I'm a German and I wonder if the word "right-wing" is understood in the same way by US Americans as it is understood by us. Because of our past, we treat everything coming from the "right" as being totally wrong and stupid (which might be good or not). But I think in other countries, with another historical background, right-wing might mean just conservative, not skinhead racist. As far as I know, right-wing in China is even the cool new thing, that young people follow (because it is against the depressing government, which many young Chinese don't like at all). Tell me about how you understand "right-wing" in non-German countries, please!
I can understand Germany's aversion to anything "right-wing", but since they have even more recently dealt with the extreme left of Communism, I'm curious as to how you label your more centrist parties.
You are correct that right-wing generally means "conservative" in the U.S., but it can also just mean "fiscally conservative" since libertarians in the U.S. are often painted as "right-wing" even though they are socially-liberal/fiscally-conservative. For the most part, though, right-wing means fiscally and socially conservative.
I guess that you are raising another important point that "liberal" means different things in Europe and the U.S. "Liberal," in the classical meaning of the term, would most appropriately be applied to libertarians and to the social policies of American liberals. "Liberal" in the U.S. is generally "hands-off" with regard to social policy (many exceptions to that, of course) but tends to believe in having a strong government presence in the economy.
It's all a big muddled mess once you really start digging into it. A pretty large number of Americans actually self-identify as "Independent" in elections because they don't want to be associated with either major party (even if they usually vote with only one) and many Americans don't like to be seen as "going with the crowd."
My guess is that most Americans are actually pretty similar in their political beliefs, and that what you see from both of the more extreme sides in the news, is actually the exception. But I could be completely wrong on that.
I'd guess the definition of "right-wing" slides along with the definition of "moderate" or "center" (and also "left-wing") in any particular place.
If the US is in general more right-leaning than Germany, then "right-wing" should also be farther right in the US than in Germany, yes?
It seems careless to compress political opinions into a single dimension stretching from "communist" on the extreme left to "fascist" on the extreme right.
I'm guessing this simplification holds up as well as it does because of a tendency for people's beliefs to cluster according to the weights they put on a few basic ideas of morality (and perhaps more fundamentally, whether they consider those ideas to be moral issues or not).
Jonathan Haidt gave an interesting TED talk about this ( http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.ht... ). He named five 'types' of morality: Harm, Fairness, Ingroup, Authority, and Purity. His thesis was that people on the left tend to value Harm and Fairness far above the other three, while on the right people tend to value all five roughly equally.
The terms 'right-wing' and 'left-wing' are throwbacks to the French revolution where pro-revolutionary elements of the National Assembly sat on the left side and anti-revolutionary elements sat to the right. The terms have lost most of their meaning over the years and have come to be really just labels for one of two factions vying for control of a nation at any given moment. (There may be more than two factions, but multiple factions will generally coalesce into two coalitions. This is due to how politics generally works and is fairly predictable.)
If there is any meaning to the right-wing vs left-wing dichotomy, it's that 'right-wing' political philosophies use as their inspiration an idealized past, whereas 'left-wing' political philosophies use as their inspiration an imaginary future, but even this is a simplification. The truth is that political ideologies don't fall along an axis (or even two axises as the Libertarians claim) and trying to classify someone as either right-wing or left-wing is more often an exercise in politics than clarity.
I think there is some overlap between what you and I are suggesting.
If people on the right put more weight on allegiance to a tribe, and respecting authority, I'd expect them to be more inspired by an idealist past attributed to their tribe or authority.
If people on the left put more weight on ending harm and injustice, I'd expect them to be more inspired by an idealized future in which these evils are dealt with and solved.
I don't doubt that there are really many dimensions to political ideologies, but it seems entirely reasonable to expect a lot of correlation between ideas that seem logically orthogonal to one another.
This strikes me as similar to the ideas underlying hunch.com -- that they can ask you about your preferred operating system and brand of fast food, and then predict how you'll vote or what music you'll like.
I'm not going to say that there isn't an overlap, because I suspect there is, but you'll have to explain (for example) which so many forms of identity politics, which by definition oriented around tribal loyalty, considered left-wing causes? For example, feminism, minority rights, and class consciousness? (Your average proponent of these causes are simply expressions of the more general fight against injustice, which is true to some degree, but your average skinhead will say the same thing about his cause.)
In general, I'd say that your average right-winger and your average left-winger (in American politics anyway) care the same amount about reducing injustice and harm but have radically different understandings of what constitutes injustice and harm and that's where the difference is.
