- Pete
- Jul 22
- 11 min read
Updated: 9 hours ago
“There's no need for formal conspiracies when all of these economic and political elites share the same ideology.”
—George Carlin
“We’re not polarized because we hate each other. We hate each other because we’re polarized.”
— Lilliana Mason
“Everybody’s so busy wanting to be down with a gang—‘I’m conservative’, ‘I’m liberal.’ Bullshit! Be a fucking person!”
—Chris Rock
“The political system is not designed to represent the public. It is designed to marginalize and control them.”
— Noam Chomsky
In Western democracies, “Left Wing” and “Right Wing” are the labels of choice for categorizing the political views of an entire nation. You’ll read them in your newsfeed, see them on bumper stickers, hear them in conversation, and relish—or resent—them pouring from the mouths of pundits, politicians, and opinionated relatives. They’re spoken like gospel, as if they define two eternal, opposing forces.
They do not.
In reality, “Left Wing” and “Right Wing” have become marketing slogans—shorthand slurs spun by pundits and politicians to divide us into warring tribes. Listen to Fox News, CNN, the Daily Wire, Joe Rogan or Donald Trump and count how often the terms are used to smear a faceless mass of people. You’ll need a calculator. Framed as pejoratives, the “other side” becomes a clear and present danger to your values, your identity, your country—even your life.
Here’s the truth: most of us move through life barely noticing this supposed divide. Meanwhile, media and politicians at the highest levels religiously promote this binary as reality. Corporate and social media reveal and stoke the polarization—and profit from it. Division spreads, an insidious cancer that hits Stage 4 before we know it exists. Comment by comment, more and more people—against their own interests—are taken in.
In prehistoric times, blind allegiance to a tribe may have been essential for survival. In our more recent religious past, the preacher divided the forgiven from the damned, the good from the evil, the worthy from the unworthy. With the Enlightenment, many saw through the manipulation. Today, that instinct is being hijacked.
History shows, when nuanced ideas and solidarity are lacking, brutality can march in and fill the space, first with propaganda, then with violence. Are we today, with the explosion of divisive rhetoric and digital echo chambers, returning to a tribal, fundamentalist mindset? Or have we never truly left the past behind?
The Origin of Left and Right: From the Gallery to the Guillotine
The terms “Left” and “Right” were first used during the French Revolution in 1789, when delegates in the National Assembly physically divided themselves: revolutionaries to the left of the chamber, defenders of the monarchy to the right. What began as geography soon became ideology. Ideology hardened into identity.
The revolution began with noble and new ideals: liberty, equality, fraternity. As the binary deepened between “us and them,” suspicion turned to paranoia. Moderates were cast out. Dissenters became enemies. The political divide morphed into a moral, hellish absolute. Bring in the guillotine (proposed by Dr. Guillotin to make executions more humane!).
During the nine months of the Reign of Terror in France, tens of thousands were executed—not just aristocrats, but former allies, and those guilty of moderation and nuance. The revolutionaries, demanding freedom, consumed their own. Division as a weapon reached its bloody conclusion.
This history is not ancient irrelevance. It’s a reminder and a warning.
The Modern Use of Left and Right
The terms Left Wing and Right Wing didn’t gain traction in the U.S. until the 1920s—starting with the Communist Red Scare, growing under FDR’s New Deal and the rise of fascism in WWII before going full-blaze during the Cold War. The labels got red hot again with anti-Vietnam War protests and stayed busy under Reagan with his undemocratic support of Central American death squads and the fantastic fall of the Berlin Wall. Then came the neo-conservatives—a new level of hawkish Right, faithful devotees of foreign interventions. Today they're anti-Trump. Or are they? Who can tell? Marco Rubio—a long-time supporter of the neo-con playbook—is Secretary of State under Trump. Neo-con Republican Liz Cheney—daughter of Iraq War architect Dick Cheney—was courted by Democrats. And the Democrat elites wonder why they lost the working-class vote.
