I bring my political compass with me on every hike, just in case I get lost.

Awesome analysis ✨ I haven't resonated with the political compass test for a long time but it's good to see its contradictions picked apart. I think any political compass test that someone could make would be inherently biased. Political ideologies aren't just about what policies one thinks should be enacted or what one's ideal system would look like, they're about the lens that one views the world through - what they feel the primary conflicts of interest are, where they think power originates from, how they understand human behavior, what they think motivates other people, what their morals are, etc. Most people have unexamined biases and coming up with questions to suss those out for everyone doesn't seem like an easy task. The prospect of making an accurate political compass quiz gets even trickier when you consider that the ideology of people is contextual within their own environment and their position in the social hierarchy, while people in positions of relative power have an incentive to convince those they hold power over that they share ideology. This became all the more apparent to me when we saw how US working class people who identify with the right reacted to the CEO killing in spite of what right wing media and influencers were saying about it. Maybe they all thought they agreed on paper until real life conflict happened and people found themselves on different sides of it depending on whether they feel more threatened by a CEO shooter or health insurance companies. I think ultimately any "political compass test" has to answer the question of what the creator(s) hope to accomplish with it, and what they think it even means to hold an ideology. I think any responsible test should be honest that it's just a jumping off point, not definitive, and encourage people to further educate themselves on history and the diversity of thought that exists in the world.

I am more in to the sapply test but what ever define all political test as the worst politics test. It not a perfect system no such thing as that but it is better then the one dimensional line

why tf is this disliked so much??

happy late birthday!!

I took it & it said I was libertarian. No I am not. Stupid thing Libertarian isn't even a real political group. I am a bloody Centrist socialist. No political compass shit can tell me that. I am not nationalist nor unionist. Fails missrebly on Northern Irish politics where the parties are all kinda odd. Hard to explain but really nobody cares much about economic shit only about whether we're being united with Ireland. Cutting ties & going fully with the UK or staying as is. Also half the questions don't feel like they mean anything. Fails miserably.

Another banger of a video! As you explained, the compass doesn't tell us whether someone supports 'restrictive measures' on principle or as a contextual necessity, and some serious misrepresentations hinge on assuming "authoritarian socialists" are disingenuous in speaking of superseding/withering away state structures. Szymanski's book is great at materially situating the shifting reliance on 'restrictive' measures (i.e. degree of "centralism" in "democratic centralism"). As Bevins stated so well, "If marauders attack your village, you should probably not respond by acting the way you hope to live when they are gone." There's genuine historical disagreement about the extent of centralization and strategies of socialist experiments toward threats of counterrevolution, but at least calling it "Left Communism" rather than "Left Libertarian Communism" flattens the quadrants to a line in ways that blur those boundaries (that praxis has, historically, blurred). Finally, I've always found self-describing as "leftist" in place of explicitly "anarchist" or "socialist" a bit cringy, but I suppose in everyday terms we're stuck with that for the immediate future. Last point: From a design perspective, it's maybe worth considering what adding a text box (i.e. "Explain why you strongly agree/disagree") would do for the substance of the results...but I guess that significantly complicates the algorithm, and it would still only be as accurate as designers' frame of reference allows.

"We now return to Russian Cartoons; Shoe and Shoelace. Shoe and Shoelace. One is meaningless without the other. THE END".

Left-Right is about decision making power. Left wants less hierarchy, right wants more hierarchy. Whatispolitics69 made a good vid about this

Best political compass critique since Halim Alrah

Great vid! I suppose my ideology has to lead to the belief that capitalism is inevitable. Thus,I try to cope with that inevitability. I'd rather have multiple competing overlords,then just one.

This is an absolute gem of a political video. Sums up all my thoughts on the stupid incoherence of Western political discourse and the reasons for its shallowness. Amazing work!

Never thought I'd see a list of religions that starts with Unitarian Universalist

I vote for a fully funded field trip of revolutionaryth0t and Hasan Piker to North Korea to discover the truth of the DPRK.

The "political compass" is heavily pushed right-wing extremist propaganda. Nobody ever uses the political compass without an agenda to push, a narrative to craft. False equivalencies, tiresome manufactures stereotypes. The faux "above it all" neutrality implied by wielding it is just one more layer of BS from the "clown world" crowd.

May main issue with the political compass is that its left/right dimension uses a bad definition that doesn't align with the historical usage of that term. But otherwise it's obviously way better than the absurdly oversimplistic left/right model.

