I asked AI the following question. I thought the response was worth sharing:
“What evidence is there for the merits of horseshoe theory?”
Let me analyze this carefully. The horseshoe theory suggests that the far-left and far-right of the political spectrum are more similar to each other than to the political center.
The main arguments made in favor of horseshoe theory include:
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Both far-left and far-right movements have historically shown tendencies toward authoritarianism, with examples like Stalin’s USSR and Hitler’s Germany using similar tactics of state control, propaganda, and suppression of dissent.
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Some similar rhetorical and organizational patterns appear in both far-left and far-right movements, such as: populist appeals, scapegoating of particular groups, calls for radical system change, and rejection of liberal democratic norms.
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There are historical cases of individuals and groups moving between far-left and far-right positions, suggesting some underlying commonalities.
However, there are significant critiques of horseshoe theory:
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It oversimplifies complex political ideologies and movements, forcing them into a rigid geometric metaphor that may not reflect reality.
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Surface-level similarities in tactics or rhetoric don’t necessarily indicate deeper ideological similarities. The fundamental goals and values often remain drastically different.
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The theory can be used to dismiss radical critiques of existing systems by equating all forms of political extremism, regardless of their specific content.
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Political scientists generally view it as an oversimplified model that doesn’t adequately capture the multidimensional nature of political ideology.
Rather than a strict horseshoe pattern, many political scientists prefer more nuanced models that consider multiple axes of political belief and recognize that authoritarian tendencies can emerge across the political spectrum without necessarily indicating ideological similarity.
What are your thoughts on how political ideologies should be mapped or compared?
What are your thoughts on how political ideologies should be mapped or compared?
I feel like one scale (left/right) to represent all of politics is such a generalization that most models based on it are pointless
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Ah, this old canard in which radical leftism didn’t do anything wrong, no revolutions lead to dictatorships and centrally planned economies were sabotaged by the capitalist illuminati. God forbid we critique leftist ideologies, anyone who does that is worse than a nazi.
Naturally a planned economy under-performs an evolutionary economy.
The first time. What about the planned economy that learns from the previous one’s mistakes? Or the one after that?
Ah yess," we need to create classless society by eating all the rich, killing all the landlords and destroying capitalism around the world" is totally different from the far right which is also “do violence against people we don’t like in order to get the society we want”. Youre not a faschist if you think the people who you want to kill are responsible for all your issues I guess. Wait, wasn’t that literally what hitler said?
Calling to violence is sure to get all the reforms you want. You could also, idunno, take a page from the rightwingers playbook and viralize memes about every single thing the administration does wrong so the public does not forget and is turned against them.
By that logic, anti-monarchism is also fascist. After all, they tried to create a “better society” by eating all the kings, killing the landed gentry, and destroying feudalism. Must be fascist, right?
A lot of countries went from monarchies to democracies peacefully and are better for it. If you want to kill people you dont agree with you are faschist. The government is literally baby feeding you workable memes you can use to ring over the population to the side of societal reforms. If you lot were more public about wanting to kill people, why wouldnt the general population vote for trump the third time in order to keep you violent maniacs in check?
How about you spread information about everything the current administration does wrong to sway the public opinion. There is ton of material already and its been day 1. You jerking off to mass murder is working against your goals of a better society.
It’s funny because Lemmygrad/Hexbear are indistinguishable from Gab.ai, and it’s a bunch of liberals on the center who think “free healthcare” is somehow not centrist
Edit; honestly, all you need to do is look at the comments in this thread saying oppression isn’t always bad. Lemmy.world never fails to amuse
First day provided tons of evidence from the lord god being disrespected and completely shat on by trump to literal nazi salutes. That have endless meme potential and can be spread around for completely free and low effort in order to swing public opinion. I am sure returning to some obscure tibetian basket weaving forum with userbase of five and talking about genociding everyone not like you while the right media machine is working overtime is going to get the public to change their mind.
oppression leads to depression
I’ve had people on this platform tell me they were excited for, “the fall of empire.” Knowing full well there would be a human cost. So yes, oppression is bad, but if your answer is violence then it’s time to parse which violence is acceptable to you because obviously you’ve already distinguished.
