>In the 1970s, left-wing activists opposed the construction of dingbat apartments and allied with liberal homeowners to pass the Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance (NPO), which effectively finished off housing construction in the city
Short of sleazebag propaganda, there is no logic or context, historical or otherwise, that can justify describing this as "left wing." They are right wing activists by definition. I don't care what they call themselves.
Local chapters of the Sierra Club still routinely oppose many types of infill housing development.
I believe the national org is now YIMBY and most chapters are, but there are certainly many progressive/environmental orgs that have blocked construction for decades.
I do not like the Sierra Club - but in the political scene it is 100% on the left wing side.
If you are saying it's "not truly left wing" then that scenes like a high bar. Sure, there are plenty of orgs to the left of them, but they seem even more anti new housing.
It's not a "high bar." It's fundamentally different. The Sierra Club is a quintessentially liberal organization, not even nominally left wing in any way.
The DSA, however, might be a better candidate for a relative comparison, but it is still effectively just a liberal organization, despite it insisting otherwise. No historically left wing agenda would take any side in the shortsighted NIMBY/YIMBY dichotomy, both of which presume capitalism marks the end of history, which is definitionally a right wing position insofar as it effectively reinforces the established order (capitalism). A left wing agenda under a capitalist society must pursue progress while also undermining profit. The NIMBY/YIMBY dichotomy simply offers no capacity for that, meaning it is right wing by default.
These are of course contextual political categories but, by virtue of the enlightenment that produced them and the inherent forward direction of history, they can only become more complicated over time rather than more simplified. The definitions you're insisting on are strictly deteriorations of meanings and distinctions; they add nothing whatsoever to the discourse. With all due respect, their contribution is mere idiocy. It's the propaganda of American exceptionalism, a well documented anti-history that thankfully hasn't penetrated in every part of the world. I hope we can keep it that way for a bit longer.
In my experience in the US people use “left”, “liberal”, “socialist” etc synonymously (and mostly pejoratively). Same for “right”, “conservative”, etc.
Maybe. A lot of people will truly believe Sierra Club to be “left” without understanding what that (used to?) mean. A descriptivist would say maybe that suggests the words’ meanings have changed.
If everyone is ignorantly incorrect maybe it’s just a different thing now.
I agree it has less utility as a word / set of words though.
>I agree it has less utility as a word / set of words though.
This is the point I think you are missing. No definitions are "changed" because there is nothing new. It is only regression. It's anti-intellectual at best. Humanity can only become more ignorant as a result. By virtue of enlightenment principles, the only acceptable way forward is to question why such a degenerate tendency has arisen and consider what to do about it.
There was a major environmentalist and neighborhood preservationist movement in California during the 1960s and 1970s that helped fuel anti-growth measures. While they weren't strictly leftist (there are right-wing slow- and anti-growth advocates), they did complement the views of the New Left, which embraced environmentalism and came out of the counter-cultural movement of the 1960s. The San Francisco freeway revolts of 1959 and 1964 were early examples of this (https://www.cahighways.org/maps-sf-fwy.html). Consider folk songs like "Big Yellow Taxi" (1970) from Joni Mitchell with the famous lyrics "they paved paradise and put up a parking lot." Such sentiments resonated among many Californians and was especially popular along the coast. These sentiments helped lead to anti-growth measures taking effect throughout the state, especially in the coastal areas. For example, San Jose during the 1950s and 1960s undergone a campaign of dramatic expansion throughout Santa Clara Valley, even reaching Coyote Valley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._P._Hamann), but this growth was curtailed in the 1970s and San Jose has not expanded beyond its boundaries. Santa Cruz also took on an anti-growth attitude in the 1970s.
While not all anti-growth sentiment is left-wing (there are some right-leaning areas of California, particularly in the Central Valley and the Sierra Nevada foothills, that also have slow-growth or no-growth policies for maintaining "quality of life" and "rural character"), much of the anti-growth sentiment along the coast traditionally had an environmentalist and grassroots community preservationist flavor to it, with opposition to "developers" who threaten it.
> San Francisco freeway revolts of 1959 and 1964 were early examples of this
We should all be grateful for those. The proposals to put freeways across SF would have ruined the city. Similar freeway construction did ruin other cities all over the USA, and was especially horrible for working-class neighborhoods that got bulldozed in the name of "progress" (i.e. the convenience of unsustainable car commuters from the suburbs).
Right wing is broadly more about preserving tradition, not opposing change of any kind. If a change doesn’t conflict with a cultural tradition, opposing the change isn’t necessarily right wing IMO.
Nonsense. The terminology comes from the French Revolution, in which the right wing was for preserving the establishment monarchy. Ever since, "right wing" has colloquially meant support for preserving the established order.
Yes, and monarchy is a long standing cultural tradition going back long before the establishment of modern nation states and the bloated megalithic monarchies they produced. I don’t see how what I said goes against the origin of the term (which I am of course aware of).
Your definition is overly narrow. Were the Nazis left wing or were they fighting to preserve Weimar? Is the contemporary far right fighting to maintain the current status quo? Was overturning Roe v Wade aligned with left wing interests or right wing? Etc.
One of the most important insights raised by the French Revolution and those who study it is that cultural traditions were not challenged. Working people were not willing to part ways with the cultural traditions associated with the monarchy, despite aggressively opposing the politics of the monarchy. It's all but impossible to study the French Revolution without grappling with this contradiction.
>Were the Nazis left wing or were they fighting to preserve Weimar?
They were right wing by every account. Any doubt was universally discarded with the Night of the Long Knives. No serious historians disagree with this.
>Is the contemporary far right fighting to maintain the current status quo?
Definitely. The current status quo is capitalism and all stripes of the right, including both the Republicans and Democrats in the US, merely represent the interests of different capitalists, including the minority who insist their desires are closer to feudalism (like Peter Thiel).
>Was overturning Roe v Wade aligned with left wing interests or right wing? Etc.
It's only right wing under capitalism, due to the drastically unequal burden of raising children under capitalism.
Furthermore, defending Roe v Wade alongside the Hyde ammendment (as the Democrats do) is also right wing. The Hyde ammendment is a strictly economic measure that outlaws subsidizing abortion services with tax revenue, ever further dividing the rich from the poor.
A left wing effort would have focused on overturning the Hyde ammendment decades ago in addition to codifying Roe v Wade, but doing so would undermine the tremendously profitable American heathcare system so the Democrats (a right wing party) would never consider it. Note Obamacare was a windfall for the healthcare industry, a key donor of the Democratic Party.
Short of sleazebag propaganda, there is no logic or context, historical or otherwise, that can justify describing this as "left wing." They are right wing activists by definition. I don't care what they call themselves.