EDIT: re "I'd expect them to be more inspired by an idealist past attributed to their tribe or authority." In my experience, as often as not, they are just curmudgeony.
You might be right. I'll confess to a limited knowledge of this subject :)
As for which groups have more tribal loyalty... maybe there is something to be gleaned from which have an easy time keeping their members marching in lockstep, vs which have a hard time with that.
Well, after WW2 there are maybe 2 to 3 generations in Germany who are trained very hard to the idea of "right=fascism". There is no other right-wing in Germany. CDU (the governing party right now) is christian and thus quite conservative. We don't consider them right-wing, though. They are more like the right side of the center.
It is probably hard to understand if you never went to Germany. The word "right" itself has a bad touch to it (the meaning of "correct" has another word in German). It is already part of the language and the daily thinking.
Just some of us can think a little outside of that box (like me, but I also have a hard time accepting people stretching their right arm for fun or using plates with the German fascist symbols on it). Btw. I can't express that opinion (that Germans have a too simple opinion of fascism and the right-wing) in Germany in the open, because people will think I am plain stupid or maybe a fascist myself.
You are correct with respect to the USA - right wing here is traditionally just 'conservative'. Recently that's started being tinged around 'religious' as well.
Definitely not 'skinhead racist'.
As someone who could easily be described as "right-wing" in the USA, I'm curious how Germany would describe someone who is for limited-government, individual liberties, and reduced entitlement spending?
Or, also in the scope of "American right-wing," how would Germany describe someone who injects Christian morality into their politics?
> As someone who could easily be described as "right-wing" in the USA, I'm curious how Germany would describe someone who is for limited-government, individual liberties, and reduced entitlement spending?
Liberal.
> Or, also in the scope of "American right-wing," how would Germany describe someone who injects Christian morality into their politics?
Religious nut. Germans don't mix politics and religion. (Quiet piety is OK, but don't talk about it in front of voters.)
As to your second point, people like me can only dream of a day when Americans didn't mix politics with faux-religiosity. (I refuse to call the way that many Americans use religion in such a public manner as having anything to do with true piety or spirtuality).
What you describe is like the governing party in Germany at the moment. The 2 big parties in Germany are a little like the 2 US parties, although we have more parties which are just not that powerful. But both big parties are considered as central, one a little leaning to the left, one a little leaning to the right. The conservative/christian party is the more right-sided one, but nobody would call them right-wing.
The CDU is for limited government? And individual liberties took quite a beating. (The greens and FDP seem somewhat more in favour of indidivual liberties.)
> Because of our past, we treat everything coming from the "right" as being totally wrong and stupid (which might be good or not).
I noticed this, too. Especially jarring, if intelligent people present being left-wing as the only sane political choice for other intelligent people. While I couldn't care less about labels, my a contrarian self still gets a giggle out of explaining that my libertarian beliefs put me firmly into `right-wing' of politics without making me a neo-nazi idiot.
The part I didn't understand was that the slogan for the concert was "Never again communism - Freedom for Germany". Do I take this to mean that anyone opposing communism is considered a right-winger in eastern Germany?
Nope. Just if you say something like "Against Foreigners" you just go to jail. So the new skinheads (neo nazis, as we call them, don't know if that is an English word, too) try to act more political correct, while being in the open.
They're called neo nazis here in the US too. They're not mainstream right-wingers, but an extreme element on the fringes. I'm still missing the link between not wanting communism to return to eastern Germany and neo-nazism, though. I assume you mean that the slogan is a political misdirection.
Yes, it is meant as being misleading. There is no direct link between anti comunism and neo nazism. I just think neo nazis are against pretty much every thing, so I am also not confused to see them using anti comunism slogans. Their power and attention comes from being against something. What that something is, that is probably not so important.
In most of the world where the political "center" isn't as strong as it is in the US, the conflict between extreme left - the autonomen, who are primarily anarchist and to a lesser degree, communist - and the extreme right - neo-nazis is a more central part of the political landscape.
The same thing happens here in the US, where neo-nazis respond to groups like Anti-Racist Action by forming front groups with names like "Anti-Communist Action". Its just that both sides are far overshadowed by more moderate liberal and conservative elements.
Extreme right-wing is understood the same pretty much everywhere except maybe extreme right-wing itself.
Now here in Estonia and I venture a guess in pretty much all of liberal democratic countries (and most notably USA) right-wing IS actually associated if not equal with extreme right-wing, since there actually is no left-wing.
