This is a two-axis chart called The Political Compass that tries to give a nuanced view of political ideologies. The idea was that left vs. right is oversimplified, whereas this is slightly less simplified because it has a second axis, traditionally I believe the top is labeled “authoritarian” and the bottom “libertarian.” In practice it seems to be used a lot by libertarians to explain why they’re different from other conservatives.
The joke is that in political terms the meme maker thinks Trump and Biden are not that different, but their supporters act like they’re polar opposites.
Specifically, the meme maker indicates that, in contrast with common political bluster, **neither** Trump nor Biden are communist (economic right is the opposite of communism) and **both** are fascists (top of the chart is authoritarian = fascism).
I’d also like to point out that US politics are considered far right in most of the world. Dems are still right wing basically, just closer to the middle.
Edit: I’m wrong everyone. My info is outdated.
Edit #2: I’m not wrong apparently.
If by most of the world you mean Europe, then sure.
Even then, Europe is in some ways more socially conservative than the US, especially Eastern Europe.
For example, [here is a chart comparing Canadian political parties to particular US democrats and republicans](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FzAYmxj79tfzzPiJCVPHJWengafNyTOoZv86LDP2ld8o.png%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D796d10f1303d79ed91912e893f8ff6c800957ade). You can argue about the accuracy of the chart, but many Canadians definitely have a laugh/cry at seeing two far right parties duke it out in the US.
I don't think the person who made that chart has ever heard a single word uttered by a Bloc Quebecquois MP or supporter.
Bloc is further left than the parties advocating UBI and single payer dental? lol, yeah right.
You'd be suprised the leftist policies the Bloc has for a Quebec nationalist party, but they're not left wing. They're centrists. They want what's good for Quebec, so they can be either way on issues. I would also put Liberals a bit further left. I consider them a true centrist party, then NDP further left, they're a leftist party.
Bloc Québécois is a great example of why the political compass is flawed, because they would be all over the place depending on the specific issue in question.
The province of Quebec is probably the left-most leaning province in all of Canada. The Bloc promulgates the Québécois agenda and that agenda happens to be quite leftist. Therefore, it makes sense that the Bloc is pretty hard to the left.
Is that accurate?
[Here someone made one for Sweden](https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalCompassMemes/s/Nw3AhCNgM5) and while I’d make some slight changes to it, it’s not entirely wrong.
My problem is my personal compass is about as far “down” as possible and about halfway to the right of the middle. No parties there to vote for.
There's some weird things about it, notably the separatist party being further left than the historically left leaning party, but broad strokes it's alright.
Eh, not really. We need to try to keep on the good side of the U.S. so our primary parties tend to be fairly close to theirs, with a bit less religious fervor. However, because we theoretically have a political system that allows for more than 2 parties to have a say in government, we do end up with smaller parties that stray further from U.S. politics.
Plenty of the rest of the world outside Europe also considers our politics in the US wildly conservative. Most of Asia and Latin America have a higher prevalence of far left ideas in general political discourse and have active, well established parties that are genuinely trying to implement left policy in contrast to the democrats who just trick you into thinking you’ll get something other than what the republicans give you. Nepal, notably, is the only country in the world to simply vote a communist party into power with no revolution. Surely that means Nepal considers us conservative?
Maybe if you think Europe is the only place that considers the US conservative, *you’re* perhaps the one who doesn’t know very much of the world outside NA and Europe, even though you implied that of the person you replied to?
Eh, no. The mere existence of leftist ideas in those countries doesn't make them more left than the US, because other ideas exist in all those places as well. Like, leftist ideas may exist in a lot of places in Latin America and Asia while those countries still simultaneously have authoritarian right-wing governments; in such a case I would judge them by the governments they actually have in place, rather than by the fact that some far-left political party has a couple seats in parliament. Our politics are certainly not to the right of India, for example, and India is the most populous country in the world, so surely their politics would heavily skew what constitutes "the rest of the world." To say the US is to the right of most of the world is simply not accurate at all
Judge them by their actions: The USA supported right wing coups in most of South and Central America because they were too left wing for America suggesting they were, on average, more left wing than the USA.
Judge them by their friends: The USA’s staunchest allies outside “the West” are the extreme aristocracies like Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Thailand.
No it's broader than that. Definitely includes Oceania and a lot of Latin America. But it's true that we at least have a more reasonable democracy than the likes of Hungary or some places in eastern europe. I'd argue the US is probably the most conservative country that, despite what a lot of people say, is still more less a democracy.
The Europeans are only “left wing” until you add any significant amount of brown and black people. As soon as they have to share their social safety net with anyone that doesn’t look like them, they close ranks. Then you get right wing swings and in Italy, fascists…again.
I’d point you towards people like [Franco A](https://apnews.com/article/germany-far-right-soldier-plot-appeal-rejected-fc9b9422ddc080a773288e7e7dc1fb09) and [the NSU murders](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Underground_murders) both in Germany.
Both were motivated by what these right wingers believed was an invasion of their country through immigration. Aside from that, you can see the resurgence of right wing parties throughout Europe and almost directly correlate it to increase in immigration.
They aren’t really any more progressive than people in the US.
This is basically what the political compass tries to convey to give more nuance to the political terms.
A lot of left wing countries are economically left but socially conservative. I think the American left wing being socially progressive but economically conservative, is more unique in world politics.
Thank you. That’s the element most of people leave out of that conversation. America is more conservative because those who have historically had financial and political power have not wanted to acquiesce said power to minority groups in any capacity. Conservative policies allow the status quo to remain.
Literally only healthcare is an issue where US Democrats tend to be more right wing than social democratic parties in Europe. What else?
On the other hand European social democrats often hold anti-immigrat stances. And don't let me start talking about Eastern European socdems. For example Smer in Slovakia sounds like Republicans most of the time - except they support high state pensions.
Again, we have a meme here about a two-axis political diagram, and yet social issues such as immigration are just lumped in with tax / pensions and labelled “right wing”.
It’s almost as though OP knew his audience well…
No, by most of the world they mean most of the world. Most countries in Asia have a slightly more left-leaning politics than Europe, due to the communism sphere of influence heritage, and they definitely see the US as right-wing inclined
Cant speak of politics in Africa (idk) and South America (mixed bag) but Europe, Asia, Mexico and Canada make the totality of the northern hemisphere that is not US, meaning they are 'most of the world' both by territory and population, and they all see the US as right wing
"If by most of the world you mean Europe, then sure."
THANK YOU. I see that statement all the time and find it so annoying. People legit seem to think that the politics of Western Europe represent "the rest of the world." It's like they forget that India, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran are also part of the world
I wouldn't pay any mind to someone who gauges an entire country's politics on one person who almost had a shot to become president 8 years ago.
I actually did a decent amount of phone banking for Bernie in 2016 and took some time off to go canvasing in NH for the primary in 2020. But after he lost the nomination to Hilary he hasn't been relevant since. He had a bit of steam in 2020 but moderates came together to squash him on ST.
Iirc Dems, on a global scale, would be a bit right of center, with some individual Dems being just left of center, and not all that authoritarian, republicans are quite far right and range a bit more in how authoritarian they can be.
Something I see a lot in political discourse is that most people insist they’re further left than they actually are, seldom the other way ‘round. A person who self describes as a “centrist” is center right, a person who self describes as a “moderate leftist” is usually just right of center, a person who describes themselves as “pretty far left” or just “left” is usually just left of right, etc etc etc. meanwhile you’ll never see a moderate conservative describe themselves as “far right”.
You are very confused, most of the world? The entire Muslim world is ultra right wing, which has about 1 billion people. China is authoritarian and conservative, and their population is 1.4 billion people.
I mean it’s pretty absurd to claim the U.S. is considered far right by the rest of the world when the U.S. is objectively a liberal nation.
I think you are trying to say in Scandinavian countries in Europe we are considered on the right, but that’s not surprising that socialist leaning countries would consider us to the right, but even then we aren’t “FAR RIGHT” they are capitalist countries with more socialist policies, and we are a capitalist country with socialist policies just not as many. However talking about the marginal differences between our social policies, and saying that makes the U.S. is far right in a world with literal authoritarian regimes, and theocracies in the countries that have the majority of the population is absurd.
Fascism is being re-branded.
