Left-Wing Vs. Right-Wing Ideologies Are Two Political Extremities Stop Killing People

We The People's of Left-Wing and Right-Wing ideologies and are two political extremities that differ in their outlook and applications. Left-wing beliefs are liberal in that they believe society is best served with an expanded role for the government, while people on the right believe that the best outcome for society is achieved when individual rights and civil liberties are paramount and the role and especially the power of the government is minimized.

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Left-wing is characterized by equality, freedom, rights, progress, and reform, while right-wing is characterized by duty, hierarchy, authority, order, tradition, and nationalism. In terms of economic policies, right-wing believes there should be less government regulation on business and that private enterprise is the best way to stimulate economic growth, while left-wing believes in more government regulation to prevent abuses by businesses and that a mixed economy is best for growth. Right-wing politics is centered around beliefs that certain social orders and hierarchies are inevitable and natural, with this belief being supported by natural law or tradition.

In a recent video of mine I used the word bhakt , and quite a few people accused me of being a left winger just because I said the word bhakt. Funnily in real life I sometimes get accused of being a right winger when I don’t agree with certain things , the Gandhis or the Mamta Banerjees of the world would do. Within my circle of friends and family I have people who are reasonably high up the chain inside the BJP and I have people who are staunch opponents of the right. When all of us hang out as friend’s and talk , the word Bhakt is used in conversation casually and no one takes offence because its friends having a discussion , and they know there is no intention to offend its just slang for today's hardcore BJP supporters .

If I had not met BJP people who use the word themselves I would perhaps worry about it being offensive. I also understand that this is you tube and people can comment what they want without thinking twice so I rarely give a flying F about haters and trolls. I am not making this video as a reaction to their comment’s but I am making this video so that it is clear to everyone in the tribe where I stand politically.

The fundamental differences between left-wing and right-wing ideologies center around the the rights of individuals vs. the power of the government. Left-wing beliefs are liberal in that they believe society is best served with an expanded role for the government. People on the right believe that the best outcome for society is achieved when individual rights and civil liberties are paramount and the role — and especially the power — of the government is minimized.

Examples of an expanded role for the government include entitlement programs such as social security and Medicare, Medicaid, universal healthcare, food stamps, free public education, unemployment benefits, strong environmental laws, and other regulations on industries. Right wing ideology would favor market-based solutions to the issues that these government programs aim to tackle. For example, encouraging a freer marketplace for healthcare, driven by consumer choice to drive down costs. Or privately held retirement accounts like 401(k) plans instead of government-guaranteed Social Security.

I Think its Wrong about Stopping Social Security's Trust Fund Back by Gold ? Is fully solvent until 2033 ? and is sourced from FICA, SECA, Income Tax and interest.
Social Security trust funds are financial accounts in the U.S. Treasury. There are two separate Social Security trust funds, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund pays retirement and survivors benefits, and the Disability Insurance (DI) Trust Fund pays disability benefits.

Social Security Is Gone and Remember, not only did you and I contribute to Social Security, but your employer did, too. It totals 15% of your income before taxes. If you averaged only $30K over your working life, that's close to $220,500. Read that again!

Did you see where the Government paid in one single penny?
We are talking about the money you and your employer put in a Government bank to insure you and I that we would have a retirement check from the money we put in, not the Government. Now they are calling the money we put in an ENTITLEMENT when we reach the age to take it back.

If you calculate the future invested value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer's contribution) at a simple 5% interest (less than what the Government pays on the money that it borrows), after 49 years of working you'd have $892,919.98.

If you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years (until you're 95 if you retire at age 65) and that's with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit! If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you'd have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month.

If you have a deceased spouses who died in their 50's -- their S.S. money will never have one cent drawn from what they paid into S.S. all their lives over the past 30 years!

Entitlement my foot, I paid cash for my social security insurance! Just because they borrowed the money for other government spending, doesn't make my benefits some kind of charity or handout!! Remember Congressional benefits? --- free healthcare, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days.

Now that's welfare!!! And they have the nerve to call my social security retirement payments entitlements?!?

They call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives, and now, when it's time for us to collect, the government is running out of money.

Why did the government borrow from it in the first place? It was supposed to be in a locked box back by gold, not part of the general fund.

Something to ponder:
History Lesson on Your Social Security Card
Just in case some of you young whippersnappers (and some older ones) didn't know this. It's easy to check out, if you don't believe it. Be sure and show it to your family
and friends. They need a little history lesson on what's what and it doesn't matter whether you are Democrat or Republican. Facts are Facts.
Social Security Cards up until the 1980s expressly stated the number and Card were not to be used for identification purposes. Since nearly everyone in the United States now has a number, it became convenient to use it anyway and the message, NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION was removed.
An old Social Security card with the "NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION" message.
Our Social Security Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program. He promised:
1) That participation in the Program would be completely voluntary, No longer Voluntary
2) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual incomes into the Program, Now 7.65% On the first $90,000.
3) That the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year, No longer tax deductible
4) That the money the participants put in went to the Independent 'Trust Fund' rather than into the General Operating Fund, and therefore, would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no other Government program, and, Under Johnson the money was moved to The General Fund and spent.
5) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income. Under Clinton & Gore up to 85% of your Social Security can be taxed. Since many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month -- and then finding that we are getting taxed on 85% of the money we paid to the Federal government to 'put away -- you may be interested in the following:
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ----
Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the Independent 'Trust Fund' and put it into the General Fund so that Congress could spend it?
A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the Democratically controlled House and Senate.
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --
Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax deduction for Social Security (FICA) withholding?
A: The Democratic Party.
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -----
Q: Which Political Party started taxing Social
Security annuities?
A: The Democratic Party with Al Gore casting the 'tie-breaking' deciding vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the U.S.
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -
Q: Which Political Party decided to start
giving annuity payments to immigrants?
(AND MY FAVORITE):
A: That's right!
Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party.
Immigrants moved into this country, and at age 65, began to receive Social Security payments! The Democratic Party gave these payments to them, even though they never paid a dime into it!
------------ -- ------------ --------- ----- ------------ --------- ---------
Then, after violating the original contract (FICA), the Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans want to take your Social Security away! And the worst part about it is uninformed citizens believe it! If enough people receive this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and maybe changes will evolve. But it's worth a try. How many people can YOU send this to? Actions speak louder than bumper stickers.

