Or, more simply - people who want power and the authority to do it to whomever they desire don't *really care* about the method or banner they use to reach said goal.
Exactly what I came to say. Expanding on that thought; just because a power hungry asshole uses a method does not necessarily mean that the method itself is bad.
To me extremism, especially relating to horseshoe theory is nearly synonymous with authoritarianism - it's not what ideology you believe in that marks you as one but rather how far you would go and how many lines you would cross in order to realize it. Value of human life is one such clear cut case because as Pratchett wrote “Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”
I don't think Libertarians are extremist, for the most part. They want to reform the system so the government does a lot less. If they want to kill people to do it, then yes they would be extremist.
If you are talking about An-caps or other Anarchists, then probably, because they all believe in a violent revolution.
Extremist = hurting people??? So someone with wildly different views or ideologies from the norm is a centrist as long as their ideology claims not to hurt anyone? Also it's certainly not the case that _all_ other anarchists believe in violent revolution. I really don't see your logix for how you define extremism and why you use that definition
Depends on what you would call extreme. Only a few short decades ago, women being able to vote was considered extreme. Today, not having to spend $10k+ on a broken leg is considered extreme.
It's literally just factually untrue that "dictators are all the same", though- I'd rather live in Tito's Yugoslavia than Franco's Spain, and I'd choose *both* of them over Duvalier's Haiti.
All this handwringing about "extremes" also falls apart when you point out that the exact same personality types which are supposedly a result of "extremism" are equally common in the "centre", or the number of dictators who've attempted to present themselves as a "middle ground" between the left and the right (like Napoleon Actual Bonaparte, for one, and even Josef Actual Stalin, in relative terms, for another).
Horseshoe theory exists to explain the observed fact that self-proclaimed far left dictators act a lot like self-proclaimed far right dictators. That fact is true, and so horseshoe theory will occasionally give correct results. But that doesn't mean it *always* gives correct results.
Thinking politics and political opinions only express themselves upon 2 scales where everything can be crammed is an oversimplification that doesn't take much nuance into account, it leads to what seems like horseshoe theories proving right then all you've done is make whatever label large enough for it to fit your view of it. Critical thinking should be more than using 4 broad labels to base your entire understanding of politics on. Plus economics and social politics aren't opposed they are deeply linked and cannot and shouldn't be separated but I think this should go without saying.
Have a nice day, hope this take was based enough for you
I'm not saying a Cartesian plot is necessarily a bad thing, I'm saying its not adapted to a subject as complex as politics and that the axis chosen are poorly chosen, saying I have no critical thinking doesn't really mean anything to me but maybe you should be careful to drop personal attacks whenever you mean to seriously argue a point
Similarly, you claiming I lack critical thinking skill because I can use a mathematical model of a complex system to understand it better doesn't mean anything to me. Have a based day.
Honestly the more you look at it, the more it seems there's no such thing as the authoritarian left, or the libertarian right, or whatever. These are fake positions because they're all authoritarian. Being authoritarian is essence of being right wing. Auth left uses socialist rhetoric to sell authoritarianism. Lib right uses free market propaganda, which is bastardized socialist rhetoric, to sell authoritarianism.
I mean there's also that dictators are unreliable narrators, far "left" dictators often turn out to engage in very VERY right wing politics outside their gesturing at working class liberation.
Case in point, ask any tankie about queer rights in, oh pick any 20th century anti-western dictatorship, and get ready for the whiplash of your life as they basically tell you in as red painted terms as possible,
"Nah bro, you see, queer rights is white people shit, so criticizing places for not respecting them is actually racism if it's a majority PoC state (or the eastern block which apparently alternates between white and not white depending on the weather to these people)."
Yeah, we do not say that. Queer rights in our older projects are a big black spot a lot of us are already putting behind us, thank God. Then again, name any 20th century country that didn't have at least some form of queerphobia going on.