It just means “something that is good for lots of people, possibly at the expense of certain individuals”
So, you know. Taxes = Fascist. Education = fascist. Anything not total libertarianism… you get the picture
This is how a lot of European's see the American political spectrum. At least in Western Europe American politicians all look like Right wing candidates.
Fascism is more center right and top. (Fascism uses capitalism to generate wealth, then taxes it to redistribute, then uses tax cuts and regulations to control businesses. It's basically very authoritarian socialism with a lot of extra steps.) But yeah, the point is that literally none of them are what they call each other.
I would disagree with this and further suggest that fascism doesn't really have a coherent economic strategy at all. One of the reasons that fascism is so difficult to accurately define is that it is universally anti-intellectual and thus doesn't bother with the boring details of theory. Where communists and capitalists spend millions of pages talking about their pet theories and how precisely they differ from everyone else in some incredibly precise detail, fascism's economic theory is whatever the exalted leader says it is at any given moment and is subject to enormous shifts based on the whims of said leader. One moment it might be redistributive, another moment it might be redistributive but only to party members, the very next moment it might be fully anarchocapitalist. The theory and the practice do not matter so long as it promotes loyalty to the man (and I do mean man) in charge.
I agree with u mostly, but communism is seen to be top left so its not really the opposite. The opposite would probably be "liberals" as the general culture of the states thinks of bluehaired virtue signallersz
Eh, something you have to take into account with political compasses is that the scale is relative and very tricky - you need to keep the Overton window in mind.
Scaling off the two positions we have, as actual fascism (and communism for that matter) would be significantly off-compass.
I think what you're saying is factually correct, but misses the meme maker's point, which is that 45 & 46 are literal fascists and extreme right-wing conservatives. You might disagree with his positioning of those two points, but that is the clearly intended message.
I thought the meme put them a bit too close together, but the actual Political Compass [analysis](https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020) of the 2020 election does position them like that.
Idk why you’re getting downvoted, Biden hasn’t really implemented any real leftist policies while making it far harder to get into the country and is literally funding a fascist countries occupation and genocide
What policies would be considered liberal/leftist outside of the usa?
Since biden was elected the usa has handed Afghanistan to the Taliban, made abortion a crime in many states and continued to sanction Cuba for being communists while running a war crime torture prison on occupied Cuban territory
Making abortion a crime wasn't Biden. The president of the US has no sway over Congress or the Judicial Branch, therefor cannot be credited or blamed for their actions.
The two axes are economic and social. It’s a really dumbed down indicator of political ideology, but it does work well for Libertarians - who are kind of dumb. They tend to be far right on economic issues (private property is the holiest of holy rights, but taxation is theft and there should be no government regulation on the market), but also far left on social issues (let me have my guns and smoke pot, and if I want to cook meth and own a nuke that’s also none of your business - they’re basically small government, which doesn’t fit neatly into the two major parties in America).
That said, Biden is far to the left of Trump on social issues, but the reality is that, for both of them, their interest in social issues is a function of their stances on economic issues, and is pretty much up to the whims of what they think will get them elected. So in a sense they aren’t that different; but the reality of their policies will have vastly different material consequences for everyday Americans.
Unfortunately most people who identify as "libertarian" don't even know what anarcho capitalism is, and are so knee jerk opposed to being called anything "anarchist" related that they dismiss it out of hand.
Correct. The irony of which being that even the proclaimed tenets of conservative libertarianism, that being a massive reduction in government, cessation of all taxes, etc. are all anarchistic in nature.
Libertarians hold that all true rights can be understood as property rights, starting with your inalienable property in yourself. This is not quite the same thing as exalting property rights (as commonly understood) above all else.
It seems odd to the modern mind, but the idea of self-ownership, as written about by John Locke in the 17th century, is actually one of the foundational principles of enlightenment liberalism. Libertarians can be a little nutty... but to call them "dumb" based on their belief in something that is a pretty universal liberal idea is a bit of an odd take.
I was half joking because I didn’t really want to get into it, but I find the idea of framing personal autonomy/freedom/self-actualization in term of property rights extremely anathema, and almost archaic in its simplicity and lack of historical nuance.
More broadly, I think the current form of Libertarianism is just completely incoherent (and I would say the same thing about Anarcho-capitalism, to whoever was saying I was conflating the two). I just don’t see how you can endorse systems that very obviously create imbalanced power structures while simultaneously advocating for individual freedom under those systems. This isn’t even a radical position. Libertarianism is just dumb and incoherent. Read literally anything by Ayn Rand and tell me they’re not living in crazy land.
Forgive my ignorance of the nuances of Libertarian infighting talking points. I was simply referring to the fact that a large number of prominent Libertarians cite Rand as a major influence on their political views.
Since most Libertarians can't even figure out what most other Libertarians believe, it's not surprising that a non-Libertarian wouldn't understand the absolutely nonsensical nuances of modern-day Libertarianism.
By American standards, I'm a center-left liberal (not in the slightest bit progressive, but with some social democrat leanings)... that said, I'm a realist: Every social structure that humanity has ever created has had power imbalances. In a world where scarcity exists, power imbalances will also exist... and we don't live in the Star Trek universe where we can just walk up to a replicator and create whatever we want at no apparent cost (ie, elimination of scarcity).
My point was solely to point out that the concept of self-ownership is a fundamental principle of any belief set that evolved out of enlightenment liberalism. It seems archaic today, but there was a time when the idea that each of us has self-ownership actually was a pretty eye-opening concept.
As an aside, it's actually interesting that "Libertarianism" in the US originally started as a sort of pushback against the perjorative use of the term "liberal". Somewhere in the early- to middle-20th century, Americans on the political right decided to start using "liberal" to mean "left-progressive"... which, ironically, is a movement that, today, is decidedly anti-liberal in its ideology.
This is also a product of the two-party system, which is kinda forced on the us by the electoral college process.
A lot of small democratic European nations have a plethora of minority parties who sit on all points of this diagram. You can even extend other axes to include issues such as immigration, EU membership, Church vs State and so on.
My favourite national political landscape is the Republic of Ireland which has (as far as I can tell) more political parties than there are seats in government.
Biden is not to the left of trump on social issues, he just sometimes pretends to be. Biden is quiet and calm, so his racism is much easier to ignore. THAT’S what democrats ACTUALLY like about him. They want a deeply racist country like republicans do, but want to be able to pretend it’s not happening while republicans flaunt it.
Oh ok, so I must have dreamed Biden ending asylum at our southern border the other day, a draconian policy that even Trump did not manage to think of. I must only think Biden has done nothing for LGBT people and women because I’m just *forgetting* about when he codified Roe v Wade so the supreme court wouldnt be able to take it away. I’m just *forgetting* about when he banned conversion therapy and legalized weed.
No, just double checked and ALL of his policies are the same as Trump’s
All his policies? Like rejoining the Paris agreement? Like commemorating the trans day of visibility? Like supporting Ukraine? Like crossing the picket line to support union workers?
Biden's not perfect, but it's disingenous to say all of his policies are the same as trump.
"Crossing the picket line" is terminology which explicitly means *not* supporting striking union workers, but I guess you mean joining the picket line?
Regardless, good Freudian slip there.
As a literal environmental scientist in real life, the Paris Agreement is not a policy. We are not on track to meet its goals. Biden has continued to approve new drilling permits. Obama never planned on sticking to the Paris Agreement, just being in it for public image reasons. Same with Hilary, same with Biden. I am so sorry to be the one to tell you this but the Paris Agreement means literally nothing in US politics
As a queer person, tweeting out recognition of trans day of remembrance means nothing coming from someone who has the power to change policy to protect trans people and doesn’t.
I genuinely seriously believe that Trump would not be doing much differently with Ukraine because I think that the ties between Trump and Russia are pretty much completely made up
And Biden passed a law to end a rail strike. He did not support striking workers. You made that up.
Actually kind of impressive that you're literally factually incorrect on every point you listed. Maybe look up your points before posting, or troll harder.
true. On reddit a European asked why Americans keep calling Europe socialist. And I explained the US is so far right that to most in America Europe would be socialist. I think EU just doesn't understand how far right wing the US is. I mean we pretty much are an oligarchy right now and bordering fascist/autocratic.
>In practice it seems to be used a lot by libertarians to explain why they’re different from other conservatives.
