The “political spectrum” as we usually see it is specifically designed to make it seem like a free-market libertarianism is the best political system. It puts “social” on the horizontal axis and “economic” on the vertical axis. Of course, you realize that economics is just another kind of power (and that all power is ultimately enforced with violence), which means that a simpler left-right political spectrum actually makes more sense.
Here is where Bidenism and Trumpism might fall on that simple left-right political spectrum:
(Those dots are meant to represent the average position of the political group, and they are only a guess.) But why is it, then, that conservatives say that support of Muslims is leftist even though conservative Islam is obviously very conservative?
As we move to the authentic left, we see more democracy — power is shared among more people — until we get to the very left edge of the political spectrum where everyone shares power. This means all kinds of power, not just the right to vote, and not just economic power; certainly that would include access to powerful tools like cryptography and firearms. That far left position could be called “Total Democracy”.
There’s certainly a lot of inauthentic leftism going around; for example, the Soviet Union seemed to really be trying to move their society to the left, but after taking a giant step to the right (which may be unavoidable in the execution of a revolution), only managed to move a little to the left overall (from a monarchy, to a single-party authoritarian state). In this essay, I’m not talking about Soviet-style not-leftism when I say “left”; instead, I’m talking about the authentic left.
There’s really just one way to be authentically on the left — you have to share power with all kinds of people, and you have to protect minority rights regardless of the kind of minority. (The only exception is that you can’t support the right of people to move the society to the right — this is the Paradox of Tolerance.) The differences between leftist positions are — in my opinion — all about how to move society to the left.
There are, however, an infinite number of ways for a rightwing government to be organized. You could have a government by white men. You could have a government by Christian leaders. You could have a government led by the tallest among you. You could have a government led by Muslim leaders. All of these ideas require a hierarchy of power, with those most closely fitting the criteria at the top of the hierarchy.
Here is a way we might visualize that:
Of note is the fact that you can have a far-right government organized under the hierarchy of “liberalism”. This would just mean that the power of individual people would be determined by how much money they have, and not by any other method. People might have theoretical rights, but their ability to enjoy those rights would be completely determined by how much power they have, and power would almost always be determined by money. Imagine a society, for example, where you are told you have the right to pursue happiness, but a huge percentage of the population don’t have enough money to even survive, much less find it; that would make the right to the pursuit of happiness an empty joke.
To return to the case of the Soviet Union example, you can imagine a “theocratic monarchy” track and a “single political party” track; they jumped from one track to another, and only moved a small bit toward the actual left in the process. In the end, more people had power, but they never really made it out of authoritarianism. Now, they’ve jumped from the “single political party” track to the “kleptocracy” track. That was more of a hop than a jump, and they’re doing the same things they did when they were Soviets — for example, poisoning political opponents and imprisoning them. (It’s almost like the problem with Russian communism was the Russians rather than the communism.)
Here that process is visualized on the multi-dimensional political chart. Blue represents the Russian monarchy, red represents the Soviet Union (circa 1930), and green represents the current Russian political system. You can see that the Russian system really hasn’t changed that much (except in terms of monarchy and Christian theocracy) and the current Russian government really represents a return to normalcy for Russia. Against Marx’s advice, the Russian revolution skipped capitalism as a societal structure, so “neoliberalism” doesn’t need to be included on this chart (in my opinion); the dimensions are qualitative and culturally determined.
Like the Russian example, most hierarchies are multidimensional. The people in charge identify multiple characteristics that they think make people superior. This is typically the case with far right governments — they are white supremacists, but they’re also male supremacists, hetero/cis supremacists, and so forth. They usually support some extra-cruel version of a particular religion as well (note how the American right loves Russia now that Christianity is being used as a cudgel in that society). No specific hierarchy is required. If you imagine each of these factors of supposed superiority being on their own track, we can kind of imagine where the Bidenists and Trumpists might fall on those various tracks. For example:
Those dot locations are pretty much a shot in the dark, so please don’t take them too seriously. As I look at it, I’m thinking that the locations for the dots for “Liberalism” should probably be swapped, for example. The far-right claim that they love capitalism is based on the fact that they 1) don’t understand what it is, and 2) grab on to anything they think will grant them power or make them appealing to the average person in their society.
