I don’t like the political compass
Table of Contents
I don’t like the political comapss. One, because it misses the “for whom?” present in some ideologies and two because you actually live on the tangent space of the political compass and your magnitude is your effectiveness, not your extremism.
1. The “for whom?” component of ideology
We often take liberal humanism for granted, forgetting that many ideologies aren’t just a spot on the political compass, but also have a “for whom?” component.
DMK is capitalist, pro-industry … for Tamil non-Brahmins. They won’t do this for you. Same with CCP, Gulf Arabs etc.
1.1. tldr
DMK is CCP-lite. Commie origins, but pivoted to RW economics out of pragmatism and belief in economic growth. Nationalism for their tribe’s culture, but cynically promote leftism (both economic & social) for others. Will probably be bitten by the snake they’re feeding.
1.2. elaboration
DMK practices the sort of cynical self-interest/realism that normies attribute to everyone, e.g.
- “Amrīkā is capitalist but uses leftist NGOs to stop our growth!”
- “Jews support open borders in America but not in Israel!”
- “Indian-Americans run DEI depts in US but are casteists at home!”
but is in reality very rare these days:
- those leftist NGOs are not “secretly agents of colonialism/Xtian nationalists”, they’re also very active in America and have done a great deal of damage there
- left-wing American Jews also have stupid multicultural fantasies about Israel and are quite deracinated on this
- woke Indian-Americans are also woke about Indian politics
DMK is like the clearest exception to this I can think of. Maybe China practised a similar cynicism in the few decades prior though they’ve increasingly started to buy into their own subversive memes – maybe Muslims to an extent but they have much less self-awareness about this and they’ve been very clumsy about it.
What DMK has done for “their tribe” (i.e. non-Brahmin Tamils) – not just on economics but also on culture & history – is basically what we want on a national scale for all Hindus of all castes and regions.
You will never get this from them, mind you, because they don’t care about you.
This is honestly a hard concept to grasp because we’re so used to assuming a “humanistic” background morality where we assume everyone cares about everyone and are just misguided by ideology … nah, these guys aren’t misguided by ideology. Our conflict with them is a conflict of interests, not ideology.
1.3. feel special
These guys yearn for a non-BJP pro-capitalist party so they can keep big-braining and feel special.
You won’t get it. DMK is pro-capitalist, pro-industry … for their people (Tamil non-V1s).
They are not liberal humanists. They will cynically back leftistm for everyone else.
2. You live on the tangent space of the political compass
Unless you’re a dictator who can freely choose where to place your country on the political compass, you exist not on the political compass but on its tangent space.
Your “direction” is your ideology, and your “magnitude” is not your extremism but your effectiveness.