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Comment by luckylion | Hacker News Reader

left/right completely falls apart when you apply it to groups like ISIS. They're decidedly not capitalist, which is strongly associated with "right wing", they run/ran their system on a religious taxation-scheme with a lot of "nationalization" of anything in conquered areas, but they're also not marxist in any way. They are obviously not nationalistic and are a diverse group, they are united by belief/ideology, not by blood/heritage.

Declaring them to be "right wing" is obviously nonsense unless you remove all meaning and just call "right wing" whatever isn't explicitly left wing.

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Well, sure, the notion of a total order on political ideologies is ridiculous, but if we are engaging in that silliness already, then the religious fanatics who insist upon their divine right to own women is pretty on the nose for comparison with other ideologies that describe themselves as right wing.

But even that isn’t that clear either. Here in Spain the right wing has accepted and defended abortion (but they don’t want social security to pay for it), but it’s primarily the left that opposes sex work and surrogation.

Why we’re still classifying political views in a single line is still baffling to me.

"Right vs left" only means the two main political parties in a government, and whatever those parties stand for. It is different in every nation and every era.

Everyone who pretends there is a worldwide eternally consistent meaning is a small minded person polluting discourse.

Broadly speaking it boils down to collectivism vs individualism and authoritarian vs libertarian on an x,y economic axis. The social z axis defining "left" and "right" (more accurately progressive and conservative) is a spook because morality is culturally subjective.

> "Right vs left" only means the two main political parties in a government, and whatever those parties stand for.

Not all countries even have two main parties.

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