unfortunately many are biased one way or other way, and I have heard of both situations).

> 6th commandment "Thou shalt not kill."

The ten commandments are not easily divided into ten, so sometimes they are numbered differently. Nevertheless, "thou shalt not kill" is one of them, whether or not it is specifically the sixth (although in my opinion, it should be considered the sixth, since it seems the most reasonable way to me to number them; this is the Orthodox way, and is unlike the Catholic way). Also, it might be better written as "thou shalt not murder".

> I don't believe in any spiritual entities - for morality I have the universe and my fellow men as the elements

I think that the philosophy of the ethics and of abortion does not require belief in spiritual entities, although many people do, I think that it is not necessary to do so. Whether or not you believe in spiritual entities is not the point, but rather, that you should not try to use them to justify things in ways that are not necessary to assert their existence like that in order to do.

> I am unwilling to tell a woman that anyone other than her has the right to make medical decisions about her body.

I agree (until the child is born, it is a part of her body, and she has the right to her own body), although, like any medical decisions, they can be informed by doctors.

> Humans will still be driven to have offspring

Yes, and it should be. However, some people don't want to, which is acceptable, and considering the current situations of the world (with too much human population), I think is good that some humans don't want to.

> it remains safest to avoid unnecessary sex (b/c of disease)

I agree, although not only because of disease (but it is also one possibility). This is better than abortion, if you do not want to have children. (However, situations are not always ideal, for various reasons, and this is one of the significant reasons why I think that abortion should be permitted even if it is not encouraged.)

Of whether or not abortion is murder, in my opinion, abortion can be murder but generally isn't. For example, if someone forcibly kills someone and her unborn child in order to gain an inheritance or something like that, then that would be murder of both the mother and the child, I think. However, something does not necessarily have to be murder to be immoral or unethical.

> Yes, I do consider being too poor for a child or not wanting a child to be selfish.

I think Quran says "do not kill your children for fear of poverty", and I agree with that, too (whether or not it has to do with "selfish" is another question, but I agree with "do not kill your children for fear of poverty" whether it is selfish or not).

[thrance]

> belief that governmental power corrupts

You can't be serious man. Not a single right winger bat an eye when Trump received a $400M plane from Saudi Arabia. They all hate muslims but they hate accountability even more.

> mandatory collectivism

What's that supposed to mean? I don't know of a single left wing politician in the US that advocates for collectivizing anything.

[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.

[dijit]

Well, Wikipedia has multiple[0] definitions and argues that it is contested (as does encyclopedia britannica[1]) and people throw it around like candy[2]; so idkwym;

From EB;

> There has been considerable disagreement among historians and political scientists about the nature of fascism. Some scholars, for example, regard it as a socially radical movement with ideological ties to the Jacobins of the French Revolution, whereas others see it as an extreme form of conservatism inspired by a 19th-century backlash against the ideals of the Enlightenment.

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

[1]: https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism

[2]: https://x.com/esjesjesj/status/1786062622531477707?s=46&t=rr...

[1718627440]

This is arguing about the nature of the thing that is described by the word fascism, not arguing about what the word fascism refers to.

[dijit]

Completely irrelevant.

It’s used as a catch-all slur to mean “evil thing I don’t agree with”, they can mean any of the competing definitions or none - I doubt if they could come up with what they actually ascribe if challenged and not in front of a computer to look up one of the definitions to find something objectionable within that.

Which is my entire point really, not really getting what yours is here though. That it has a clear definition? I mean, I don’t think it does but it doesn’t matter. It’s not clear in practical use what people refer to.

[1718627440]

It does have a specific meaning referring to a historic entity, when its not used as a slur. That's what I wanted to point out, see the sibling comment for clarification.

I don't see this to be commonly used as a slur except maybe from people, who also use capitalist as a slur. Most times it is used to describe parties or policies that have national and populist agendas, so I think its not a stretch to compare them to fascistic agendas.

[timr]

> Fascist is a very concrete definition, as it is a comparison to a concrete existing historical movement.

If, by "very concrete definition" you mean "party name invented by Mussolini" [1], then yes. Otherwise, absolutely not. I can't tell from your comment which you're trying to imply.

Using the word in reference to a modern political movement is essentially just a lazy, dumb way of flinging a slur that invokes someone bad in history.

[1] Per Britannica: "[Mussolini] took the name of his party from the Latin word "fasces", which referred to a bundle of elm or birch rods (usually containing an ax) used as a symbol of penal authority in ancient Rome."

[1718627440]

> party name invented by Mussolini

Yes exactly that's what I meant with "concrete existing historical movement". I thought that would be unambiguous, what else do you thought I've implied?

It is however not exclusively used as a slur. What I hear more often from the mouth of politicians, is calling something fascistic, which means that is compared to it, so saying that X is using something from the playbook of the fascists.

This is why I am glad, that calling someone a Nazi is sue-able in my country. This means that we now have court decisions both for that someone is not a Nazi, it was a slur, and that this was punished, and also that someone is indeed a Nazi and is officially documented as such.

> as a symbol of penal authority

And this is actually a good description of what fascism stands for. I'm often astonished of how good self-labels actually are in defining and arguing against ideologies.

[timr]

Yeah, calling something "fascistic" is at least more honest that a metaphor is being invoked. I still think it's lazy, because most of the time, the people using the word have no idea what specific thing they're talking about is "fascistic", nor could they name a specific "fascistic" trait if you challenged them to do so. Again, it's mostly a lazy way of saying "I think this person is evil, but I cannot articulate precisely why!"

I personally think the laws against calling someone a "Nazi" are antithetical to free speech -- and invocation of "Nazi" is always useful to quickly illustrate that you're arguing with an idiot -- but lately my eyes are getting sore from rolling so much, so I have sympathy for such a law.

[1718627440]

> calling someone a "Nazi" are antithetical to free speech

This seams to be disagreement what free speech is. Here an insult is never free speech, it is simply an infraction on "the personal honor" of someone else (although nobody uses this old-fashioned term). It is however free speech, if the claim is actually true (same for defamation). This is why now courts are arguing whether some "insult" is justified.

I think this is a very good thing. Ultimately laws and judiciary exist to be a formalism for personal fights. This is intended to make violence unneeded, so that we can have trust in the society. This is why the police has a monopoly on violence: Not because they are special and to be trusted, but because less people being violent is always better. If someone is calling you a Nazi, you might be tempted to punch back. This will lead to violence on the streets. If how ever you have a way to settle this legally, then you are much more able to walk away proudly and have satisfaction in calling your lawyer.

> invocation of "Nazi" is always useful to quickly illustrate that you're arguing with an idiot

This is a bit more serious here (Germany), since being a Nazi is punishable, so you're accusing someone of a crime.