Re:Robots in Europe Vote for the Radical Right
by ralusek on Wednesday November 24, 2021 @12:45PM
(#29332746)
Yes I wouldn't get hung up too much on whether it's a left or a right thing, that's why I specifically isolated the "progressive" vs "conservative" aspect. There's also an element of "populism" vs "elites" going on, which is language that can be leveraged by either the left or the right.
There was an under-examined switch between anti-globalization being a "left" thing round about 2000, and its current status of being "right" thing. Obviously the financial crisis happened in the middle of that, but what happened ideologically?
Part of it is just the general uselessness of labels, especially those applied externally in bad faith; anti-racism being labelled as "Marxism", for example. It also fails to capture the various internal factions and rifts in both movements and parties.
It's fairly clear that the US Republicans contained a pro-international-free-markets faction and an anti faction, and the anti faction won a significant victory in the Trump primary which has led to substantial capture of the party.
> Progress is fundamentally just change.
Normally this is defined differently, see "whig view of history", such that "progress" is by definition better. What you need to ask is "for whom?"
Speaking of labels, the early Luddites were proto-socialists; see https://libcom.org/history/machine-breakers-eric-hobsbawm