Talk:Hard right

Comment

There is a page for Hard left separate to Far-left. It makes sense to do the same with Hard right and Far-right. If it's argued that Far-right and Hard right should be merged, then the same should happend to Far-left and Hard right. (Garageland66 (talk) 12:21, 27 March 2016 (UTC))

WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 17:13, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Unclear topic

This seems a bit of a WP:POINT creation, by admission too, per the above justification. It also lacks a coherent subject, being little more than a mini-list of things that have been described in various places as "hard right", ranging from Progress and Blairite Labour (according to a tossed-off phrase from John McDonnell) to UKIP and the Tea Party. WP pages are not meant to be a dictionary or disambiguation entry for multiple discrete topics that happen to have attracted a one-off conjunction of the same adjective and a noun. If you want to deal with the Hard left page – which no-one disagreed was probably, as a general term, superfluous to the Far left page – deal with that. The only issue there was whether a separate page about the "Hard left" faction within intra-Labour divisions in the UK in the 1980s should be maintained, just as we have a page about the "Soft left" of the time. N-HH talk/edits 22:05, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

• This page was not created to make a point, but to add an important distinction. There is little doubt over the fact that Hard right is a term used across Europe and north America. Indeed its usage seems to be increasing, especially with the rise of Donald Trump. The sources used in the article include both academic studies and popular media. I would agree that the John McDonnell statement is questionable. So please edit that section as you see fit. (Garageland66 (talk) 09:37, 2 April 2016 (UTC))

But what is the distinction? The phrases are different but, when used technically, they broadly appear to cover the same thing. As for sources, I know there are sources for the use of the term "hard right", but that's not the point. First, do those sources use it to mean something fundamentally distinct from far or extreme right, or even perhaps right-wing populism? Second, as noted above, it is simply a conjunction of two words that, when used casually, can cover multiple different topics. Removing the McDonnell stuff might deal with that for now, but would still leave the more fundamental problem of duplication. N-HH talk/edits 09:45, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

• * Do you mean the distinction between "Hard right" and "Far right"? I tried to make clear that the Hard right seems to be somewhere between conservatism and the far right. Most conservatives distance themselves from Trump, from UKIP and others that advocate a strongly anti-immigration populist position. But the Hard right is clearly something very different to the fascist, racist and neo-Nazi groups. Having two separate pages therefore makes sense. Or are you suggesting that Hard right be moved to the Far-right page? (Garageland66 (talk) 10:08, 2 April 2016 (UTC))

I'm not disputing that there might be a legitimate distinction, I'm just not clear that there is or what it is. If that is to be the distinction, it should be set out more clearly and referenced. Currently the page doesn't explicitly mark this out as being short of racism/fascism – and in fact it includes a reference to White nationalism. My broader worry is that WP is full of dictionary-style entries for political concepts based around adjective-noun phrases, many of which are often about the same, or at least an overlapping, basic topic. There was also the point that consensus a while back at Talk:Hard left seemed to be for a merge with Far left; and as you suggest, the same logic should probably apply here too if that were to happen. N-HH talk/edits 10:22, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Tag etc

As noted in my edit summary when restoring the tag and as discussed above, the issue is not necessarily disambiguation or splitting, but about coherence and clarity. Currently the page is simply a bundling-together of times the words have been found together to describe something, ranging from things as disparate as white nationalism to the Progress faction in Labour, and kicks off with a cite to tyhe casual use of the term on a random "consultant"'s blog. There's no indication of what exactly the topic is and how it differs from far right, radical right etc. It needs a much better definition, cited if possible, for example, to an authoritative political dictionary. N-HH talk/edits 17:46, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Indeed. In February 2010 I had created the page as a redirect to Far right, because there is never any consistent difference that can be generally agreed upon (versus not only 'right' combined with 'far' but also e.g. 'ultra', 'extreme' etc then just as well in bold at the top in the article). It may be that one term is more 'popular' at one time and/or used by certain speakers and writers and/or in one or other area. But broadly as it all may be, the same things are meant by what is also called 'far right', having just as broad a spectrum of topics and varieties. There are numerous examples of a very same thing having been called 'far right' as well as 'hard right' without any distinction being suggested by the context. Over time, there does not seem to be a large difference in either frequency of usage by e.g. English versus Americans or in the location of the topics being described. One can expect a certain 'coinage' of either term for a particular e.g. organisation, but then a very similar organisation is found to be called most often by the other term. This means the terms are true synonyms.

Whether or not 'Far left' and 'Hard left' are identical as much as 'Far right' and 'Hard right' appear to be, is for handling this article basically irrelevant: "I put the wheel hard down, and still the Snark rolled in the trough. Eight points was the nearest I could get her to the wind" could not have been equally well expressed by 'I put the wheel far down‍' either. Personally, I haven't encountered the term 'hard left' enough to form an opinion about it. But its article depicts it as a typical British term for only two specific far left topics - if the Labour Party should be called even that; no Trotskyists remain to contest their coinage: If its article is correct, 'hard left' is hardly a synonym of 'far left' because too far from the latter's general interpretation. Looking more closely at the redirects and disambiguation pages about left-wing politics (and in the latter pages the several links that are no longer valid), it is obvious that the constant editing of Wikipedia by all too different characters will never for long allow a both objective and consistent set.

Unless a clear and substantiated difference is put forward, 'Hard right' must again become a redirect, this time to 'Far-right politics' to which 'Far right' was moved on 2010-05-28, and if something useful from this article would still be missing there, that should be included. In case there would be some faint difference in most frequent practical usage, though the several terms remain being used for the same things, such finer aspect would still belong in the article 'Far-right politics'.
Most convincingly: These at present 28 terms all redirect to 'Far-right politics' and 'hard right' does not stand a chance of becoming differentiated with all of those.
​▲ SomeHuman 2016-04-18 17:34 - 2016-04-19 09:53 (UTC)

Blank and redirect

In line with comments made by multiple editors here, I have blanked and redirected this article to Far-right politics, as they appear to be synonyms, and I couldn't find any content in the article that satisfied our verifiability and no original research policies. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 18:17, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2018_August_5#Hard_right, closure: keep/retarget, hence disturbing tags removed.
​▲ SomeHuman 2018-08-10 22:44 (UTC)