Origins in France
The political terms left wing and right wing originated in the 18th century during the French Revolution. They are based on the seating arrangements in the French National Assembly — those who sat on the left of the chair of the parliamentary president supported the revolution and a secular republic, and opposed the monarchy of the old regime. The people on the left were in favor of radical change, socialism and republicanism i.e. a strong French republic instead of the monarchy.

Those who sat to the right supported the institutions of the monarchist old regime or Ancien Régime. The stronger your opposition to radical change and desire to preserve traditional society, the more you were to the right. Tradition, institutional religion and privatization of economy were considered the core values of the right-wing.

Social Policies
A variety of social issues in the U.S. divide the left and right. These include abortion, the death penalty, drug policy, gay rights, women's rights, separation of church and state, gun rights, and healthcare policy. In general, the left wing philosophy believes in "one for all and all for one," looking to the government to support those who cannot support themselves. The right wing, on the other hand believes supporting individuals in need is not the most efficient way to optimize government resources, and relies on the private sector and charitable institutions for the same.

Abortion
The left wing generally supports abortion rights, but does not outwardly and necessarily believe that abortion is a good thing. Those on the right, largely due to religious beliefs, would like to see Roe v. Wade overturned to make abortions illegal. Some majority-right states have enacted legislation recently that would make it harder for women to attain abortions while not outlawing it entirely.

The right wing believes that a fetus is a living person and that abortion is, therefore, murder. Some people make an exception for cases involving rape and incest, but some do not.

Left-wingers believe that women should have control over their bodies and that outlawing abortion infringes on women's reproductive rights. Some also claim that making abortions illegal will only force them underground, resulting in untrained, non-physicians performing botched abortions and risking women's lives. Some other arguments by the pro-life and pro-choice factions are described here.

Related issues
Some issues are closely related to abortion rights, including:

Embryonic stem cell research: People on the left support embryonic stem-cell research, which involves the creation, usage and destruction of human embryos, believing that the research has the potential to save and improve lives, and cure many diseases. People on the right are horrified by what they believe is the taking of a human life.
Religious rights of pharmacists: The right wing believes that emergency contraceptive pills — commonly called "morning-after pills" — are similar to having an abortion. So pharmacists who oppose abortions on religious or moral grounds should be allowed to not dispense such pills. The left wing believes that pharmacists are healthcare workers who should be required by law to dispense any medication that a patient has a prescription for.
Contraception mandate in health insurance: One of the provisions of Affordable Care Act (a.k.a Obamacare) was the mandate that all health insurance plans must cover contraception. With strong opposition from the right wing, especially the Catholic church, some exceptions for religious institutions were made.
The Death Penalty
Many on the left believe that the death penalty is barbaric and does not deter crime. Meanwhile, the right generally believes that certain crimes deserve death as a punishment, somewhat akin to the "an eye for an eye" doctrine. A debate over the fairness of the criminal justice system has emerged, with the left asserting that many on death row may be innocent.

Opponents of the death penalty cite the following reasons for their position:

Several people on death row were innocent and have been exonerated. The justice system is not perfect and it would be wrong to kill an innocent person.
It is inhuman to take a life, even that of a murderer.
Minorities and poor people are given the death penalty in disproportionately larger numbers, so criminals with means can escape death row. It's not so much about how heinous the crime is but how much the defendant can afford to spend on lawyers.
Proponents believe that:

The death penalty is an effective deterrent against crimes, especially crimes of a heinous nature.
The death penalty is an appropriate punishment for perpetrators of heinous crimes. The alternative — life in prison — would only mean spending taxpayer dollars to keep them confined, fed and provide healthcare services to them.
Victims and their families deserve justice; often they can only get closure when the perpetrator is put to death.
Gay Rights
Almost without exception, those on the left support gay marriage, and other gay rights issues like adoption rights and non-discrimination at work or in business.

Most on the right believe marriage is strictly an institution based on the union of a man and a woman, and see gay unions as an aberration from the norm. People on the right also advocate for the right of employers (especially religious institutions, including Catholic hospitals) to choose not to employ gay individuals.

Another issue of divergence on gay rights is businesses choosing their customers. For example, a florist in Washington state refused to do the flower arrangement for a gay wedding. She was sued for discrimination. In a situation like this, people on the right generally support the business owner while those on the left support the customers.

Religion
Some people on the political right believe that religious doctrine, such as the 10 Commandments, should play a role in government. Some on the right have sought to have such Christian documents enshrined near government buildings, as according to them, the government should abide by the Bible when it comes to social issues like abortion and gay marriage.

A significant portion on the left identify themselves as atheist or agnostic. Regardless of their religious beliefs, people on the left strongly believe in a secular government and the separation of church and state.

Gun Rights
While some on the right are moving from strongly and wholly supporting the Second Amendment to accepting a ban on assault weapons, many still stand firmly in support of the right to bear arms. Their argument is that guns don't kill people; people kill people, and every citizen should retain the right to defend himself. The right to bear arms is enshrined in the U.S. constitution, and any attempt to regulate gun sales infringes on this right.

The left is in favor of restricting gun ownership altogether, or at least banning automatic or assault weapons. This video with its black humor is the left's take on the issue of gun control.