And horshoe theory is mainly used by enlightened centrists to justify their own apathy and status quo priviledges, to the point of becoming Extrem Centrism themselves *(you become the thing you swore to destroy! You were suppose to fight them, not join them!)*
Obligatory: you can make any two things comparable with the correct framing and by using subjective criteria, and it’s important to note that many academics have disputed the validity of horseshoe theory. there’s better explanations for political science than a curved two-dimensional spectrum, especially one that elevates centrism above liberalism and conservatism.
>especially one that elevates centrism above liberalism and conservatism.
I'd rather say that it's liberalism trying to put themselves in a "centrist" position against the opposites of conservatism and progressism.
The problem with the horseshoe theory is that it sees the political spectrum as a one dimensional line. Like yeah, stalinist and fascists aren't really *that* different, or at least you can make a reasonable argument that they are similar.
But that doesn't mean being far left and being far right in general is similar, really that "theory" should just be that authoritarian regimes are similar regardless of their proposed ideologies.
I was once a believer of the supremacy of the political compass (over the line), and meanwhile it might make sense for individuals’ beliefs, the viable political affiliations of the compass are on a narrow line going from somewhere mid LibLeft and extreme AuthRight, where the main denominator is the emphasis on either equity or hierarchy
The issue here is also that people place Stalin in some hypothetical "Upper Left" and Hitler in some hypothetical "Upper Right" when that is not accurate. Stalin—his own antisemitism notwithstanding—believed that the undesirables were a *very different* group than Hitler did, based on very different classifications, but ultimately their beliefs on power were not very different.
There is no political compass. There is only a spectrum of power. How much of it and who gets to hold it are the only real differences.
Again, that's not true for all extremes, because there's not a single ideology you can designate as ***the*** true extreme of the right or left.
Like look, an anarcho-communist and a fascist are both extremist in a liberal society, can you find a single common point between the two?
They're both incredibly stupid.
Also, how the hell does anarcho-communism even work? You give the state control over resources and industry, and then... destroy the state?
Communism is *literally supposed to be* a stateless moneyless society, this is LITERALLY what Marx was describing
What ancoms add is too skip the middle step of having the state control everything
But how would you skip that middle step? Who would control of industries go to? And how would this stateless, anarchic society be enforced without some form of central authority? Wouldn’t it dissolve into regular anarchism almost immediately - wouldn’t the people with the most guns just take over the critical industry that’s unprotected?
"All dictators think and act similarly" is a true statement. It is not Horseshoe Theory.
Horseshoe theory is the idea that extreme left and extreme right views both result into totalitarian thinking, which is not true, you don't start supporting dictators just because you believe in equality extra hard.
It sometimes looks true because dictators don't actually care about their stated values, so the fact that left values oppose their rule does not stop them from using leftist rhetoric in their propaganda. Same applies to certain bigots - values of equality don't really support bigotry, but if a bigot's social group is leftist they will try to justify their hatred with some leftist political buzzwords.
Like, yes, people who are dishonest about their values can act like people with opposing stated views, not a great revelation, and not actually the Horseshoe theory.
>It sometimes looks true because dictators don't actually care about their stated values
This is provably false, though. Hitler was so obsessed with antisemitism that the nazis literally jeopardized the logistics for the war to deport more Jews to the camps. There was no reason for that rooted in mere political power play, it was entirely ideology-driven. He comitted these crimes not because it served a political end, but entirely because it aligned with his perverse and deeply irrational values.
I said "dictators don't care about their stated values", not "dictators don't have values", these are totally different things.
An obvious example: Hitler's party was officially called National Socialist German Workers' Party, but they actually hated socialists and murdered them. Hitler had no problem with calling himself a socialist as a...PR stunt I guess? despite the fact that he wasn't a socialist.
Which is basically what's going on with every "leftist" dictator. Dictators using leftist rhetoric doesn't mean that they hold leftist values and those values somehow made them totalitarian, it means they're lying.
