> Strange to see the American Revolution called leftist

The American Revolution was absolutely leftist in the traditional sense right as "support of the monarchy" or conservative and left as "royal abolitionists" or progressive.

Of course, this maps a little awkwardly onto modern American politics. For example, the Americans of the 1800's were progressive in a lot ways, but they kept supporting the system of kidnapping Africans for slaves (and chattel slavery in general) for a lot longer because they benefited so greatly from it.

> The American Revolution was absolutely leftist in the traditional sense right as "support of the monarchy" or conservative and left as "royal abolitionists" or progressive.

But that wasn't it at all. They didn't revolt "because kings are shit", they revolted because they believed the British parliament (where the anti-royalists had won against the royalists in the English civil war) didn't give them adequate representation. It was motivated by an unbalanced relationship between economic ability and political participation, not because of ideology.

Sure if you define anyone who wants to change things as leftist all revolutions are tautalogically leftist.

Neo Nazis want to change things too. Does that make them progressive leftists?

> Sure if you define anyone who wants to change things as leftist all revolutions are tautalogically leftist.

Most people understand this to be the case, _unless_ the revolution is _reactionary_ which is traditionally conservative.

> reactionary denotes "a movement towards the reversal of an existing tendency or state" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary

Interesting. Had never heard of that before but it seems to make sense in most cases. I still think american neo nazis are a counter example. They aren't really trying to go back to something that ever existed.

> The Nazis got elected, they didn't start a revolution.

Nazi's killed their political opposition, especially Communists.

Do you believe that killing political rivals makes a movement a revolution? Is Assad in Syria running a revolution?

The Nazis went wild with murdering everyone they didn't like after they got elected (not that they weren't into violence before, but Hitler's attempt at a revolution failed in '23, Hitler was convicted and went to prison). They got elected on a populist vote, but that's not a revolution. Revolution != getting elected by normal proceedings.

> ...killing political rivals...

> ...got elected on a populist vote...

To my mind, a violent populist movement is a revolution.

It's not contentious term for me.

20th century Communists, of course, were famously tolerant of their opponents.

> between 1933–39, with 30,000 communists executed and 150,000 sent to Nazi concentration camps.