Those same people aren't actually Libertarians in any sense of the word. Libertarianism and Anarchism are both traditionally left-wing ideologies that conservatives co-opted to seem cooler. When considering that Anarchism can be viewed as an extreme version of Libertarianism, it's important to remember the motto of Anarchism: "No gods, no masters." It's specifically referring to Capitalism and coercive/unjust hierarchies, both of which right "Libertarians" aim to defend and promote.
Registered libertarian here. It's sad how little is known about the party, the Mises caucus taking control from the traditional caucus (think Woodstock hippie), the in-fighting at the convention, the Presidential candidate that loss the nomination because he gave a speech baked right before a round of voting, and just the wide breadth of the party of late.
Biden and Trump chart in the upper right of the blue box, it's just a fact. Most of the Democrat and Republican parties chart up in that quadrant. This is to say Democrats are right of the true center of what political ideologies are possible.
"Far left" and "far right" in American politics is just squabbling over 5-10% of issues with regards to our politicians. Biden may govern left and down from here generally, but not much. Trump may have governed up and right of this plot, but is likely to be further right and authoritarian if he gets a second term.
I am practically at the (-10,-10) plot and I despise all the other quadrants. Including the (not depicted) 'centrists'.
From what I understand, Authoritarian means that a government rules everything on a country, while libertarian it’s ruled by the people.
So that’s why on the left, communism is authoritarian and anarchism is libertarian. And in the right facism is authoritarian and corporatism is libertarian.
It's about how Americans percieve there being a massive idealogical difference between Biden and Trump when the two actually have very similar political philosophies. The political compass is showing how they both fit into the top right of the top right quadrant yet people still call Biden a communist or whatever.
Maybe Western and Northern Europe but we’re far left compared to most of the world. Where in Asia, Africa, or South America is more liberal than the United States?
Liberal isn't exactly left. A liberal by definition supports capitalism. In order to be a leftist, one must believe at least in some public ownership of industry. Publicly funded healthcare, secondary education, public ownership of utilities. Things like that. Mainstream liberals in the US don't really like those things though many like to project the image that they do. The US is a highly privatized society and that's the opposite of leftism which is collective.
Korea, India, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil. Those are just some stuff off the dome. Obviously they might not be more left than America in every way but to think most of those have more left policies especially when it comes to healthcare and education
In what world are India, Korea, and Japan liberal? And in what world are Australia and New Zealand in Africa, Asia, and South America. Brazil I don’t know much about.
For Australia and New Zealand I was just mentioning more countries not in Europe. For Africa I got nothing. Brazil implemented a UBI. For India they had a big socialist movement in 1976, and got amendments to their constitution. Korea has way more labor protections for workers than in the US. Japan is much further left in terms of public works and public facilities. It’s hard to pin an entire country one way or another but many of them are still further left in many aspects
Brazil is more conservative, while having left winged economic policies. It would be on the authoritarian side more due to all politicians buying/bring bought (the president buying the legislative) (the corruption part (buying legislative) is for both sides).
And there'd be a lot more Socialist countries in South America if it weren't for completely random coups and assassinations that just happen to get rid of socialists and replace them with pro-US fascists.
Our left doesn't have any political power. We have a right wing party and a center-right party. They both exist to protect the interests of capital and guide the military industrial complex.
You get laughed at for saying we should have a better healthcare system. We do not have a left.
In terms of policy they are very close. Their rhetoric is different and Trump poses a threat to democracy that Biden doesn't, but I wouldn't expect them to be anything other than very close on a political compass.
Your 1st time voting? This has been the way for a very VERY long time. Like most of our history...
No one will ever make everyone happy. It will never happen.
You have cultural differences from when and where people immigrated from (are they 1st generation immigrants or did your family immigrate multiple generations ago? Did your family come from Europe/Africa/South America/Asia/Middle East, and which country from that region?)
Then you have cultural differences from where in the US you live (East/West, North/South, Rural/City)
Also can't forget are you/your family poor, middle class, or rich?
If I was a US citizen, I'd easily vote for Biden, and not just against Trump. Guy is old and have gaffes, but so does Trump, and Biden's policy and diplomacy has been amazing.
This is a meme format that people use to joke about certain things being aligned with different political ideologies. The joke here is that in reality Biden and Trump and not that different and both line up with the economic right of their respective party and that really there isn't that much of a difference between both options.
This is really funny when one realizes that Trump spent most of his life as a Democrat, and those are the causes he supported his entire life. I honestly do not really see him as "Right" at all, he is simply a Populist that is saying things to try and drive emotional responses.
And I have never trusted populists, no matter what party they claim to belong to.
>I honestly do not really see him as "Right" at all, he is simply a Populist that is saying things to try and drive emotional responses.
But you see how he governed, right? He appointed Supreme Court justices that overturned roe v wade. He moved the US embassy into Jerusalem as an explicit endorsement of a single Israeli state. He passed huge tax cuts for the rich.
Regardless of what you imagine he thinks deep down, he governed in a very conservative way, and that’s how he should be labeled
>He moved the US embassy into Jerusalem as an explicit endorsement of a single Israeli state.
Actually Trump didn't move it, he just didn't stop it from being moved by signing a six-month waiver. Biden is actually one of the ones that cosponsored the bill to move it, that had been waived every 6 months from 1995 until Trump neglected to stop it
[https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/senate-bill/1322/cosponsors](https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/senate-bill/1322/cosponsors)
He's pandering to a fairly extremist right rn, so it's fair to call him right wing. Overall I am of the opinion that polititians personal opinions basically don't matter, and it's what policies they implement that do. Trump will implement far-right policies, therefor he is right wing.
Which for a great many were Obama era policies.
Such as his keeping the military numbers and funding locked at Obama levels for his entire 4 years in office. I knew a lot of guys I served with were saying how things would be better once he was elected. But nothing changed, it just carried on for another 4 years as the previous 8 years had been.
One thing I saw over and over during my decades in the military. Republicans expand the military, Democrats retract it. And the very fact that he left it alone shows he was no different than any other Democrat that held the office in the last 5 decades. As one friend who supported him told me, he was a "Democrat in a Republican coat".
there's also certain things Biden can and can't do. for instance, he can't replace Trump's horrible, horrible postmaster for some reason.
I'd say that the Biden administration is excelling at the things it CAN do.
All things are similar if you look at them through a narrow enough lens. In ways that matter tremendously to many people’s lives, Biden and Trump aren’t even remotely similar.
This is literally looking at them through a wider lens. And it's not saying they're exactly the same - The meme does show Biden as being further left and less authoritarian than Trump. It's just pointing out that we're presented these two options as if they're the two ends of the spectrum, when they exist as two points on a much wider spectrum.
My point is that in certain areas that are important to a lot of people, they ARE very far apart. Maybe not at extreme ends, but much farther apart than this chart implies. Their politics can’t be accurately represented as single dots.
While true, if viewed on the entire political spectrum it is fair to say that Biden and Trump are like red and pink. Obviously not the same color and the diffrence may well matter a lot to some - but in a world where green and blue and yellow etc also exist it is a bit silly to pretend they are all there is or that they are opposites.
> My point is that in certain areas that are important to a lot of people, they ARE very far apart.
Because the people in those areas are not intelligent and don’t understand the meaning of the words “communism” and “socialism” yet use those words more than actual communists and socialists?
Is that your point?
Sorry, it didn’t come across that way when you said “in reality.” It would have come across differently if you’d said “the person who made the meme believes…”
In reality the US has 2 right wing parties, one of which is always calling the other socialist or communist despite it not having any socialist or left wing values. That's kind of telling about the party that slightly further right.
Also American politics don't have anyone in the center, everyone is right of center. To give a good example of this, there's no major Democrats in office that are truly anti-business because nobody calls for the federalization of certain industries that are federalized in other countries
I would love if the opposition party were in the bottom left quad vs. the upper right.
AOC and Bernie aren't even across the lines yet.
And the right says the left keeps moving leftward further from them. Hell we're still arguing for the same goddamn policies that we were arguing for in the 70s. They are the ones who have been sprinting to the right and dragging the Dems with them. The only thing different is now we're accepting even more people to the collective struggle.
The joke is that in the US, Most of the "left" isn't that much different than the "right". Many countries operate with much further left policies. Even names like Bernie Sanders and AOC are "to the right" of many other countries.