Morality
University of Virginia psychology professor Jonathan Haidt has studied moral values of people on different parts of the political spectrum.

Media
It used to be that the right wing had a very strong talk-radio presence, while the left had a strong presence in print media. In recent years, media outlets have formed to appease either the left or right wings. Right-wing media includes Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and Rush Limbaugh. Left-wing media includes MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Ed Schultz and comedians like Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart.

Politicians
While many on the left will vote exclusively for Democrats and those on the right will vote for Republicans, many do so only because there are no other choices. Many on the far-right or far-left would prefer politicians who represent the most extreme respective political philosophy, i.e., full drug legalization, or the banning of all taxes.

Some notable far left figures include Ralph Nader and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, and on the right former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Self Identification
In general, the right wing outnumbers the left in the U.S. According to recent polls, only 23 percent of Americans identify themselves as being on the left, while 38 percent identify as “conservative,” or members of the right wing. Even so, 23 percent is the highest number self-identifying as being on the left at any time since 1992.

Demographics
Those who would typically identify as being on the right tend to live in rural areas and suburbs, especially in the south, Midwest, and extreme rural west. Meanwhile, those on the left tend to inhabit medium and large cities, and live along either the east or west coast.

Those on the left also tend to be young, and many tend to be of a minority population, including women. Those who identify as being on the right tend to be older, most often Caucasian, and mostly male.

Left-wing politics - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics

Right-wing politics - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_politics

Left–right political spectrum - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_political_spectrum

How to Tell Whether You're Right Wing or Left Wing Knowing whether you are right-wing or left-wing can be helpful in shaping your future perspective. Generally left-wingers are the people who strive for social equality whereas right-wingers strive for a national patriotism. In this article you will discover who you are, so let's begin!

Placing Yourself on the Political Spectrum
Consider the policies most important to you. When you think about politics, what issues do you think about? What stances do you normally sympathize with, and which ones could you care less about. Before trying to place yourself on the left or right-wing, remember to think about your own political spectrum without thinking about "sides." Ask yourself the following questions, knowing that there is no correct answer:
Do you think the government should try to make life better, or should stay out of the way for other people to make life better?
Do you think your country should assist other countries in wars or global issues, or should it only respond when it is directly attacked?
Do you think the government should help make the economy more fair, or does regulation stifle businesses and entrepreneurs?

Determine your general political position with an online political survey. Sites like the political compass can be a good way to get your political baseline. These sites test out your political position on a variety of issues, usually asking you to rank how important the idea is or how much you agree. When done, you can use these answers to help you dive into some of the suggested pages, ideas, and parties.
Take more than one quiz to avoid biases and mistakes found in one alone.
Don't take these quizzes without a grain of salt. Instead, check out the political parties and sites they suggest. Do these sites also match up with your general viewpoints?

Read over the basic positions of both sides. Again, you don't have to agree with all of one side, and you generally shouldn't. This is why thinking of your own beliefs first is important -- it lets you sort out what is important to you instead of letting you feel dragged to one side or the other:
Those on the left-wing may support:
Social welfare programs (food stamps, homeless shelters, unemployment benefits).
Separation of church and state.
Higher taxes on the wealthiest members of society to fund social programs.
Environmentalism and green initiatives.
Strong trade unions and industry regulations.
Social change or social justice to create equality.
Stronger federal (national) government, as opposed to stronger state governments
Those on the right-wing may support:
Strong moral and religious values.
Belief that charities, churches, and communities should provide social welfare, not the government.
Lower or flatter taxation to cut government programs.
Limiting the scope of government, with emphasis on freedom of the individual.
The strength of free-market capitalism, both at home and abroad.
Reducing regulations on industry and business.
Stronger powers to state and local governments, with a weaker federal government.

Be aware of political bias. Again, this is why it is important to make your own mind up before diving into other people's interpretations. If you decide you're "right-wing," ask yourself how often you let yourself see "left-wing" news. Often the reason you choose one side is because you haven't been exposed to the other. This is often known as the political "echo-chamber," where you only hear the same views over and over. While these change frequently, test out some of the sites "across the aisle" from you to get better news:
Conservative Leaning News: Fox News, The National Review
Liberal Leaning News: The Washington Post, New York Times, MSNBC, Buzzfeed, CNN, The Huffington Post.

Remember that political views are a spectrum. You can place yourself anywhere between left and right based on your unique views. One of the biggest tragedies in American politics is the insistence that you must be either "left" or "right," and you can't disagree with your own side. Real humans, however, are not so perfectly ordered. We agree with some policies and disagree with others regardless of what side they fall on. Remember to stay true to yourself, not the prescribed beliefs of each side, to truly understand your political leanings.

Understanding Your Right-Wing Views
Consider right-wing policies as a generally "conservative" political view. Conservatism is currently the most right-wing branch of political thought in the United States, though what conservatism actually is only become harder to define. Currently, conservationism and right-wing ideologies are generally used interchangeably in conversation, and you can usually assume conservatives will consider themselves as "right-wing" and vice versa. Both believe:
A smaller government is a stronger government.
Free, unregulated markets create the most wealth.
Strong moral, traditional, and religious values are key to a strong nation.

Think about social issues separately from economic or political issues. One of the biggest differences among right-wingers comes on social policy. Specifically, the difficult line between "limited government" and "strong social values." At what point, to you, is the government getting too involved in social life, and when is appropriate for the government to get involved at all? Take an issue like same-sex marriage, for example. Two right-wingers might come to surprisingly different interpretations based on the same tenets:
More socially conservative: The institution of marriage is thousands of years old, and has always been "one man, one woman." This should not change now when it has worked well before.
More economically conservative: The government has no right to get involved in something as personal as marriage, and people should do (or marry) whoever they want. This is not something worth spending tax dollars on.

