They can if the proper spectrum and description of what are “left” political views and what are “right” political views is applied. The problem is people have been tricked into thinking that the left still exists in mainstream politics. The Left has been dead since before the new millennium and all political players are now some version of corporatist imperialist. This distorts people’s views of what left and right are and makes it impossible to parse what is going on in mainstream politics for most. Which is how we end up with people claiming the Nazi’s were of the left because they had a large government. Blatantly ridiculous. My helpful rule is this: Left = anti centralized authority, anti-imperial, anti-corporatism Right = pro centralized authority, pro imperial, and pro corporatism