All political positions weigh the violence of their positions. Liberals who fight to maintain the status quo are fighting to keep people from enclosed resources like food and housing, with the justification of the profit motive. Whether or not they’re right, they’re accepting blood for their policy
We’ve established what blood the liberals actively tolerate. I don’t think that’s a question at this point.
Oppression is bad…
…Unless that oppression is done by the vanguard to protect the revolution. Then the oppression is ok.
Yeah, the people saying that the guillotine crowd just want to stop oppression are either the stupidest, most ignorant people imaginable or they’re just lying.
The sweet spot is for the current ruling class to obey a set of rules out of fear of the guillotine or incarceration.
Exercising the guillotine or incarceration excessively would just be starting over to build the necessary fear with a new ignorant crop of ruling class.
Or how about you make laws that limit the influence any one person can have and remove money from politics so anyone can run and you don’t have bribes called lobbying?
Oh not your power fantasy? Sorry. I guess countries where democracy works and socialism is blended with capitalism so people are happy all need to have bloody genocides happen to them as well. I can see how it is a very reasonable and non extreme take from a very educated person.
Or how about you make laws that limit the influence any one person can have and remove money from politics so anyone can run and you don’t have bribes called lobbying?
Do you see a path forward to this that doesn’t somehow involve doing away with the current system that allows influence and money in politics? Don’t you think the people who benefit from this arrangement will do everything in their power to keep us from reforming it?
If entirety of the public sees how fucking stupid they are and if you keep reminding them constantly you will get your reforms especially since almost all of the rest of the democractic world has it figured out.
Where can I get that upside-down blue flag shirt? That’s going to go hard while the police are beating me for having a sign on a sidewalk.
It’s been a conservative symbol for years, try places that sell Trump merch.
Yeah but I don’t want to give the orange man money. :(
Horseshoe theory is truly one of my worst enemies, a thought terminating cliche that is zesty enough to feel like a revelation so every midwit loves to trot it out to feel superior. “Opposite things have similarities, therefore, opposite things tend toward the same”
Lol, some leftists need to get over the fact that not everyone will agree with their pov, and that doesn’t mean those who disagree are “center” or “liberal”, whatever the fuck they think those labels mean. I am tired of what feels like emotional blackmail by hardliners who insist that their biased opinions are definitive progressivism, or that they are the arbiters of truth or justice. But continue being wrong, it’s just you losing credibility 🤷♀️ Truth and justice require a principled and unbiased approach towards morality, ethics and philosophy. I believe people can do better than zero-sum realpolitiks, I guess that’s just my naïve take.
/tiredposting
That’s not what zero-sum means. Implied strawman. Insisting that your own position is the arbiter of unbiased truth and justice without demonstrating it (because obviously).
Lol k.
The worst thing to come out of social media discourse is ad hominem attacks (attacking a person) being perceived as attacking the argument itself. What an annoying take, no one is a god or angel. We have to do the work to find truth and justice.
Wasn’t an ad hominem either, and that certainly wasn’t invented by social media.
What are you doing, fam? Is this satire itself? Please stop co-opting debate club culture, I paid for my right to use these words.
NPR did a segment on how people from different sides of the spectrum tend to see each other in a negative light. I TRY NOT TO man, but someone yesterday told me to my face, “Those mother fuckers should burn”, because his neighbor made a sound complaint about his chickens.
Our city is NEXT TO LA. I’m a farmer, and so is he. I don’t understand his worldview at all. He’s an immigrant, and he’s anti-immigration. His business struggles to compete with larger businesses, but he fears socialism. He brags about freedom of speech and the pursuit of happiness, but he thinks he should be able to control women’s bodies. Also, he said a bunch of people should die in a fire. My sister has cerebral paulsy, and if you don’t know, a lot of people who died in the fire couldn’t run for the same reason. I wanted to spit in his face. I’m a bald, white, male farmer, so people open up to me, thinking they’re in good company. I look like a redneck, and technically, I have one. The shit people say is wild. It tends to darken my world view. I try not to focus on them, though, except in ways I can be kind and slowly sway them, hopefully.
