This pretty much describes the extreme left and right perfectly.

@freemo Mysterious stuff, the definitions of extreme left and right... won't find two people on this planet agreeing there

@admitsWrongIfProven Its usually only the people existing at these extreme ends who struggle to see the line where the extreme begins. Moderates on the left, right, and center are much better at it.

@freemo I find left and right to be hard enough as they are, without the "extreme".
It may have all started out with royalists sitting on the right, but from there a lot has happened.

@freemo Care to try defining it together or would that be too stressful for the evening?

@admitsWrongIfProven i can define it with a simple drawi g, give me a minute.

@freemo Sure. And i interpret this as "yeah, now is a good time".

So i started out with the historical meaning. I would guess Aristocracy is not your fancy, so let's go on to the concept of "conservative", which means "change things slowly and pay attention to not make anything worse", which is something claimed to be on the right. This, i would say, is a good concept most of the time.
I do not see it currently in any politics.

Left, that would be against the royalists, pretty indistinct. Generally associated with peoples rights, contrary to first the royals, then the rich.
I do not see that either in the current political landscape.

Now, before diving in any deeper, do you actually see any effective measures to either side in politics? Family values, peoples rights, any of the topics claimed by either side?

So, provided you don't say "but they do have values, everything's great", we would have to determine what we actually mean - political parties? What people on masto toot? It's not like it was all aligned in set groups.

@admitsWrongIfProven tha ks to horshoe theory we dont even need to define right or left to define if your in the extreme of either.

@freemo Well, this sounds very american, more focussed on positions than actual contents... horseshit theory i would say, or is there anything relevant to this theory? Pertaining to contents, not positions?

@admitsWrongIfProven you are the one who came in exerting extremism was hard to define, not me. We can debate left vs right too, its just making thwt distinction is not relevant to my post.

@freemo Sorry, i don't understand. Maybe i should back off and let you define what you mean.

@admitsWrongIfProven for the record i find that the extreme left and right are almost nonexistant in most coubtries outside the usa, so there is less need to define it.

@freemo So you are not interested in defining left and right? Totally ok if it is so, just asking, will back off if requested. Would love to see that graphic in any case.

@admitsWrongIfProven I am fine with defining left and right as a fun exercise. I just want to point out it is a tangent not particularly relevant or neccesary to frame the original post.

@freemo I can see that, but if we would devolve to horseshoe theory level, i don't see any meaning to it - position fights are just senseless occupation therapy imo.

@admitsWrongIfProven the original post is about political extremismand how it is at odds with objective consensus... any form of ideological political extremism is inevitably going to take this form, tbats just common sense. It also forms the core of horse shoe theory since when you become that radicalized it your ideals really dont matter since they are so absurd you wont ever approach them in the first place and instead devolve into contrarianism as the core.

@freemo Just my point, if people go to that length... sorry, had to flake out for a moment there.

I see now you had a thing about extremism and didn't actually talk about left an right - and i was infatuated with the idea of defining left and right, which would be a hard thing to do, and as such interesting.

The point you made stands - if anyone is extremist and stops to listen to reason, that is very bad. Never wanted to contradict that!

If you would be interested in trying to define those difficult words, the offer stands, but no bad feelings if you want to leave it at "your point was correct".

@admitsWrongIfProven

So extremism side in terms of politics is easy to Identify... If someone has a set of ideologies where anything that is even slightly different, introducing nuance, is "the enemy" then you are dealing with someone on the extreme end.

If you are on the left and see centrists as evil as the right, and even the moderate left as evil, then you are probably an extremist.

Basically you just need to look at how well defined the walls of the silo is.

So yea extremism is easy to identify... now right vs left I think that is harder because you can be right and left in different categories its not an all or nothing thing.

For example communists, socialists.anarchists, progressives. are all generally agreed to as "left" though having quite a bit of ideological difference. Generally I'd say the common denominator of the left vs right is the left focuses on ensuring individuals power is mitigated (to some extent) and that the power and resources need to be spread out and not allow the natural processes of of concentration of power in a small group of individuals.

Therefore common themes among the left are redistreibution of power and wealth and/or the prevention of centralized power (as is the case of anarchism, which even sees the government as bad).

the right on the other hand seems to see a strong centralized power as ok, so long as it comes about through natural power-dynamics. Generally prefering free-markets and seeing accumlated power in a central place as both natural and good.

the meanings of right vs left in a political context have changed over time. originally it referred to the two opposing wings of the revolutionary french legislative assembly. on the left were all the folks you cited, but also including laissez-faire/free-market capitalists such as bastiat. whereas on the right you had the monarchists, aristocracy and those interested in centralized power. repositioning laissez-faire onto the right (ie. authoritarian) side of the spectrum is not only historically incorrect, but against the ethos of laissez-faire entirely.

@toiletpaper @freemo Hmm, the toilet paper has a point, what is commonly referred to as non-extremist left was never in there... it was about the old rich vs. who wants to get rich.

So we have neoliberal (left, they call themselves), monarchist as "centralized power" and, not featured, "decentralized power" or anarchist, never in a center of power. Of course, to the last, anarchists don't want to be in power. A view i can subscribe to, but would not sacrifice the discussion we (freemo and me) started to.

@freemo, do you acknowledge that right is associated with centralized power? I thought i read that in your posts, but i want to be sure. Is left vs. right maybe the question of centralized power vs. decentralized power, with decentralized power far off because decentralizing it forbids taking power without giving up your conviction?

@admitsWrongIfProven

modern liberal and conservative are not exactly the same thing to me.

left vs right is one dimension on a multi-dimensional political spectrum (where other dimensions re things like personal freedom vs authoritarianism)...

I would define a modern liberal as someone who is on the authoritative-left of the spectrum, a conservative is on the authoritative-right, a libertarian is generally on the personal freedom side of the spectrum, and they are split between left-libertarian and right-libertarians.

@toiletpaper

@freemo @toiletpaper Of course they are not the same thing, they are two parties struggling for power - but do you see any fundamental differences? Would anything change for most people if the one side or the other won?

How would the people against centralized power (without a clear party) factor in? Would anything change if they were ... not really in power but preventing power? What would be the result of that?

@admitsWrongIfProven

> Of course they are not the same thing, they are two parties struggling for power

No i wouldnt say they are parties either.. while it is true the republican party is ont he conservative side of the spectrum, and the democrat party is on the liberal side, they are not synonymous. You can be liberal and against every principle of the democratic party, just as you can be conservative and disagree with every principle of the republican party.

@toiletpaper