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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   587 thread views

Transnational Thursday for September 17, 2026

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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If even "right-wingers" are left wing, that sounds like institutions being captured by the left

Do you propose that people like the Koch brothers were leftwing and that Bernie Sanders was rightwing in 2015?

"Left Wing" and "Right wing" are fuzzy social categories, not mathematical primitives. You should sort by tribe, it's closer to the joints of reality.

Kinda. Look at how all the anti immigration lefties were treated by their supposed fellow left-wingers. They were treated as enemies, and that means that whatever you want to call them, they definitely weren't left-wing.

The main reason the “right wing” has so many diverse policy viewpoints is that the left has a rolling omnicause, and anyone kicked out of the left will thenceforth be described as right-wing.

Reddit is firmly convinced JK Rowling is a “right-wing nut job” because she disagrees with trans ideology, despite holding fast to every other piece of the left’s policy platform. They believe famous Monty Python comedian John Cleese is now a right-winger because he's outspoken against Muslim migration to Britain.

Really, there are three axes, and you can only be a left-winger if they say you’re on the left side of all three: anti-patriarchy, anti-colonialism, and socialism. The Kochs are for unbounded immigration, which is anti-colonial, but not socialism.

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