Acknowledge the positions of "far-right" candidates and ideas. There are many degrees of right-wing thought, from the surprisingly moderate ideas of Richard Nixon to the intensely conservative ideology of Ted Cruz. While the Republican Party is generally considered the party of the right-wing, the 2016 primary shows just how big that conservative tent is. Far-right candidates, in general, believe:
The government must be significantly and immediately slashed down, getting out of healthcare, taxation, regulation, and social programs like Social Security and welfare.
The government has an obligation to uphold strong Christian values across the nation.
The Constitution is infallible and should be the first source of information on legal disputes.
The free market, when businesses and consumers do what they want without intervention, will solve most, if not all, problems over time.

Follow parties and candidates sympathetic to right-wing causes. In general, the Republican Party is considered America's "right-wing" party. This makes it the frequent "landing zone" for new conservatives, but it is hardly your only option. Republicans generally believe in lower taxes, regulation, and immigration, but stronger promotion (with laws) of stronger social and moral values. As the 2016 U.S. presidential election has shown, there are a lot of different views, candidates, and ideas about what it means to be right-wing:
The Libertarian Party: Libertarians emphasize individual rights and freedom over group rights. In the economic sphere, with some exceptions, they are close to traditional conservatism. They favor free markets and want as little government as possible and scaling back economic regulations heavily, but favor the decriminalization of drugs. In the social sphere, they are somewhat liberal. They oppose government discrimination for or against any group, but oppose government influence over social/religious life, and advocate for the right of an individual to choose with whom they associate or do business with.
The Constitution Party: A socially conservative wing that promotes traditional and religious social order through strong government presence.
The American Party: Socially and economically conservative, the American Party specifically hopes to remove the US from world politics, including slashing our foreign aid, position in the UN, NATO, and other world organizations, and stronger civilian oversight on foreign policy.

Understanding Your Left-Wing Views
Consider left-wing policies as a generally "liberal" view. Liberalism has been redefined many times over the years, but most people today use it almost synonymously with left-wing ideology. As such, most people will consider themselves both left-wing and liberal at the same time. Both believe that:
A large, central government is essential to run the country smoothly.
The free market gives too much power to businesses, and must be regulated to ensure consumers are treated fairly.
The government must actively protect the rights of ethnic minorities and at-risk populations.

Distinguish between social policy and economic policies. The left-wing is not a precise set of ideals that everyone agrees with. Just like right-wing ideology, the most common split is over social and economic policy, with equally left-wing groups capable of taking different "liberal" stances. For example, think about how two different left-wingers might approach affirmative action, which is a policy aimed at reducing social inequality amongst people from ethnic minority backgrounds. In which, a company is legally required to hire people from ethnic minority backgrounds, as they are statistically more likely to be unemployed than White people are. Critics claim the policy is racist against the White majority of the population, as they are deliberately given a disadvantage in the recruitment process.:
More socially liberal: Minorities face untold, and unseen, discrimination at all levels of hiring. A small boost will help even this playing field after decades of hateful laws, policies, and attitudes, even if it means some people will be left behind.
More economically liberal: Acting like some groups are "worse" and need a boost drives down long-term growth, and lack of education and resources is a more important issue. The real issue is in wealth distribution, not hiring policy, even though this doesn't help the current generation.

Know where the "far-left" stands. Extreme liberals, often known as those "on the far-left," generally believe that the government has an obligation to fix a variety of wrongs, and that the government is better suited to handle problems and spend money than individuals. As such, the far-left generally believes:[5]
Capitalism, particularly free-market capitalism, only concentrates power in the hands of a wealthy few, destroying the working-class.
Companies and individuals will not treat ethnic minorities or disenfranchised groups with respect unless compelled (by regulation or incentive) to do so.
There are some things (like the environment) too important to trust people with doing, and thus the government must control group efforts to tackle these issues.

Follow parties and candidates sympathetic to left-wing causes. In general, the Democratic Party is considered America's left-wing party; even though it would be classed as "centrist" by European standards, compared to a left-wing party in Europe. This makes it a good first place to go for burgeoning liberals, as the Democrats generally believe in government-enforced social equality for all people, higher taxes on higher earners, and moderate environmental and economic regulation. However, this is not the only option for impressionable left-wingers:
The Green Party: One of America's biggest third parties, they focus on economic equality, a strong commitment against global warming and pollution, and expanded social rights for all.
The Justice Party: A relatively new party, the Justice Party's primary goal is to challenge the influence and big businesses on politics. They argue this can only occur through stronger regulation.
The Working Families Party: Supports Democrats and Republicans, though sticks to a center-left policy of stronger labor unions and worker support, higher minimum wage, and other middle-class protections against strong business interests.

Tips - Left-wingers typically believe that the government is a force for social justice and change, and that the state needs to be involved in society to ensure that social justice can be achieved.
Right-wingers typically believe that the government should only play a minimal role in society, and should keep state involvement in citizen's lives to a minimum in order to maximize the freedom of the individual. They believe that the force of law granted to government authority often contravenes an individual’s liberty and other human rights.
Just because the left-wing typically is more secular, it doesn't mean that left-wing people can't be religious. The difference is that the right-wing tend to support strong links between religion and the state, while the left-wing believe religion plays a more personal role and shouldn't have a significant role in government policies.

Warnings - There are many online quizzes designed to place oneself on a political spectrum, but not all can be trusted. Some may have chosen questions or wording intended to steer people into a particular label. Others may simply be poorly researched or wrong.
Compressing the entire political spectrum onto a single axis may lose important information. Two politicians could disagree on every major issue and both get labeled moderates. Some prefer a 2-dimensional model, such as ones that place economic issues on one axis and personal liberties on another. Others prefer even higher-dimensional models.
Political labels may have different meanings in different nations or eras. An Australian "Liberal", for instance, supports the right-wing Liberal National Party, whereas an American "Liberal" supports the Democratic Party; which is typically viewed as the main left-wing political party in the USA.
While often related, conservative does not mean right-wing, and liberal does not mean left-wing. They are often conflated, though they are separate ideas.
Also be cautious with relative terms such as far-right or centre-left when the centre ground is unspecified. The Democratic Party is the leftmost of the two major political parties in the United States, but might be considered a centre-right party compared to the left-wing political parties in many European countries. Not all left-wingers are socially liberal, and not all right-wingers are socially conservative.