In Canada, the labels Left and Right Wing flew in with less—but still real—vigour, often reacting to similar pressures. Canada had a World War I Red Scare with deportations and internments. The Gouzenko Affair in 1945, exposing Soviet espionage in the government, was headline news.
The rise of Tommy Douglas’s Saskatchewan-based, socialist CCF party in the '30s—which helped usher in universal health care—was a uniquely Canadian trigger. In 1962, most physicians did not support the first plan in North America to publicly fund medical care. Thousands of doctors in Saskatchewan went on strike, refusing to work under the new rules. A compromise—what a beautiful word—led to their return. A single-payer system where doctors could bill the government for their work instead of accepting a salary. Today, no conservative could get elected Prime Minister wanting to abolish socialized medicine.
That moment remains instructive. It speaks to the tension between fear and progress, ideals and opportunism, not to mention what's actually needed. That battle is experienced today by the majority of Americans who still yearn for universal health care, despite what many pundits and politicians, media companies, and corporations would have us believe—using Left-Right rhetoric as a weapon to yet again pit us against our own interests.
A closer look reveals the Left Wing-Right Wing labels repeatedly and shamelessly shift principles—unlike well-defined political philosophies. In woke parlance, they're fluid. Trump's tariff fanaticism would make protectionist Democrat President FDR declare a national emergency. Republicans once freed the enslaved; Democrats once defended Jim Crow, and filibustered against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In the '70s, the Left were pro-civil rights, anti-war and anti-Intelligence. Under Biden, the Right were anti-war and anti-Intelligence. Free speech was once a liberal hill to die on. Now, it’s a conservative cause célèbre—until, that is, it came to criticism of Israel. On that front, many on "the Right" abandoned the First Amendment, passing legislation or resolutions that categorize certain critiques of Zionism as antisemitic—despite the fact that it remains perfectly legal for Americans to harshly condemn their own country’s history, accusing it of colonization, the genocide of Native Americans, or anything else.
In other words, the application of the Left and Right labels is not about principle. It is about manipulation, profit and opportunism. It is about what serves the brand in the moment. Anti-war, pro-corporate, anti-censorship or pro-surveillance? It doesn’t matter. Ideas leap back and forth across the Left and Right Wing divide like a deranged pogo stick, as required.
Common Good, Common Ground
The myth of some impenetrable Left Wing-Right Wing division collapses further with a cursory glance at what the majority of people actually agree on.
A 2024 Gallup poll found that 62% of Americans support a federally funded health care system that guarantees coverage for all. That’s not fringe opinion. That’s a political landslide.
In a 2019 Hill-HarrisX poll, 58% of respondents supported tuition-free public college and forgiving student loan debt. That includes strong support from younger Republicans as well as Democrats.
A Knight Foundation study showed 91% of Americans believe protecting free speech is essential. 90% defend the right to express unpopular opinions.
Surveys also show that a vast majority of working people across the spectrum want fair, livable wages. They want dignity and safety at work, equitable pay, and protection of their rights. In the richest societies in the world, the desire for a living wage is not controversial.
Even on divisive issues like abortion and gun control, people in both the U.S. and Canada hold more nuanced, middle-ground views than political pundits admit.
Who Benefits from the Great Divide?
The old saying goes, to see who benefits, follow the money. So it goes with Left-Right politicking.
Politicians profit. Divisive outrage raises money, energizes the base and creates an enemy.
Media companies profit. Conflict fuels engagement. Consider the irony: America comes together on line to hate each other because polarization has torn us apart—fuelling more divisions and more delusions.
Social media algorithms amplify divisive comments—and profit from them. Nuance, on the other hand, could be a code word for "digital graveyard."
Transnational corporations and lobbyists profit. It's their reason for working together.
A polarized public is more easily manipulated into supporting policies that serve business interests, but not our own. When we’re busy fighting each other, we don’t notice who’s robbing us in broad daylight. This division is not accidental. It may not even be conspiratorial. But it is business. And business is booming.
