This is a UK English -vs- US English thingee.

In traditional American usage, before all this newfangled Alt-this and Far-that made it all so confusing, 'liberal' meant to the left of *TheCenter* and 'conservative' meant to the right of the *TheCenter*.

OK, we got two more of these newfangled terms popping up here: 'alt-left' and 'extreme left'. However, it's pretty clear that these terms, like the term 'progressive', are simply more synonyms for the term 'far left'. I guess we all gotta be eskimos now with all these newfangled terms, and have like a couple dozens words for the same damn thing... that being for those so far anonymous fools in the 'far left'.

Trolly, politics is really a 10-20 dimension graph. You could fit it pretty well on 5 though. Here's what I come up with on two dimensions:



The merit vs equality axis is really most of the left vs right divide. The left tries to lump in the totalitarian right with the libertarian right, and smear them by association, which is of course absurd. The right does this too, but it's not as extreme as the left's latest attempts (e.g. Donald Trump, this forum).

The philosophical and empirical debates between these groups could be fascinating if they could put politics aside. In fact, much of the difference for a substantial portion of each group involves not competing values but competing claims and beliefs about reality.

was just going to post that xy image.. now let's figure out the z axis

What you got there is a warmed over rehash of c.1969 US libertarian-type propaganda, known as the Nolan Chart. Being eurotrash you might not be aware of this. Like the traditional linear spectrum, and the farcical 'circle', it don't make literal sense. Unlike the other two, it isn't naive, but was designed to propagate.

I think you misunderstand the purpose of this thread. It isn't to come up with some kinda taxonomy that accurately reflects reality. That's not a reasonable goal when discussing shiz like 'far left'. The purpose is to allow those who actually use such newfangled terms to describe them in their own words. The purpose is to generate some kinda Rosetta Stone.

For example, in US English the term 'progressive' has had a pretty settled usage for about the last 100 years. Above is what today's Wikipedia article has to say. It's a work-in-progress of course, but currently we have the newfangled terms 'far left', 'extreme left', and 'alt-left' all being synonyms used to describe peeps who want to attack political machines, trusts, and quite likely are prohibitionist.

Feel free to add more information and data points.

I have no idea what this means. I did it up myself in five minutes in OneNote based on my own views. I think the axis/dimensional clustering approach is the only way to accurately approach political classification, including "newfangled" words. But I'm very ignorant of political science.

Ok, carry on. Interesting thread. Hopefully we get more viewpoints.

Political terminology does not change because of national differences for reasons which should be obvious.

All such threads like this are essentially people sounding off in ignorance.

I think Trolly's idea is enough people sounding on their ignorant views that we can all understand each other's ignorance better. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Uh, sure it does. A 'republican' in the us != a 'republican' in Ireland != a 'republican' in au. Being to 'the left' in the USSR != being to 'the left' in cold war us. Being a member of the Revolutionary Party in mx != being a member of the Revolutionary Party in China.

Uh, there is no official answers. When some dude posts 'Far Left', he isn't wrong. If he means something, that's what he means. You can ignore him because he isn't using the textbook definitions from whatever textbooks you prefer. Or... you can give him an opportunity to explain what he means.

Words mean what everyone wants them to mean...yeah that'll work. Forget about the English language and just pull definitions out of your arsehole.

Isn't this exactly the same mistake you think progressives make about Trump, Milo, and conservatives more generally? You have SJWs way up in the top left corner, leaving no room to differentiate them from much more real leftist totalitarians like Mao, Stalin, Chavez, or Kim Jong Un.

Well yeh, that's how words work. Words are pointers to ideas. ASCII strings don't have innate meanings. Sorry about that.

Besides not understanding how words work, I suggest you step back a bit, and look at a bigger picture. People can know something's wrong, know what's wrong about it, and know what they wanna do about it... but have no idea what that wrong is called, know how why it's wrong is described, etc.

Now, one thing we can say for sure about our friends who whine about the 'far left' is they aren't bookworms. They don't have advanced degrees in comparative political science, or whatever. They are also likely poor at spatializing and math, if we are to believe ToothSayer's Nolan Chart, as "far left" directly implies a linear (left-right) and continuous (near-far) spectrum.

That all being said, if they mean something, that's what they mean. What's the harm of letting them use their own words as they wish ??

This is a good observation. It would be good to better define the social justice left and the alt-right. I think there is a branch of the alt-right who are clearly white nationalist, but how large and influential I do not know. I also think there is a branch that are just basically kids reacting to being called bigots by "SJW's" for asking perfectly ordinary questions and not automatically agreeing with the answers given.