Cute but wrong

what are your thoughts on tests like "left Values" or "right Values" and or the system they use of having many different lines pointing out different ideas and then seeing where you sit on said line of ideas within the same central idea... Check the test out yourself if you want a better explanation or to try them out

2:52 barley if you're not going to explain how

11:13 I think the most important thing about this question is, it depends on how taxed they are at the moment, for the answerer! Even if you have the same stance, you might give a different answer based on whether your country had just raised/lowered taxes for the rich, but obviously that doesn't necessarily mean your ideology has changed

Ugh this Saturday morning coffee and KZbin sesh of mine is starting off phenomenally, what a find

Your biases are annoying, but I find you attractive and am willing to past that. Also the political compass test is flawed in the lack of nuance within the propositions or answers. I will say that when I was an Ancap in my early 20s the test would consistently place me exactly where I expected it to, which was more or less the far bottom right quadrant.

Great Video!!! Thank you so much

Legend

i love this video. made a similar one on tiktok but this is more comprehensive. good work!!!

I grew up in a country that was occupied by the soviets and I have some bad news for you. Cartoons are not reality. Especially if their narrative is dictated by the state. What these cartoons don't tell you about are that if you want this unrealistic utopia to exist, you must learn russian, forget about your national identity, culture, language, and assimilate into the russian race or else get deported to Siberian labour camps where you will work, freeze and starve to death. Working together for the greater future, but your own neighbour or a friend could call a KGB agent on you for having personal opinions that don't 100% match with the communist manifest. Not because they hate you, but they are in fear of getting punished by KGB if it comes out they knew about your evil deeds but didn't report about it. Working together for the greater good means that there's an order from Moskow that says that your community must produce X amount of grain in Y amount of time. To avoid punishment, you need to lie and steal to meet the quota. And afterwards, the produce of your hard labour gets shipped away for "the common good". And what the fuck are you on about socialism means no wars? Have you even looked into history books? Indeed, the fucking moscals who were enjoying the fruits of labour from other occupied territories, didn't need to worry about wars (much like today) but the oppressed minorities were a good cannon fodder to be sent to Afghanistan (and Ukraine today). This would mean the minority population would fall and the remaining children and women are easier to assimilate to the russian race. The vatnik boomers who tell you that people were nicer in the soviet times are the ones who aren't nice or good today, because they are furious their great Leninistan fell apart and now these stupid minorities are trying to build up their own republics and cultures without them being able to fuck us around. Yes, I also hate american capitalistic oligarchy and enjoy my European life that some americans consider socialism (which it isn't) but for the love of greater good, don't be praising soviet propaganda for their "values". Gena and Cheburekcyka weren't shunned away from the pioneers because they were cartoon animals. If they had been people of colour or part of LGBTQ+, they'd had gone straight to the asylum and considered "crazy" and a "threat" to society.

Step back history had a great video on this...

In Florida public school, I was taught that left=authoritarian and right=libertarian. So fascists are left wing and anarchists are right wing. The political compass, crappy as it is, was vastly vastly better than my initial understanding.

The political compass is Redditor astrology

THANK YOU! I've always found it extremely biased and 1st-world-centred.

what is it called if somebody is socially liberal but economically leftist?

Thanks for all the sources

I completely agree with a lot of your points but I think debunking authoritarianism vs libertarianism would work better in a seperate video. You've clearly got some interesting thoughts, and even if I don't agree with them I do like listening to comrades :). But the political compass is a critique of neo liberal frameworks of change. I agree authoritarianism and libertarianism just aren't useful labels but I feel it's kinda mixed in with a critique of anti state socialism within leftist movements versus a critique of anti state socialism within neo liberalist movements. I'm using State transition vs anarchism here, which I don't believe relate to authoritarianism or libertarianism since they don't exist. I'm an anarchist. Our version of a revolution isn't 'magically transition'. We oppose the state in all of it's forms, and any hierarchies or power structures everywhere always. That's the core of anarchism that everything around it forms. Generalising cos youtube comments but I think its fair to say most anarchists believe the revolution should be targeting and destroying the conditions that lead to the formation of the state. Therefore a transition state is unnecessary, since you've already destroyed the formations that lead to the state. Abolish capital through abolishing the state becuase of as you pointed out, the continous involvement of the state to keep capitalism going. The reason we don't like the inverse is because we (for the most part) think that the state is the ultimate evil. The state cannot exist without some form of exploitation, so using it to destroy exploitation seems like a contradiction. Also it's just unneccessary lesser evil. We think resources should be redistributed immediately, rather than redistributed slowly by the state. There is a wider conversation to be had about anarchist vs state transition theories. I've oversimplified a lot here. Mainly because youtube. Anarchism has a broad diversity of thought, especially around how to go about a revolution and what to do. I think it's important we maintain leftist unity as best as we can. We all want the downfall of capitalism. We all want a communist society. Part of leftist unity is engaging in good faith, doing research within the diversity of leftist thought and believing each other when we say this is what I believe. <3. I hope this comes across as engagement in good faith. Edit: just wanna mention on the co opting thing. I've been involved in socialist and anarchist style organizing. In my experience due to vertical power structure, they are much more easily co opted because all it takes is one bad actor rising within the hierarchy. I won't say there isn't a problem, but we have taken active measures to prevent bad actors from co opting our movements. We have had instances of state socialists attempting to co opt our movement and have resisted them fairly easily. no one person should have more power than another within anarchist movements, which makes it possible for the working classes to remove bourgeois actors. I understand where the criticism is coming from, but steps have been taken within our movement.