Conservative and Liberal Brains Might Have Some Real Differences
Scanners try to watch the red-blue divide play out underneath the skull In 1968 a debate was held between conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., and liberal writer Gore Vidal. It was hoped that these two members of opposing intellectual elites would show Americans living through tumultuous times that political disagreements could be civilized. That idea did not last for long. Instead Buckley and Vidal descended rapidly into name-calling. Afterward, they sued each other for defamation.

The story of the 1968 debate opens a well-regarded 2013 book called Predisposed, which introduced the general public to the field of political neuroscience. The authors, a trio of political scientists at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Rice University, argued that if the differences between liberals and conservatives seem profound and even unbridgeable, it is because they are rooted in personality characteristics and biological predispositions.

On the whole, the research shows, conservatives desire security, predictability and authority more than liberals do, and liberals are more comfortable with novelty, nuance and complexity. If you had put Buckley and Vidal in a magnetic resonance imaging machine and presented them with identical images, you would likely have seen differences in their brain, especially in the areas that process social and emotional information. The volume of gray matter, or neural cell bodies, making up the anterior cingulate cortex, an area that helps detect errors and resolve conflicts, tends to be larger in liberals. And the amygdala, which is important for regulating emotions and evaluating threats, is larger in conservatives.

While these findings are remarkably consistent, they are probabilities, not certainties—meaning there is plenty of individual variability. The political landscape includes lefties who own guns, right-wingers who drive Priuses and everything in between. There is also an unresolved chicken-and-egg problem: Do brains start out processing the world differently or do they become increasingly different as our politics evolve? Furthermore, it is still not entirely clear how useful it is to know that a Republican’s brain lights up over X while a Democrat’s responds to Y.

So what can the study of neural activity suggest about political behavior? The still emerging field of political neuroscience has begun to move beyond describing basic structural and functional brain differences between people of different ideological persuasions—gauging who has the biggest amygdala—to more nuanced investigations of how certain cognitive processes underlie our political thinking and decision-making. Partisanship does not just affect our vote; it influences our memory, reasoning and even our perception of truth. Knowing this will not magically bring us all together, but researchers hope that continuing to understand the way partisanship influences our brain might at least allow us to counter its worst effects: the divisiveness that can tear apart the shared values required to retain a sense of national unity.

Social scientists who observe behaviors in the political sphere can gain substantial insight into the hazards of errant partisanship. Political neuroscience, however, attempts to deepen these observations by supplying evidence that a belief or bias manifests as a measure of brain volume or activity—demonstrating that an attitude, conviction or misconception is, in fact, genuine. “Brain structure and function provide more objective measures than many types of survey responses,” says political neuroscientist Hannah Nam of Stony Brook University. “Participants may be induced to be more honest when they think that scientists have a ‘window’ into their brains.” That is not to say that political neuroscience can be used as a tool to “read minds,” but it can pick up discrepancies between stated positions and underlying cognitive processes.

Brain scans are also unlikely to be used as a biomarker for specific political results because the relationships between the brain and politics is not one-to-one. Yet “neurobiological features could be used as a predictor of political outcomes—just not in a deterministic way,” Nam says.

To study how we process political information in a 2017 paper, political psychologist Ingrid Haas of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and her colleagues created hypothetical candidates from both major parties and assigned each candidate a set of policy statements on issues such as school prayer, Medicare and defense spending. Most statements were what you would expect: Republicans, for instance, usually favor increasing defense spending, and Democrats generally support expanding Medicare. But some statements were surprising, such as a conservative expressing a pro-choice position or a liberal arguing for invading Iran.

Haas put 58 people with diverse political views in a brain scanner. On each trial, participants were asked whether it was good or bad that a candidate held a position on a particular issue and not whether they personally agreed or disagreed with it. Framing the task that way allowed the researchers to look at neural processing as a function of whether the information was expected or unexpected—what they termed congruent or incongruent. They also considered participants’ own party identification and whether there was a relationship between ideological differences and how the subjects did the task.

Liberals proved more attentive to incongruent information, especially for Democratic candidates. When they encountered such a position, it took them longer to make a decision about whether it was good or bad. They were likely to show activation for incongruent information in two brain regions: the insula and anterior cingulate cortex, which “are involved in helping people form and think about their attitudes,” Haas says. How do out-of-the-ordinary positions affect later voting? Haas suspects that engaging more with such information might make voters more likely to punish candidates for it later. But she acknowledges that they may instead exercise a particular form of bias called “motivated reasoning” to downplay the incongruity.

Motivated reasoning, in which people work hard to justify their opinions or decisions, even in the face of conflicting evidence, has been a popular topic in political neuroscience because there is a lot of it going around. While partisanship plays a role, motivated reasoning goes deeper than that. Just as most of us like to think we are good-hearted human beings, people generally prefer to believe that the society they live in is desirable, fair and legitimate. “Even if society isn’t perfect, and there are things to be criticized about it, there is a preference to think that you live in a good society,” Nam says. When that preference is particularly strong, she adds, “that can lead to things like simply rationalizing or accepting long-standing inequalities or injustices.” Psychologists call the cognitive process that lets us do so “system justification.”

Nam and her colleagues set out to understand which brain areas govern the affective processes that underlie system justification. They found that the volume of gray matter in the amygdala is linked to the tendency to perceive the social system as legitimate and desirable. Their interpretation is that “this preference to system justify is related to these basic neurobiological predispositions to be alert to potential threats in your environment,” Nam says.

