What is the difference between Political Parties and Political Ideology?

This is another important question that leads to confusion.

As most people understand, political parties are defined across a spectrum. On the left, sit the Progressives and next to them on their right are the Liberals. Moving farther to the right, we see the independents who have no strong affiliation with either party. At the extreme right are the Conservatives. Most people, when asked, would say they are "on the Right" or "on the Left" or "in the Middle" politically; a shorthand way of describing their political beliefs.

The ideology spectrum is much different. Politics, since the Enlightenment, has been a battle between Collectivists and Individualists, meaning those who believe society should emphasize the group versus those who believe society should emphasize the individual. Socialism, Communism, and Fascism are examples of Collectivist models. Classical Liberalism is an example of a individualist model.

During the development of Collectivist thinking, a split occurred. One group embraced Collectivism by group management of a society (Socialists), and the other embraced Collectivism as an Authoritarian management of society (Fascists). As you can imagine, Socialism has government controlling the economy to achieve equality. Fascism has a single political party with an Authoritarian structure controlling the society. Fascism is a group model because the whole society is considered one large group. Fascists believe that their structure is the best to avoid society's problems because the state will solve them. They also believe that theirs is the best form to protect people from outside interference or attack.

As you can see on the chart, Socialists are on the left of the ideology spectrum and Fascists are on the right. Liberalism sits in the middle because it is an individualism model and not a group model like the other two.

People create confusion when they mix up ideology and politics. For example, some on the Left call Trump a Fascist. That's wrong. He is not interested in becoming a dictator, but he is interested in exercising the full power of the presidency. He actually isn't a Conservative either because many of this beliefs are not a part of the Conservative ideology. Trump is most correctly labelled a "populist", meaning he has tailored his programs to his major constituencies. He won the election by convincing blue collar men that he would look out for their interests (jobs). They voted for him instead of the Democratic Party because they felt abandoned.