I think China in general is a good example of why the 1D, and even 2D political spectrum is a bullshit abstraction.
> authoritarian communist regimes were/are so far left that they kind of wrapped around and became conservative
Placing autocratic "communist" states on the same axis as modern feminist professors makes about as much sense as placing someone like Peter Theil on the same axis as Hitler, in both cases one would have literally killed the other.
One doesn't go from tolerating gay people to persecuting gay people the more "left" they are.
> Stalin was very prudish about sex, so maybe they just don't fit into the same political spectrum
Or maybe tolerance of gay people and "leftness" are actually completely separate variables that we only lump together because we're trying to project our modern ideologies onto historical figures