Memes

See those jackasses with swastikas, they hate you. They’re the furthest right. See the people with hammers and sickles or black flags and maltovs? They hate each other almost as much as they hate the rich. They’re the furthest left.

In reality the right wing wants lower taxes, more police, more military, less corporate legislation, and to regulate your sexual and medical decisions every moral panic. They also tend to vote how their preacher tells them.

The left wing wants to regulate businesses, fund public works and social services, try to create a more equal society (the right wants hierarchy), and generally supports freedom except when used for bigotry. We also like unions. The further left you go the more you like unions.

Obligatory Wilhoit: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

Bro, the left and right are originally French, not American, and they're applied worldwide throughout various systems.

Long story short, in the original National Assembly in 1789, people with similar opinions ended up befriending each-other and sitting nearby during the session, so at one point you had all those who thought the revolution ought to go further (give more rights to more people, decrease the power of the king or outright depose him, etc...) sitting on the left, and all those who thought the revolution had gone to far already and ought to slow down sitting on the right.

Of course, by this metric, the very concept of a republic is far left, but the idea is that no matter what system you're in, once it's established enough, wanting to maintain the status quo is being a centrist, wanting change that puts more power in the hands of common people is left wing, and opposing such changes or wanting to undo them to "restore order", often concentrating power in fewer hands, is right wing.

This "power" I speak of was at the beginning just political power, but through the 19th century, the focus shifted towards economic power. Therefore, since the late 19th century, a right wing policy a policy that favors the rich, and a left wing policy one that places restrictions on the rich and welfare policy for the poor to decrease inequality. This is why liberals were initially left wing, but neoliberalism is now mostly regarded as a wing ideology. These are policies that want a weaker state, but more rights/powers for rich individuals.

If in America then it's all right wing.

Left wingers want collective ownership of the Means of Production, right wingers want individual ownership of the Means of Production.

What follows from that are generally a bunch of interconnected, intersectional views. Leftists tend to oppose hierarchy, rightists tend to support hierarchy.

Some people enjoy walking on the wings of passenger planes. For some reason Americans are really hostile about which wing is better to stand on while in flight.

I can't stop recommending the youtube channel what is politics. Seriously: it's perfect if you're represented by this meme.

It's a simple series of videos that explains in digestible terms what right and left are and why everyone should care.

There's a hockey joke in there too.

You're probably better off not knowing. This stuff never makes a person happy.

Those who wank off with left hand are left wingers and those that wank off with right hand are right winger. And none of them are gonna care about your privacy or freedom.

It depends if you're watching them from the front or the back. So it can be quite confusing.

In Empire (aka USA) as there is no true opposition, they're the same picture, the same lobbyists and so on

You can just make up a name for whoever you don't like and use it to dehumanize them. "Lib" is a popular stand-in when you don't have even a tenuous grasp of global politics.