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Wait what ? Emmanuel Macron far more right than Xi Jinping ? And even more than Barack Obama ? France has an incomparable social security ; environmental laws

by maelito 4mo ago

Wait what ? Emmanuel Macron far more right than Xi Jinping ? And even more than Barack Obama ? France has an incomparable social security ; environmental laws ; worker protection ; way less economic inequality ; freedom of speech and civil liberties are impossible to compare with China ; etc Of course this is not exhaustive, of course Macron did try to hinder some of those rights, but come on, there's something wrong here. I couldn't find how these leaders have been ranked.

c0n5pir4cy 4mo ago
I mean yes - I think you are also confusing the axes of the political compass somewhat. Freedom of Speech, civil liberties etc are the Y-Axis - here Xi leans authoritarian. China actually has some pretty radical left economics policies - like pushing money/resources etc towards state owned entities.
lstodd 4mo ago
No opinion on Macron's rightness (I think he's so weak as to be unable to have a position, but that's neither here nor there). I think you misattribute, everything you cited was there before him and he had no leverage to change any of it. EU is left, FR is very left, and anyone elected president in FR can't do shit. Now, if you task an LLM to skim hot news you'll get a distorted rendition of a projected image which has zero to do with actual policy.
- maelito 4mo ago
  "EU is left". Haha, good joke. This shows how much the US and the audience of HN has shifted to the right.
  - lstodd 4mo ago
    Haha nice catch. In EU there is no left or right, only reelections by scaremongering. Also 75% effective tax rate, not including VAT.
  - xdennis 4mo ago
    > "EU is left". Haha, good joke. You are out of touch. The left supports the EU far more than the right. See this Pew poll from 2025[1]. In Europe, for every country, the left view the EU more favorably. The largest difference is in Poland where 88% of left wingers support it and 41% of right wingers support it. [1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/09/22/opinions-of-the-eu-remain-mostly-favorable-across-25-countries/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/09/22/opinions-...
    - asadotzler 4mo ago
      If your choices were Hitler or Mussolini and you picked one side over the other, how you voted isn't saying much about your politics. How people vote, often the lesser of two evils, isn't necessarily representative of anyone's political views, the voter or the candidate. Suggesting the EU is liberal because more liberals support the EU is hardly useful and borders on misleading.
      - lstodd 4mo ago
        I chose Mylene Farmer and Welle: Erdball. Hitler and Mussolini haven't got up there by themselves, they were symbols that personified current beliefs. It is the same with Putin for example: he rides some (diminishing, but still there) amount of faith. Absent that he would have been silently buried long ago.
u8080 4mo ago
This is very strange ranking where Putin is "right" compared to Obama - while Russia has universal healthcare and education with huge government involvement into economy.
- xdennis 4mo ago
  It's useless to judge left vs right on a global scale because different countries have different standards. For example, supporting universal healthcare does not make you a left winger in the UK. Or, take conservatism for example. It was first used in France, where it meant supporting the monarchy. By that definition, no one in the US is a conservative. Whenever someone tries to create a global definition for left and right, they're just baking in their personal biases for what left and right ought to be. > huge government involvement into economy This has nothing to do with the right. Stalin had the government even more involved in the economy and he wasn't a right winger.
  - u8080 4mo ago
    >This has nothing to do with the right. Stalin had the government even more involved in the economy and he wasn't a right winger. But this is exactly my point, I also can't see what makes Putin "right" in conventional definition.

by maelito 4mo ago

c0n5pir4cy 4mo ago

I mean yes - I think you are also confusing the axes of the political compass somewhat. Freedom of Speech, civil liberties etc are the Y-Axis - here Xi leans authoritarian. China actually has some pretty radical left economics policies - like pushing money/resources etc towards state owned entities.

lstodd 4mo ago

No opinion on Macron's rightness (I think he's so weak as to be unable to have a position, but that's neither here nor there). I think you misattribute, everything you cited was there before him and he had no leverage to change any of it. EU is left, FR is very left, and anyone elected president in FR can't do shit. Now, if you task an LLM to skim hot news you'll get a distorted rendition of a projected image which has zero to do with actual policy.

maelito 4mo ago
"EU is left". Haha, good joke. This shows how much the US and the audience of HN has shifted to the right.
- lstodd 4mo ago
  Haha nice catch. In EU there is no left or right, only reelections by scaremongering. Also 75% effective tax rate, not including VAT.
- xdennis 4mo ago
  > "EU is left". Haha, good joke. You are out of touch. The left supports the EU far more than the right. See this Pew poll from 2025[1]. In Europe, for every country, the left view the EU more favorably. The largest difference is in Poland where 88% of left wingers support it and 41% of right wingers support it. [1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/09/22/opinions-of-the-eu-remain-mostly-favorable-across-25-countries/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/09/22/opinions-...
  - asadotzler 4mo ago
    If your choices were Hitler or Mussolini and you picked one side over the other, how you voted isn't saying much about your politics. How people vote, often the lesser of two evils, isn't necessarily representative of anyone's political views, the voter or the candidate. Suggesting the EU is liberal because more liberals support the EU is hardly useful and borders on misleading.
    - lstodd 4mo ago
      I chose Mylene Farmer and Welle: Erdball. Hitler and Mussolini haven't got up there by themselves, they were symbols that personified current beliefs. It is the same with Putin for example: he rides some (diminishing, but still there) amount of faith. Absent that he would have been silently buried long ago.

u8080 4mo ago

This is very strange ranking where Putin is "right" compared to Obama - while Russia has universal healthcare and education with huge government involvement into economy.

xdennis 4mo ago
It's useless to judge left vs right on a global scale because different countries have different standards. For example, supporting universal healthcare does not make you a left winger in the UK. Or, take conservatism for example. It was first used in France, where it meant supporting the monarchy. By that definition, no one in the US is a conservative. Whenever someone tries to create a global definition for left and right, they're just baking in their personal biases for what left and right ought to be. > huge government involvement into economy This has nothing to do with the right. Stalin had the government even more involved in the economy and he wasn't a right winger.
- u8080 4mo ago
  >This has nothing to do with the right. Stalin had the government even more involved in the economy and he wasn't a right winger. But this is exactly my point, I also can't see what makes Putin "right" in conventional definition.