If you’ve been online in the past decade, chances are you’ve come across The Political Compass.
The Compass is a 4-way graph used, mostly in memes, to chart a politician, party or ideology across a left-right economic spectrum and authoritarian-libertarian social spectrum. Before it was a meme, however, it served as the gold standard for self-administered political tests. Users answer a series of questions about their political beliefs, and the Compass shows where on the spectrum they lie.
On social media, the Political Compass has become a staple of any political discussion. The subreddit r/politicalcompassmemes has over 600k followers, and the iconic four-quadrant colors have become synonymous with their political affiliation: Blue for the authoritarian right, ranging from mainstream Christian conservatives to ardent fascists; red for the authoritarian left, which could include your local union as well as Joseph Stalin; yellow (or sometimes purple) for the libertarian-right, which might support lower taxes or the abolition of the state altogether; and green for the libertarian-left, running from a standard progressive to an anarchist who seeks to overthrow capitalism altogether.
Beyond the test, the Compass also serves as a reference guide for real world politics. The website contains a page where it sorts prominent political parties and politicians from around the world into its spectrum. This is where the problem becomes apparent.
The positions it assigns to various parties appear to be completely foreign to the popular conception of the political spectrum. The most apparent and familiar examples are in its placement of American politicians, which show establishment liberals like Joe Biden being treated as borderline extreme authoritarian right-wingers, on par with several far-right European parties.
A charitable interpretation would be to assume this website works under the assumption that American politicians, being more reticent about large-scale social programs like universal healthcare, are far more friendly towards capitalism than their European counterparts. This rhetoric has existed for a long time on social media, in which it is common to hear that “Bernie would be centrist in Europe.”
Another explanation is that the makers of this website use a broader Overton window than our political environment allows: If we assume that the center is between capitalism and full-blown communism, then it wouldn’t be incorrect to place Joe Biden, someone who believes in capitalism with welfare programs, on the right.
Yet something more deliberate may be going on.
Over the years, the Compass test has been taken by prominent political commentators on the right, from Ben Shapiro to Nick Fuentes, as well as more left-wing figures like Destiny and Kyle Kulinski. Unlike Biden, the Compass assumes they are a layman user simply plugging in their personal beliefs.
But if you watch famous conservative influencers like Shapiro or Michael Knowles take the test, an interesting discrepancy arises. Shapiro and Knowles are significantly to the right of Biden by any conventional standard. Yet the Compass designates them as far more liberal and leftist than Biden himself.
There are two issues here: The website treats existing politicians as much more right-wing and authoritarian than they appear, and treats users taking the test as more left-wing and liberal than they likely are.
This has serious implications for regular voters who may genuinely not know or understand where they fall politically. A centrist normie who took the test would likely be led to believe he belongs next to Bernie Sanders or other socialist parties around the world. Thinking the Compass is a neutral test, he may be swayed to vote in that direction. At scale, we see the almost comical scenario of centrists rejecting a politician far to the left of them because they feel he is too far right. Even Reddit users have taken issue with the apparent discrepancy.
If the goal is to impact contemporary Western politics, then pegging Trump as more authoritarian than murderous dictators like Castro, Mao and Mugabe is certainly a great way to scare off normies.
Rather than outright manipulation, however, results may all come down to some sneaky semantics.
For example, the first question on the test asks: “If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations.” Users answer on a multiple choice scale from “Strongly Agree” to “Strong Disagree.”
But how do we define the concept of “serving humanity?”
The Average Joe would likely think this means building a safe and prosperous society for his fellow citizens – a fairly conservative notion. On these terms, he would likely “agree.” A hard leftist would also “agree,” but based on abstract notions of dismantling structures of class and power. The end goal of communism was always global, after all. If the Compass is built to assume the latter definition, then it pegs the Average Joe as a leftist.
This isn’t that far-fetched, given the creators of the Compass credit both Marxist psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich and critical theorist Theodore Adorno as intellectual influences.
Though it’s impossible to prove whether the discrepancy stems from an intentional ploy to shape class consciousness and bolster left-wing politicians, but intent matters less than impact. Politically uninformed users, drawn to the Compass for its meme-worthy brand recognition, will leave with the impression that Joe Biden is functionally identical to Donald Trump and that Bernie Sanders is a perfectly reasonable guy.
The problem with the Compass is not that it’s broken, but that it may be working exactly as its creators would like. Yet a compass only works if you can trust where it’s pointing.