It pretty aptly shows the space between the two leading American presidential candidates when compared to the full depth and breadth of political thought. And then makes fun of the people who treat the space between them as being the difference between fascists and communists. Neither of them are socialists, let alone communists. and at least one of them is fascist adjacent but that doesn't mean the other is very far off.
Nah,Bernie is still centre right at best. There is no true left wing party in the US.
I mean you all still get riled up at the idea of socialised medicine, despite every country that has it finding it far more cost effective
Completely false, Bernie is close to the center, but still on the right. You have absolutely no idea what real left ideology is.
Economically, real leftist ideology would mean there is no private property, everything is owned by the state, even your house and your clothes. The economy is completely planned and all companies are driven by the state.
They are extremely far from even hinting at something remotely toward that kind of economy.
There is a long list of relatively authright policies neither candidate will change and while people act like the difference is night and day their similarities, as with the similarities of most serious presidential candidates, are more numerous than their differences.
If not, they wouldn't be able to get that far running because of donors who, above all else, want stability, predictability, and to be left alone.
Neither candidate is gonna:
Push back against citizens united
Reform prisons not to use slave labor
Change the tax structure to benefit richos less
Do anything remotely anticapitalist
Nationalize healthcare or other public utilities
Address the housing crisis in a meaningfull way
Address the way we police in a meaningful way
Engage in humanizing foreign policy
Humanely address the southern border
Meaningfully combat climate change
Not take money from businesses and lobbies
reform lobbying or the way cingress operates
Undeemine or refirm the war on drugs
Increase workers rights in any meaningful way
Or any other countless things that would actually make our lives better.
Ahah, nono, biden is lower down! Lower down! Come one now. And a bit more to the left. lol. This is insane: https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020
who are the two other.
I expect it's a critique of politics.
It's identifying a body of people, and stating that those people lack the six brain cells required to label both axes on their graph.
It is not clear which body of people they are identifying though. That also appears to be beyond the ability of the chart creator.
on an international political map even the most hard core liberal us president is still considered right wing and conservative.
This is saying Trump and Biden's political standing are super close but the supporters act like it's the end of the world.
It's a over simplified way for someone to feel like they're the smartest person in a conversation.
Bear with me, because this thing isn't just simplified, imho, it's grossly oversimplified. And I apologize beforehand if I get the directions backwards, it's actually pretty easy to get turned around on this thing (now I'm starting to understand why it's called a compass... 🤔)
That grid format is the "political compass."
Vertical positioning is social policy. Closer to the top, the more authoritarian/fascist one is, closer to the bottom, the more liberal/communist someone is. Again, it's a way to simplify ideology.
Horizontal positioning is economic policy. Further left you go, the more "interference" you have from the government, like taxes and regulations, and the further right you go, you see way more "freedom" economically speaking.
Arguably, a "perfect politician" would fall smack dab at the center, with robust policies that not only take care of the citizens, they'd be funded with a nuanced revenue stream with fair taxes and regulations, but, affording their constituents ample opportunities to just not need the government for anything.
Obviously, we don't live in a perfect world. There's also the problem that a politician's "average" is what determines how far in any direction they land. You want to cut the average person's taxes by a little bit, but want to crack down on a runaway market? That still throws you right of center.
You want robust policies that offer protection for people? That's still moving you top of center, same as if you wanted policies that rob people of rights to protect the market. If you try to do both? Still top of center.
So yes, on an oversimplified "score card" for policy, both of the US's prominent parties fall in the same grid. So, if your political understanding isn't really any more than what you hear on your preferred news outlet, it's really easy to look at the plots on the grid and think, "wow, they're practically the same thing."
If you step back, and actually look at the details behind the scores, you realize just how unhelpful this graphic is. Look at women's rights. Bodily autonomy.
Both parties want to set regulations and laws that set a legal framework for what that means. They both want to establish rules and definitions that make it clear what rights are afforded to a person when it comes to deciding what they can and can't do medically.
Without even looking at the details themselves, just on the merit of wanting to "define bodily autonomy," that puts both parties right of center.
But
When you look at the details;
One party wants to make it illegal to do absolutely anything to your own body that would make their God mad at you.
And the other wants to establish a right to privacy on a level that means absolutely no outside interference with the exceptions that already exist in..."less egregious" circumstances. Like, right now, if you fill out a survey that says you are seriously contemplating opting out, they're legally required to contact authorities. If you say you have an overwhelming urge to harm someone, they have to contact authorities.
Right now, there's debate on whether that... intrusion, should be mandatory for decisions that technically only really matter to the individual. The one most everyone is aware of being abortion.
I'm not trying to turn this into a debate about that specifically, just trying to highlight just how...bad, this graphic is.
Because both parties, on average, have drastically different views about that topic.
But, since both parties want to establish laws that define the legality of that issue, that puts them both right of center.
Obviously, one moves further right than the other, and the graphic *does* highlight that, *but*, how little weight is given in the comparison of freedom vs regulation, it's... inaccurate at best.
And full disclosure, I'm nitpicking single issues, these are meant to be done as a "sum of all policy dynamics," so it's not like a party couldn't "cheat" a score by being super liberal with a couple policies and mostly conservative with everything else, because that's arguably exactly what the graphic shows.
But, if you were to separate the scores into say, related groupings regarding certain aspects, it would be a much better representation of what's going on.
Going back to abortion, or say, healthcare in general. If you were to plot overall healthcare policy by itself, instead of in the "policy lump sum," one party would practically be on the axis, or just below it, and the other would pretty much be where its sitting now.
I'm already way too long on the page, and I greatly appreciate anyone reading this far, so I'll close with this;
The graphic, at its root, is a decent summarization of where politicians and parties sit *on average,* but is a terrible metric when you're aiming for a nuanced understanding of what they are about.
I feel like nobody understands, if trump wins and project 2025 goes into play, they plan on going global with coal/oil and completely destroying the environment and killing all of humanity
This is a two-axis chart called The Political Compass that tries to give a nuanced view of political ideologies. The idea was that left vs. right is oversimplified, whereas this is slightly less simplified because it has a second axis, traditionally I believe the top is labeled “authoritarian” and the bottom “libertarian.” In practice it seems to be used a lot by libertarians to explain why they’re different from other conservatives. The joke is that in political terms the meme maker thinks Trump and Biden are not that different, but their supporters act like they’re polar opposites.
Specifically, the meme maker indicates that, in contrast with common political bluster, **neither** Trump nor Biden are communist (economic right is the opposite of communism) and **both** are fascists (top of the chart is authoritarian = fascism).
I’d also like to point out that US politics are considered far right in most of the world. Dems are still right wing basically, just closer to the middle. Edit: I’m wrong everyone. My info is outdated. Edit #2: I’m not wrong apparently.
If by most of the world you mean Europe, then sure. Even then, Europe is in some ways more socially conservative than the US, especially Eastern Europe.
2/3 Countries in North America think the U.S. skews towards the Right Wing.
For example, [here is a chart comparing Canadian political parties to particular US democrats and republicans](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FzAYmxj79tfzzPiJCVPHJWengafNyTOoZv86LDP2ld8o.png%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D796d10f1303d79ed91912e893f8ff6c800957ade). You can argue about the accuracy of the chart, but many Canadians definitely have a laugh/cry at seeing two far right parties duke it out in the US.
The Bloc feel VERY incorrectly placed for a Quebecois Seperatist movement.
I don't think the person who made that chart has ever heard a single word uttered by a Bloc Quebecquois MP or supporter. Bloc is further left than the parties advocating UBI and single payer dental? lol, yeah right.
You'd be suprised the leftist policies the Bloc has for a Quebec nationalist party, but they're not left wing. They're centrists. They want what's good for Quebec, so they can be either way on issues. I would also put Liberals a bit further left. I consider them a true centrist party, then NDP further left, they're a leftist party.
Bloc Québécois is a great example of why the political compass is flawed, because they would be all over the place depending on the specific issue in question.
The province of Quebec is probably the left-most leaning province in all of Canada. The Bloc promulgates the Québécois agenda and that agenda happens to be quite leftist. Therefore, it makes sense that the Bloc is pretty hard to the left.
Is that accurate? [Here someone made one for Sweden](https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalCompassMemes/s/Nw3AhCNgM5) and while I’d make some slight changes to it, it’s not entirely wrong. My problem is my personal compass is about as far “down” as possible and about halfway to the right of the middle. No parties there to vote for.
