1,114 words 
To be “on the left” is an apparently arbitrary binary classification of one of two dominant political hemispheres. Broadly speaking, being on the left signifies collectivism, internationalism, and more recently, government-enforcement of utopian egalitarian beliefs about class, race, gender and religion. To be on the right, therefore, is usually understood as adopting ideas of nationalism, limited government, and the natural development of inequalities between biologically and culturally unequal citizens (i.e., men are not women, race is a biological reality, some cultural values are superior to others, etc).
The origin of this terminology comes from the 1789 National Assembly during the French Revolution where the Republican Revolutionaries sat on the left side of the chamber opposite the Monarchists on the right. Surely it was unintentional to invoke the ancient association between the goodness of the right and evil of the left. In Latin, the word sinister means “on the left”. In modern English we would hear the root of the word sinister: giving the impression that something harmful or evil is happening or will happen.
Why this association between the left and evil began is unclear. Perhaps because only about 10% of the population are left-handed[1], something strange was equated with wrong or unnatural. Within the right-handed majority, the left hand was the weaker. In ancient Mesopotamia and Greece omens involving leftward motion were interpreted as ill-fated.[2] In Virgil’s Aeneid, the great poet depicts the Roman belief that souls of the dead will encounter a fork in the road which, to the left, leads to Tartarus: a prison of eternal torture and, to the right, Elysium: a paradise “untouched by sorrow in the islands of the blessed.”[3]
You can buy Jason Kessler’s book Charlottesville & the Death of Free Speech here.
Some may be familiar with the beliefs of self-avowed 20th century sorcerers who claimed that magic can be classified into right and left-hand paths, with the left signifying black magic (malevolent) and the right, white magic (benevolent). The concept was adopted by famous occultists like Madame Blavatsky and Aleister Crowley, the founder of Thelema. By engaging in acts subversive to the moral authorities (sex acts, rituals, drug intoxication, etc), they claimed to receive spiritual empowerment. Though their aim might have been religious, it could not help but have a political implication familiar to modern advocates of sex and drug liberalization. These religious aims would have been totally congruent with those of a secular political figure like the Marquis De Sade, a magistrate in Revolutionary France whose novels Justine and 120 Days of Sodom celebrated immorality by reveling in orgiastic celebrations of incest, rape, murder and sodomy.
Anton LaVey, the Jewish founder of the Church of Satan, promoted a view of the left-hand path similar to Crowley and Blavatsky, while rejecting drug use and embracing the biological inequalities associated with right-wing thought. This makes him a complicated and unorthodox figure politically. The modern Satanic Temple, however, acts as a more cohesive bridge between secular and religious traditions of the left by using its government classified status as a purported religious group to advocate for liberal causes like transgenderism and a supposed religious right to abortion.[4] Evangelical conservatives often draw a parallel between abortion and blood sacrifice, a practice believed to hold supernatural power.
The Satanic Temple has adopted Eliphas Levi’s famous representation of Baphomet, the “Sabbatic goat” as central to its supposed religion. Supposedly, the organization claims to reject the supernatural and therefore appears to be using the facade of religion to push leftist politics under the auspices of freedom of speech. For instance, by placing statues of Baphomet in front of state capitols in a thinly-veiled attack on Christian Conservatives. Levi, a Hebrew anagram, was a Frenchman and utopian socialist, born Alphonse Louis Constant in 1810 during the reign of Napoleon in the aftermath of the French Revolution.
A statue of Baphomet erected by the Satanic Temple, a left-wing activist group, under the auspices of religious expression. (Little Rock, Arkansas)
Despite the occult association between Satan (a Hebrew word meaning “the adversary”) and the left-hand path, its origins are not in Abrahamic religious texts but Tantric practices developed on the Indian subcontinent. The right-hand path (dakshinachara) supposedly derived its magical power from conventional morality, while practitioners of the left-hand path (vamachara) were driven by breaking taboos and reveling in immorality. Examples of this might be practicing sex magic during rituals, eating meat, drinking alcohol, or committing sodomy. Celebrating homosexuality and other forms of sexual deviancy is, of course, a major element of the modern left’s political agenda.
A Hindoo sacrifice – 19th century painting of goat slaughter at Kali Puja
Most modern Westerners would fail to understand Roman morality, suffused as it was with the right of might and strength, contrasted to Christian sympathy for slaves and the underclass. However, one thing they’d have in common is disdain for hubris: the sin of pride. The modern left-wing “pride movement” takes one of Christianity’s Seven Deadly Sins and turns it into virtue. While the Romans may not have had the same prohibitions, or even conception, of homosexuality per se, feminized men were reviled and being penetrated was considered a despicable humiliation. In Tantra, anal intercourse, along with other acts of indecency like defiling a graveyard, were considered an act of vamachara, the left-hand path.
