When it comes to political topics e.g. on the internet or on television talk shows one of the most important questions is if someone is left or right winged. Often, those two sides debate using common liberal or nationalist arguements.
In my opinion, this division of people's beliefs leads to major difficulties regarding constructive political discussions. At least that's what it appears like to me watching the German inner political debates ( no matter wheter between politicians or the people around me).
Some people may say it makes discussions easier, since you know what your vis-à-vis roughly is up to, but I think this more often works in a bad way of generalization and black-white patterns of thinking.
For example, if you start a discussion about the refugee crisis claiming that receiving too much refugees could lead to unpredictable social problems, others automatically think your opinions are all right-winged and make up a whole lot of prejudices regarding your personal character. Where I live, you've also got a good chance of getting called a nazi if you say something against refugees, but actually you are pretty tolerant towards foreign cultures. Sounds like total nonsense to me.
People whou just want to express their personal opinion are forced into either left or right winged roles, neglecting important ideas they might have and which are totally different from these prejudices.
In such a way the image of a whole society can be distorted, even politicians tend to misunderstand political acting groups, which leads to new difficulties when they try to make political decisions concerning these people. In the end we need to live with compromises no one ever wanted, neither politicians nor the people.
On the other hand this way of thinking makes people hate each other. When they feel offended, many start to insult their opposition using the role of the political left or right winged person as an armor of irresponsibility. These role models become an excuse for not thinking of reasonable arguments but using hate speech. It seems like a gap forming in between a society, which in fact doesn't even exist.
As you can see, dividng political positions in either right- or left-winged makes constructive discussions a lot harder. An argument between two paries automatically becomes a left-right debate, straying further away from the original topic. You can't find useful compromises and policy is made beyond reality.
The best example for confusion made up by left/right wing role model understanding is the rise of the german party AfD. The idea of creating a new party focusing on national strategies suddenly became nazi party in media and german politics because no one wanted to deal with the problems in many people's minds that this party tried to solve. Once it was 'officially' a nazi party, actual right extremists found themselfes a new place in society.
Furthermore, those who hoped to find someone who listened to their concerns voted for the AfD and finally when renowned political parties disparaged the AfD and their ideas, even more people who felt ignored and betrayed by german politicians making fun of their concerns voted for the AfD as a result of defiance.
Today it seems like germany divided into two parts again. Those who feel betrayed and those who try to ignore actually existing problems. Simplified that's just one big misunderstanding.
And to me it's even more alarming that those who vote for the AfD mostly come from former East Germany, the other ones from former West Germany.