Because the USSR was "authoritarian" and that makes them right wing.
Political Science is a real field of inquiry and Political Scientists are real scientists who deserve to be taken seriously, and other lies.
The shit political scientists say is just baffling. Like whether you like the USSR or not, defining right wing politics as being "authoritarian" is just bizzarely ignorant and weird. And, like, the definition of a nation state is partially an entity which effectively monopolizes the legitimate use of force within it's borders, so what the fuck does authoritarian even mean? Authority is the definition of a state, it's what makes a state a state. Fucks sake.
Analyzing right/left dynamics in this way seriously requires a full and total ignorance or misunderstanding of everything. Willful, purposeful, ideologically driven ignorance I'd argue (in most cases).
It also totally deletes discussion of class (this is why I said it's done purposely- of course capitalists want to delete that discussion altogether). It boils everything down to "Is the state exerting power somewhere?" "Is that force justified?" This effectively equates suppressing capitalist/liberal ideas like private property ownership being sacred and actually where value flows from (business owners- which hurts my brain even typing bc it's so dumb, but moving on) to, I dunno, police coming and killing striking workers because a private owner demanded the strike end. Both of these are examples of authoritarianism, the state exerting force on individuals to force an outcome, but one is in the interest of workers/society as a whole, and the other is in the interest of a handful of owners. Under the bullshit definition some want to push, the class aspect doesn't matter, all that matters is someone was forced.
When neoliberals know they've got no answer to questions around class and legitimacy of private property, they just change the definitions to fit whatever they need. Convenient and not unexpected
I hadn't considered that, good point.