Refuse to Give Up
Common truths that usurp the propaganda reveal the real divide—not Left versus Right, but top versus bottom. The people versus power. The many versus the few. The everyday human, in crushing ways, is trapped in a class war disguised as a culture war. This is, for so many, self-evident in their insufficient paycheques and day-to-day survival. Economic inequality is expanding faster than the Universe. Homelessness is epidemic. Salaries are no match for housing prices. Elite power structures rely on a rigged ideological debate to keep us too divided to unite.
And let’s be clear: the so-called “1%” isn’t limited to the ultra-wealthy and powerful. It’s a metaphor for those—rich or not—who feel no solidarity or empathy with the rest of us. That includes extremists, fundamentalists, and racists who reject shared humanity, though they may one day need it.
But there's still an internal barrier dividing us, reinforced by polarizing language.
In conversations with friends and strangers, it’s evident many everyday people—well below the familiar 99%—do not feel aligned with others in this loosely defined group I'm attempting to convince you is real.
Hear me out. What if the real percentage of those who disdain democracy and solidarity—be it powerful elites or extremists, fundamentalists, or unabashed racists—isn’t the familiar 1%? Let's say it's 19%? Or 31%? That still leaves 81% or 69% of us capable of empathy, decency and change, together. That's a powerful group. Landslide victory numbers in any democracy.
If we could believe it's possible we share much in common, imagine the new friends to be made just by breaking out of our own echo chambers and conversing, listening and laughing. But it's not about friends. It's about common interests relentlessly polarized by liars.
With an intelligent commitment to solidarity and freedom—and a willingness to confront our own assumptions about the "them" within this group—we could steer this earthly ship to follow that moral arc of the universe that bends toward justice and love. Individually, we can start now. Solidarity grows instantly, with a choice. Collectively, we'll rein in the atrocities of weaponized political rhetoric, and even limit social collapse, civil war, or genocide.
If we could all see the Right-Left con for what it is, we could also imagine ourselves an unstoppable, loosely affiliated movement for good. Don't give up.
The Division is the Distraction
Power thrives in distraction and division. To improve most people’s lives, we have to expose the lie—and confront the power behind it.
The first step? Turn the noise off. Refuse to parrot their language. What could annoy a propagandist more? Call out polarizing Left-Right framing when it diminishes human richness and possibility—which it always does. Stop using the Left and Right labels. It’s hard. I’m writing the essay, and I use them. Start demanding and conversing with more nuance. Start demanding our collective needs be the centre of our debates.
Most importantly? Let them know we see what they are doing. We see through the manipulation. We see through the performance. And we refuse to destroy ourselves for their profit.
Calling the divide a lie isn’t hyperbole or theoretical. It’s real. It is a lie. But is it lethal?
In Rwanda, colonial divide-and-conquer tactics laid a foundation of tribal inequality. After Rwandan independence, broadcast radio propaganda picked up the torch. Ethnic labels—Hutu and Tutsi—became slurs. Over radio and in print, the Tutsi minority was dehumanized as “cockroaches” and “snakes.” Genocide erupted, killing 800,000 people in 100 days. Relatives killed relatives. That genocide didn’t start with machetes. It started with language—broadcasts, newspapers, slurs. Words that made murder seem righteous.
In Nazi Germany, antisemitic propaganda and nationalist binaries created an “us vs. them” narrative that ended in the extermination of six million Jews—and up to twelve million human civilians in all.
This isn’t ancient history. That was 1945. Rwanda was 1994.
We see words turn deadly again in the devastation in Gaza. Here in North America—as anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish incidents rise sharply—the so-called Left and Right both fund the horror, arguing with facts, lies and shifting views—while tens of thousands of civilians are killed and starving.
Language shapes reality. Binaries kill nuance, and stop coalition building. When people and their complexities are distilled into pejorative categories, cruelty prepares to pounce. Nobody knows the tipping point. But can we learn from these horrors?
