Talk:Far-left politics

History by country?

I took a look at this article. I find it perhaps too short, but actually not bad. The lead is similar to the lead of far-right politics, which I think is probably appropriate. I notice that far-right politics has a history by country section. I think this article should have something similar. This could in turn go into genocides in China, the Soviet Union, North Korea, and Cambodia, for example, just as the far-right article goes into the Rwandan genocide. Adoring nanny (talk) 03:09, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

The basic problem is that if you type "far right" into Google books, you get thousands of results, type in "far left" and you get nothing. The term far right and similar ones were coined to group a number of similar but unrelated groups, such as Italian neo-fascists and American Klansmen. But that problem did not happen for the Left, which is made up of related groups. So this article is about how the term far left is used. TFD (talk) 17:51, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

There is a reason this is not done. Unlike the fascist movement, the far-left is composed of many different groups, often with wildly different ideologies. Even within the Stalinist branch which ruled over China, North Korea and the USSR there is a lot of variation in ideology and action. Cambodia is in many ways the exact opposite of Stalinism, and in some ways even the opposite of communism due to its repressive and ultranationalist nature. These branches, in turn, cannot even be compared to modern far-left politics, which often does away with authoritarianism, pursuing either a libertarian or idealist society. Thus, to add a summary by country is oversimplification to the point of becoming propaganda. Lucydesu (talk) 09:43, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

This article is a farce

You will not find a single political science textbook that accepts "far-left" as a scientific term. This article should be deleted. 120.22.38.19 (talk) 04:52, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

There are plenty of sources in this article which use this term. — Czello 07:39, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

None of which explicitly define WHAT far left politics is, which is a farce. Anyone who had actually studied political science would tell you how much of a farce this article is and why it should be deleted. In fact this entire article is a hypothetical which goes against Wikipedia policy itself particularly Wikipedia:CRYSTAL on point four (4) in particular

"Although currently accepted scientific paradigms may later be rejected, and hypotheses previously held to be controversial or incorrect sometimes become accepted by the scientific community, it is not the place of Wikipedia to venture such projections."

On that basis alone this article due to its speculative nature should be entirely deleted... "Far Left" is not a term any political scientist would use (and it is a science, generally falling under systems science, due to the relationship with the way systems science, and systems theory works in general) however hard it is to observe what the machinations of politics do at a scientific level beyond qualitative analysis. There are literal effects on the world around us or "system" aka "biosphere" due to the results of politics. "Far Leftt" is just not a term any man of science actually uses though... Even this article states that it IS NOT clearly well defined enough yet.

Quoting reason enough itself for the article not to be here from the article itself

"The term does not have a single, coherent definition." --120.22.14.186 (talk) 08:15, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Clearly there is a term called "far-left" which is notable and used widely, given how well sourced it is. The fact that there isn't a single unifying definition doesn't mean the term doesn't exist or isn't notable - nor that we shouldn't discuss it. Indeed, part of the purpose of the article is to discuss the fact that it might not have a singular definition. — Czello 08:44, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

A lack of coherency often indicates a lack of cogent thought on the matter, lots of people have speculated about the term far left, but the frequency of its use (which often tells us a lot scientifically) in actual studies is usually in places such as Fox News and other non-mainstream news sources where it comes up far more frequently. And yes, frequency is something we can study scientifically in political science pretty much under any studying of cultural anthropology actually where frequency and terms specific to ideologies and politics often come up, along with views about conservatism, liberalism and many other things (and what makes these things). My argument is such, that while it may be a term, it's not a very good one, and using terms spuriously that have very little cogent and coherent meaning is often dangerous at best, and life threatening at worst (as we've already seen with the far right politics of this world) that come up with these bastardisations of terms. Just look at the January 6 riots or the Christchurch mosque shootings to see where misuse of terms actually gets us when some idiot (even the former President of the United States) takes misuse of terms way too far. That is why this topic lacks usefulness (and is dangerous) to the vast majority of the world.

If you missed the message misusing terms leads to ideologues (people who take ideologies too far) and bigots that do dangerous and stupid things. that much is self evident. Trying to create an alternate reality where an equivocal far left exists in the same sphere of influence as the far right (which is an actual thing) is dangerous and foolhardy at best... Even the Bay of Pigs Crisis (mostly spurred on by the United States) never killed nearly as many people, as in general, most, if not all modern conflicts have been spurred on by those from the far right, and even when it does lead to someone like Fidel or Raúl Castro these people are not nearly as dangerous or stupid as their right wing equivalent.

AND FYI, no this isn't a spurious matter off the top of my head, people have written entire books about this issue such as Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics with far more weight than my own voice about the moral bankruptcy of neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and conservative iealogues in general who use these terms. --120.22.28.205 (talk) 07:35, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

I certainly agree that defining this term is challenging but the same can be said about thousands of other Wikipedia articles. That is why it is entirely appropriate to write in articles, "some reliable sources define the topic as A while other sources define the topic as B, or less commonly as C. An assertion that this topic lacks usefulness (and is dangerous) to the vast majority of the world should be ignored by all serious Wikipedia editors. We care not at all about Righting great wrongs terminology like "usefulness" or "dangerousness". We summarize what reliable sources say, period, end of story. Cullen328 (talk) 07:54, 1 April 2023 (UTC)