Let’s get back to the odd problem of conservatives saying that anyone who supports the existence of Muslims is a leftist, and that Islamic extremists are leftists. To truly be a leftist, you must support the existence of everyone, and so you would obviously support the existence of Muslims (and their religious freedom), but you would also oppose Islamic extremists when they agitate for an Islamic state, or persecution of various types of people (women, LGBTQ people, or Christians). You’d have to be able to see past a simple dichotomy regarding not just Muslims, but many different people.
Leftists also support the existence and religious freedom of Christians in the same way. In contrast, rightwing atheists like Ayn Rand find Christ’s teachings to be abhorrent because they promote the ideas of loving thy neighbor, tolerating (and even forgiving) people who trespass against us, and disdain for the wealthy (just to name a few). Naturally, conservatives think all atheists are leftists, but there is a huge amount of political variation among atheists, just as there is a huge amount of political variation among Muslims or Christians.
Islamic extremists are not leftists. Though they do tend to oppose capitalism, they oppose it because they see it as being opposed to their preferred hierarchy — not because they think a hierarchy is bad. In the Iranian revolution, the left decided to side with those wanting an Islamic state because they thought they could work with them to a greater extent than the other side, which was the liberal (western capitalist) faction. As soon as the Islamic extremists had control of the state, they purged the left — but the western capitalists would have done the same thing.
This multi-faceted reality, and the idea of having solidarity with people who don’t necessarily have solidarity with you, are not ideas that conservatives embrace. They want things clear-cut, with every person either in their camp or the enemy camp. They assume that both Muslims and rich Democratic party donors are leftists. They call pantsuit feminists “Nazis” — not because pantsuit feminists support the capitalist hierarchy that creates enormous poverty and suffering, but because they find effective ways to force conservatives to treat women as equals.
An egregious example of conservatives assuming all their enemies are leftists is Black Lives Matter. BLM just wants law enforcement to stop murdering Black Americans at a far higher rate than white Americans (though, they’ve also vocally opposed the unjust murder of white people by law enforcement). Although there are leftists supporting BLM and within BLM, most people participating in BLM protests are probably not leftists. If you consult with some Black Americans, I think you will find that they are just as likely to have conservative values (like supporting capitalism) as any other group of Americans, and just like most people, don’t want to be executed in the street.
Let’s look at the curious fact that “conservatives” (Republicans) label the left edge of the Democratic party as “communists” even though they are clearly centrists who want to balance the power of the wealthy and the power of working class people. We might call these people (Sanders, Ocasio, etc.) “Democratic Socialists” or “Social Democrats”. They oppose the power of the very elites that conservatives seem to be angry about — so why do conservatives hate them so much? I’ve fixed the previous chart (putting Democrats further to the right on “capitalism”) and added Democratic Socialists as green dots.
There it is! Conservatives don’t call them “communists” because Democratic Socialists want to balance the power of the wealthy and the power of the working class. They call them “communists” because Democratic Socialists are opposed to all the other hierarchies that conservatives care about. This chart also explains why the United States are doomed. The opinions of the voters themselves are split between the blue dot positions and the red dot positions — almost no one is a centrist if you consider all these political dimensions. Centrists like Democratic Socialists look like dangerous extremists to both parties; to the right wing, democracy looks like chaos because it disposes of their beloved hierarchies.
I really hope this clears up a key area of confusion regarding the relationship between the left and various other cultural and political positions. Until we all have a shared, basic understanding of the world — and especially the meaning of words — it’s pretty hard to find common ground. Again, all those dots aren’t meant to be in precise locations; the purpose of the charts is just to help you visualize the differences between the various dimensions that have previously been crammed together in a way that makes “left” vs. “right” extremely confusing.