That said, I don't think all of the social justice left are "SJW" or should be classified in the same area as Maoists, but there are some who I suspect should.

Really? Like whom? I think some leftists would agree with Mao's economic ideas, but very few with his totalitarianism (I can't think of any, but I'm not as familiar with actual leftists as some).

I don't know if you've read much of Jonathan Haidt's points of view on the social justice movement, but he's a moral psychologist who has for years studied a lot of the differences between conservatives and liberals. He has some good Ted talks and here's one on that subject.
https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_h...nd?language=en

Regarding the social justice movement, he also has a lot of interesting thoughts.

http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2016...onathan-haidt/
Edit: Btw, I hope Mat is reading this, because this is similar to the type of crap many of the P regs keep trying on him, calling him and his father, and Mason bigots, not-so-veiled threats about how bad this would look from the outside, driving off/banning posters they disagree with, always trying to get everyone to bend to their will this way. Pretty ugly stuff.

Awwww the poor white men can't make racist comments anymore. Where are the Soviet Bluecaps when you need them?

Yep, that's a pretty good caricature of the arguments coming from that side of the issue.

I agree with a lot of Haidt's criticisms of the illiberalism and lack of intellectual diversity on college campuses and especially in the social sciences, but the Halloween incident at Yale is not even close to Maoism. Did the students try to kill their political opponents? Did they prevent these powerful (in the academy) professors and administrators from writing op-eds and making public statements? Yelling at some professors and administrators because they don't abide by their speech codes is kind of dumb and I hope those students are embarrassed by their actions as they mature, but come on. Small potatoes.

Mao killed tens of millions of people, destroyed a significant portion of the cultural heritage of one of humanity's greatest civilizations, and created a system of government that still oppresses millions today. These are not the same thing.

Right, they're not killing anyone. Neither are those white nationalists and trolling kids on the alt-right, are they? I don't know if you need to be killing people to be aligned with Nazi or Maoist ideals (alt-right and sjw, respectively). We're trying to place them on a chart, and I'm arguing there are extreme factions in each movement who probably approach those extreme ends.

MissileDizzle (a good little dizzle),

I'm grunching but I think Thar Be Dragons should be included somewhere. Normally I'd say it's past the far-beyond-far-far-like-totally-far-right, and likewise on the left, but right now I'm thinking it could be smack-dab in the center as well.

Whoops, sneak saw a post above.

Apparently Foldn equates white-ethno-nationalism with so-called SJWs so-called whining about the micro-offensiveness of certain Halloween costumes.

That's nice.

You don't need to do the killing yourself, but yeah, you probably have to support it. If I met some person who called himself a Nazi, but just wanted a libertarian paradise where Jews and Gentiles lived together peacefully, then I won't care much. Maybe he's an anti-semite, but that is not what I mean by "Nazi." I want to be able to distinguish between the Nazis that want to kill/expel the Jews and those that just don't like Jews.

In this sense my guess is that very few of the alt-right are Nazis, although some do seem to be white nationalists (eg some of the "racialist" element). Of course, there's a lot of trolling on the alt-right, and it's hard to find clear representatives with a coherent ideology, so I could definitely be wrong about this.

I'm not disagreeing with you that there are people among the left that are Maoists. Kim Jung Un for instance can plausibly be considered a Maoist - and he is clearly a leftish totalitarian - but I don't know anyone even Internet famous that seriously defends him. You said there were some SJWs who you think qualify as Maoists, so I was curious to know who you're thinking of.

I don't know. The whole thing is utterly fascinating and often scary if you dig deep. It's hard to know what to believe or who to trust.

I recommend everyone just be highly skeptical of everything written about either of these movements right now that are shaping up to be named SJW's or the alt-right. I doubt either side can really be well defined right now. But it's fun to try.

^^^

Whelp, I just vomited in my mouth a little bit.

...and there is just so much weirdness and so many odd balls on the internet, it's really a wilderness. Or like the wild west, with few well-established institutions and norms. It's really difficult to understand how this virtual semi/full anonymity effects different personality types, and their views on the real world. Quite a tumultuous time, I'm expecting some good music to come out of all this!

FoldnDark,

Would you like me to tell you about small, fringe, yet modern far-left communist party members joining the military to have access to guns and military equipment for when/if the revolution goes down?