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Hmmm ... could you give examples? In my experience nationalism, xenophobia, and religious prejudice overwhelmingly are only on the agendas of right wing parties

Hmmm ... could you give examples? In my experience nationalism, xenophobia, and religious prejudice overwhelmingly are only on the agendas of right wing parties.

Manishearth 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_politics#Usage_in_Western_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_politics#Us... "right wing" in the US has a very different meaning than the rest of the world. At its core, left/right is a statement about social (in)equality and the government's involvement in the same. It often is tied with conservative or nonsecular politics (inextricably so in the US, less so elsewhere), but that does not define it. India's government is pretty heavily involved in trying to break down social inequality. Whilst people disagree about the intentions and/or impact; we have plenty of policies trying to break down this inequality. We're also more on the socialist side of the capitalist-socialist spectrum (the constitution, for example, explicitly calls India socialist). As far as cross-party agreement on government "interference" in equality is concerned, India has it much more than the US AFAICT. Whether this makes the main parties left-wing; I don't know, but it's not clearly right-wing. Then again, Wikipedia seems to call the BJP right-wing. .... terminology sucks. (IMO this dichotomy isn't particularly useful in India.)
- sremani 11y ago
  Especially when the Sangh is for Swadeshi and actively for Protectionism. RSS happens to Hindu Nationalist but have Fabian socialist tendencies.
- hackuser 11y ago
  > India's government is pretty heavily involved in trying to break down social inequality. Is the current BJP administration trying to do that, or is that the long-term trend? Also, is the BJP trying to help the Muslim minority or only Hindus?
  - Manishearth 11y ago
    It's a long term trend. As far as the Muslim minority is concerned, there haven't been any changes in law that I am aware of regarding them (besides, India has a bunch of laws that make it hard to remove laws pertaining to minorities without involvement from minority leaders. Or something like that). There probably have been internal policy changes. I don't know. One would expect them to focus on fixing "Hindu rights" issues over Muslim rights, sadly. I'm not sure what they have done so far in that direction (and there's a lot of debate over this right now; whether or not the atmosphere in the country has changed due to them). I'd rather not get into that debate here.
    - iofj 11y ago
      The thing I don't get about Indian politics is this : given what has happened to the Hindu majority in Pakistan and the Hindu minority in Bangladesh [1] [2] [3]. Given that, how can you possibly defend that muslims in India are anything but a clear and present danger to both national security itself (ie. the democracy, but generally all state institutions and Indian territory), but more importantly, to the very lives of a majority of Indians ? (judging by what happened in Pakistan and Bangladesh, even to a very significant fraction of their own lives) Note that you might say that those were rebels, specific leaders, but accounts of the various massacres say differently, and all say roughly the same thing: it was ordinary muslims, neighbors, friends, villagers, who suddenly started massacring everyone. It wasn't armies, it was certainly not an organised military force, it was ordinary muslims (this is the same thing being reported from the isis/daesh areas in Iraq and Syria however). And whilst I don't mean to say Hindus never commit violence upon muslims, far from it (even increased recently), the scale of it just doesn't compare. No massacres (plenty of events that were fights between mobs being reported as massacres on muslims, especially in Western press, but nothing that anyone can reasonably consider a massacre : people going to houses and executing whoever they find inside). If you say 100 million Hindus were killed or forcibly oppressed in the last century in India, that's a conservative figure. You'd never get anywhere near 10 million muslims being affected. The general population certainly doesn't see things this way, when I find it extremely hard to argue anything else, given recent Indian history. I don't understand why. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus#Pakistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus#Pakistan [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus#Bangladesh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus#Banglade... [3] article, as illustration: http://news.yahoo.com/hindu-temple-set-fire-pakistan-over-blasphemy-142524012.html http://news.yahoo.com/hindu-temple-set-fire-pakistan-over-bl...
whybroke 11y ago
You correct. Perhaps that is why you are being downvoted. Indeed you can trivially get a rough idea of political leanings of European parties from the university of Bergen. For example http://www.nsd.uib.no/european_election_database/country/uk/parties.html http://www.nsd.uib.no/european_election_database/country/uk/... Obviously googling will quickly show each party's stance on any issue of interest. There are a finite number of significant parties in the EU and they are not secretive about what they stand for. And it's hard to imagine anyone being unaware of a US politician's alignment or the difference between say Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump on say the issue of xenophobia. But perhaps chimeracoder is such a person. I do not know about India but chimeracoder only mentioned Europe and the US In fact, the US definition of left vs right is nearly identical to the European understanding of that difference. What differences there are would stem from the prominence of far right ideas in the US: In Europe, parties form all sides generally agree on issues such as firearm regulation, climate change, the wisdom of the metric system and the right to medical care
DanBC 11y ago
UK labour party had mugs before last election with anti-immigration messages. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelection/labours-diane-abbott-condemns-partys-anti-immigration-mug-as-shameful-10142149.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelectio...
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  They were Thatcherites and couldn't honestly be described as left wing.

