Is being left-wing harder than being right-wing in general because being left-wing requires more research and knowledge than just accepting the current right-wing status quo?

The title reads like a very polite own.

Otherwise, depends on your circumstances. Do your nationally syndicated news media propagate right-wing or left-wing ideology writ large? Do your nation's school systems instill senses of nationalism and xenophobia into its youth? Does your country's leadership more fervently and regularly repress one side or the other?

It is easier to be a fascist in a fascist state. It is easier to be a liberal in a liberal one, and a socialist in a socialist one. Half the battle has already been won at that point. There is comfort to belief in the system one lives under, a comfort that has the potential to breed ignorance or intellectual laziness.

My own experience shows that most people are more -- I hate to use the word, naturally inclined towards sympathizing with a left-wing perspective when the correct words are used.

I think it's probably just as easy to be a vaushite as it is to be a fan of Joe Rogan, if you accept that kind of passive consumption as political orientation.

I don't really believe a unified "left wing" exists.

It's harder to be a well-read, committed, and active Marxist-leninist than it is to be someone who simply wants to roll back the status quo to their benefit, sure.

There are plenty of nominal leftists who don't read theory, don't put their principles in practice in their life, and aren't connected with a party, cadre work, or real life organizing (guilty).

Yes. "common sense" is the repetition of dominant ideology. They can bang on "common sense" and destroy things. We have to deconstruct common sense so. That we can build the future.

I think also, left-wing groups tend to be more prone to splitting off into separate factions whenever members disagree, whereas right-wing groups tend to just glom together under a broad umbrella. Which often means you're not just arguing your point against the right, but also a good chunk of the left as well.

Also the right aren't always even bothered with arguing their point at all, often they just insult their opponents and do whatever they like.

Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is working very hard against us.

I think socdem is the easiest followed by right wing then truly left wing. Saying that from originally being a socdem (communism is kinda hard to randomly stumble upon/research unless you live in an AES state or something). But depends a lot on the location.

For America being socdem definitely harder than right wing.

You have quite a few assumptions built into this question, whether you know it or not. Do you really think left wingers spend all day in books? How is the difficulty of something quantified? Considering how you phrase the question, there is clearly a lean here. How hard do you work at it? Surely, those at the top of the biggest political ideologies work incredibly hard at their craft. Though it can't be unsaid that not all of them work honestly.

Not trying to be an enlightened centrist (because I'm not a centrist lmao). Simply acting as devils advocate here.

Are you speaking to US partisan politics here? As in, are you referring to republicans when you say "right" and democrats when you say "left"?

I ask, because the political right in general is about centralization of rights, and the left is about decentralization of rights... i.e. should the rights you have be a matter of state, of law, or should they be inherent in you as an individual entity.

US politics has absolutely fucked that concept up, across the board.

Republicans want the state to dictate morality, but want everything else left to individuals. That is to say, that depending on what exact issue you put on the table for discussion, they can be very right wing or very left wing... and likewise with democrats...

Republicans are incredibly authoritarian minded (right) when it comes to abortion. Democrats are very authoritarian minded (right) when it comes to gun rights. And flip flop that to both sides being very individualistic (left) if you reverse it.

The short answer is that if you're referencing US politics with this question, nobody has done any fucking research whatsoever. Democrats claim to be the left, and demand authoritarian solutions to most problems (race, wealth inequality, crime...). Republicans claim the right, and want an absence of government on most things. It's absurd that either claims left, right, liberal, conservative, etc... they're all over the map on these scales... the only consistency you'll find is that they both abhor the other and will more often than not go to unreasonable lengths to disagree (this appears as face value to be a republican trait, but I promise you, I will be determined by a not small number of people to be a Ford F950 driving redneck trump fan simply because I didn't cast a distinctly blue hue with this comment... at best I'll be declared "enlightened" in a very facetious manner... I'm not a Smurf, so I must be a redneck...).

But offhand, id say the republicans do a lot more research. It's not very good quality, and it tends to favor things like the Bible or cherry picked "fact", but they're definitely more ubiquitous about it :)