Isn't anti-authoritarian typically considered a leftist position? So the opposite of what you are saying?
Depends on who currently is the authoritarian. Left wing authoritarians make right wing anti-authoritarians and vice versa.
I think this is obviously the right answer. There have clearly been left wing avd right wing authoritarians in history. These days in, western countries at least, most authoritarian are right wing. Trump and the conservative party in the UK being the clearest examples.
I define here authoritarian as someone who is decreasing democracy and transparency. Not caring if they do it for the right or wrong reasons.
Also clearly all leaders are a bit authoritarian, Obama did sine things as did Blair. But it pales in degree to the current leaders.
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You cannot use heartland institute as a source. If the claim is that it is leftwing because they are supported by the working class than the republican party is leftwing/socialist which is hard to take seriously.
As for your question the easiest and clearest example would be Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte of Chile that was supported by the right wing forces in the US, including Milton Friedman.
I would encourage you to look aside from your partisan lenses. Note that I do not in any way argue against that Stalin or Mao most likely should be considered left wing and were brutal authoritarians that was a stain on the world.
I am happy to look at things from both sides. When I asked who are the rightwing authoritarians, I wanted answers that I could use to look things up.
As for Hitler, I believe he was left wing for the following reasons:
He pushed socialist programs like universal health care, welfare, government job creation, etc..
He was anti-established religion, including Christianity. He said that when he was done with Judaism, Christianity would be next.
His beliefs on eugenics and racial superiority had far more in common with other leftists of his time. The American counterparts on the left, for instance, including the founders of planned parenthood, wanted to prevent minorities from reproducing,
Hitler used the public education system to indoctrinate the youth into his ideology, a similar tactic of the left in the U.S. Hitler also encouraged/forced mothers to go to work, further undermining the nuclear family.
Hitler made gun control laws stricter. Hitler also supported abortions.
The only counter argument I've heard is Hitler was a fascist which is obviously right-wing. I don't buy this argument at all. Fascism seems like it could apply to either the right or the left equally.
The extreme dictators like Stalin, Hitler etc are so far out that it doesn't really make sense to call them either.
Edit: It is also meaningless. I didn't like Trump but he was/is obviously nothing like Hitler or even Pinochet. And Biden is clearly no Mao. Calling either of them these things is just lazy and brings no clarity.
As for which is best/worst I think that is also a bit harder than it looks. For example I'm happy that I live in CA that is controlled by democrats instead of republicans. But honestly, I think one party control is bad whoever it is. We need power sharing and transparency. It is obviously bad when democrats are in control as well even if they pretend to do policies I support. And I don't always like what they propose, sometimes republicans have the right idea too.
Plus he strongly supported the Soviet Union, particularly with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
(Tongue firmly in cheek.)
Maybe get your tongue out of your cheek? Not supporting communism doesn't mean or even provide evidence Hitler wasn't leftwing. Often the greatest infighting occurs between groups with adjacent political beliefs. A group must fight for unity among the ranks of those who are close but not in full agreement before tackling those with opposite beliefs.
Hitler hated communism because he believed it was invented by Jews. Marx's parents were Jews, although Marx himself did not identify as Jewish in the slightest. Communism also didn't fit with Hitler's views views on Aryan superiority.
To quote from answers here: https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Hitler-hate-Communism https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Hitler-hate-Communism
"From what we can tell, Hitler hated communism because it was a system that emphasized class struggle over national and racial struggle. He saw it as a system that was developed by the Jews to deliberately undermine both national unity and racial purity.
Interestingly enough, Hitler did not apparently have a problem with the economic aspects of communism, or at least most of them. His party was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and they successfully competed for many of the same workers the Communists wanted to win over. The Nazi flag had a red background because it was a socialist movement, albeit one that emphasized socialism within the nation while those outside the nation were viewed with varying levels of inferiority".
So again, Hitler held views fairly adjacent to communism, putting him clearly in leftwing territory.
It's considered a liberal position, not a leftist position. Traditionally leftist political philosophy is aligned with central authority (strong federal government, marxixm, communism, etc.)
Whistle blowing is a lib position, but the conservatives have their own liberal movement as well with lib being the root of "libertarian", which in contemporary american political framing is right-aligned.
> It's considered a liberal position, not a leftist position.
“Liberal” and “left” are terms of slightly different origin for the same position, opposing the established narrow feudal/monarchist elite power in favor of popular sovereignty and the government based on the rights of the individual.
It’s true that subsequently they’ve diverged with the old enemy being irrelevant, with “liberal” including and “left” excluding defense of concentration of power in the now-established capitalist elite justified by appeal the preeminence of the capitalist understanding of property rights.
"Left" and "Liberal" are distinct political ideologies which happened to both oppose monarchies at one point in time. Their proposed solutions even then were quite different.
Liberalism ostensibly values things such as property rights and freedom of information that are not really important in Leftism. Leftism prioritizes "fair" distribution of resources, which is not really a concern of Liberalism.
The left is uber authoritarian; progressivism is an authoritarian philosophy about using state power to change the world and society.
Lenininism and its descendants confuse that issue (non-Leninist leftists often consider Leninism a right-wing ideology that borrows left-wing rhetoric, though.)
Each "team" accuses the other of being authoritarian. So, when blue team is in charge, the reds think of themselves as anti-authoritarian. When red team is in charge, the blues think of themselves as anti-authoritarian. Basically, it's a rhetorical ploy to gain a few cheap points: When the side in charge does something you don't like, just call them "authoritarians," and your cause, whatever it is, becomes more appealing.