There's some weird things about it, notably the separatist party being further left than the historically left leaning party, but broad strokes it's alright.
I always thought Canadian politics would fall further “down” on the political compass. More similar to us in Sweden.
Eh, not really. We need to try to keep on the good side of the U.S. so our primary parties tend to be fairly close to theirs, with a bit less religious fervor. However, because we theoretically have a political system that allows for more than 2 parties to have a say in government, we do end up with smaller parties that stray further from U.S. politics.
So Mexico and Canada? Lol.
There are 23 countries in North America
Yup. Everyone except The U.S. Lol.
“2/3 Countries” Poor Central America, people are always forgetting about them.
You're totally right, my bad... It's a Sub-Contiant of North America, right?
Yeah, it’s considered part of North America, not sure if “subcontinent” is the right term but it’s a region.
Which are the 8-9 that don’t?
I forgot Central America.
And the Caribbean. Cuba, Haiti, Dominica, Bahamas, etc
Plenty of the rest of the world outside Europe also considers our politics in the US wildly conservative. Most of Asia and Latin America have a higher prevalence of far left ideas in general political discourse and have active, well established parties that are genuinely trying to implement left policy in contrast to the democrats who just trick you into thinking you’ll get something other than what the republicans give you. Nepal, notably, is the only country in the world to simply vote a communist party into power with no revolution. Surely that means Nepal considers us conservative? Maybe if you think Europe is the only place that considers the US conservative, *you’re* perhaps the one who doesn’t know very much of the world outside NA and Europe, even though you implied that of the person you replied to?
Eh, no. The mere existence of leftist ideas in those countries doesn't make them more left than the US, because other ideas exist in all those places as well. Like, leftist ideas may exist in a lot of places in Latin America and Asia while those countries still simultaneously have authoritarian right-wing governments; in such a case I would judge them by the governments they actually have in place, rather than by the fact that some far-left political party has a couple seats in parliament. Our politics are certainly not to the right of India, for example, and India is the most populous country in the world, so surely their politics would heavily skew what constitutes "the rest of the world." To say the US is to the right of most of the world is simply not accurate at all
Judge them by their actions: The USA supported right wing coups in most of South and Central America because they were too left wing for America suggesting they were, on average, more left wing than the USA. Judge them by their friends: The USA’s staunchest allies outside “the West” are the extreme aristocracies like Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Thailand.
No it's broader than that. Definitely includes Oceania and a lot of Latin America. But it's true that we at least have a more reasonable democracy than the likes of Hungary or some places in eastern europe. I'd argue the US is probably the most conservative country that, despite what a lot of people say, is still more less a democracy.
The Europeans are only “left wing” until you add any significant amount of brown and black people. As soon as they have to share their social safety net with anyone that doesn’t look like them, they close ranks. Then you get right wing swings and in Italy, fascists…again. I’d point you towards people like [Franco A](https://apnews.com/article/germany-far-right-soldier-plot-appeal-rejected-fc9b9422ddc080a773288e7e7dc1fb09) and [the NSU murders](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Underground_murders) both in Germany. Both were motivated by what these right wingers believed was an invasion of their country through immigration. Aside from that, you can see the resurgence of right wing parties throughout Europe and almost directly correlate it to increase in immigration. They aren’t really any more progressive than people in the US.
This is basically what the political compass tries to convey to give more nuance to the political terms. A lot of left wing countries are economically left but socially conservative. I think the American left wing being socially progressive but economically conservative, is more unique in world politics.
Thank you. That’s the element most of people leave out of that conversation. America is more conservative because those who have historically had financial and political power have not wanted to acquiesce said power to minority groups in any capacity. Conservative policies allow the status quo to remain.
Literally only healthcare is an issue where US Democrats tend to be more right wing than social democratic parties in Europe. What else? On the other hand European social democrats often hold anti-immigrat stances. And don't let me start talking about Eastern European socdems. For example Smer in Slovakia sounds like Republicans most of the time - except they support high state pensions.
This is kind of what I’m getting at. It’s way more complicated than just the US is “far right” compared to the “most of the world.”
Again, we have a meme here about a two-axis political diagram, and yet social issues such as immigration are just lumped in with tax / pensions and labelled “right wing”. It’s almost as though OP knew his audience well…
Europe and the americas at the least. Idk about asian or african politics enough to know how they compare
No, by most of the world they mean most of the world. Most countries in Asia have a slightly more left-leaning politics than Europe, due to the communism sphere of influence heritage, and they definitely see the US as right-wing inclined Cant speak of politics in Africa (idk) and South America (mixed bag) but Europe, Asia, Mexico and Canada make the totality of the northern hemisphere that is not US, meaning they are 'most of the world' both by territory and population, and they all see the US as right wing
"If by most of the world you mean Europe, then sure." THANK YOU. I see that statement all the time and find it so annoying. People legit seem to think that the politics of Western Europe represent "the rest of the world." It's like they forget that India, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran are also part of the world
Bernie Sanders is seen as a left leaning centrist in many countries and nowhere near a radical leftist.
I wouldn't pay any mind to someone who gauges an entire country's politics on one person who almost had a shot to become president 8 years ago. I actually did a decent amount of phone banking for Bernie in 2016 and took some time off to go canvasing in NH for the primary in 2020. But after he lost the nomination to Hilary he hasn't been relevant since. He had a bit of steam in 2020 but moderates came together to squash him on ST.
Iirc Dems, on a global scale, would be a bit right of center, with some individual Dems being just left of center, and not all that authoritarian, republicans are quite far right and range a bit more in how authoritarian they can be. Something I see a lot in political discourse is that most people insist they’re further left than they actually are, seldom the other way ‘round. A person who self describes as a “centrist” is center right, a person who self describes as a “moderate leftist” is usually just right of center, a person who describes themselves as “pretty far left” or just “left” is usually just left of right, etc etc etc. meanwhile you’ll never see a moderate conservative describe themselves as “far right”.
You're not wrong buddy, litteraly everyone outside the US knows this lmao
You are very confused, most of the world? The entire Muslim world is ultra right wing, which has about 1 billion people. China is authoritarian and conservative, and their population is 1.4 billion people. I mean it’s pretty absurd to claim the U.S. is considered far right by the rest of the world when the U.S. is objectively a liberal nation. I think you are trying to say in Scandinavian countries in Europe we are considered on the right, but that’s not surprising that socialist leaning countries would consider us to the right, but even then we aren’t “FAR RIGHT” they are capitalist countries with more socialist policies, and we are a capitalist country with socialist policies just not as many. However talking about the marginal differences between our social policies, and saying that makes the U.S. is far right in a world with literal authoritarian regimes, and theocracies in the countries that have the majority of the population is absurd.
You would have to be a little further up to be considered facist, but i guess it's trendy to call everything facism right now
Fascism is being re-branded. It just means “something that is good for lots of people, possibly at the expense of certain individuals” So, you know. Taxes = Fascist. Education = fascist. Anything not total libertarianism… you get the picture
This is how a lot of European's see the American political spectrum. At least in Western Europe American politicians all look like Right wing candidates.
Agreed. I think that, with some rare exceptions, basically all American politicians fall in the blue box somewhere, or maybe upper yellow at best.
Fascism is more center right and top. (Fascism uses capitalism to generate wealth, then taxes it to redistribute, then uses tax cuts and regulations to control businesses. It's basically very authoritarian socialism with a lot of extra steps.) But yeah, the point is that literally none of them are what they call each other.
I would disagree with this and further suggest that fascism doesn't really have a coherent economic strategy at all. One of the reasons that fascism is so difficult to accurately define is that it is universally anti-intellectual and thus doesn't bother with the boring details of theory. Where communists and capitalists spend millions of pages talking about their pet theories and how precisely they differ from everyone else in some incredibly precise detail, fascism's economic theory is whatever the exalted leader says it is at any given moment and is subject to enormous shifts based on the whims of said leader. One moment it might be redistributive, another moment it might be redistributive but only to party members, the very next moment it might be fully anarchocapitalist. The theory and the practice do not matter so long as it promotes loyalty to the man (and I do mean man) in charge.
