I think it’s important to clarify what is left or right because that’s how people talk and think - a lot of political language is warped or difficult to clarify. When I explain what liberals are to people in the U.S. they simply refuse to believe me. They think “liberal” can only mean “the left” and this has a whole set of assumptions built into it. When I ask them about the Liberal party in Australia they legitimately don’t understand it, and it seems like people are extremely stubborn around political topics and unwilling to believe you when you say something so against their understanding.

I think whether a “communist” or “socialist” is left-wing depends on a few things, I don’t consider Marxist-Leninism a left-wing movement or ideology for example.

I also tend to be skeptical that ideology is relevant to political movements, and that most of the time politics is reduced to the struggle of different constituents who pragmatically use ideology to manipulate people into supporting that constituency. Much like racism was leveraged to get the agrarian, southern whites in the U.S. to vote for the interests of wealthy landowners in that region, I think ideological promises or affiliations are often used to whip up support and then dropped once elected in favor of whatever is needed to get things done.

Sometimes I think ideology applies, it’s hard to understand the particular flavor of George W. Bush’s imperialism without understanding the Christian motivation to wage a religious war, but even that is ultimately more about civilizational struggle" than it is about any particular religious or theological belief.

Anyway, I just mean to say that most political language sabotages political understanding, and that maybe understanding is a tricky endeavor.