Let us stop it before we tip. Let us call out the lie now, clearly and publicly. Let us be so brilliant, so brave, that we see something stunningly beautiful through the toxic smoke: all we share in common. Life. Love. And hopefully the pursuit of happiness.
The Hidden Danger of Belonging
It feels good to belong. Kinships. Friendships. Clubs. Churches. Sports teams. To know who your people are. To share a common cause. Or to feel superior. Focusing on an enemy has certain psychological benefits. Needing to belong is natural.
But the benefits can come at the cost of curiosity and compassion. The cost of truth. Within the spectrum of belonging, we find at the murky edges, the cult, the secret society, the gang, led by figures who lie shamelessly, with a smile, or a snarl. We have to believe character has greater value than charisma. We have to call out cruelty against the oppressed, everywhere. We’re not wrong to care about our side. But we’ve been misled about who is on our side.
In politics, the Left-Right divide is the big lie.
In the early 1930s, German priest Martin Niemöller was an anti-semite and supporter of the Nazi Party. After the war, after witnessing the horror, he wrote these famous words: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out…"
Today, we might add: “Then they came for the Left Wing... then the Right Wing... and still, I did not speak out—and then they came for me.”
This sentiment has been embodied recently with shocking and disturbing images of ICE agents in the U.S.—in masks and lacking visible warrants—storming mostly Latino neighbourhoods and workplaces to seize and deport immigrants.
Beyond the Lie
History shows us, in the extreme, where binary thinking leads: censorship, purges, civil war. When people become categories, laws collapse, cruelty follows.
We don’t need a new political ideology. We need a new cultural honesty.
Nearly everybody wants effective healthcare that doesn’t leave us homeless. We want education that uplifts, not impoverishes. We want clean air, safe communities, and free speech—with enough nuance to fend off ignorant, hateful speech. We want our kids to grow up in a better world.
We want dignity. Equal rights. Enlightening conversation and debate. For everyone.
We don’t want to be divided by lies. The Left-Right lie divides us. If you start loving your conservative neighbour or hippie colleague, but miss the passion of blind allegiance? Channel it into your sports teams. They can take it.
When the game is over, though, the majority of us want to go back to a job that, after a hell of a day, month or year, at least provides a dignified working wage. Who doesn’t hope for that for their fellow human being?
We want civil liberties protected—not negotiated away by stoking fear, false labels and fake divisions.
We are not enemies. We are neighbours. We are the 99%, and we deserve better than a rigged debate. More importantly, we need to stop reinforcing it.
It’s not easy to love the loudest voices to death. Let alone change the algorithm. But it’s come to that. We can reject manipulation, cultish obedience, extremism, and a media that thrives on fear. We need to disrupt the elitist status quo.
There is no revolutionary answer, unless love, honesty, courage and community are revolutionary. Maybe it's getting that way.
As conservative economist Thomas Sowell—a human too often captured by ideological framing himself—once said with piercing honesty: “There are no solutions—only trade-offs.”
May some trade-offs become fantastic solutions, open to new ideas and solidarity based on reason and compassion.
Whether we are an evolving species or children of God—or both—we are in this human journey together. Inspire yourself with clarity. Inspire each other with kindness. Could it begin by talking? By Learning? By seeking out points of connections? By remembering all we have in common?
Let our trade-offs be shaped by truth, not cowardly tribalism. Let our compromises be courageous.
Let our politics reflect our complexity—and our deep capacity to care.
We are only divided if we fall for the Big Lie.
We can do better. We are better.
Together.
Note:
This essay is a bird’s-eye, philosophical, and historical reflection—meant to pierce elite propaganda and expose our collective blind spots. I cannot speak for those living the daily realities of this binary—marginalized by income, race, opportunity, historical or ongoing injustice, or the absence of citizenship. But I believe that empathy, the continual rediscovery of our shared humanity, and the fight for strong communities and greater access to justice are essential steps forward.