After the original study, Nam’s team followed a subset of the participants for three years and found that their brain structure predicted the likelihood of whether they participated in political protests during that time. “Larger amygdala volume is associated with a lower likelihood of participating in political protests,” Nam says. “That makes sense in so far as political protest is a behavior that says, ‘We’ve got to change the system.’”

Understanding the influence of partisanship on identity, even down to the level of neurons, “helps to explain why people place party loyalty over policy, and even over truth,” argued psychologists Jay Van Bavel and Andrea Pereira, both then at New York University, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences in 2018. In short, we derive our identities from both our individual characteristics, such as being a parent, and our group memberships, such as being a New Yorker or an American. These affiliations serve multiple social goals: they feed our need to belong and desire for closure and predictability, and they endorse our moral values. And our brain represents them much as it does other forms of social identity.

Among other things, partisan identity clouds memory. In a 2013 study, liberals were more likely to misremember George W. Bush remaining on vacation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and conservatives were more likely to falsely recall seeing Barack Obama shaking hands with the president of Iran. Partisan identity also shapes our perceptions. When they were shown a video of a political protest in a 2012 study, liberals and conservatives were more or less likely to favor calling police depending on their interpretation of the protest’s goal. If the objective was liberal (opposing the military barring openly gay people from service), the conservatives were more likely to want the cops. The opposite was true when participants thought it was a conservative protest (opposing an abortion clinic). The more strongly we identify with a party, the more likely we are to double down on our support for it. That tendency is exacerbated by rampant political misinformation and, too often, identity wins out over accuracy.

If we understand what is at work cognitively, we might be able to intervene and try to ease some of the negative effects of partisanship. The tension between accuracy and identity probably involves a brain region called the orbitofrontal cortex, which computes the value of goals and beliefs and is strongly connected to memory, executive function and attention. If identity helps determine the value of different beliefs, it can also distort them, Van Bavel says. Appreciating that political affiliation fulfills an evolutionary need to belong suggests we should create alternative means of belonging—depoliticizing the novel coronavirus by calling on us to come together as Americans, for instance. And incentivizing the need to be accurate could increase the importance accorded that goal: paying money for accurate responses or holding people accountable for incorrect ones have been shown to be effective.

It will be nearly impossible to lessen the partisan influences before the November 3 election because the volume of political information will only increase, reminding us of our political identities daily. But here is some good news: a large 2020 study at Harvard University found that participants consistently overestimated the level of out-group negativity toward their in-group. In other words, the other side may not dislike us quite so much as we think. Inaccurate information heightened the negative bias, and (more good news) correcting inaccurate information significantly reduced it.

“The biology and neuroscience of politics might be useful in terms of what is effective at getting through to people,” Van Bavel says. “Maybe the way to interact with someone who disagrees with me politically is not to try to persuade them on the deep issue, because I might never get there. It’s more to try to understand where they’re coming from and shatter their stereotypes.”

Trolling for Truth on Social Media
What 1990s Internet protest movements share with today’s disinformation campaigns During the 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets with banners and puppets to push back against economic globalization. They were met with a violent militarized suppression. At the same time, a small group of artist-activists called the Yes Men created a parody Web site pretending to be the WTO. Cloaked in its official logos and design, they made critical claims about the organization. This hoax was so successful it landed the Yes Men speaking engagements as the WTO at several conferences around the world. As the absurdity grew, viewers began to question what they saw—which was the point.

Realizing that they could pull off similar pranks using mimicry of official Web sites, the Yes Men made a career out of punching up, posing as the National Rifle Association, the New York Times and Shell, among many others. In an eerie foreshadowing of today’s disinformation campaigns, these activists poked fun at George W. Bush’s gaffes as a presidential candidate at GWBush.com.

Through spoofs, the Yes Men understood the power of the Internet as a new networked terrain where battles over truth could be fought. They played with the ambiguity of authenticity at a time when most Internet users were already skeptical of online content. The “culture jamming” tactic used by the Yes Men took its cue from Guy Debord and the so-called situationists of the 1960s, who advanced social and political critique. In the 1980s and 1990s culture jamming unified activists around a common cause and set of tactics, such as making minor edits of an advertisement to drastically change its meaning. This form of “artivism” was championed by Adbusters, a Canadian magazine that ran numerous anticorporate campaigns, most notably initiating the call to Occupy Wall Street in 2011. Simply modifying the slogan under a Nike swoosh to read “Just Buy It” was an effective way of reorienting consumers’ ideas about what it meant to wear corporate logos as fashion.

Crucially for activists such as the Yes Men, the big reveal was the raison d’être for the hoax. The cognitive dissonance experienced by the reader or viewer was a clever strategy that opened the way for critical thinking. Once they produced that chasm of the mind, the real work would begin: convincing new audiences that these corporations were the real enemies of democracy and justice.

The Yes Men’s tactics were a kind of media manipulation. For them and other activists, the Internet provided a means of knowledge transmission and a way to counter the credulity of the mainstream press and hold corporations to account. But the ingenuity of using the Internet as a canvas for mischief and critique worked a little too well. Just a couple of decades later technology companies have created a media ecosystem that allows governments, political operatives, marketers and other interested parties to routinely expose Internet users to dangerous misinformation and dupe them into amplifying it. There is mounting evidence of foreign operatives, partisan pundits, white supremacists, violent misogynists, grifters and scammers using impersonation on social media as a way to make money, gain status and direct media attention. How did we end up in a situation where lies travel farther and faster than the truth?