So when Obama or our centrist parties are labelled "communist" by teabaggers and such, you actually begin to understand that something is terribly out of balance with democratic systems of ours.
To make a statement like "the right-wing IS actually equal with the extreme right-wing" is to invalidate your entire argument and show that you can't differentiate people that you disagree with.
I'm surprised you didn't also cite his claim that "there actually is no left-wing" in America, and the implication in "Obama or our centrist parties" that the American left is really just the natural order of things.
All-in-all, the post you reacted to is a remarkable example of political blinders. Although I'm just guessing, it seems to be exactly what pundits are talking about when they refer to the Internet "echo chamber".
I can have a productive conversation with someone who disagrees with me, but understands the philosophies on which my ideas are based. Talking with someone who believes that there are no other legitimate philosophies is just wasting air.
I am very well aware that there is left wing in America, it just isn't represented in any meaningful way in political system in my and many others' opinion. Can you bring counterexamples?
Here's an article that is shaping my opinion on the matter from very respected "progressive" James K. Galbraith:
It may not be represented to the level that you would like it, but that isn't to say that isn't represented in any meaningful way.
In much the same way, George W. Bush is considered a "conservative", but there are many on the right that do not feel that he in any way represents their beliefs as conservatives. That is a fair argument to have about both Bush and Obama, but to claim that that means that the left (or by extension the right) is not represented is disingenuous.
It may not be represented to the level that you would like it, but that isn't to say that isn't represented in any meaningful way.
this, again, is not my personal opinion, but what I've read from political scientists.
you or me can indeed not consider Bush a conservative, but in any objective terms as studied by political science he is, and in the same vein Obama and the majority of Democrats are considered centrists, not leftists (or commies, as GOP would like to paint them).
this, again, is not my personal opinion, but what I've read from political scientists.
I question your use of the term "political scientist". I think you actually mean "political pundits", writers of op-ed pieces, etc. To say that someone schooled in the science of political interactions is taking a stand as to whether something is "left" or "right" really strains my credulity. The thing is, the definition of those terms -- as this thread itself demonstrates -- is a fuzzy concept that changes over time, place, and individual speaker, and doesn't have a scientific definition. Moreover, any scientist could tell you that the left-right spectrum itself is a hideously handicapped model of political values. In other words, you're never going to find a paper in political science making claims that "the political left believes that...".
Now, if you believe that those folks acting as foils against the American Right -- to wit, Pres. Obama and the Democratic Party -- are not themselves representative of the Left, can you answer two questions for me?
1. What are the ideas of "real" members of the Left that Obama and the other Democrats are failing to represent?
2. Since Obama and the Democrats clearly are in opposition to the American Right, what are those ideas that they (the DEMs) are fighting for in opposition to the Right?
That doesn't mean that we can't more or less precisely place one or the other political force onto it.
This is not "real" science of course, more kind of art, but if we conform to the rules of the game ("liberal democracy" it is called), then I think by polling large enough pool of political scientists/commentators/pundits/whatever-you-wanna-call-them we can arrive at pretty good consensus of where to place one party or the other at each moment in time, wouldn't you agree?
now to your questions:
1. What are the ideas of "real" members of the Left that Obama and the other Democrats are failing to represent?
the link to the article by J.K.Galbraith I gave above perfectly answers it, I think:
Whether your prime interest is housing, health care, peace, justice, jobs or climate change, if you are an activist in America you have known for a long time that this President is not your friend.
2. Since Obama and the Democrats clearly are in opposition to the American Right, what are those ideas that they (the DEMs) are fighting for in opposition to the Right?
Well, I'm actually not even so sure anymore that Obama is in clear opposition to "American Right" whatever that may be. I don't recall any issue during his presidency where he has stood his ground and haven't bowed to pressure from GOP, do you? Guantanamo, Afganistan, Healthcare, Bush Tax Cuts extensions and now Debt Ceiling deal. Not one of those went by unmodified by Tea Partiers, even when Democrats had supermajority.
So I clearly side with commentators who called Obama centrist right from inauguration. I mean, who even calls Obama leftist besides Tea Partiers?
the link to the article by J.K.Galbraith I gave above perfectly answers it
Galbraith isn't a political scientist. He's a well-respected economist, like Krugman, who writes political commentary. That's nowhere near the same thing. One may as well call Rush Limbaugh a political scientist.
