What does “right-wing” and “left-wing” even mean at this point?
Historically it apparently meant who sits on the right side and who sits on the left side of the president of the french National Assembly.
From wikipedia:
The terms “left” and “right” first appeared during the French Revolution of 1789 when members of the National Assembly divided into supporters of the Ancien Régime to the president’s right side and supporters of the revolution to his left side.
But i think that’s a kinda stupid categorization because it doesn’t explain why things developed like this. They could have developed completely differently, and are therefore arbitrary and not reliable.
Not only that but what most people call the left nowadays (socialists, communists and beyond) categorically refused to be called left until the 30s. They saw themselves as playing outside the Assemblée.
The left of the time were calling themselves the “Radicals”, and they were fine and dandy with capitalism, just liberal in their cultural beliefs, whereas the right was conservative/reactionary (in that they wanted to keep the status quo/go back to monarchy/more autoritarism). Socialists were fighting against both left and right.
The left and the socialists only allied themselves during the Front Populaire, a large union against fascism that was heavily on the rise in France (and Europe obviously) at the time, with a failed far right Coup attempt (la Cagoule) and a ton of high profile people having at the very least sympathies for Hitler (those were instrumental in France’s defeats and surrender at the beginning of the war by the way). The sentence “Plutôt Hitler que le Front Populaire” (better Hitler than the Popular Front) was used a lot, and is still widely remembered today.
It’s only after the Front Populaire that the socialists started to be bundled with the left in their and the common political discourse.
Funnily enough, today’s US democrats show a perfect example of why socialists didn’t want to be labeled in the same way as the “Radicals” at the time.
“Wing” has started to lose meaning, yeah. All of the explanations I’ve seen for this have essentially described women moving left and men moving right. To call either move a move into a “wing” seems pretty unfounded.
What does “right-wing” and “left-wing” even mean at this point?
Historically it apparently meant who sits on the right side and who sits on the left side of the president of the french National Assembly. From wikipedia:
But i think that’s a kinda stupid categorization because it doesn’t explain why things developed like this. They could have developed completely differently, and are therefore arbitrary and not reliable.
Not only that but what most people call the left nowadays (socialists, communists and beyond) categorically refused to be called left until the 30s. They saw themselves as playing outside the Assemblée.
The left of the time were calling themselves the “Radicals”, and they were fine and dandy with capitalism, just liberal in their cultural beliefs, whereas the right was conservative/reactionary (in that they wanted to keep the status quo/go back to monarchy/more autoritarism). Socialists were fighting against both left and right.
The left and the socialists only allied themselves during the Front Populaire, a large union against fascism that was heavily on the rise in France (and Europe obviously) at the time, with a failed far right Coup attempt (la Cagoule) and a ton of high profile people having at the very least sympathies for Hitler (those were instrumental in France’s defeats and surrender at the beginning of the war by the way). The sentence “Plutôt Hitler que le Front Populaire” (better Hitler than the Popular Front) was used a lot, and is still widely remembered today.
It’s only after the Front Populaire that the socialists started to be bundled with the left in their and the common political discourse.
Funnily enough, today’s US democrats show a perfect example of why socialists didn’t want to be labeled in the same way as the “Radicals” at the time.
“Wing” has started to lose meaning, yeah. All of the explanations I’ve seen for this have essentially described women moving left and men moving right. To call either move a move into a “wing” seems pretty unfounded.