Curiously, the cluster of political positions on issues ranging from economics, government locus of power, and more recently, race and identity issues, classified as left-wing, may not merely be a happenstance of seating arrangements in the French National Assembly. A 2024 study found a correlation between the left-handed population of a state and the likelihood of that state voting for Democrats in United States presidential elections between 1964 and 2016.[5]
Though the study is far from conclusive on the purported link between handedness and belief, it is a potentially interesting biological basis for the left and right dichotomy. Additionally, handedness is determined by hemispheres in the human brain.[6] 90% of people are dominant in the left hemisphere which controls the right hand, as well as logic, facts, language and speech. The right hemisphere, controlling the left hand, handles more creative, non-verbal, emotional and artistic skills. Though this is an area of fierce academic debate, some neuroscientific studies have found a link between handedness and personality.[7] Ultimately, perhaps the left and right align with some unspoken subconscious archetypes of human behavior or perhaps human culture itself has created the paths and girded them into significance over eons of narrative entrenchment.
Notes
[1] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1978-00208-001
[2] https://isac.uchicago.edu/research/symposia/science-and-superstition-interpretation-signs-ancient-world
[3] https://www.thecollector.com/mortals-underworld-katabasis-greek-roman-mythology/
[4] https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2024/02/09/the-satanic-temple-asserts-medication-abortion-is-a-religious-right/
[5] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26134780-900-are-left-handed-people-more-liberal-52-years-of-data-says-maybe/
[6] https://www.mpi.nl/news/large-study-compares-brains-left-handers-and-right-handers
[7] https://www.webmd.com/brain/ss/slideshow-left-handed-vs-right
Jason Kessler is the author of Charlottesville and the Death of Free Speech, available now from Dissident Press. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter,Youtube, Odysee, and Gab. Also follow Dissident Press on Twitter/X.
4 comments
I have an early memory of being taught the difference between left in right in school. Out on the left were rows of windows looking out into dark, winter rain. On the right looked into the brightly lit classroom. I always thought of left as the lesser side because of this, and I still use the memory when I get brain fog.
Ford Reagan Clinton Dubya Obama
QED
Counterpoint Steve Bannon.
We are not all cross-eyed antifa activists with prolapse issues! Seriously though as a sinistral, I find it staggering that in this modern grievance culture that the case has not been made for discrimination against the left-handed.
It does exist.
The most blatant case in point is that it is straight up impossible to find a mainstream mouse manufacturer that provides a decent ambidextrous model with > 3 buttons let alone a decent lefty version of their best-selling models.
I really do wish that I belonged to the other 90% as I do see it as a physical impediment that no designer really gives the slightest f about. Phone buttons, serrations, tools, cars…
No doubt, if I were a color-blind troon that follows a different calendar, or had some other defect from a consanguinous marriage I’d readily find more checkboxes in my OS.
Yet another fascinating article on C-C, thank you!
Great article. A few points that came to mind:
The Spanish for left, izquerda, is a Basque word in origin meaning ‘crooked hand’. The French for left, gauche, has a different meaning in enlgish : to be awkwardly outlandish. I don’t know the etymology of the German ‘Links’. Meanwhile , dexter is the Latin for right and dextrous has come to mean able or able-handed. This is the root of the spanish derecha, which links to the word ‘direct’. I think right is ‘diretto’ in italian. This is like the french ‘droit’. Adroit in french is ‘straight ahead’. Siga todo recto in Spanish is continue straight ahead but both can also mean right. Right in enlgish obviously means correct, but also right of way, od human rights. But in general Left is associated with bad things and right with… Well, right things.
If we had to gender them, right would be male (logical, steadfast, unmoving) and left would surely be female (unpredictable, reactive, spiritual).
But the Right is also sometimes foolhardy, gullible, naive and overly earnest. For example it’d be classically right wing to be pro monarchy, pro church, pro war, and these things have led to big problems. How about being ambidextrous like Leonardo da Vinci who reportedly could write with both hands at the same time going in different directions, in two different languages.
You need both of course. But perhaps the Left should not be the one with the final say. Plus, right sidedness comes from the Left side of the brain. Does this mean our brains are evil? The heart, also, is on the left side.
