What is the difference between ‘Left’ and ‘Right’? The terms arose from the seating arrangement in the National Assembly convened in the wake of the 1789 French Revolution. Those who wanted to press for greater liberty, equality, and fraternity, and bring in policies that would secure the necessary changes sat to the left of the assembly’s president. Those who sought to defend the position of the monarch, aristocratic privileges, and the hierarchical structures of the status quo sat to his right.
Two centuries on, Left is still in essence the label for those who challenge oppression, inequalities, and discriminatory exclusion, while Right embodies the mindset of those who desire the preservation of concentrated power, rigid divisions, and unquestionable customs.
On the surface, the Left ought to be the natural rallying point for everyone who suffers from the iniquities perpetuated by champions of the Right, and should readily appeal to the unfairly disadvantaged and the critics of prejudice and exploitation. But for decades, the Left appears to have forgotten that they need to remind people what they stand for, and that to do so effectively requires the deployment of key words.
One of the most critical errors of the Left is to let go of any term which has been hijacked by the Right. Just consider the following:
• Community: the Right obsesses about communities that are controlled by tight hierarchies and deferential to the powerful, but the Left should support the development of positive community life by enabling people to act cooperatively and deliberatively as democratic citizens.
• Customs: there are customs that are positive in uniting people and celebrating positive memories, but there are also customs that are outmoded and harmful. The Right wants to preserve prejudices and discrimination as integral parts of selected customs, but they should be exposed, while valuable customs and historical symbols ought to be embraced by the Left.
• Faith: There is no single spokesperson for God and there is no religious sect that can condemn all other faiths and beliefs as wrong. The Right has no compunction in claiming it is the standard bearer of ‘true faith’ when that is simply whatever they pick to suit their rhetoric. The Left welcomes faith that promotes love and harmony, but opposes false prophets who preach hatred and spread lies.
• Family: why let the Right pretend only they care about family values? They actually want to retain patriarchal family structures and attack all other forms of loving family relations as unacceptable. The Left should promote real family values.
• Freedom: the Right’s ‘freedom’ is about the freedom of the powerful to oppress others, the freedom to act irresponsibly, and the freedom to deceive and intimidate. The Left’s role is to defend everyone’s freedom from the oppressive, irresponsible, and unjust acts of others.
• Law and Order: the Right wants to be associated with ‘law and order’ but they are quite ready to undermine legal due process or incite riots if that would help them win/keep power. The Left wants law and order for all irrespective of their connections or bank balance.
• Patriotism: the Right is ever ready to dress up their xenophobia and aggressive stance against other countries as patriotism, but true patriotism is about doing what is in the real best interest of one’s country, and that is at the heart of the Left’s dedication to enhance the wellbeing of the country’s people.
• Prosperity: the Left has allowed the Right to caricature it as wanting fairer shares of a shrinking pie. In reality, the Right wants the privileged few to have more and more at everyone else’s expense, while the Left wants prosperity for all with renewable resources helping to enrich everyone’s life-chances.
• Security: the Right sees security as protection for themselves whenever they take ownership of property or control of government, but they are not concerned about the lack of security for the poor and vulnerable, or about public institutions if they were not in power. The Left stands for security, in all forms, for all citizens and all institutions.
If the Left keeps dissociating itself from any word that the Right has tried to claim as its own, it will end up with nothing to signify what it stands for. It’s time for the Left to rebuild its vocabulary.
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