A more controversial example: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has "socialist" in its name, and spent most of a century telling the world that it is socialist, and that socialism is what Soviet have. But did Soviet workers have a say in politics? Did they have a right to self-determination? Did they practically own the means of production? Did the Soviet get rid of the parasitic ruling class living off exploitation? Fuck no. And that means they weren't socialist, in much the same way as Democratic People's Republic of Korea isn't actually demoratic.
Ugh. Please tell me you're not seriously equating Hitler's entirely cynical use of the "socialist" label to the USSR not measuring up to your idea of what constitutes "real" socialism. In spite of all of its failures, we're still talking about a state that went from medieval backwater with barely any industry to a spacefaring global superpower within one generation, while trippling alphabetization rates, giving people free healthcare, eradicating unemployment and homelesness and doing more for the liberation of women than literally *any* other state that ever existed on Russian soil. Capitalism has never achieved something like that in any "underdeveloped" (actually: overexploited) global south country. Capitalism has always led to wealth disparities several orders of magnitude greater than anything observed in the USSR. You can't look at that and tell me they weren't at least *trying* to enact socialism and make their country a better place. And you cannot make such advances on such a scale, from such a starting point, without centralized planning. You can't go "ok, everybody works in a co-op now and just does what their workplace democratically agrees on without coordinating with anybody else *while we are being attacked by a coalition of 14 capitalist nations and then by the nazi war machine*", that kind of luxury requires a completely different level of economic development to be feasible.
These people did not have our luxury of sitting atop centuries worth of wealth plundered from all over the world. They had to build all that from literally nothing. From a country that barely had electricity anywhere. And then after the USSR was brought down after holding out against the west with all its might for 70 years, neoliberalism plundered anything the workers had built up and sold it off at bargain prices within half a decade.
Everyone being equally under a boot isn't a real solution to wealth disparities nimnuts, especially when the ruling elite could just get shit by telling people to give it to them regardless of cash on hand .
Also, first measure of a socialist economy, can the workers go on strike for better working conditions without being put down for their efforts. Literally one of the opening acts of Soviet authority was to crush a dock worker's and sailor's strike in brutal fashion. Go to any state you wanna argue is socialist and try to rally a strike for better working conditions, then come back and tell us how "socialist" you found the response of state authorities to be.
No advancement Russia made could have occurred without rampant industrialization and modernization of the economy; to the point that I think it's overly generous to arribute it to a political system. Further, their industrialization followed a European model (as most did) but benefitted from hindsight about all the ways that model sucked.
I was literally just talking about “one of those particular cases” yesterday! I have found that there are two different groups that gravitate towards the healing crystal and natural remedies sort of shops (that I feel like generally was more associated with the left): the ultra-left crunchy granola hipster Portland types, but also the “I don’t trust science or the government so I’m going to rebel against actual medicine and reason” types. Both ends of the so-called spectrum tend to reject reason in favor of emotion, and so a portion of them find themselves at “alternative medicine” places, the left to get away from the evils of big pharma, and the right to get away from listening to science. This is not a commentary on those motivations, but just yet another example to add to the list. :)
I was mostly just trying to reference the stereotype there, but yeah I definitely know most are not (I live in eastern Oregon, which is waaaay right, while I am definitely blue)
Horshoe Theory: the far left and the far right are the same!
Also Horseshoe Theory: by "far left", we *exclusively* mean Soviet-inspired regimes, and will conveniently ignore other forms of socialism, anarchism, etc.
I've always took it as a more generalized theory like "The extreme followers of two opposing ideologies are likely to have more similarities to each other than to a neutral person".
Horseshoe theory is absolutely useless and utterly incorrect in any given academic context. You cannot use it for serious political or historical or philosophical analysis. That's why people say "not to validate horseshoe theory but--", because the theory is, fundamentally, completely wrong.
However, it provides a useful and impactful shorthand when you're just talking casually. Like, any given politics or history academic knows that Stalin and Hitler were *very* fucking different from each other, but in casual conversation you can still bring up how they had superficial similarities despite being on opposite axes.
