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Comment by Rochus | Hacker News Reader

> "Switzerland is as deeply polarized as the USA"

Such a claim is obviously wrong, since in Switzerland we have a great many parties with all sorts of political positions, not just two. To divide the political spectrum into only "left" and "right" is an oversimplification. Switzerland still has a healthy distribution of the population across the political spectrum, and it regularly happens that so-called "right-wing" parties advocate left-wing issues and vice versa (as can be seen again in the last vote). As in the USA, however, academic dellusion is also spreading in this country; I recently found this video which has a good explanation for this phenomenon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Peima-Uw7w (Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things).

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> To divide the political spectrum into only "left" and "right"

I don't think it's as easy as "left"/right" in the US. The Democratic Party for example hardly champions many of the ideas someone like FDR or the social democratic left did/does.

Republicans are split between a typical conservative, more of a "libertarian" and then a Paleoconservative wings etc. But yes, party-wise it's only two that are viable.

Left/Right is a totally outdated and oversimplified categorization and I just do not get how it is still being used even by moderately intelligent people. It just became obvious in Germany, where the far right party (AfD) lost many votes to a newly formed party, that fractioned from the far left party (Die Linke). The voters did not even have to change their political view to make the switch from "far left" to "far right".

There have been attempts like the Political Compass[1] and the Nolan Chart[2]. Both are better than the right-left categories, but still none have been widely adopted. It is as if Mathematics would still exclusively use integer numbers. Political science get their stuff together and come up with something better, if they one day want to be seen as a "science".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Political_Compass

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart

Look at the UK - where Leaver/Remainer (or Rejoiners these days) has become a major political categorisation that doesn't really map onto the standard left/right political spectrum (e.g. both those on the far right and far left tended to be Leavers).

>The voters did not even have to change their political view to make the switch from "far left" to "far right".

Die Linke has almost never managed to practice what it preaches when it comes to ostensibly leftist values; besides, this just sounds like the nth iteration of successful right opportunism.

> this just sounds like the nth iteration of successful right opportunism.

This is exactly what I am talking about. Can you elaborate what "right" means in this case?

Pffff... what do these people from..ummmm.. University of Zurich's Department of Political Science know about Swiss politcs eh

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