Who wins Hillary or Trump ?

drac, it depends on how you define right-wing??

He’s not a conservative, any more than Marie Le Pen, Geert Wilders, Putin, Farage are conservative.

Mussolini wasn’t a conservative in his day.

Most of the above endorse major public spenidng programmes whihc are more associated with the Left.

So did Sir oswald Mosley in his day.

But does that mean than none of them are right-wing???

drac,

it doesn’t sound as though you know your history, for one thing. Mosley was the elader of the British Union of Fascists.

They are generally seen as radicals, appealing to the same wortking-class people who were drawn to the Socialists and communist in the past (Le pen is a classic, as the mass ex-Communist vote shifts to her, but Farage’s appeal is to the labour working-class voters of the Northern cities left behind by globalisation). In many ways, such as a demand for more public spending on infrastructure, they are very similar to the Left.

But they aren’t left radicals. They are seen as radicals of the Right (hence the Far Right).

For you to say that Trump, Farage, Le Pen etc are centre-right is startling ebnough to beg the question, Just what does right-wing mean? for them to be in the centre?

I would say they are reactionary Right in the fullest sense of the word. A guy called mark lilla has just written a book about such reactionaries called The Shipwrecked Mind. They are people who want ta return to a past whihc was ogreat but betrayed by a liberal establishment.

For you to call them centre-right would definitely place you in oppsotion to Lilla. So how do you define right-wing?

skep

draculina wrote:

To me the left / right divide is only based on ecconomic policies, for example infrastructure spending is a left wing policy, the right wing counterpart would be to privatise infrastructure and to let the free market invest in it. I would define a centrist is someone who holds both left and right wing views simultaniously on different issues, this describes most rational people who are not ideologues. .

The problem wiht this very eprsonal definition is that it tends to lead to some bizarre examples.

Under it, Hitler would be a centre-right politican. He had expansionary economic policies based on state intervention  at every level, and he succeeded in wiping out unemployment, leading Germany to escape from the economic catastrphe intow whihc it had fallen.

Of course he was a mixture of different ideas – but his right-wing social attitudes – lebensraum, anti-semitism, women back to the kitchen – are what make him rightwing, not his economic policies*. He was a socialist, after all, but a national-socialist in the particular meaning of the term.

I understand the seriousness with which you try to assess today’s world, drac, but while right-and left-wing definitons are difficult, yours doesn’t work. Hitler was not a centre-right politician – and neither are Farage, Le Pen, Trump etc.  They’re not conservatives either, but right-wing radicals.

* Economic policies aren’t left or rightwing according to expansion vs austerity, but according to the purposes which they serve.

sceptical guy wrote:

The problem wiht this very eprsonal definition is that it tends to lead to some bizarre examples. Under it, Hitler would be a centre-right politican. He had expansionary economic policies based on state intervention at every level, and he succeeded in wiping out unemployment, leading Germany to escape from the economic catastrphe intow whihc it had fallen. Of course he was a mixture of different ideas – but his right-wing social attitudes – lebensraum, anti-semitism, women back to the kitchen – are what make him rightwing, not his economic policies*. He was a socialist, after all, but a national-socialist in the particular meaning of the term. I understand the seriousness with which you try to assess today’s world, drac, but while right-and left-wing definitons are difficult, yours doesn’t work. Hitler was not a centre-right politician – and neither are Farage, Le Pen, Trump etc. They’re not conservatives either, but right-wing radicals. * Economic policies aren’t left or rightwing according to expansion vs austerity, but according to the purposes which they serve.

Most political models i’ve seen show Hitler as centre or centre left. Labeling a socialist as right wing seems a bit silly to me.

It’s maybe not the best model, but its the first one I came across from a somewhat legitimate source that had Hitler on it.