The main crit lit course was undergrad and at a European uni (with an American professor) so it was all pretty superficial, but the prof didn't exactly volunteer the ugly sides of these thinkers (as he most certainly would have done with a Carl Schmitt or a Heidegger). The other course (also undergrad) was even less rigorous, just a quick once-over of the basics of oppression and yada yada, namedropping Marcuse/Foucault/Derrida but never dissecting them.
The point of mentioning this wasn't to say that I'm some kind of particular expert on these thinkers (I am not) but rather that my experience with their presentation is that they are left as likeable as possible (there were years between me hearing of Foucault and realizing he was a nonce, whereas people usually learn that someone like Heidegger was a nazi before they even know how his name is pronounced).
I 100% agree on the uselessness of the left/right-dichotomy as it stands, particularly because the radical right gets lumped in with liberal individualists like Adam Smith/Ayn Rand/Ronald Reagan etc., which makes no sense at all.
Still, there are some essential axioms that can be used to distinguish the left and the right, those being equality+liberalism vs. disparity+illiberalism. There is a natural reason that the pedophiles aren't garnering support among the ranks of the far right and that white nationalists won't find much love among the far left.