I've written before about
a widespread misunderstanding of the complexity of left and right wing positions
(like here).
Today I want to try to visualise those complexities with a 3D graph
representation. When people talk about left and right wing, they really
shouldn't be making their statements without defining the type of left and
right they mean, because there are (at least) three considerations that need to
be made: economic left and right, social left and right, and collectivist vs. individualist
left and right.
Consequently, I think a more accurate measurement of socio-political society would be a 3D graph like the one I have pasted below, with the Z axis determining a place on the spectrum of collectivism (top) vs. individualism (bottom), the Y axis determining a place on the spectrum of economic left and right wing, and the X axis determining a place on the spectrum of social left and right wing too.
As you can see, I've put a red dot to determine where I would stand, generally speaking: economically right wing (because markets are the primary driver of prosperity), individualist (because liberty and freedom are the primary drivers of progression), and socially left wing (because I believe in togetherness, kindness, tolerance, inclusion, and helping the most vulnerable).
(It's only supposed to be an illustrative model - it's obviously not a fine-detail representation).
Now even if you can get people that far so they think about different types of left and right wing, there's something interesting that plays out in people's perception of left and right wing politics - something I began to think about a bit in a little more depth after I heard Douglas Murray introduce the proposition (although Douglas Murray's consideration was fairly general as he didn't break down the categories of left and wing). The proposition is this. If you start from a fairly moderate position on the social left-to-right spectrum - say somewhere perceived as near the middle - you find that the shift to the extreme right (a fascist dictatorship) is a shorter journey than the shift to the extreme left (a communist dictatorship). It looks something this:
Social left and right spectrum:
Far Left -------------------------------------------------Moderate-------Far Right
In other words, once you veer away from the moderate position to the right, there aren't many perceived steps to take before you fall foul of a dangerous, totalitarian collectivist mentality. If you get brainwashed into Islamic fundamentalism or extreme ethno-centric nationalism and xenophobia, the walk from relatively intolerant moderate to a 'send all immigrants home' or 'Death to all kafirs' mentality isn't that far, because once you tap into a hateful collectivist mentality you are already in touching distance of the kind of extremism that dehumanises people and sends masses to their grave.
But things aren't the same with the walk to the far left: the journey is much slower, and much more Machiavellian. It ends with the gulag, but there are many more steps in between, because shifts to the left disguise their maladies in a more insidious way. They might start with virtue signalling, like endorsing redistributionist policies, bogus missions to save the planet, safe spaces and extremist rallies promoting what has recently been coined 'wokeness' and 'cancel culture', and end up mirroring the dystopian nightmares portended by Orwell, Huxley, Burgess and Bradbury - but they will take more time to be found out than those steps to the right.
A similar thing is true with the economic spectrum of left and right, it looks similar, as does the collectivist-individual spectrum, but perhaps more like this:
Economic left and right spectrum:
Far Left-----------------------------Moderate------------Far Right
Here the shift to the right involves mostly positive things like a freer market, more liberty, greater freedom of ideas, but you only have to champion those qualities a bit more passionately than the moderates and you're soon accused of being a heartless capitalist with no concern for the poor and needy. This is a misconception, of course - for as anyone well versed in economics will know, a freer market, more liberty and greater freedom of ideas are the primary qualities that benefit the poor and needy - they are the answers to most of the problems the economic left are trying to solve.
On the other side, the creep leftwards, if unchecked, will end up with the old Soviet Union or the modern day Venezuela, but along the way it will present itself as a benign, good-intentioned striving towards social justice and the narrowing of the so-called 'unfair inequality' gap. Like a Trojan-horse, the collectivist, authoritarian dogmas that produce murderous far left ideologies more easily creep into public discourse than the authoritarian dogmas that produce murderous far right ideologies. We appear to have a more acute radar to the dangers of extreme right wing politics, which seems to mean undue suspicion of right wing economic sentiments, which are really a synonym for increased growth, progression and a higher standard of living for all.
And with the collectivists versus the individualists, we find that collectivists on the social left and the right want to demarcate everyone into groups as the primary identifier and pit one group against each other through tribal factions based on power and class, and deny that competence and intelligence and hard work and creativity play the primary role in successes. Moreover, what's often unnoticed is that it's very difficult to align yourself with a group (race, ethnicity, political, regional, national) and not want to be in conflict with others, because tribalism is built on a 'them vs. us' mentality, and is hundreds of thousands of years old in our evolutionary legacy. And as those who've read it will know, Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, perhaps better than any book, explores how the totalitarianisms of both the left and the right are cut from the same cloth of impulse.
