Ask Lemmygrad

The title reads like a very polite own.

Otherwise, depends on your circumstances. Do your nationally syndicated news media propagate right-wing or left-wing ideology writ large? Do your nation's school systems instill senses of nationalism and xenophobia into its youth? Does your country's leadership more fervently and regularly repress one side or the other?

It is easier to be a fascist in a fascist state. It is easier to be a liberal in a liberal one, and a socialist in a socialist one. Half the battle has already been won at that point. There is comfort to belief in the system one lives under, a comfort that has the potential to breed ignorance or intellectual laziness.

My own experience shows that most people are more -- I hate to use the word, naturally inclined towards sympathizing with a left-wing perspective when the correct words are used.

It's easier to be right wing in the west because there are billions and billions of dollars sloshing around shaping the base and superstructure. Being left wing means pushing against that. It's swimming upstream

I think it's probably just as easy to be a vaushite as it is to be a fan of Joe Rogan, if you accept that kind of passive consumption as political orientation.

I don't really believe a unified "left wing" exists.

It's harder to be a well-read, committed, and active Marxist-leninist than it is to be someone who simply wants to roll back the status quo to their benefit, sure.

There are plenty of nominal leftists who don't read theory, don't put their principles in practice in their life, and aren't connected with a party, cadre work, or real life organizing (guilty).

Yes. "common sense" is the repetition of dominant ideology. They can bang on "common sense" and destroy things. We have to deconstruct common sense so. That we can build the future.

I think also, left-wing groups tend to be more prone to splitting off into separate factions whenever members disagree, whereas right-wing groups tend to just glom together under a broad umbrella. Which often means you're not just arguing your point against the right, but also a good chunk of the left as well.

Also the right aren't always even bothered with arguing their point at all, often they just insult their opponents and do whatever they like.

Yes.

All that's required to be ideologically right wing is one of its many sometimes contradictory hooks. Do you hate (slurs) and blame them for your personal frustrations? You're in. Are you a greedy piece of shit and want the planet to burn down a little faster so you can get another yacht? You're in. Do you believe that the creator of the universe is your personal buddy and wingman and wants you to persecute some (slurs) and make a quick buck burning the planet down a little faster? You're totally in.

Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is working very hard against us.

I think, on some level, following the state line is easy internally because it is effectively giving up responsibility for your own and others actions. There's one or two sources of information, and doing what's right or wrong has an accessible choice that doesn't have the same moral weight if it fails and doesn't work.

If you want to truck outside that, your failures are your own.

(At least psychologically, that's how it feels)

I think socdem is the easiest followed by right wing then truly left wing. Saying that from originally being a socdem (communism is kinda hard to randomly stumble upon/research unless you live in an AES state or something). But depends a lot on the location.

For America being socdem definitely harder than right wing.

It goes in both directions. The further you are from the dominant ideology you grew up in the more work you had to put in to get away from it - and while in general following research and evidence-based claims will push you to the left, that doesn't mean that there aren't an awful lot of people who get pushed to the left by non evidence-backed things, like their own anecdotal life experiences or just an internet personality that they jive with, so I wouldn't say that going left is always harder than going right.

You have quite a few assumptions built into this question, whether you know it or not. Do you really think left wingers spend all day in books? How is the difficulty of something quantified? Considering how you phrase the question, there is clearly a lean here. How hard do you work at it? Surely, those at the top of the biggest political ideologies work incredibly hard at their craft. Though it can't be unsaid that not all of them work honestly.

Not trying to be an enlightened centrist (because I'm not a centrist lmao). Simply acting as devils advocate here.