You sound like a chill guy for what its worth. Sorry your neighbors a dickhead
I used to be baffled by people’s behavior in the same way, but recently I’ve come to understand that a lot of people see the world through the lens of power instead of morals, and they want to see themselves as the most powerful. Socialism means they didn’t “earn” their business, and surely they can become the next mogul without it. He doesn’t care about other immigrants because he sees himself as above them.
I’ve come to understand that a lot of people see the world through the lens of power instead of morals, and they want to see themselves as the most powerful.
That’s one of the most concise ways I’ve seen it written out. People think reactionaries are stupid; when they say that, they don’t understand that conservative morality is wholly based on putting themselves higher in the hierarchy than the people they hate.
It’s why they make exceptions for themselves and their loved ones: it’s entirely morally consistent that they deserve the exceptions because of who they are.
There’s always a bigger fish
I don’t consider myself a centrist, but I do consider myself between the two parties currently.
I don’t like the “both sides are wrong” mentality often associated with centrists. I don’t think I am inherently better than either side. I think I am disillusioned by both sides.
I was a Leftist/Democrat for the majority of my life. Then at some point ~8-9 years ago saw the pipeline that leads to radicalized righty thinking and said “fuck that” but when I turned around and looked back on my old party critically I also didn’t want to walk back through that door either.
Basically I think both “sides” need to shut up and stop slinging poop at each other. Occasionally you need to listen to the other side. Neither one is always right or always wrong. Some of the moderates from either side can admit this and they hang out in the middle ish with me. But most people just sprint farther to either side when their ideas are challenged.
But since everyone has this “us vs them” mentality over every little thing I don’t see communication or collaboration getting any better going forward.
When has the right been correct about things? Lmao
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Pensions protection act in 2006 encouraged the growth of employer sponsored savings accounts
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Tax cuts and jobs act in 2017 simplified taxes and was welcomed by everyone in both parties
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First step act in 2018 improved prison conditions
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USMCA in 2018 was a functional version of NAFTA
I’m not saying these were perfect (First step act has some issues, for example), but all of these were pushed by Republicans and had demonstrably positive effects. Blindly implying the right never makes good decisions makes you no better than the people you think you’re against.
This is honestly the first time I have ever heard anything positive about USMCA. What exactly do you think it did better?
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Happens more often than you may realize. Someone being “correct” on a topic in an objective sense is good, but that doesn’t necessarily outweigh their flaws. Also worth keeping in mind that “left” or “right” ideology can mean very different things in different parts of the world.
An easy example from my own country - our left wing worked hard to shut down functioning nuclear power plants with plenty of time left to run whilst the right wanted to preserve them. Left largely got their way on the issue, and now we’re in an electricity crisis due to a lack of dispatchable capacity.
Think for yourself, consider ideas & statements based on their own merits rather than judging them by who is embracing them at the current moment. A century ago it was the Democratic party pushing jim crow laws in the US and the RNC were championing civil rights.
Rightwingers believe they can and should wield their power to crush their political and business opponents. And if they do this enough times, they’ll accrue immense amounts of wealth and power. They should never surrender, never compromise, and always fight to the bitter end, because a long and painful enough campaign will see liberals surrender and conservatives triumph.
In this, they are proven absolutely correct.
the left doesn’t believe in the right of power.
You cannot implement something that is morally sound if it cannot handle the environmental pressures it is faced with, including the pressures of other powers and ideologies.
it’s survival of the fittest out there. the most powerful ways of being include cooperation, inspiration, and unity, but aren’t limited to them. likewise, the most powerful ways of being include sedition, deception, and coercion, but aren’t limited to them. “but we shouldn’t have to” is a losing mentality, and puts power in the hands of those you’re appealing to.
There’s no moral high ground to be had. But morality is based on something that is objectively true - the power which meets both the practical and emotional needs it’s faced with wins.
in the mean time, the pendulum will swing. for the left, it’s never left enough, for the right, it’s never right enough, and for the true centrists, it’s just the tide. it can fuck you up, it can be enjoyed, and it can be used for power. that’s all.