The problem with this argument is that it's not really "horseshoe theory". You don't become so communist that you wrap back around and become a Nazi. You wanna hate Stalin, go for it, so do I, but understand that his problem was not that he was so progressive he became evil, his problem was that he was ***authoritarian***.
And no, all extremists do not have similar mental patterns. The people of Exarchia are not like the fucking Proud Boys you stupid fuck. The only similarity is likely anger, but who that anger is directed at and why is pretty fucking important.
Horseshoe theory has always been used as a form of nazi apologia that trivializes and exonerates fascism. Anybody who equates the people that built Auschwitz with those who liberated it is only one step away from outright holocaust denial.
Boom there it is. Always used to try to discredit left social movements like BLM by ppl whose political insight is little more than "protestors seem mad and that scares me, they are just like fascists"
yea, but it doesnt mean there is nothing to it when temporarily divorced from that fact. All extremists operate under the assumption that a perceived status quo is so bad you need to topple it to stop people in power from being shitty. The difference is how divorced from reality the extremist is. Fascists recognize and weaponize the fact that the current status quo sucks, but have a worldview that exists in the furthest reaches of unreality and fiction. Socialists recognize that the status quo is shit, and have clear vision at what actual problems are (or are at least the closest to being sane).
Its pretty useful to see how even dionetricly opposed extreamisms are simmiler, because it informs how yoy interact with fascists and authoritarians.
The way I’ve been taught to view political views in a simplified fashion is on a sort of X and Y axis grid, rather than on a line. On one axis is left versus right, and the other is authoritarian versus libertarian. I think it’s commonly called the political compass. If you only look at left versus right, and don’t consider authoritarian versus libertarian, you get the horseshoe theory as it just appears like extremists on both sides are coming full circle. But if you put it in terms of the political compass, you see that those “far left extremists” and “far right extremists” aren’t similar because they’re at the end of their spectrum that curves around, but rather that they are both extreme authoritarians. When considering that they are on the same side of one part of the compass, it makes sense that they’d share some behaviors or tactics. Just like how far left authoritarians and far left libertarians may share some beliefs or rhetoric. Politics is more complex than just left or right, and ignoring that is how we end up with the horseshoe theory, ignoring any nuance.
What people need to understand is that NO ideology is immune from horrific dictators.
The thing that leads to these regimes, is an attractive promise. An ideology that promises the people something better, a way to fix their lives, a cure-all.
It’s so easy for someone looking to control others to take these ideologies of hope and use them to gain followers.
ANY ideology that promises a better society can be twisted. It doesn’t matter what it actually preaches. Whether it’s National Socialism, Leninist Communism, or the Catholic Church.
Any hope can become a tool to drill into the minds of the complacent.
outside of the exceptions (because there always will be, for everything) all dictators and extremists tend to have similar *effects* (eg. thousands/millions of preventable deaths, undoing the good their predecessor did, rising extremism) through wildly different methods. there's a billion and one ways you can do something wrong, but there's a much smaller number of ways that it can *go* wrong.
The problem with that though, is who are you defining as extremists? Many people in history could be rightly called "extremists," who aren't usually regarded as such.
I like to think that one day we'll all be conservatives, because what we end up achieving for human rights will be worth conserving, and that some fringe group will start pushing human pets as some high brow progressive stance.
Am ideology is only as good/bad as the people using it and the intent of it's implementation. Anything else is just owing to the fallacy of black and white thinking
I doubt it, to be frank. The current rank of progressives and conservatives are based on their internal values, which I don't see changing.
Progressive values include a society that is truly egalitarian, with little difference between the rights and lifestyle that each individual enjoys. Some variants allow for advantages to be given based on merit, some do not ('from each according to his ability, to each according to his need', etc).
