When I say Left, I mean Vänsterpartiet, not some nebulous coalition. See their stance here.

Chat control was a proposal on an EU level which meant that applications and social media platforms would be forced to scan all of their users messages. The proposal has been put forth by the EU comission as a part of a larger package with the purpose of protecting children against exploitation on the internet. The Left Party considers that the part specifically about chat control wouldn’t contribute to the end goals. There are more effective measures that need to be taken in order to protect children.

After significant criticism from us and many others the EU parliament has significantly improved the proposal. They have among other things removed all parts regarding automatic scanning. This has meant that all parties now are in support of the EU-parliament position. The proposal is now on hold among the member states and instead another, temporary law has been extended to counter sexual abuse of children on the internet.

Overall the Left (Vänsterpartiet) campaigns on a position of being against surveillance and the like. The Social Democrats (part of the Left coalition) however is in favour of it, because of course they fucking are. My issue here is obviously that they’re lying to our faces.

On a much greater scale I have a lot of issues. For the most part I align mostly with V and MP, but we’re talking on a level of like 60-70%, so they don’t actually represent my views particularly well. In the grand scheme of things that’s also not something I’d expect; I’m rather extreme but I also realise that there’s only so much we can do when operating within the system we currently have. Thus I align with the parties that align the closest with the core beliefs I have, V and MP.

One of my biggest icks when it comes to politics is hiding behind children. It infuriates me because it’s never genuine. It’s never about the fucking children, they’re just a convenient excuse because the moment someone criticises a suggestion, you can turn around and say “Oh so you hate children? Are you a paedophile? Why do you support children being harmed?”

Not exactly orthogonal, left right could be viewed as an Principal Component Analysis reduced to only one axis. So there are correlations between stances but so much dimensions lost that it’s nearly useless

Check out the political compass, which is an interesting way to conceptualize political leanings. I don’t think the test is particularly good (I have issues with a few of the questions), but the answer I get is pretty close to where I think I should be placed, so maybe there’s some merit to it.

I’m consistently in the bottom half near the center line, and the two major parties in my country are in the top right. I guess that just demonstrates why I fail to see much difference in what I care about in the two major parties, since moving toward either direction is a move away from me.

Anyway, I hope this is a decent demonstration of how the left/right divide doesn’t tell the whole story.

Left or right is an economic stance

What about the social stance?

Left or right is an economic stance, and is orthogonal to beliefs surrounding government rights Vs population rights.

Left or right is political stance. The closest you can get it to economy is by saying “left prioritizes political freedoms, while right economic”.