One will also note that you complained that while America has citizens on the Left, these people do not have representation. You then went on to use Pres. Obama as an example of this. Let me remind you that the President isn't intended to be a representative of anyone: his job is to execute the decisions of the Congress and of the Courts. Thus, blaming him for what those decisions are is nonsensical.
I don't wish to actually debate the topics you list, but I'd like to briefly address a couple of them -- not in the interest of proving that I'm right, but to show that there really are (at least) two sides to these stories, and that the ideas of the Left really are being represented.
I understand that the Left feels betrayed by the recent debt ceiling deal. But you should understand that fiscal conservatives feel precisely the same way. Contrary to the hyperbole in the media, there really are no cuts to spending: by and large, the cuts agreed on are doing nothing more than slightly slowing the projected growth of spending. The decreases you'll see in spending next year are, quite literally, a drop in a bucket. To say that such a trivial compromise is caving in to the Right is disingenuous.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say that Obama (for which I'm substituting "the Democrats of Congress, since, as I noted above, it makes little sense to hold the President accountable for the actions of Congress) betrayed the Left over healthcare. I mean, we've now got a system in place that will guarantee medical care to everyone. This certainly is not the outcome that the Right wanted. Indeed, since it seems that a majority of Americans today dislike it (or at least the way it was implemented), there must be some force to the left of center that dragged it in that direction.
There is one area where I do think you've got good reason to feel betrayed, and that's all of our various wars. Back in 2008, the Democrats took a clear stand against our wars -- Iraq and Afghanistan -- and make all kinds of promises to get out. Yet today, we're still fighting, and although troop levels are lowered, there's really no actual end in sight. But, to make matters worse, Pres. Obama has illegally gotten us tangled in another war (in Libya), and Congress -- both the DEMs and the GOPs -- have done nothing to stop it.
On the technical side, how would I make something like this? Can you order these kinds of wash-once-to-change-message shirts? If not, what kind of ink would you use to DIY it?
Apparently, they printed about 50 shirts using different mixes until they got the desired result. It sounds like it's simply two layers of printing, the lower one using regular washing-resitant ink, and the on top using an ink that comes off in the washing machine - but not from simply getting wet (since that would have risked early discovery). It may be temperature-dependant.
Actually, it does work. I was working in a similar group (locally and much smaller) for some time. You can reach everyone with clever and impressive actions for a simple reason: they are impressive and resonate so much that even the "enemy" has to admit that they were impressed. You won't turn anyone, but you make sure that they know someone to turn to once they do. Its an offer to talk.
Considering that exiting the right-wing circle often involves ditching most of your friends, someone to talk is the most important asset "on the other side".
Exit are a left-wing group trying to steer people away from a right-wing group. Tolerance doesn't come into it. From the perspective of the left in Germany, street-level and youth movements for right-wing groups are a real problem. And this is a practical, pragmatic action.
Keep in mind the main goal was to spread the message (address & phone!) of an "exit" program for people who want to leave that scene. So those people who want to eventually leave know that they can get help. (It seems peer pressure is very high inside those circles)
From what I read that "attack" was a big talk in the German right wing forums websites... => people now know the Exit program exists => so it worked VERY well.
Not a monetary con, but giving them a T-Shirt that says one thing, knowing that underneath it is another contrary message...
Forget for a moment that we're talking about people whose beliefs we (presumably) strongly disagree with and imagine another scenario - say youth at a Democrats rally are given T-Shirts with Obama on them, take them home and find that after a wash they have a pro-T-Party slogan. I would think that pretty unlikely to change anyone's mind. They're more likely to be pissed off.
I can imagine the Exit people watching the concert and giggling at their clever prank. Cute prank, amusing, but as a technique for persuasion?
How many young pro-Obama democrats are secretly considering joining the tea-party movement, but are currently afraid to do so due to per-pressure and the threat of retaliatory violence?
The goal isn't to persuade or change peoples minds, but give people who have, on some level, decided that they want to leave the push and support they need to actually take the final step.
You still think that they wanted to 'persuade' or 'convince' people with this shirt. That's not true according to various reports.
On the other hand: I know _I_ would've giggled nevertheless, seeing people walk away with those.. That doesn't change the fact that the whole thing was a _success_ measured against the goals of the creators.
I think this would be the most bad ass guerilla marketing technique.
Say you are WePay - and you go to a Paypal event and hand out hundreds of PayPal shirts, which become WePay shirts after the users take them home and wash them for the first time.
Or, we can simply go to TeaParty campaigns and troll unsuspecting users there :)
