The Woes of the Political Compass
Who would have thought that a simple internet quiz could derail popular political discourse?
It says something about the ubiquity of the Political Compass that I’m not sure exactly when I first became aware of it. Like any successful meme, it has percolated its way from relative obscurity into practically every area of online discourse (exceptions, of course, include Silent Generation Facebook pages and the comment sections of those weird, procedurally-generated YouTube kids’ videos).
My first exposure to the four-quadrant political compass might have happened in 2015 or so, on some forum where a political discussion was happening. My thoughts on it at the time were “Oh, interesting.” Little did I know how much influence this simple graph would have over the Very Online in the next few years.
A Brief History
For the two people in the world who don’t know (thank you both for reading my columns, by the way), the Political Compass is a quiz that presents several propositions. Depending on how much a user agrees or disagrees with each statement, the quiz assigns that person a point on a graph with two axes: left/right and authoritarian/libertarian. The compass was first developed in 2001 by Pace News Ltd., making it ancient by online meme standards.
When I first started seeing it, I thought it was a new and interesting way to visualize where one’s politics lean. The left and right spectrum was familiar, and the authoritarian/libertarian axis added a way to think about the various tendencies and attitudes that exist on the political spectrum but aren’t always captured clearly by degrees of “left or right.” After all, a paleo-conservative and a card-carrying Objectivist are both right-wing, but express significantly different on issues such as taxation and what should be considered a crime. On the other side, a Marxist-Leninist and an anarchist are both against capitalism, but will support different ways of organizing to establish a worker-controlled society. Adding a y-axis gives us a way to express these differences quickly.
Of course, I knew the Compass had its flaws. The quiz may have a slight left-leaning bias in its weightings, the developers’ assertion that belief in fate is linked to authoritarianism is a bit questionable and could benefit from some evidence, and so on. But most things are imperfect, so at first, I thought of it as just another quirky political thought experiment and put it aside.
Then something terrible happened
Reddit and various other forums found out about the Political Compass and started doing two things:
a) Making endless memes about it
b) Taking the format too seriously when discussing politics
Some will see that I’m criticizing Political Compass Memes and accuse me of being humourless, because “they’re just jokes stop taking them so seriously.” So, first of all, yes, memes about the Political Compass can often be funny, especially when they subvert the format or otherwise don’t take it too seriously. The problem with Political Compass Memes began when online communities were formed specifically to post and discuss this type of meme.
As memes are remixed and remade over time, their elements typically become more simplified and stereotyped. In a word, they become Flanderized.
This isn’t necessarily a problem in and of itself, but when this kind of meme’ing happens in a place where people attempt to have political discussions, the space tends to attract people with increasingly fringe or extreme views, or cause people to express more extreme views. Such is the fate of the subreddit /r/PoliticalCompassMemes, a space that is supposedly for people of all political affiliations but has been filled with edgelords, fascists and other assorted /pol/ posters. The same trend has happened in several online platforms, including /pol/ itself, producing the kind of alt-right political compasses you might expect.
The Flanderization of such memes has also lead to various ideologies being lumped together into an overarching quadrant. Take this meme for example:
Here the libertarian left is portrayed as loving Kamala Harris, a former Attorney General of California, despite being broadly against policing. But which libertarian leftists “stan” Kamala Harris? Anarchists and other libertarian socialists certainly don’t — they recognize that the state and law enforcement do not serve their class interests. The people who do stan Harris may be somewhat to the left but are likely of the more liberal variety, therefore they are unlikely to also believe All Cops Are Bastards. And this raises another issue: why are two notably different political tendencies both associated together into one alignment? Which one is more truly libertarian left?
Why Does It Matter Anyway?
I realize that I am overanalyzing an asinine meme that probably took one tenth the time to make as I have spent writing about it, but my point is that many people using the political compass do not consider why certain ideologies fit into an area of a compass, and others are too busy triggering the libs to care.
So why should any of this matter? Internet forums attracting reactionaries, fascists and shit-disturbers is nothing new. Really, if the problem with the Political Compass was only to do with Political Compass Memes, I would just write PCM off as another online community that took a turn for the worse.
What is more concerning is the tendency I have noticed among some online groups to take this oversimplified concept of the Political Compass and make it their entire political identity. Many of these people treat Political Compass test results as astrological signs, discussing traits of various alignments on the chart and the compatibilities and incompatibilities of different quadrants.
Putting aside the limitations and potential biases of the original quiz, these types of alignment discussions often lead to supposedly political conversations that have very little to do with actual political matters. People may spend considerable time debating how far into the bottom left quadrant a person is, but never discuss how someone of that persuasion might, for example, advocate for immigrant rights. In these cases, the Political Compass becomes a four-way team sport and not a point of political analysis.
My point in all of this is that, if you are someone who likes Political Compasses, it is important to remember that the Compass is a representation of politics — not political action itself. Don’t oversimplify what a chart alignment could mean and don’t take a position on the chart as gospel for what someone believes or is. Instead, try using the chart as a jumping-off point, a way to think more deeply about what you believe and learn more about why you may believe it. This will help you and others have more thoughtful conversations about politics.
In other words, I recommend taking Political Compass memes about as seriously as horoscopes.
Further Study
For more criticism of the Political Compass from a left-wing perspective, I recommend this video essay by the YouTuber Halim Alrah. He goes into greater detail on the limitations and inconsistencies of different political alignment charts.
