Liberty Alone

“Of course, if we take the political compass…”

Political Compass is actually a very cheap copy of the original two-dimensional political test, World’s Smallest Political Quiz, but Political Compass is made by people who aren’t actually understanging what they are measuring. Therefore they have also incorporated elements from The F Scale which is supposed to measure how authoritarian personality a person has by asking questions about whether one believes in astrology or not and about one’s taste in arts, but which isn’t really scientific, either.

Beside the original World’s Smallest Political Quiz I could recommend two variations of it, World’s Enhanced Precision Political Quiz and Politopia Quiz. (Unfortunately all of these three tests are using American political vocabulary.)

Tristan, I wonder if you by mistake deleted the wrong message. Jonny Wright asked to delete his first message, but you seem to have deleted mine. I didn’t think it was that offensive.

Hmm, I think I’d disagree, under your definition of the terms left and right wing you are quite correct in pointing out that fascists were anti free market (pro private corporation and state working together as one) and you are thus correct under your terms. But I believe left and right wing can be seen more in terms of sympathies and where those sympathies lie rather than in differing methods such as whether they are free market or corporatist. For instance the sympathies of communism lie with the proletariat (although in practise it only truly favours the bureaucrat) while the sympathies of fascism lie with those in traditional authority such as monarchy, church and state (although mainly the state as this tended to be turned into both a religious and monarchical organisation). My view of left and right is not so much based on your well defined methods but on which people those methods are aimed at helping, whether it is aimed at creating equality and fraternity in society or class and hierarchy. Under those definitions which I find portray the left and right far more accurately fascism is a thoroughly right wing ideology. It also shows why the old classical liberals of the 19th and 18th century were relatively left wing while the protectionist tories were right wing for surely under your definition the oppossite would be true.
P.S. Hitler was a National Socialist rather than a Fascist, they are different ideologies although rather similar.

[...] on from a post by Tristan Mills and a follow up by John Dixon I thought I’d offer my own perspective on the question [...]

Dividing opinion into any simplistic left/centre/right axis really depends on the question being asked at that moment. It is then used as the basis for extrapolation to manipulate people into creating associations between issues which don’t necessarily exist, because an assumption is made that the original questions are formulated from some external and objective political position.

As such using the description left/right/centre deemphasises and deprioritises the founding principles of individual opinion and obscures far more than it reveals.

The use of generalised left/centre/right descriptions is paradoxically and fundamentally illiberal.