So the trigger for this post is that I follow US political youtubers and I can't really guage on what end of on the political spectrum they would stand in my country, the Netherlands, because the US only has two political parties by design.
Recently this includes the new mayor of New York Zohran Mandami, which I placed at centre-left at first, but upon hearing him speak, I would move him towards left-wing.
But is he really? And how would I know?
New York City is not the same as a country, ten to twenty times as large and twice the population, depending on how many people Mandami actually governs, 8 million, 14 million?
And their policies of course reflect of what came before, so by looking at just their policies, I think would be comparing apples to oranges.
But perhaps if I were to instead analyze the election programs choice of language of the Dutch political parties and see how they compare to US politicians and political commentators I maybe could have a better picture, because I've noticed that when it comes to the language used by the extreme right party of my country, they tend to use hyperbolic language on certain issues.
And when it comes to what I consider hypobolic or even inadvertently self-denigrating word choices like "People of color", I feel like this is something wholly embraced by the Dutch centre-left party, but when it comes to the left-wing party it's more in the background while
The language I come across there is "solidarity", "class justice", "for the people", "product", "casino-X", "without profit".
So having said that I'll first conclude this post with my vibes towards all of these political figures, commentators and parties and see if their language more or less matches with each other.
To categorize them, I added the term 'Ample', because I grew up with the VVD being the liberal right-wing party and the only right-wing party apart from two others;
One tradcon evangelical party and a far-right party.
And when I learned of the US Republican party and British conservatives it was.... weirdly far more right-wing than the VVD without being headed by a Kenneth Copeland or a Donald Trump (lite).
My vibes
US youtubers and media personalities
- Extreme-right - Nick Fuentes
- Far-right - Andrew Tate, Matthew Tye
- Ample-right - Ben Shapiro(?^), Steven Crowder, Piers Morgan, Tucker Carlson(?ˇ)
- Right-wing - Bill Maher
- Centre-right - Joe Rogan(?^)
- Centrists - Cenk Uyghur, David Pakman, Thom Hartman, Jimmy Dore
- Centre left - Steve Shives, John Oliver, Francesca Fiorentini
- Left-wing - Kyle Kulinski, Ian Kochinski(?^), Hasan Abi
- Ample Left - Richard D. Wolff, Danny Haiphong
- Far-left - Haz Al-Din, Brian Berletic(?ˇ), Nathan Rich(?ˇ), Daniel Dumbrill(?ˇ)
- Extreme-left - x
US politicians and oligarchs
- Extreme-right - Donald Trump(?)
- Far-right - Elon Musk(?)
- Ample-right - Ted Cruz, George W. Bush
- Right-wing - Jeb Bush, Michael Bloomberg
- Centre-right - Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Andrew Cuomo, Hillary Rodham-Clinton
- Centrists - ???
- Centre Left - Alexandria O. Cortez
- Left-wing - Zohran Mandami
- Ample-left - x
- Far-left - x
- Extreme-left - x
Political parties of the Netherlands
- Extreme-right - PVV
- Far-right - FvD
- Ample-right - JA21, SGP
- Right-wing - VVD, BBB
- Centre-right - CDA, NSC
- Centrist - D66, CU, Volt
- Centre-left - Pvda/GL, PvdD, Denk
- Left-wing - SP
- Ample-left - x
- Far-left - x
- Extreme-left - x
So that's my vibes. If you think I'm off by a mile, please comment in this thread as to why you think otherwise. Some figures I have followed more than others.
In my next post I will analyze part of the election program of the Dutch extremist right-wing party and see if I can have it distinguish itself enough from the far-right by word choices and topic focus alone.
I'm going to agree with you here.
I put Mandami left of center until I rethought
on what I often see and hear from the center-left,
and words often used by the left.
"I don't think we should have billionaires" sounds very much left-wing to me,
rather than center-left.