They called the affordability crisis. Notably Hitler was right that the American loans would hurt Germany. Broken clocks are right twice a day and fascist ones make the most of them.
However they do nothing particularly responsible about the indicated fiscal problems. GOP administrations have a track record of spending even more than the democratic administrations, while pulling in less revenue.
So they jump up and down at a credible issue, but have no credibility as they have zero track record of fixing it, just making things even worse.
Oh absolutely. But most people don’t pay attention to that. Until it gets bad enough that they’re angry and desperate.
Do you people have any amount of self awareness?
Do you legitimately believe that anything and everything the right has ever said or done has been wrong?
Most people would say that Hitler was a terrible person (and they would be right), but even the evil as shit Hitler did some Good things in his life even if some people refuse to admit it.
Hitler is credited with pulling Germany out of the post WW1 economic slump. One of the major contributors was his insistence on building the highway/Autobahn. It enabled Germany to expand faster and years before other European countries could catch up
Him and the Nazis were among the first to recognize the health benefits with not smoking and he is credited with pushing Germans to quit smoking but especially pregnant women and kids.
If you want a more recent example:
During Trump’s first Term he made it easier to prosecute financial crimes. The main way he did this was by requiring businesses to report their true owners. No longer would they spend as much time and money digging through shell corporations to figure out who is truly responsible.
If you want a less recent example:
Nixon created the EPA.
Not everything the left does is rainbows and perfection. Not everything the right does is evil and ruins the planet. You need to stop thinking in absolutes and recognize that things are more complicated.
Please stop the shit with the Autobahn. Thats straight up Nazi propaganda.
https://www.dw.com/de/deutscher-mythos-adolf-hitler-und-die-autobahn/audio-16149056
TLDR: -First Autobahn was built before Hitler by Adenauer. -Nazis decried it as jewish project. -Changed opinion and propagandad about 600.000 jobs. -Only 120.000 jobs were created and the conditions were really bad for the workers. Hunger, sickness, death. -Striking workers were put in the KZ.
- Unemployment was resolved by the rearming before WWII
The irony of you telling me to stop posting Nazi propaganda and then linking an article with zero sources that many historians have already called out as just being a Nazi smear article not based in historical fact whatsoever.
Not really the “gotcha” you were going for but you believe whatever you wanna believe I guess.
What historians called this article nazi smear?
This is really not contentious in Germany, there is a consensus amongst historians and the third reich is well researched. So I don’t know how you can close your eyes to the facts.
If you want more sources with sources:
https://www.bpb.de/themen/antisemitismus/dossier-antisemitismus/504205/autobahn/
Schulz, Eckhardt / Gruber, Erhard: Mythos Reichsautobahn. Bau und Inszenierung der “Straßen des Führers” 1933–1941, Berlin 1996.
https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichsautobahn#Mythen_und_Motive
Kiran Klaus Patel: „Soldaten der Arbeit“. Arbeitsdienste in Deutschland und den USA 1933–1945. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
Gotcha.
Now please edit your primary comment to not distribute nazi propaganda. Dankeschön.
My father is a historian. Has a degree in world history. Plus that article has been posted to several history forums over the last ~10+ish years as best I can tell and not once has it included sources or been taken seriously by any of the historians that read it.
You’ve then linked a German website and a German Wikipedia page. I am not fluent in German so I can’t read them, but they are both German hosted so I suspect some modern German biases probably apply. It would behoove any and all Germans to forever distance themselves from Hitler whenever possible but I also see that extending past reality with people trying rewrite history such as yourself.
Pre-Nazi Germany had something like ~15-20km of Autobahn built. Post-Nazi Germany had almost ~4000km of Autobahn. Stop trying to come at me with some “Nazi propaganda” bullshit. Those are both facts that you can independently verify if you want.
It’s perfectly fine to despise the Nazis. I highly recommend it at all times. I DONT agree with trying to rewrite history because we don’t agree with the optics of it today.
Have a good day teletubbyzurückwinker.
Him and the Nazis were among the first to recognize the health benefits with not smoking and he is credited with pushing Germans to quit smoking but especially pregnant women and kids.