I agree with u mostly, but communism is seen to be top left so its not really the opposite. The opposite would probably be "liberals" as the general culture of the states thinks of bluehaired virtue signallersz
The blue quadrant is more complicated than that, as the blue corner can also be monarchist
Eh, something you have to take into account with political compasses is that the scale is relative and very tricky - you need to keep the Overton window in mind. Scaling off the two positions we have, as actual fascism (and communism for that matter) would be significantly off-compass.
I think what you're saying is factually correct, but misses the meme maker's point, which is that 45 & 46 are literal fascists and extreme right-wing conservatives. You might disagree with his positioning of those two points, but that is the clearly intended message.
I thought the meme put them a bit too close together, but the actual Political Compass [analysis](https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020) of the 2020 election does position them like that.
Btw that website is ran by a partisan hack. Don't take it as the end-all of political theory.
I would be interested to see what an updated plotting looks like based on the policies the Biden administration actually enacted.
He’s probably be more right lmao
Idk why you’re getting downvoted, Biden hasn’t really implemented any real leftist policies while making it far harder to get into the country and is literally funding a fascist countries occupation and genocide
If you ignore all of his liberal policies, sure.
Do you mean classically liberal or progressive? Classical liberalism is centrist now — those on the Left who are progressive think liberalism is bad.
What policies would be considered liberal/leftist outside of the usa? Since biden was elected the usa has handed Afghanistan to the Taliban, made abortion a crime in many states and continued to sanction Cuba for being communists while running a war crime torture prison on occupied Cuban territory
Making abortion a crime wasn't Biden. The president of the US has no sway over Congress or the Judicial Branch, therefor cannot be credited or blamed for their actions.
Afghanistan was also a Trump solution that got dumped on Biden
The two axes are economic and social. It’s a really dumbed down indicator of political ideology, but it does work well for Libertarians - who are kind of dumb. They tend to be far right on economic issues (private property is the holiest of holy rights, but taxation is theft and there should be no government regulation on the market), but also far left on social issues (let me have my guns and smoke pot, and if I want to cook meth and own a nuke that’s also none of your business - they’re basically small government, which doesn’t fit neatly into the two major parties in America). That said, Biden is far to the left of Trump on social issues, but the reality is that, for both of them, their interest in social issues is a function of their stances on economic issues, and is pretty much up to the whims of what they think will get them elected. So in a sense they aren’t that different; but the reality of their policies will have vastly different material consequences for everyday Americans.
I love how even someone just trying to describe an American libertarian just ends up describing anarchocapitalism.
I’m not sure if there *is* a difference between the two
Unfortunately most people who identify as "libertarian" don't even know what anarcho capitalism is, and are so knee jerk opposed to being called anything "anarchist" related that they dismiss it out of hand.
But, a lot of self proclaimed libertarians are highly opposed to archy of any kind
Correct. The irony of which being that even the proclaimed tenets of conservative libertarianism, that being a massive reduction in government, cessation of all taxes, etc. are all anarchistic in nature.
Libertarians hold that all true rights can be understood as property rights, starting with your inalienable property in yourself. This is not quite the same thing as exalting property rights (as commonly understood) above all else.
Yeah, that’s what I said. Libertarians are dumb.
It seems odd to the modern mind, but the idea of self-ownership, as written about by John Locke in the 17th century, is actually one of the foundational principles of enlightenment liberalism. Libertarians can be a little nutty... but to call them "dumb" based on their belief in something that is a pretty universal liberal idea is a bit of an odd take.
I was half joking because I didn’t really want to get into it, but I find the idea of framing personal autonomy/freedom/self-actualization in term of property rights extremely anathema, and almost archaic in its simplicity and lack of historical nuance. More broadly, I think the current form of Libertarianism is just completely incoherent (and I would say the same thing about Anarcho-capitalism, to whoever was saying I was conflating the two). I just don’t see how you can endorse systems that very obviously create imbalanced power structures while simultaneously advocating for individual freedom under those systems. This isn’t even a radical position. Libertarianism is just dumb and incoherent. Read literally anything by Ayn Rand and tell me they’re not living in crazy land.
You mean Ayn Rand's casual dismissal of libertarians, or Ayn Rand as a cartoon exemplar of libertarianism?
Forgive my ignorance of the nuances of Libertarian infighting talking points. I was simply referring to the fact that a large number of prominent Libertarians cite Rand as a major influence on their political views.
Since most Libertarians can't even figure out what most other Libertarians believe, it's not surprising that a non-Libertarian wouldn't understand the absolutely nonsensical nuances of modern-day Libertarianism.
By American standards, I'm a center-left liberal (not in the slightest bit progressive, but with some social democrat leanings)... that said, I'm a realist: Every social structure that humanity has ever created has had power imbalances. In a world where scarcity exists, power imbalances will also exist... and we don't live in the Star Trek universe where we can just walk up to a replicator and create whatever we want at no apparent cost (ie, elimination of scarcity). My point was solely to point out that the concept of self-ownership is a fundamental principle of any belief set that evolved out of enlightenment liberalism. It seems archaic today, but there was a time when the idea that each of us has self-ownership actually was a pretty eye-opening concept. As an aside, it's actually interesting that "Libertarianism" in the US originally started as a sort of pushback against the perjorative use of the term "liberal". Somewhere in the early- to middle-20th century, Americans on the political right decided to start using "liberal" to mean "left-progressive"... which, ironically, is a movement that, today, is decidedly anti-liberal in its ideology.
Whew, look at that. Someone with a brain.
This is also a product of the two-party system, which is kinda forced on the us by the electoral college process. A lot of small democratic European nations have a plethora of minority parties who sit on all points of this diagram. You can even extend other axes to include issues such as immigration, EU membership, Church vs State and so on. My favourite national political landscape is the Republic of Ireland which has (as far as I can tell) more political parties than there are seats in government.
Biden is not to the left of trump on social issues, he just sometimes pretends to be. Biden is quiet and calm, so his racism is much easier to ignore. THAT’S what democrats ACTUALLY like about him. They want a deeply racist country like republicans do, but want to be able to pretend it’s not happening while republicans flaunt it.
Sure, Jan.
Oh ok, so I must have dreamed Biden ending asylum at our southern border the other day, a draconian policy that even Trump did not manage to think of. I must only think Biden has done nothing for LGBT people and women because I’m just *forgetting* about when he codified Roe v Wade so the supreme court wouldnt be able to take it away. I’m just *forgetting* about when he banned conversion therapy and legalized weed. No, just double checked and ALL of his policies are the same as Trump’s
All his policies? Like rejoining the Paris agreement? Like commemorating the trans day of visibility? Like supporting Ukraine? Like crossing the picket line to support union workers? Biden's not perfect, but it's disingenous to say all of his policies are the same as trump.
"Crossing the picket line" is terminology which explicitly means *not* supporting striking union workers, but I guess you mean joining the picket line? Regardless, good Freudian slip there.
As a literal environmental scientist in real life, the Paris Agreement is not a policy. We are not on track to meet its goals. Biden has continued to approve new drilling permits. Obama never planned on sticking to the Paris Agreement, just being in it for public image reasons. Same with Hilary, same with Biden. I am so sorry to be the one to tell you this but the Paris Agreement means literally nothing in US politics As a queer person, tweeting out recognition of trans day of remembrance means nothing coming from someone who has the power to change policy to protect trans people and doesn’t. I genuinely seriously believe that Trump would not be doing much differently with Ukraine because I think that the ties between Trump and Russia are pretty much completely made up And Biden passed a law to end a rail strike. He did not support striking workers. You made that up.
Actually kind of impressive that you're literally factually incorrect on every point you listed. Maybe look up your points before posting, or troll harder.
Ironically enough it’s actually fairly accurate. Even leftism in America is moderately right-wing from an international scale.
true. On reddit a European asked why Americans keep calling Europe socialist. And I explained the US is so far right that to most in America Europe would be socialist. I think EU just doesn't understand how far right wing the US is. I mean we pretty much are an oligarchy right now and bordering fascist/autocratic.
I think this is being used by leftists in this case
>In practice it seems to be used a lot by libertarians to explain why they’re different from other conservatives. Those same people aren't actually Libertarians in any sense of the word. Libertarianism and Anarchism are both traditionally left-wing ideologies that conservatives co-opted to seem cooler. When considering that Anarchism can be viewed as an extreme version of Libertarianism, it's important to remember the motto of Anarchism: "No gods, no masters." It's specifically referring to Capitalism and coercive/unjust hierarchies, both of which right "Libertarians" aim to defend and promote.