The answer involves the promise of networked communication technology, the new data economy and the spiraling deluge of profitable strategic misinformation. We must admit that the truth is often emotionally boring and that the motivation to take action online through, say, sharing a video requires some combination of outrage, novelty and hope. But rather than proposing a set of solutions that involve tweaking social media systems, hunting down bots or insisting on verified identities, we can look to activism to understand how we got here—and how we could get out.

THESE DAYS it is difficult to remember that there was a time when what happened online was not so world-shattering. Back in the mid-1990s heyday of America Online, Internet users protected anonymity via screen names and cryptic profiles littered with song lyrics. Most would never have thought it safe to type a credit-card number into a Web site or share personal identifying information. Because bandwidth was limited and you were yoked to the telephone wire, going online meant stopping everything “in real life” and forming bonds out of shared interests or a desire to play backgammon on Yahoo Games. The Internet was a place you could go to be yourself or someone else. John Perry Barlow and other early Internet pioneers cheered that it was the “home of the mind” where neither bodies nor laws much mattered.

Because news was still expensive to create and its distribution largely remained in the hands of media moguls, the Internet was not considered a place to seek authoritative information. In the mid-1990s news organizations were contemplating “going digital,” which mostly meant putting print articles online. There was no widespread fear that local news would disappear. If anything, it seemed like networked communications would produce the opposite outcome: any person with a connection could write about their community and interests and publish it for the world to see, anonymously or not.

I often joke that the Internet died the same day someone figured out how to get users to pay online for pizza delivery. As the Internet developed into a digital economy, verifiable identity was indispensable to the flows of commerce. Of course, the first widespread online commodity was pornography, which illuminates an important point: it is often not the whizbang of disruptive innovation that drives social change but the technological adaptation of the ordinary and mundane. As technology develops, so do humans; in adopting new technologies, people become part of a recursive circuit that changes themselves and the world around them.

Whereas the printing press was the platform that gave birth to a society of readers, the Internet fashioned everyone as a publisher. Early social-networking platforms such as LiveJournal, BlackPlanet, Friendster and MySpace were like self-service telephone books; they gave people the capacity to share stories and converse. Similarly, today’s biggest Silicon Valley tech companies began from modest intentions, a desire to connect people for specific reasons.

Facebook built its base by maintaining exclusivity. It was social networking but only for the elite colleges. Its earliest version included a misogynistic feature where users could compare and rate fellow women students’ attractiveness. YouTube began as an update on video dating, where the “you” in YouTube was an invitation for users to upload short videos talking about their perfect partner in the hopes of finding true love. Twitter was meant to function like group texts among co-workers but only seemed to find its purpose when the techno-elite of SXSW used it to enhance communication across an already technologically dense network. In that context, Twitter’s character limit was celebrated as virtuous microblogging, where small strings of text were favored over the long-winded diatribes of traditional blogs. Each of these tools has evolved not just technologically but also culturally, as society passed through a phase of excitement into one of disillusionment.

Since their inception, big questions loomed about how social media companies could become financially lucrative. The search for profit drove decisions about expanding the user base, remodeling advertising and converting users into market value. Mobile technology and broadband accelerated the capabilities of tech companies to expand their services in new areas, including data harvesting. Personal data were seen as an artifact of time spent on these services, and by simply interacting, online users sloughed off enough residual data to energize a digital economy ravenous for every click, like, share and mouse movement to be aggregated and monetized.

Social-networking sites transformed into social media, where the business model was no longer just to connect people to people and litter those pages with ads but also to connect people to “content”—information, pictures, videos, articles and entertainment. The result was a digital economy built on engagement, where content farms making “click-bait” became the watchword of the Internet economy.

But not just junk news sites make money. By creating a content-rich environment, tech companies turned advertisers into customers and users into cattle to be milked. Behavioral data could be repackaged for purposes from marketing to research to political campaigning. Profit-sharing models that made average users into content producers generated a so-called influencer culture, where entrepreneurial creators cultivated networks of followers and subscribers and then monetized them through donations, subscriptions or sponsored content. As personal data became a cash cow for social media companies, user experience could be tailored to prolong their time on sites.

The consequence, as we know well today, was the development of personalized information ecosystems. No longer did Internet users see the same information. Instead algorithmic echo chambers shaped individual news feeds and time lines to the extent that two people sitting side by side may receive very different recommendations based on their past behaviors online. Scams and grifts that would have been shut down if they were taking place on city streets, like selling counterfeit merchandise or running an illegal taxi company, flourished online.

Yet technology companies shield themselves from accountability by claiming to be a humble set of rails on which information is shuttled from one place to another. Largely because of an early ideological commitment that cyberspace was no place at all, tech companies leveraged a metaphorical mirage, where jurisdiction in cyberspace is murky and accountability is elusive. While scholars of gender, race and technology, such as Lisa Nakamura of the University of Michigan, Alice E. Marwick of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and T. L. Taylor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, routinely wrote about the dangers of divesting the Internet of a material existence, politicians and regulatory bodies failed to treat the Internet as a place where real damage could occur.

JUST PRIOR to the rollout of broadband in the 1990s, a hyperlocal model of media justice took shape through activist use of the Internet. Jeffrey Juris, an anthropologist of networked social movements, ethnographically studied how the anticorporate globalization movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s used every technology at its disposal to organize large summits to protest meetings of the WTO and International Monetary Fund. As Juris has written, the Zapatista movement’s use of networked communication technology was the forerunner to large protest gatherings: insurgents used online networks to connect with other like-minded groups globally and to provide the international press with updates on the struggle for independence in Chiapas.