We write left to right: Arabs write right to left and have a higher number of left handers. Writing L-R makes sense if you’re mostly right handed so your hand isn’t covering your writing. But it just feels right to go left to right. For some reason I feel my body ‘begins’ on the left and ‘ends’ on the right. Why is this? I don’t know.
In video games typically you move with the left and input button actions on the right. Since moving is something you can basically do subconsciously, once more it seems the right hand is making the important decisions. Imagine a game pad with the stick on the right and buttons left? Wouldn’t that just seem weird? And this often comes from Japan, and they write up and down in straight lines!
My take is that Right is not always, well, right. Sargon of Akkad recently tweeted (millennial woes retweeted it) that the Nationalists sat on the Left of the French revolutionary parliament. Indeed nationalism was broadly a left wing idea (including in 1848) right up til more or less WW1. After all how can one claim to care for his nation, and not mean his ENTIRE nation? The poor included? Then of course we have National-Socialism. NatSoc has often been attacked by Leftist Marxists as being essentially a bait and switch, a ‘corporatist’ ideology; the final trump card of the Capitalists (this was my take on Nazism when I was an indoctrinated Marxist teenager.). They tacked “-Socialism” on the end of their name to eat into the Left’s vote, they claim.
The Marxists believe there’ll come a time when conditions get so bad that a clash between the classes will happen and the poor will rise up, violently. They believe that when that time comes that Nationalism, (however defined) is the last resort of the Capitalists to stymie the Revolution; nation being an irrelevance to one’s being.
But of course, Nationalism IS Socialism. What the Marxists call socialism is in fact tyranny. I’ve said now for many years “scratch a Marxist, find a Liberal.” Why is the driving force of the Marxist “equality”? They’re very focused in equality and fairness, in and of themselves. Fairness ain’t my motivating factor. To an extent fairness of my own kinfolk. Sure. But just a nebulous concept of fairness, as an end in itself? No. That’s essentially Liberalism.
In other points:
Baphomet holds one hand up, one down. As above as below. What is good is what is bad. Duality. White and black squares. Masonic imagery. Two pillars. Star of David – one triangle pointing up, one pointing down. And note that Baphomet points downwards with his Left hand – Right as you look at him but his left. But of course he’d point down with his weird hand!
If you ever look into Heraldry (as in the study of emblems and insignias) the canton is usually in the dexter corner, but looks on the left for someone looking at it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canton_(heraldry)
Another point is sports. In sports, left sidedness is usually rare, and usually an advatange since most people are right sided. This means that the lefty has angles they don’t. In soccer a left footer is generally associated with being a better player: Maradona and Messi are both left footed. However, a left footer is easier to predict in some situations since there’s less of them. A left footer is less likely to score a penalty kick (studies have proved what was previously just anecdotal). A keeper can read the one lefty better and predict his angles. Whereas if 90% of them are right footers this becomes harder to predict over the course. There are some famous moments of left footers missing big penalties in tense penalty shootouts. Lefties in sports are mavericks.
In general and to summarise there does seem to be something to this concept of left and right. It’s probably rooted in the fact that most people are right handed so it came to be associated with good, but there does seem to be a grander overarching aspect to it also. Call that esoteric.
Many concepts are rooted in a basic fact but reflect a greater picture. For example why is 13 unlucky? Well essentially it’s one more than 12, making it awkward for various reasons. You make 12 of something you usually have bits left over for a 13th, but it won’t be as good, for example baking bread dough and the bakers dozen. But if one more than 12 is awkward, isn’t 2 more than 12 doubly awkward? 14 then ought to be unlucky. But what is it with 13? 13 seems to keep popping up, in all sorts of places. Bear in mind some people used to operate on base 60 n the ancient world. Base 60 is good because 60 can be divided several ways. By 1, by 2, by 3, by 4, by 5, by 6, by 10 and by 12, and by 15, by 20, by 30.
Therefore if you’re diving up an estate or whatever and you have 1, 2, 3, 4 sons , you can do it equally on a base 60, an important aspect of which is diving by 12 or five dozens. 12 months of the year, many 12s or dozens thru history. And a dozen +1 is awkward and weird. Not inherently ‘evil’.. or… is it ?
That’s the question! Just as with ‘Left’!
I didn’t know about the Basque interpretation of ‘izquierda’. Fascinating.
Just learned ‘gauche’ in my beginner’s French lessons yesterday night and thought about how it played into this article.
Yes, the French Revolutionaries created nationalism as we know it today. Perhaps we could say nationalism isn’t inherently right or left-wing coded, although today leftists seem to be much more internationalists than nationalists.
Comments are closed.
If you have a Subscriber access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.