Hmmm ... could you give examples? In my experience nationalism, xenophobia, and religious prejudice overwhelmingly are only on the agendas of right wing parties.

Manishearth 11y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_politics#Usage_in_Western_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_politics#Us... "right wing" in the US has a very different meaning than the rest of the world. At its core, left/right is a statement about social (in)equality and the government's involvement in the same. It often is tied with conservative or nonsecular politics (inextricably so in the US, less so elsewhere), but that does not define it. India's government is pretty heavily involved in trying to break down social inequality. Whilst people disagree about the intentions and/or impact; we have plenty of policies trying to break down this inequality. We're also more on the socialist side of the capitalist-socialist spectrum (the constitution, for example, explicitly calls India socialist). As far as cross-party agreement on government "interference" in equality is concerned, India has it much more than the US AFAICT. Whether this makes the main parties left-wing; I don't know, but it's not clearly right-wing. Then again, Wikipedia seems to call the BJP right-wing. .... terminology sucks. (IMO this dichotomy isn't particularly useful in India.)

sremani 11y ago
Especially when the Sangh is for Swadeshi and actively for Protectionism. RSS happens to Hindu Nationalist but have Fabian socialist tendencies.
hackuser 11y ago
> India's government is pretty heavily involved in trying to break down social inequality. Is the current BJP administration trying to do that, or is that the long-term trend? Also, is the BJP trying to help the Muslim minority or only Hindus?
- Manishearth 11y ago
  It's a long term trend. As far as the Muslim minority is concerned, there haven't been any changes in law that I am aware of regarding them (besides, India has a bunch of laws that make it hard to remove laws pertaining to minorities without involvement from minority leaders. Or something like that). There probably have been internal policy changes. I don't know. One would expect them to focus on fixing "Hindu rights" issues over Muslim rights, sadly. I'm not sure what they have done so far in that direction (and there's a lot of debate over this right now; whether or not the atmosphere in the country has changed due to them). I'd rather not get into that debate here.
  - iofj 11y ago
    The thing I don't get about Indian politics is this : given what has happened to the Hindu majority in Pakistan and the Hindu minority in Bangladesh [1] [2] [3]. Given that, how can you possibly defend that muslims in India are anything but a clear and present danger to both national security itself (ie. the democracy, but generally all state institutions and Indian territory), but more importantly, to the very lives of a majority of Indians ? (judging by what happened in Pakistan and Bangladesh, even to a very significant fraction of their own lives) Note that you might say that those were rebels, specific leaders, but accounts of the various massacres say differently, and all say roughly the same thing: it was ordinary muslims, neighbors, friends, villagers, who suddenly started massacring everyone. It wasn't armies, it was certainly not an organised military force, it was ordinary muslims (this is the same thing being reported from the isis/daesh areas in Iraq and Syria however). And whilst I don't mean to say Hindus never commit violence upon muslims, far from it (even increased recently), the scale of it just doesn't compare. No massacres (plenty of events that were fights between mobs being reported as massacres on muslims, especially in Western press, but nothing that anyone can reasonably consider a massacre : people going to houses and executing whoever they find inside). If you say 100 million Hindus were killed or forcibly oppressed in the last century in India, that's a conservative figure. You'd never get anywhere near 10 million muslims being affected. The general population certainly doesn't see things this way, when I find it extremely hard to argue anything else, given recent Indian history. I don't understand why. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus#Pakistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus#Pakistan [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus#Bangladesh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus#Banglade... [3] article, as illustration: http://news.yahoo.com/hindu-temple-set-fire-pakistan-over-blasphemy-142524012.html http://news.yahoo.com/hindu-temple-set-fire-pakistan-over-bl...

whybroke 11y ago

You correct. Perhaps that is why you are being downvoted. Indeed you can trivially get a rough idea of political leanings of European parties from the university of Bergen. For example http://www.nsd.uib.no/european_election_database/country/uk/parties.html http://www.nsd.uib.no/european_election_database/country/uk/... Obviously googling will quickly show each party's stance on any issue of interest. There are a finite number of significant parties in the EU and they are not secretive about what they stand for. And it's hard to imagine anyone being unaware of a US politician's alignment or the difference between say Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump on say the issue of xenophobia. But perhaps chimeracoder is such a person. I do not know about India but chimeracoder only mentioned Europe and the US In fact, the US definition of left vs right is nearly identical to the European understanding of that difference. What differences there are would stem from the prominence of far right ideas in the US: In Europe, parties form all sides generally agree on issues such as firearm regulation, climate change, the wisdom of the metric system and the right to medical care

DanBC 11y ago

UK labour party had mugs before last election with anti-immigration messages. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelection/labours-diane-abbott-condemns-partys-anti-immigration-mug-as-shameful-10142149.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelectio...

crdoconnor 11y ago
They were Thatcherites and couldn't honestly be described as left wing.