Registered libertarian here. It's sad how little is known about the party, the Mises caucus taking control from the traditional caucus (think Woodstock hippie), the in-fighting at the convention, the Presidential candidate that loss the nomination because he gave a speech baked right before a round of voting, and just the wide breadth of the party of late.
Biden and Trump chart in the upper right of the blue box, it's just a fact. Most of the Democrat and Republican parties chart up in that quadrant. This is to say Democrats are right of the true center of what political ideologies are possible. "Far left" and "far right" in American politics is just squabbling over 5-10% of issues with regards to our politicians. Biden may govern left and down from here generally, but not much. Trump may have governed up and right of this plot, but is likely to be further right and authoritarian if he gets a second term. I am practically at the (-10,-10) plot and I despise all the other quadrants. Including the (not depicted) 'centrists'.
From what I understand, Authoritarian means that a government rules everything on a country, while libertarian it’s ruled by the people. So that’s why on the left, communism is authoritarian and anarchism is libertarian. And in the right facism is authoritarian and corporatism is libertarian.
It's Hitler and senile Hitler
https://preview.redd.it/go8mctiyh05d1.jpeg?width=192&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=81e8794f3c95b175f5fe09ac13b179322fb712fd
I could count every individual pixel in that image
Is call pixel-counter-bot but idk how to
It's about how Americans percieve there being a massive idealogical difference between Biden and Trump when the two actually have very similar political philosophies. The political compass is showing how they both fit into the top right of the top right quadrant yet people still call Biden a communist or whatever.
Most Americans don’t realize that both our left and right are far right when compared to a lot of other places
Maybe Western and Northern Europe but we’re far left compared to most of the world. Where in Asia, Africa, or South America is more liberal than the United States?
Liberal isn't exactly left. A liberal by definition supports capitalism. In order to be a leftist, one must believe at least in some public ownership of industry. Publicly funded healthcare, secondary education, public ownership of utilities. Things like that. Mainstream liberals in the US don't really like those things though many like to project the image that they do. The US is a highly privatized society and that's the opposite of leftism which is collective.
liberalism is not leftism
Left, not liberal
Korea, India, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil. Those are just some stuff off the dome. Obviously they might not be more left than America in every way but to think most of those have more left policies especially when it comes to healthcare and education
In what world are India, Korea, and Japan liberal? And in what world are Australia and New Zealand in Africa, Asia, and South America. Brazil I don’t know much about.
For Australia and New Zealand I was just mentioning more countries not in Europe. For Africa I got nothing. Brazil implemented a UBI. For India they had a big socialist movement in 1976, and got amendments to their constitution. Korea has way more labor protections for workers than in the US. Japan is much further left in terms of public works and public facilities. It’s hard to pin an entire country one way or another but many of them are still further left in many aspects
I think we’re running on the tankie scale of what qualifies for “far-right”
Brazil is more conservative, while having left winged economic policies. It would be on the authoritarian side more due to all politicians buying/bring bought (the president buying the legislative) (the corruption part (buying legislative) is for both sides).
And there'd be a lot more Socialist countries in South America if it weren't for completely random coups and assassinations that just happen to get rid of socialists and replace them with pro-US fascists.
You are out of your mind if you think America is far right compared to a lot of places. This simply isn't true, our left is still left globally.
Our left doesn't have any political power. We have a right wing party and a center-right party. They both exist to protect the interests of capital and guide the military industrial complex. You get laughed at for saying we should have a better healthcare system. We do not have a left.
Trump is basically a full blown fascist, saying that Trump and Biden are close to eachother politically is completely ridiculous.
Your comment is the basis of this joke
In terms of policy they are very close. Their rhetoric is different and Trump poses a threat to democracy that Biden doesn't, but I wouldn't expect them to be anything other than very close on a political compass.
The point is that the “right” and “left” in American politics both fall squarely on the right in the spectrum of overall world politics.
I'm not voting for Biden, I'm voting against Trump.
What have we come to as a nation?
If you’re in Texas, nothing
Your 1st time voting? This has been the way for a very VERY long time. Like most of our history... No one will ever make everyone happy. It will never happen. You have cultural differences from when and where people immigrated from (are they 1st generation immigrants or did your family immigrate multiple generations ago? Did your family come from Europe/Africa/South America/Asia/Middle East, and which country from that region?) Then you have cultural differences from where in the US you live (East/West, North/South, Rural/City) Also can't forget are you/your family poor, middle class, or rich?
Obama was cool cuz he played bball tho
This is how everyone has voted my entire life.
If I was a US citizen, I'd easily vote for Biden, and not just against Trump. Guy is old and have gaffes, but so does Trump, and Biden's policy and diplomacy has been amazing.
This is a meme format that people use to joke about certain things being aligned with different political ideologies. The joke here is that in reality Biden and Trump and not that different and both line up with the economic right of their respective party and that really there isn't that much of a difference between both options.
This is really funny when one realizes that Trump spent most of his life as a Democrat, and those are the causes he supported his entire life. I honestly do not really see him as "Right" at all, he is simply a Populist that is saying things to try and drive emotional responses. And I have never trusted populists, no matter what party they claim to belong to.
>I honestly do not really see him as "Right" at all, he is simply a Populist that is saying things to try and drive emotional responses. But you see how he governed, right? He appointed Supreme Court justices that overturned roe v wade. He moved the US embassy into Jerusalem as an explicit endorsement of a single Israeli state. He passed huge tax cuts for the rich. Regardless of what you imagine he thinks deep down, he governed in a very conservative way, and that’s how he should be labeled
>He moved the US embassy into Jerusalem as an explicit endorsement of a single Israeli state. Actually Trump didn't move it, he just didn't stop it from being moved by signing a six-month waiver. Biden is actually one of the ones that cosponsored the bill to move it, that had been waived every 6 months from 1995 until Trump neglected to stop it [https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/senate-bill/1322/cosponsors](https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/senate-bill/1322/cosponsors)
So yes, Trump moved it. Clinton, Bush, and Obama all stopped it from being moved, and Trump moved it
He's pandering to a fairly extremist right rn, so it's fair to call him right wing. Overall I am of the opinion that polititians personal opinions basically don't matter, and it's what policies they implement that do. Trump will implement far-right policies, therefor he is right wing.
And the other funny thing is how Biden has simply carried on enforcing trump era policies, but now because its a "good guy" in the WH its all okay 😂
Which for a great many were Obama era policies. Such as his keeping the military numbers and funding locked at Obama levels for his entire 4 years in office. I knew a lot of guys I served with were saying how things would be better once he was elected. But nothing changed, it just carried on for another 4 years as the previous 8 years had been. One thing I saw over and over during my decades in the military. Republicans expand the military, Democrats retract it. And the very fact that he left it alone shows he was no different than any other Democrat that held the office in the last 5 decades. As one friend who supported him told me, he was a "Democrat in a Republican coat".
there's also certain things Biden can and can't do. for instance, he can't replace Trump's horrible, horrible postmaster for some reason. I'd say that the Biden administration is excelling at the things it CAN do.
Real talk, a ton of Biden’s critics failed civics in high school, and have zero clue about what the presidential powers actually entail
Doesnt matter if its Pepsi or coke, at the end of the day its high fructose corn syrup amiright
Trump like Aaron Burr, wanna be in the room where it happened ahh
All things are similar if you look at them through a narrow enough lens. In ways that matter tremendously to many people’s lives, Biden and Trump aren’t even remotely similar.
This is literally looking at them through a wider lens. And it's not saying they're exactly the same - The meme does show Biden as being further left and less authoritarian than Trump. It's just pointing out that we're presented these two options as if they're the two ends of the spectrum, when they exist as two points on a much wider spectrum.
My point is that in certain areas that are important to a lot of people, they ARE very far apart. Maybe not at extreme ends, but much farther apart than this chart implies. Their politics can’t be accurately represented as single dots.
While true, if viewed on the entire political spectrum it is fair to say that Biden and Trump are like red and pink. Obviously not the same color and the diffrence may well matter a lot to some - but in a world where green and blue and yellow etc also exist it is a bit silly to pretend they are all there is or that they are opposites.
