- If you were to watch the news right now,
you'd probably hear something like this.
- Suspected left wing extremists.
- Extreme right wing groups.
- Better, worse, left and right.
- Left wing counter protesters-
- On both the left and the right-
- A choice between the left and the right
could mean so many different things.
Which way you turn at an intersection,
which hand you use to pick up a pen,
which side of a train carriage you could sit on.
But if you Google what the left and the right is,
one of the first things that comes up is a description
that says the left seeks social justice
while the right defends private property and capitalism.
That political definition can feel unavoidable.
The news bats around the left and the right freely,
and social media is flooded with polarizing opinions.
Because the left and the right
isn't just a simple political system anymore.
It's a splinted and divisive one
that's also become synonymous with social identity.
Being left or being right
now represents someone's entire belief system
on complex issues like class, race, and religion,
or even world leaders and pandemic vaccines.
But it didn't start like that.
So how did this divide evolve over time?
How did it seep into the darkest corners of the internet
and political systems around the world?
The story of the left and the right
starts way back in the summer of 1789,
in a huge French palace.
The Palace of Versailles.
Bastille had just been stormed,
the French Revolution was gaining force,
and a group called the National Assembly
had formed to lead that revolution.
They wanted to act as a new government
and to write a new constitution for France.
But something that the national assembly couldn't agree on
was just how much power the French king should hold
in their new system.
Some people thought that the king
should continue to hold more power,
and others thought the complete opposite.
But the debate was far bigger than that.
Really this was an argument between French traditionalists
who wanted to maintain Christian faith
and the authority of the monarchy.
And then on the other hand there were modernists
who wanted to move away from that.
Those two opposing groups were the first versions
of what we now call the left and the right.
And that happened purely because of
which side they sat in Versailles.
During the debate, the traditionalists grouped together
on the right hand side of the president leading the meeting,
and the modernists on the left.
Ultimately the French Revolution led to France's monarchy
being overthrown.
It was replaced by a Democratic Republic,
and France's political system changed from then on.
And after the Revolution,
this new system of terminology
between a left view and a right view
extended beyond France's politics
and onto the countries widest social issues too.
Some people began pushing for more socialist ideas,
like freedom and equality.
A freedom of the press law was passed in 1881,
and three years later
trade unions that could fight for workers' rights
were made legal.
But other people continued to defend Catholicism
right up until the turn of the 20th century,
and favored economic liberalism over socialism.
It actually took a long time
before anything that was happening in France
reached other countries.
In fact, a French historian called Marcel Gauchet
wrote in 1996 that it didn't really cross over
to the Western world until the early 20th century.
And by the time it did,
two things had happened to the left and right system.
On one hand, the distinction between the two
had become kind of blurred.
And then on the other hand,
both the right and the left
had become more divided in their fundamental beliefs,
splintering and making space for more radical ideologies
in the far corners of both sides.
Take the Bolsheviks for example.
They wanted to do in Russia something similar
to what the French Revolution had done in France.
And so in 1917, they pushed for an abolition
of the imperialism that had ruled over Russia for centuries.
But by the time the Bolsheviks came around,
subcategories of the left and the right had developed,
because there were just way too many different beliefs
for people to sit comfortably on either side.
The Bolsheviks were defeated by a rise in independence
and socialists who really pushed this idea of equality,
and eventually re-established themselves
as the communist party.
Communism is what we would call today the far left.
And Russia's Communist Party showed that
the more radical people got with their political ideologies,
the further they could move away from the center fold.
Australia's framework of governance is one called
a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy.
We still have the queen as our head of state,
and organized national political parties
have really been a part of our political landscape
since the Federation.
Australia's political left and right divide
has very much been between the Labor Party
and the Coalition,
made up of the liberal party and the nationals.
They've played a significant role in the division
between what was historically the working class
and the anti-labor parties,
which were the businesses, middle class,
and increasingly rural populations.
- Then we have other parties
that are on the left and rights.
So the Greens in Australia would be widely considered
as the leftmost party in Australia.
On the right we have parties like One Nation
and Family First,
and what now calls itself the Christian Democratic Party,
which these are right
in terms of their stance on social issues.
- Politically, Australia has sort of
stuck to the left and right at its top levels.
But over time, just like in France and Russia,
Australia's left and right
have become more divided themselves,
and the distinction between them blurrier.
Sure, the left stands for progressivism,
but that doesn't mean
it throws all liberal beliefs out the window.
Australia's Labor Party, for example,
which was historically the working class,
is becoming even more of a centralist party,
with its stance on issues like border protection
and anti people smuggling, and vice versa.
Australian independent or minor parties
like Pauline Hanson's One Nation
have never had any real success in parliament.
In fact, radical far right or far left parties
have only ever been short-lived.
But the Australian Security Intelligence Organization,
or ASIO, reported last year
that far right ideologies within Australia
have really been on the rise.
In fact, right wing extremists now make up
around a third of all ASIO domestic investigations.
And that's because there's been a lot
for the world to be divided about.
It's not uncommon now to hear the left and the right
being used in discussion of polarizing issues
like abortion or vaccines.
That ASIO report actually noted that
the increase in far right ideology in Australia
was really noticeable once the COVID pandemic hit.
And some experts warn that
Australian conservative politicians
downplaying the impacts of Trump's presidency
on the far right movement
is actually really quite dangerous,
because it could lead to these movements
mobilizing further in politics.
- Of that most heated issue of people arriving by boat,
the major parties basically do
what the far right wants them to do.
Just because there are limits
on what the far right can do politically in Australia,
nonetheless, in policy terms,
sometimes it does get what it wants.
- For a system that was set up in Versailles centuries ago,
today the left versus the right
is probably one of the most important antitheses
in Western democracies.
It's a system that offers both a political identity
and a social one.
And it's an increasingly diverse and splinted space.
One with more complexities to it
than an eight minute video can cover.
But as much as it has helped some countries
maintain stability,
in others it's led to disarray and terror.
Which is why, as complex and divisive as it can be,
we really need to continue
trying to understand the ramifications
that divide could have in the future.