To plan the 1999 protest against the WTO in Seattle, activists relied on Web sites and e-mail lists to coordinate their tactics and to forge trust across borders. Juris wrote of this form of media activism in 2005 as he studied the development of a digital hub for citizen journalists calling itself. He wrote that “Indymedia has provided an online forum for posting audio, video, and text files, while activists have also created temporary media hubs to generate alternative information, experiment with new technologies, and exchange ideas and resources. Influenced by anarchism and peer-to-peer networking logics, anti–corporate globalization activists have not only incorporated digital technologies as concrete tools, they have also used them to express alternative political imaginaries based on an emerging network ideal.” This shared set of digital tools included Web site templates that could be quickly adapted and networked through a centralized repository. The rallying cry of Indymedia contributors became: “Don’t Hate the Media, Become the Media!”

It was this same techno-optimism that later led activists to adopt Facebook, Twitter and YouTube alongside e-mail lists, SMS text groups and livestreaming during the so-called Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement and the early iterations of Black Lives Matter. These networked social movements were multiplatform in several senses of the word: they existed on computational infrastructure that referred to itself as a tech platform where activists offered an alternative political platform geared toward social justice.

Because activists were using this infrastructure to create widespread change, technology companies envisioned a new purpose for their products. To capture this momentum, companies such as Facebook and Twitter began to rebrand their products as tools for free speech. In this new marketing scheme, social media companies were likened to the digital streets or public square, and their products were framed as synonymous with democracy itself. In truth, the slipperiness of the term “platform” permitted companies such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to sidestep regulation and public-interest obligations that are typically applied to broadcast media.

Then, in 2013, the Edward Snowden scandal revealed a deep paradox to the public: The same technology used by activists to foment social change was being used by governments to spy on their citizens and for corporations and political campaigns to carry out different kinds of experiments. (Shoshana Zuboff explored this theme in her 2019 treatise on surveillance capitalism.) Activists’ participation on tech platforms was largely about using any means necessary to achieve a more just society. As the platforms’ products changed, so, too, did their usefulness to other actors, such as police, news organizations, brands and politicians. By expanding their customer base to include all these types of professionals, tech companies diluted their reputation as a place for digital democracy and took on the sinister character of a panoptic media system—one bent on making a profit at the expense of users and anyone who threatened their growth.

THROUGHOUT THE 2000s the Yes Men continued to pull pranks through their form of digital activism. They devised a political education program, where many folks contemplated the use of hoaxing as a mechanism for social protest. Shenanigans undoubtedly make a lasting and memorable impression, but hoaxes and impersonation can backfire by giving false hope. No one likes to feel manipulated or tricked, and the tactic received significant criticism from people who were truly victimized by corporations. In 2007, for example, the Yes Men impersonated Dow Chemical during an interview on the BBC where they took responsibility for the gas leak disaster in Bhopal, India, and promised $12 billion in reparations. This “news” was met with excitement that morphed into sadness and disappointment when victims found out that Dow actually did no such thing.

It was not only leftists creating convincing hoax sites in the 1990s. Jessie Daniels, a sociologist, has researched the myriad ways white supremacists have used “cloaked Web sites” to malign Martin Luther King, Jr., and other Black activists and groups, in ways similar to the tactics the FBI would use to plant stories about King. Networked factions of white supremacists are keenly aware that they cannot show up in their true form online. Whether they are remaining anonymous to avoid social stigma or evade hate crimes investigations, white supremacists continue to see the Web and social media as a political opportunity to convert new believers. As a result, they have innovated on strategies to hide their identities online to maximize reputational damage to their perceived opposition.

Now the field is open to any ideologically motivated group. Tactics include impersonating individual politicians, creating mass fake accounts, and coordinating the harassment of journalists and activists through the use of streaming platforms, chat rooms and message boards. Groups have also used automated posting to game algorithmic signals, as well as paid advertising tools to target vulnerable populations. Others have generated denigrating deep-fakes. They also have adopted techniques to influence trending algorithms, as well as to circumvent content moderation.

Many of these techniques, such as the use of bots, were pioneered by advertising agencies, which understood that data were money and that the creation of fake engagement data could produce real profit. Now the generation of fake accounts and manipulated engagement are the means by which hoaxes are carried out.

Unlike the artist-activists who used hoaxes to reveal deeper truths about capitalist exploitation, these imposters use cloaking and pseudoanonymity to attack journalists, politicians and average users. My Harvard University colleague Brian Friedberg and I have written about the impact of “pseudoanonymous influence operations,” wherein politically motivated actors impersonate marginalized, underrepresented and vulnerable groups to malign, disrupt or exaggerate their causes. Recently accounts run by white supremacists claiming to be antifascist activists were outed as impostors.

If and when operators of pseudoanonymous accounts are found out, there is no grand reveal of some larger social or political critique. Usually their goal is to trick journalists into smearing their opponent or to simply cause chaos. These disinformers quickly move on to the next potential media-manipulation campaign to advance their political agendas.

Eradicating these impostor tactics is possible, but it would require tech companies to admit that the design of their systems aids and abets media manipulators.

Indeed, we do not have an equal-opportunity media ecosystem. The anguish of seeing these tactics deployed time and time again to malign movements for justice illustrates that over the long term, they are effective only for those who want to advance short-term gains over long-term trust and safety.

https://rumble.com/v2k15za-left-wing-vs.-right-wing-yes-two-wings-of-the-same-bird-all-politicians-are.html

Many people believe they can spot false news and propaganda, but the reality is that it is much more difficult because the very design of social media and the incentives to plant misinformation are weighted in the favor of disinformers. In an environment where novel claims travel far and fast, the truth is at a serious disadvantage.

https://rumble.com/v2s414s-left-wing-liberals-vs.-right-wing-conservative-all-have-same-agenda-its-cor.html

Because tech companies have been reticent to handle the information war playing out across their platforms, society at large pays the price. News organizations, as well as individual journalists, are investing huge amounts of resources to combat the problem. National security experts and academic research centers across the globe are creating content moderation software to monitor social media. Yet activists who have long endured damaging coverage by misinformed press are now called to defend their very existence from impostors and disinformers Lies ?.

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