this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
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MeanwhileOnGrad
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I wish people would stop referring to Tankies and authoritarian regimes as leftists. If we stop entertaining the hallucination that they are- then maybe places like Wikipedia will start labeling them correctly as right wing.
From the very beginning of the terms "Left" and "Right" to describe the political spectrum, which originated in pre-revolutionary war France, the Left has always been about freedom from Tyranny and the Right has been pro-government (ruling class) control.
Maybe the USSR did start out as revolutions of the proletariat, but once they were controlled by increasingly authoritarian leadership, that should have flipped them from left to right on the political spectrum. In a sane world that's exactly what would have happened. Guess who's best interests it was to mislabel the USSR, the PRC and the DPRK as 'Leftists'? Ill give you one guess. If you said capitalists and the right wing in Western democracies- That's a bingo! And of course they are going to label themselves as 'left wing'. To admit otherwise would be to expose the whole lie. So in a weird example of cold war cooperation between the East and West, that fiction has continued.
The only reason that Communism and Socialism were correctly labeled as 'Left' ideologies in the first place is because, implemented correctly, they both offer less control by the 'ruling class'. Socialism was meant to return the power to the people, and communism was meant to abolish the state completely. Authoritarian regimes run counter to both those goals. You will NEVER abolish the state by strengthening the state. That makes about as much sense as 'trickle down economics'. Hey maybe if we give the billionaires all the money, they'll give us a little back in return. Spoiler alert, no they wont.
/rant