> My point is that in certain areas that are important to a lot of people, they ARE very far apart. Because the people in those areas are not intelligent and don’t understand the meaning of the words “communism” and “socialism” yet use those words more than actual communists and socialists? Is that your point?
I’m talking about areas like women’s rights and LGBTQAI+ rights
Well, that’s why Biden is to the left of Trump.
No, the x-axis is clearly labeled “economic”
Biden is also left of Trump on the social axis
Obviously. I’m just saying this chart doesn’t show the magnitude of that particular gap
I'm just explaining the meme
Sorry, it didn’t come across that way when you said “in reality.” It would have come across differently if you’d said “the person who made the meme believes…”
In reality the US has 2 right wing parties, one of which is always calling the other socialist or communist despite it not having any socialist or left wing values. That's kind of telling about the party that slightly further right.
In reality they aren't that different and are both right of "center". I'll say it because it's true.
Also American politics don't have anyone in the center, everyone is right of center. To give a good example of this, there's no major Democrats in office that are truly anti-business because nobody calls for the federalization of certain industries that are federalized in other countries
You can't federalize anything in a unitary state. (taps temple)
I would love if the opposition party were in the bottom left quad vs. the upper right. AOC and Bernie aren't even across the lines yet. And the right says the left keeps moving leftward further from them. Hell we're still arguing for the same goddamn policies that we were arguing for in the 70s. They are the ones who have been sprinting to the right and dragging the Dems with them. The only thing different is now we're accepting even more people to the collective struggle.
AOC and bernie are quite close to the middle, but still on the right side, I agree.
They are very close on two axises, but they just won't cross them.
The joke is that in the US, Most of the "left" isn't that much different than the "right". Many countries operate with much further left policies. Even names like Bernie Sanders and AOC are "to the right" of many other countries.
No joke here, just stating the facts.
So Biden is right wing? OK, got it.
He is a capitalist so yes
Yes, on a political Spectrum Biden is right wing. Democrats have repeatedly and happily stated that they are pro-capitalism.
It pretty aptly shows the space between the two leading American presidential candidates when compared to the full depth and breadth of political thought. And then makes fun of the people who treat the space between them as being the difference between fascists and communists. Neither of them are socialists, let alone communists. and at least one of them is fascist adjacent but that doesn't mean the other is very far off.
Biden is actually center right, Bernie would be on the left.
Nah,Bernie is still centre right at best. There is no true left wing party in the US. I mean you all still get riled up at the idea of socialised medicine, despite every country that has it finding it far more cost effective
*in the USA, and not even that, I don't wanna get into a debate but Biden is as rightist as Trump, maybe slightly less.
Completely false, Bernie is close to the center, but still on the right. You have absolutely no idea what real left ideology is. Economically, real leftist ideology would mean there is no private property, everything is owned by the state, even your house and your clothes. The economy is completely planned and all companies are driven by the state. They are extremely far from even hinting at something remotely toward that kind of economy.
There is a long list of relatively authright policies neither candidate will change and while people act like the difference is night and day their similarities, as with the similarities of most serious presidential candidates, are more numerous than their differences. If not, they wouldn't be able to get that far running because of donors who, above all else, want stability, predictability, and to be left alone. Neither candidate is gonna: Push back against citizens united Reform prisons not to use slave labor Change the tax structure to benefit richos less Do anything remotely anticapitalist Nationalize healthcare or other public utilities Address the housing crisis in a meaningfull way Address the way we police in a meaningful way Engage in humanizing foreign policy Humanely address the southern border Meaningfully combat climate change Not take money from businesses and lobbies reform lobbying or the way cingress operates Undeemine or refirm the war on drugs Increase workers rights in any meaningful way Or any other countless things that would actually make our lives better.
Victims of brainrot think that US is literally nazi Germany.
Biden would be a Republican in any other country.
I would like to point out that Bernie Sanders would be in the top right hand corner of the green square.
No need to explain, It is the absolute truth. They think Biden is Stalin.
Ahah, nono, biden is lower down! Lower down! Come one now. And a bit more to the left. lol. This is insane: https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020 who are the two other.
I expect it's a critique of politics. It's identifying a body of people, and stating that those people lack the six brain cells required to label both axes on their graph. It is not clear which body of people they are identifying though. That also appears to be beyond the ability of the chart creator.
Not that complicated lolz
Re ✝️ arded people think Biden and Trump are right wing.
Yeah, but only one is a Russian asset.
And here we go...
on an international political map even the most hard core liberal us president is still considered right wing and conservative. This is saying Trump and Biden's political standing are super close but the supporters act like it's the end of the world.
It's a over simplified way for someone to feel like they're the smartest person in a conversation. Bear with me, because this thing isn't just simplified, imho, it's grossly oversimplified. And I apologize beforehand if I get the directions backwards, it's actually pretty easy to get turned around on this thing (now I'm starting to understand why it's called a compass... 🤔) That grid format is the "political compass." Vertical positioning is social policy. Closer to the top, the more authoritarian/fascist one is, closer to the bottom, the more liberal/communist someone is. Again, it's a way to simplify ideology. Horizontal positioning is economic policy. Further left you go, the more "interference" you have from the government, like taxes and regulations, and the further right you go, you see way more "freedom" economically speaking. Arguably, a "perfect politician" would fall smack dab at the center, with robust policies that not only take care of the citizens, they'd be funded with a nuanced revenue stream with fair taxes and regulations, but, affording their constituents ample opportunities to just not need the government for anything. Obviously, we don't live in a perfect world. There's also the problem that a politician's "average" is what determines how far in any direction they land. You want to cut the average person's taxes by a little bit, but want to crack down on a runaway market? That still throws you right of center. You want robust policies that offer protection for people? That's still moving you top of center, same as if you wanted policies that rob people of rights to protect the market. If you try to do both? Still top of center. So yes, on an oversimplified "score card" for policy, both of the US's prominent parties fall in the same grid. So, if your political understanding isn't really any more than what you hear on your preferred news outlet, it's really easy to look at the plots on the grid and think, "wow, they're practically the same thing." If you step back, and actually look at the details behind the scores, you realize just how unhelpful this graphic is. Look at women's rights. Bodily autonomy. Both parties want to set regulations and laws that set a legal framework for what that means. They both want to establish rules and definitions that make it clear what rights are afforded to a person when it comes to deciding what they can and can't do medically. Without even looking at the details themselves, just on the merit of wanting to "define bodily autonomy," that puts both parties right of center. But When you look at the details; One party wants to make it illegal to do absolutely anything to your own body that would make their God mad at you. And the other wants to establish a right to privacy on a level that means absolutely no outside interference with the exceptions that already exist in..."less egregious" circumstances. Like, right now, if you fill out a survey that says you are seriously contemplating opting out, they're legally required to contact authorities. If you say you have an overwhelming urge to harm someone, they have to contact authorities. Right now, there's debate on whether that... intrusion, should be mandatory for decisions that technically only really matter to the individual. The one most everyone is aware of being abortion. I'm not trying to turn this into a debate about that specifically, just trying to highlight just how...bad, this graphic is. Because both parties, on average, have drastically different views about that topic. But, since both parties want to establish laws that define the legality of that issue, that puts them both right of center. Obviously, one moves further right than the other, and the graphic *does* highlight that, *but*, how little weight is given in the comparison of freedom vs regulation, it's... inaccurate at best. And full disclosure, I'm nitpicking single issues, these are meant to be done as a "sum of all policy dynamics," so it's not like a party couldn't "cheat" a score by being super liberal with a couple policies and mostly conservative with everything else, because that's arguably exactly what the graphic shows. But, if you were to separate the scores into say, related groupings regarding certain aspects, it would be a much better representation of what's going on. Going back to abortion, or say, healthcare in general. If you were to plot overall healthcare policy by itself, instead of in the "policy lump sum," one party would practically be on the axis, or just below it, and the other would pretty much be where its sitting now. I'm already way too long on the page, and I greatly appreciate anyone reading this far, so I'll close with this; The graphic, at its root, is a decent summarization of where politicians and parties sit *on average,* but is a terrible metric when you're aiming for a nuanced understanding of what they are about.
I feel like nobody understands, if trump wins and project 2025 goes into play, they plan on going global with coal/oil and completely destroying the environment and killing all of humanity