Slide from my government class where Bernie Sanders is more left wing than China, Pinochet is extreme right wing authoritarian and Milton Friedman is a sweet right wing libertarian despite advising and defending Pinochet. Obama is more authoritarian and right wing than Washington as well.
All vibes based, one's Y position in the chart seems to be mostly a function of how many times the liberals making it have heard you called an authoritarian in the news
I think this is the correct response lol. There might be some reasons that it's used more for Stalin than Mao (likely because Stalin was a much more widely adored figure around the Imperial core than Mao ever was). But libs don't know that