The hazards of smoking had been established as far back as the 17th century. One of America’s Founding Fathers - Benjamin Rush - was on record as a physician documenting and objecting to the proliferation of smoking.
The Nazi cribbing of then-modern health trends against smoking was not a point in their favor. FFS, this was an organization that popularized the consumption of methamphetamines
Nixon created the EPA.
Congress authored the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), having modeled it after Senator James E. Murray’s Resources and Conservation Act (RCA) of 1959. Nixon organized the EPA under the powers afforded this law. He didn’t draft the legislation from whole cloth but cobbled it out as a compromise with far more eco-friendly Congressmen in an era when industrial pollution was at the worst point in human history.
Even after that, his failures were far more notable than his successes. Nixon failed to curb the popularization of lead in gasoline and paint or asbestos as a building material, despite these substances been notoriously hazardous well before the EPA was formed. He presided over a surge in fossil fuel extraction and consumption, despite the threat of climate change having been established during his tenure.
Even past that, Nixon was - fundamentally - a Liberal Republican. His social and economic views were in line with the liberal establishment of his era. His governance was in line with his predecessors, LBJ and Kennedy and Eisenhower. If he’d been born 50 years later, he’d be right at home in the administration of Gavin Newsom or Kathy Hochul.
Your need to equivocate between left and right in this regard is extraordinarily naive and shortsighted.
You could have just said “what about all the good things Hitler did” if you wanted to out yourself like that.
You’ve missed the point of all my previous comments entirely. Good job.
Oh no I completely understood the point, which is why I chose that exact language.
The history of humanity going back thousands of years is the history of progress triumphing over conservatism. Every single major historical epoch in recorded human history follows this trend. But Mussolini made the trains run on time so I guess we’re even.
…do you think that in order for humanity to function we constantly need to be changing? You never think that maybe we level off at some point and settle into a groove where we leave shit alone for awhile?
Have to considered that maybe we as a species require both to function? We need progress and then periods of stability before we get bored/restless and decided to take over the spice trade in our neighborhood?
Light and dark. Yin and Yang.
We need progressives to push for change and we need conservatives to pull the reigns back when we try and change too much too quickly and things start falling apart.
My point this entire time was that good people do bad things. Bad people do good things. Humans are complicated. Our history is even more complicated. At no point has any side or group been “right” forever.
Yup, fact is a majority of people in thd US agree on many of the most important issue, yet the governing structure seeks to “otherize” people from each other as much as possible in order to prevent meaningful discourse and foster division.
Can’t have the population working together to take out the elites. They need us good and pissed off at each other so we are too busy to see them taking everything and giving us scraps constantly.
Yeah… you’re a centrist.
Please use my preferred title: “moderate retard”.
Far left is mostly also authoritarian. They say they want everyone to have the same rights but get angry or try to silence people that don’t agree with their radical ways. I’m not talking about the left in general but the far left. As such they see it needed to achieve their goals, even if it official is equality for example.
Edit: Removed “Tankies definitely are authoritarian.” They are kinda a weird case where they believe or say they believe in Marxist Leninist ideology but then support countries that dress as communist even if they are ruled by a small elite or are actually mostly capitalist. I believe they are kinda gullible far left with mostly a “US bad” sentiment so China and Russia must be good. They are not solely representative of far left authoritarianism
Tankies aren’t the only option over there. Authoritarianism is just Authoritarianism, no matter what dressing they throw on it.
Yeah I know. It was one prominent example I could think of on the spot but you can definitely be authoritarian without being a tankie
tankies are right wingers who use leftist vocabulary
You just don’t like the idea of such an appalling group considering themselves as part of the left since thats where you think you belong and you want nothing to do with them. Yes russia and china aren’t truly socialist countries but far left people definitely also have authoritarian tendencies. Otherwise they would probably just be left.
what in your opinion do “left” and “right” mean
Far left is mostly also authoritarian.
There is no such thing as a “far left.” Go ask Centrism 101 for a refund.
I can confirm it exists because I seem to be one when Im honest with people
“i say it doesn’t exist, so it doesn’t.”
yawn
Why can’t you just get along with the nazis like we on the enlightened center do
Wow, author doesn’t know what centrism OR horseshoe theory are, lol.
