What do we make of former friends who fell down the rabbit hole of the Right?
inthesetimes.com
I thought this was pretty good about leftists who end up going to trump and adopting some/many far right views. I feel pretty horrible about some stuff I believed for a bit and this helped me put things in perspective too.
Years ago, I was doing an A'Level in politics at a local college.
A'Level = Advanced Level, which was next step up from O'Level = Ordinary Level, which was roughly same level as US high school diploma.
Anyway, the teacher had a special interest in US politics, so we followed the syllabus for UK and US politics (not just UK).
One time, she set us some homework to watch a documentary on television about US politics.
This was back in the day before internet/video on demand, etc. And because I'd planned to watch it live, I hadn't arranged to video record it (not sure if I even had a video recorder at home at the time).
Unfortunately, I missed the start, missed the first 10 minutes or so, but watch all of it in a slight state of confusion. Because due to missing the start, I'd missed the bit where they put some of the interviewee's names, job titles, [political party/think tank/whatever] on screen. I was really into UK politics and could've recognised most British politicians and political commentators, but because they were American, I wasn't sure who many of them were.
During the next lesson, teacher asked for our thoughts on the programme, and I explained something along the lines that I wasn't sure whether some of the interviewees were left wing or right wing, because they'd start off saying something that seemed left (or right) wing, but then as they carried on talking it would seem that they'd gone so far left that they'd come out the other side as far right (or vice versa).
To me, it seemed as though it wasn't so much a political spectrum with polar opposites, left on one side and right at the other, it was more like a circle.
Thinking back now, I feel like it was happenstance, because if I'd watched from the beginning and new who they were, I would've anchored their comments to either the left or the right of the political spectrum and reflected on them in that context.
I suppose that political compass, which has left and right axes, and also libertarian? and authoritian? axes is more accurate than left-right/x-y, but still doesn't capture that backflip nature of some people's politics shifting from (usually) left to far left to far right, although the opposite does sometimes happen, albeit seemingly more rarely.
www.ctvnews.ca
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