Originally posted by
[email protected] 25 2004, 05:23 PM
Hello I am new here. I browsed around read some topics and I can say this is the most intelligent gathering of people I've come across yet. But I do have some questions, like whats a ''right winger'' and ''leftist''? Any information you can give me on the views of this board would be great, thanks!
Welcome to Che-Lives, DarkAngel!
Here are the defenitions from Wikipedia.com
Right-wing politics
(Redirected from Right wing)
In politics, the term right-wing (or political right or simply on the right) refers to the segment of the political spectrum associated either with any of several strains of conservatism, or with opposition to left-wing politics. The term is also often used to characterize fascism, although few non-fascists on the political right would consider their own politics to have anything in common with fascism.
This use of the terms "left" and "right" originated during the French Revolution. See Left-Right politics for the origin of the terms and for a summary of what political views would usually be characterized as "left" and "right". Many don't find the left/right dichotomy helpful to discuss contemporary politics (see Political spectrum for discussion of alternatives), but it remains a very common view of the political spectrum.
Today, some conservatives who see themselves as defending society and its traditional institutions and freedoms from what they consider the irrational liberalism (especially in either the American sense of the word) or the repressive socialism of the left sometimes use the term "right-wing" in a positive sense. This active embrace of the term is probably more widespread in Europe and even in Latin America than in the United States. Some non-conservative groups also identify themselves as "on the right" (at least within some context) to indicate their opposition to the left, though such groups very likely dispute the left-right characterization altogther. The term is also often embraced positively by fascist and neo-fascist groups.
Leftists often use the term "right-wing" as a pejorative term: they interpret the right as defending the traditional power of aristocrats, royalty, established religions and the wealthy against that of commoners. In this sense, the term has also become associated with nationalist or racist movements which promote the interests of a dominant majority, or, in cases such as apartheid-era South Africa, a ruling minority, above the rights of other groups. The radical right has associations with fascism or with terrorism, just as the radical left has associations with communism or with terrorism. Of course, most groups on the left and right tend to vigorously deny any such linkages.
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Left-wing politics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
In politics, the term left-wing (or political left or simply on the left) refers to the segment of the political spectrum associated either with any of several strains of socialism, social democracy, or liberalism, (in the United States sense of the word), or with opposition to right-wing politics. The term is also often used to characterize the politics of the Soviet Union and other on-party communist states, although many (perhaps most) on the political left (even including some who call themselves Marxist) would not consider their own politics to have anything significant in common with those of these states. Similarly, most anarchists consider themselves part of the political left, but many others on the left would reject that connection.
This use of the terms "left" and "right" originated during the French Revolution. See Left-Right politics for the origin of the terms and for a summary of what political views would usually be characterized as "left" and "right". Many don't find the left/right dichotomy helpful to discuss contemporary politics (see Political spectrum for discussion of alternatives), but it remains a very common view of the political spectrum.
Ironically, the original "left" in 1789 were the largely bourgeois supporters of Laissez-faire capitalism and free markets. As the electorate expanded beyond property-holders, these relatively wealthy elites found themselves clearly victorious over the old aristocracy and the remnants of feudalism, but newly opposed by the growing and increasingly organized and politicized workers and wage-earners. The "left" of 1789 is in many ways part of the present-day "right", liberal only in the European sense of the word.
The inclusion of Soviet-style state communism in the "left" is particularly controversial. Many argue that (despite its use of socialist rhetoric), Soviet-style communism should either be viewed independently of the conventional left-right spectrum or be placed on the right as a type of authoritarian dictatorship. Critics of democratic socialism or of left-liberalism have often used the association of communism with Soviet-style politics to tar the political left has become tarred with what they see as the crimes of Bolshevism.
The European left has traditionally extended into Communist parties (including such hybrids as Eurocommunism), which have sometimes allied with more moderate leftists to present a united front. In the United States of America, however, no avowedly socialist or communist ever became a major player in national politics although the Social Democratic Party of Eugene V. Debs and its successor Socialist Party of America (in the late nineteenth and early twentiech century) and the Communist Party of the United States of America (in the 1930s) made some inroads. While many American "liberals" would be "social democrats" in European terms, very few of them openly embrace the term "left"; in America, the term is mainly embraced by New Left activists, certain portions of the labor movement, and people who see their intellectual or political heritage as descending from 19th-century socialist movements.
The "New Left" has had varying degrees of unity since its rise in the 1960s, and is a coalition encompassing several movements, such as feminists, Greens, some Labor unions, some Atheists, and exponents of identity politics such as Gay rights activists, minority ethnic and racially oriented Civil Rights groups, and some feminist groups. Many Greens deny that the "left" label provides is useful to describe them, and build their green politics on a different set of assumptions, usually asserting that local control improves on central control, and that only a few issues benefit from global unity. Nonetheless, when they have formed political coalitions, it has almost always been with groups that would generally be seen as, at least in some degree, on the left.
Rightists often use the term "left-wing" as a pejorative term. Many critics of the left have claimed that leftist movements lost their moorings after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Most leftists respond that they have never taken their inspiration from the Soviet model and rejoiced to see the USSR's system collapse -- as leftist writer Michael Albert put it, "one down, one to go". Certainly some parts of the radical left have associations with Soviet-style communism fascism or with terrorism, just as the radical right has associations with fascism or with terrorism. Of course, most groups on the left and right tend to vigorously deny any such linkages.
Some self-described leftists also subscribe to postmodernism and Nietzschean philosophies. (Most postmodernists see themselves as leftists, but most leftists are not postmodernists.) Critics on the right have generally seen this as an indication of the poorly thought-out, fashionable nature of academic leftism. However, many on the left say postmodernism makes no sense and offers no useful political