Left–right political spectrum
The terms left-wing and right-wing are widely used in the United States, but as on the global level there is no firm consensus about their meaning. The only aspect that is generally agreed upon is that they are the defining opposites of the United States political spectrum. Left and right in the U.S. are generally associated with liberal and conservative respectively, although the meanings of the two sets of terms do not entirely coincide. Depending on the political affiliation of the individual using them, these terms can be spoken with varying implications. A 2005 poll of 2,209 American adults showed that "respondents generally viewed the paired concepts liberals and left-wingers and conservatives and right-wingers as possessing, respectively, generally similar political beliefs", but also showed that around ten percent fewer respondents understood the terms left and right than understood the terms liberal and conservative.
Conservative wave
According to Roberto Schwarz, the left has historically had cultural hegemony. It can be considered its peak in the 1990s, a period that coincides with the beginning of the left turn in Latin America). In his essay "Culture and Politics in Brazil (1964-1969)", literary critic and professor Roberto Schwarz already observed the phenomenon. In full military regime, he writes:
Schwarz feared that the left would lose its cultural hegemony after the hardening of the military regime, but that did not happen. With the return of democracy, the left's cultural and intellectual hegemony was still enormous. In his work entitled "Literature" (1988), sociologist and writer Antonio Candido already observed the phenomenon. It was rare to find any politician or entrepreneur who risked defining himself as conservative as they were all "invariably centered, even center-left, including the frankly reactionary".