Except what you are saying is not really true. Most conservatives want to reduce government power, not extend it. The left, on the other hand, universally wants to extend government reach. I would recommend reading "The Authoritarian Moment" which goes into detail as to how the left are basically winning: https://www.amazon.com/Authoritarian-Moment-Weaponized-Americas-Institutions/dp/0063001829 https://www.amazon.com/Authoritarian-Moment-Weaponized-Ameri...
To quote from the book's introduction:
"There are certainly totalitarians on the political right. But statistically, they represent a fringe movement with little institutional clout. The authoritarian left, meanwhile, is ascendant in nearly every area of American life. A small number of leftists—college-educated, coastal, and uncompromising—have not just taken over the Democratic Party but our corporations, our universities, our scientific establishment, our cultural institutions. And they have used their newfound power to silence their opposition."
Not necessarily. What you're thinking of is probably anarchism.
Leftists can favour authoritarianism just as much as right-wing types. The difference is usually just between MY "good" authoritarianism vs. YOUR "bad" authoritarianism. In my opinion this "whistleblower" and democrat donor's call for more censorship is anything but anti-authoritarian.
The idea that authoritarians exist only in one wing has long been a misunderstanding and an ideological blindspot that is now smacking us in the face. The Atlantic recently did a good piece on this, noting that there are common traits between left-wing and right-wing authoritarians, including a “preference for social uniformity, prejudice towards different others, willingness to wield group authority to coerce behavior, cognitive rigidity, aggression and punitiveness towards perceived enemies, outsized concern for hierarchy, and moral absolutism.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/psychological-dimensions-left-wing-authoritarianism/620185/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/psychologi...
If you want an anti-authoritarian ideology, you're looking for classical liberalism / libertarianism.
In the US, neither the left nor the right could be considered 'anti-authoritarian', as the left embraces broad government control of economic matters (a welfare state, environmental regulations, relatively high taxes), while the right embraces government control of social matters (regulating abortion, supporting 'traditional' marriage, etc.)
If you had a country with a perfectly free (laissez-faire) economy, but with strict social controls (mandatory Christian prayer in schools, abortion punishable by jail time, and mass deportations of illegal immigrants) leftists would call it an authoritarian nation.
If you had a country with a state-controlled economy (complete with cushy welfare state!), but with perfect social freedom (legal drugs, no regulation on abortion or sex work, and open migration) the right would call it an authoritarian nation.
While both right-wing and left-wing governments can exist without crossing the line into authoritarianism, only the classical libertarian's ideal government is by definition anti-authoritarian, because its focus is on the consent of the individual, whereas others are satisfied with the consent of a majority.
> While both right-wing and left-wing governments can exist without crossing the line into authoritarianism, only the classical libertarian's ideal government is by definition anti-authoritarian, because its focus is on the consent of the individual, whereas others are satisfied with the consent of a majority.
"Consent of the individual with sufficient capital," to be clear. "Freedom" is a cold comfort when it's your freedom to die of exposure and hunger on a street corner. Nobody in that position consents to that, and no libertarian ideology I've encountered presents a compelling justification for such a sorry state of affairs (much less a solution).
The law, in its majesty, forbids both the rich and the poor from sleeping under bridges.
> "Freedom" is a cold comfort when it's your freedom to die of exposure and hunger on a street corner.
This is a common argument, which is odd, since it doesn't make much sense. If your government were replaced by a libertarian one, would you stop caring about the poor? Would you be okay with folks dying in the streets? Of course you wouldn't. Well, luckily, one doesn't need a government to take care of the poor--you can do that by donating to a charity.
Could charities feed and house the poor? Yes, and easily. In 2019, the Federal government spent ~$45 Billion on HUD (housing for the poor) and ~$85 Billion on SNAP, which only amounts to ~3% of the federal budget! This could easily be raised via private charities--especially considering that taxes would be far lower, leaving folks with more disposable income. Not to mention the sense of social responsibility which would come with the knowledge that taking care of the poor is your responsibility, and not something that you can ignore under the assumption that "the government will take care of them".
> Nobody in that position consents to that, and no libertarian ideology I've encountered presents a compelling justification for such a sorry state of affairs (much less a solution).
Let's consider this argument carefully.
Say we've got two people, Person A and Person B. Person A is poor, and Person B is not. Say Person A wants money from Person B, and Person B doesn't give it to them. What does it even mean for Person A to "not consent" to this arrangement? So what if Person A does not consent to not having control over Person B--does Person A have some divine right to control Person B?
That is what Gen X and later were taught when the right was in fact authoritarian. But then the left also included people like Stallman and Chomsky.
Now we have a radical intransigent left again, and a brief look at the former Eastern Bloc shows us the end game of these people. I do not think that the "elite" leftists want a proletarian revolution though. They would like the exploitative China model, where bureaucrats and their offspring stay in power and the tightly controlled businesses do the work.
Not really, authoritarianism can be a property of both left and right wing ideologies. Mussolini's Italy and Stalin's USSR lay at opposite ends of the left/right spectrum yet were both undoubtedly authoritarian.
> Isn't anti-authoritarian typically considered a leftist position?
It seems as though it used to be, maybe 30 or 40 years ago, but that's shifted pretty much 180 degrees.