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Accepting horseshoe theory (self.politics)

submitted 2 years ago by estelle to c/politics

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An introduction for those you who may not have heard much about the concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory

Like with most things, it's complicated but I do think there are certain core inclinations, tendencies, and a general uniting ethos between the far left and far right that does suggest taking horseshoe theory seriously. I've laid them out below.

A bone deep rejection of 'the system' with the system being liberal democratic capitalism of one type or another. The far left/lemmygrad and far Right both feel that the liberal democratic market capitalist societies are empty. People are happy with their Netflix and playing games on their phones and taking pictures of their food and posting it on Instagram. In contrast, the far left and the far Right hunger for revolutionary drama. Accordingly, they abhor legislative incrementalism and love mass street protests which destabilize 'the system.'
They both hate the center-left and center-right more than each other. Listen to the way the far left talks about Biden or the way the far Right talks about Romney.
They both regularly apologize for anti-Western dictators. The far Left prefers to defend Maduro, the far Right Putin. But they converge on Assad.
Vaccine 'skepticism' and a general distrust of science as hopelessly tainted by 'big pharma' Right-wing examples of this are endless but see Russell Brand showing the far Left in 'now we can't even question it' mode here. He also declares mandatory vaccination constitutes 'apartheid' So does Madison Crawthorne (or however you spell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfxnKgCN3OY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfxnKgCN3OY)
Unhinged hostility towards Israel and anti-Semitic language (as distinct from rejecting the toxic authoritarianism of Netanyahu and supporting a humane two-state solution)
Anti-globalization. Both far Left and far Right claim globalization has impoverished us and made the world shittier for everyone but the very Rich. If you take a Trump or Sanders speech on trade, you'd struggle to tell them apart (well the strange capitalization would give Trump away but yeah). While center-right and center-left see the world becoming more like America as a generally good thing, the far Left and far Right have nothing but contempt for 'Americanization.'

There's probably many, many more. Curious to hear your thoughts.

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[–] Gaywallet 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Horseshoe theory was never meant to describe political attitudes. Horseshoe makes the classic mistake of confusing economic policy with social in an attempt to oversimplify and classify individuals. Perhaps most importantly, there's exceedingly little scientific study of horseshoe theory and what little is out there happens to fail to prove the horseshoe theory hypothesis.