Hint: Neither of them are accurately described as “both sides are equally bad”.
I’m reminded of a Christian fundamentalist depicting an atheist being gotcha’d by being asked where his morality comes from if there’s no God, and literally having a “checkmate atheists” moment over it. Equally smugly dumb.
Wtf? We know where morality comes from. It’s about acting with others as you want them to act with you. Because as social animals, if we didn’t have morals, our kind would just die. I like Kant’s way to define something as moral or not: Ask yourself “What if everyone did this?” and if the result is bad, you will easily understand why it’s in everyone’s interest to collectively prevent it instead of trying to individually cheat
Wow, author doesn’t know what centrism OR horseshoe theory are, lol.
What’d they get wrong, exactly?
The part where they are similar is that both the far left and far right are willing to use authoritarian violence to achieve their goals. And the representation of the left as just “oppression is bad” is overly simplistic. They too believe in oppression of particular groups (see oppression of academics/scientists/bourgeoise/etc in almost all communist take-overs). Centrists can also have very differing views as well but the reason they are located where they are on the horseshoe is because they would rather problems be solved with slow beauraucracy/well-defined protocols and not revolution or political violence.
This is not an admonishment or support for any of these things from me personally. I personally think a little revolution is needed once in a while. Just pointing out in more detail the idea behind horseshoe theory.
I just think if we long term want to build a stable system that works for everybody we can’t just keep rerolling dice hoping a revolution would magically fix it all. I like my politics boring if it gets the job done and keeps improving and iterating on a better system
I like my politics boring if it gets the job done and keeps improving and iterating on a better system.
Absolutely.
Of course, I try to stay aware that my ability to wait patiently for a better world is, in itself, a privilege.
There’s wisdom in carefully iterating forward.
But billionaires also need something to help them focus on cooperation toward a better world. They need to believe in some non-zero chance that the fate of some person they stepped on could randomly suddenly become their own fate.
I don’t have answers for how that happens, but history says it’s almost never been pleasant for anyone concerned.
I don’t know if we can all do better. I hope so.
True. I think for the most part, keeping things boring is best but sometimes a country/government/culture rots to the point that the only way for it to correct itself is through some bloody action of some kind. That can be a revolution started by its own people, a civil war, or a war that perhaps the country itself starts but then loses (see Germany and WWII). I think the US is slowly making its way to that point as the safeguards of democracy are continuously being eroded by Republicans and conservatives and there will be a point of no return.
That US politics has screwed up definitions of left and right, making the cartoon meaningless when applied to it.
Okay, I’m Canadian, but let’s play ball:
Republicans (right-wing) want to ban abortion.
Democrats (*left-wing) want to not ban abortion.
What’s the Centrist solution here? Is it… some bans on abortion by any chance?
(*I’m aware they’re basically right-of-centre at this point, but not wanting to ban abortion is a ‘left’ stance.)
You don’t understand what centrism is. There is no such thing as a single “centrist position”.
Centrism defines a collective of views; it describes a set of points of view that lie on both ‘wings’, such that it’s not really accurate to label that person as either.
Defining centrism the way you just did is kind of like defining bisexuality as being attracted only to a person who is a 50/50 mixture of male/female (which of course doesn’t actually exist), instead of someone who is capable of being attracted to males and females. And just how most bi people have a preference ‘lean’ toward one sex over the other, centrists also tend to ‘lean’, based on where the lion’s share of their values sit.
Basically, anyone who describes themselves as “left/right leaning” is a centrist, specifically who has volunteered a bit more specificity about their set of values.
The Democrats are centrists. If you want the far-left perspective, look around Lemmy for a bit.
That’s the only real difference between the far right and the far left: The far right has a substantial presence in major western governments while the far left (fortunately) doesn’t.
Centrism does not mean coming up with a middle-ground solution for all issues. It could be taking a left-leaning stance on one issue, and right-leaning on another.
Are they far left? No? Then it doesn’t apply to the horseshoe theory since it doesn’t become closer aligned again
