SolarCross wrote:that you can put all these diverse weirdos into one group called "right" and not see how arbitrary that is shows that "right" wing is as bogus a concept as "left" wing.
People keep calling me right wing for some reason but I am NOT:
- a racist
- a flat earther
- a christian
- a creationist
- a totalitarian
Well right-wing is a lot easier to define because they tend to have one or more of these characteristics: reactionary, traditional, religious, conservative, or pro-ruling class (the rich, the aristocracy, the political institutions, etc). These are characteristics that are universal to right-wingers and can be generalized accross historical lines such that we can always imagine a conflict between those interests and the interests of people attempting to reform, innovate upon, discard, or otherwise update the institutions that right-wingers seek to protect.
So generally we can define these two sides as they work in opposition to each other. Depending on your point of view this can either be the ideological opposition or the material opposition (what interests that they actually serve as a consequence of material circumstances). Obviously there are those that say that this is a false opposition (notably post-modernists), but that is what I believe the basis of the left-right paradigm generally is agreed to stem from.
Obviously the more in favor of the status quo you are, the more to the center you will identify. Personally I don't think that my vision of what the world should be like is too radically different from the status quo, so I identify as center-left.
Karl Marx was a white supremacist, Stalin was a homophobe and an anti-semite.. Are they far right?
No, because you are not viewing them within the context of their time and place. You are plucking them out of their historical circumstances and asking what they would be considered as of today. In the context of what they were historically, there is no argument that they were both left-wing. Their opposition to capitalism was based upon their belief in socialist revolution. That alone will tell you they are not far right.
If you try to focus on a specific characteristic as belonging to one side or the other you will confuse yourself and fail to see the forrest for the trees. For instance, a right-winger and a left-winger can oppose Obamacare for two completely different reasons. Any one trait is not going to tell you if someone is left or right.