It's good in as much as it helps people to understand that there's more than one axis of political belief. It's bad in that most people seem to assume it means there are only two.

I want to hear more about the Marxist child phycologist!!! 19:20

This is informative and rationally proposed. Humorous where it needs to be and pseudo dramatic where it is relevant. I have taken this poll/questionaire a few times since it was published and deemed it as an amusing time waster that has some underlying ugliness's that were hidden well in the blogosphere like accompanying texts. Your breakdown is spot on. so thanks you.

Man, that was deep! Now I get why so many well-read leftists dislike this compass. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that such a well-known and promoted thing like that should be from a right-wing source. Sigh... One thing that really stood out to me in this was the description of liberal anticommunism as having become more like a religious dogma than a cogent political critique. I think that would be a fascinating topic, because the weird fantastical arguments employed just looked crazier by the day. Everything now seems to be on fast-forward, and absurdities become more blatant all the time. Thanks for your hard work! It's much appreciated. :)

I've often called the Political Compass a BS tool to figure out what kind of Libertarian you are. It's for Libertarians to share with their friends so they can pretend they're not fringe weirdos.

I think ideology is way overrated to begin with. I think most people will vote cross idealogy depending on the issue. A good example of this could be one could believe in climate change but at the same time be pro necular power. Another example could be one could vote for a flat income tax system. while also voting to supporting government subsidized housing for lower income families.

Sinapore has like litteraly socialised land and is basicly a chinese market testing ground. Its insane that liberals think it is somehow a "free market" society.

This channel is so damn underrated. Great stuff!

34:23 even that labor freedom is not what u think it is 😅 It's the "freedom" to have loose regulation labor laws and rights.

It's a bit of one-sided view, but yeah, cartoons are morally based

I took this test to see if i could get the following results -10 10 -10 -10 10 -10 10 10 0 0 Which is impossible

So refreshing! From now on, you are my thot leader.

1:17:00 take the repression of Mormonism by various US presidents. How much of it was ethnocentrism? How much of it was genuine concern for women's rights or the opinions of Mormon women? It's a tough example because Mormonism was Communist at the time & Utah was theocratic and oppressed divergent indigenous peoples (those who didn't convert). Parts of Utah engaged in slavery at the same time as the US South did. Mormonism didn't support slavery, but did take a man as tithing once.. I'm not sure exactly how that worked, was he free, was he just a convert, i don't get it. In the 70s, 'free' capitalist utah saw BYU following young men to salt lake to catch them going to gay bars and expel them. I was born in Texas before 2003's Lawrence v Texas. I'm grateful I've never been to jail. I'm not saying these societies were good, but we can do apologetics for any society & probably should (with moderation) question any propaganda we get handed down. If a church has most power, consider it the state. If a Republic has most power, consider it the state. If a monopoly has the most power, consider it the state. Not sure of a country that fits that last descriptor, but just saying that this is a useful exercise within reason for any cultural group or region of the world. Not to be uncritical & say "it's just their culture" but to shed ethnocentrism in favor of actually evaluating each culture in its own context, with an eye to universal human rights.

u know what's worse? the red scare is worldwide. my country is sliding towards islamist fascism, and yet communism is still somehow the absolute worst thing and must never even be so much as hinted as something worth learning about.

1:00:00 it would be interesting to see all this assessed based on outcomes: - gender parity regardless of means - teen pregnancy & extant child labour - health outcomes, malnutrition, & care - hurdles to entrepreneurship It would be measuring something different, but would be interesting to see how different countries achieved each thing with their wide ranging ideologies

53:00 i highly doubt they base it on the right of gay folks to raise or conceive kids, let alone their ability to do so. Still reckon there's a decent correlation with things like marriage equality though, tbh.

50:00 ermmmm