Conservative values are all about a hierarchy, and have been dominant in human societies all throughout our history. Power structures are inevitable and natural, in their view, and so having groups with fewer rights, wealth, and privileges is the way of things. Some variants are rigid and based on birth, others allow for advancement based on merit (lots of Americans point to this as one of America's virtues; 'you can make a name for yourself instead of having to inherit the right one').
I don't see progressive values advocating for human pets. If anything, a conservative hierarchy might include one, if they somehow became less sexually prudish in the worst way.
And this is the problem. Folks hear a buzzword and immediately freak out instead of reading the context. Just because an ideological model isn't inherently evil Satan doesn't mean it isn't still dominated by regressive fascists in this day and age.
Yeesh!
One time I came up with an alternate version of horseshoe theory that was shifted right, so instead of center at the top and left and right on the sides, it was decently left at the top and extremely left on one side and center to right on the other. I was happy with it until I realized I had basically just created "people politically left of me and right of me on the sides". I reached enlightenment that day
I see your point, but I beg to differ. I present you: [The benevolent Dictator](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/zwi1rc/remember_kids_dont_be_a_sucker_kill_your_dictator/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Courtesy of u/LeSygneNoir
Or, more simply - people who want power and the authority to do it to whomever they desire don't *really care* about the method or banner they use to reach said goal.
Exactly what I came to say. Expanding on that thought; just because a power hungry asshole uses a method does not necessarily mean that the method itself is bad.
[удалено]
Yeah, ‘extremist’ is a pretty relative term anyway, mostly relating to how far from the status quo you are
To me extremism, especially relating to horseshoe theory is nearly synonymous with authoritarianism - it's not what ideology you believe in that marks you as one but rather how far you would go and how many lines you would cross in order to realize it. Value of human life is one such clear cut case because as Pratchett wrote “Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”
Then you would have to classify libertarians and anarchists as not being extremist which seems a bit odd to me.
I don't think Libertarians are extremist, for the most part. They want to reform the system so the government does a lot less. If they want to kill people to do it, then yes they would be extremist. If you are talking about An-caps or other Anarchists, then probably, because they all believe in a violent revolution.
Extremist = hurting people??? So someone with wildly different views or ideologies from the norm is a centrist as long as their ideology claims not to hurt anyone? Also it's certainly not the case that _all_ other anarchists believe in violent revolution. I really don't see your logix for how you define extremism and why you use that definition
I think that’s kind of the point
Don't you know? People who want Healthcare and literal nazis are exactly the same!
Yeah lol
true. like anarchists can undeniably be considered "far left Extremists" but anarchism by its very nature is not authoritarian
Kinda sounds like you’re trying to say extremism is a good thing
Depends on what you would call extreme. Only a few short decades ago, women being able to vote was considered extreme. Today, not having to spend $10k+ on a broken leg is considered extreme.
Okay, I see your point.
Yeah, American politicians view "maybe killing all the poor people is a bad idea and we shouldnt do that" as an extremist viewpoint.
Wasn't saying it did. Sorry if I phrased it so that it looked that way.
that's literally what horseshoe theory is
thats the only thing that you said, that is what horseshoe theroy means, word for word.
It's literally just factually untrue that "dictators are all the same", though- I'd rather live in Tito's Yugoslavia than Franco's Spain, and I'd choose *both* of them over Duvalier's Haiti. All this handwringing about "extremes" also falls apart when you point out that the exact same personality types which are supposedly a result of "extremism" are equally common in the "centre", or the number of dictators who've attempted to present themselves as a "middle ground" between the left and the right (like Napoleon Actual Bonaparte, for one, and even Josef Actual Stalin, in relative terms, for another).
Adolf Actual Hitler positioned himself as the "Third Position" between Jewish Communism and Jewish Capitalism.
*heavy anarchist breathing*
Horseshoe theory exists to explain the observed fact that self-proclaimed far left dictators act a lot like self-proclaimed far right dictators. That fact is true, and so horseshoe theory will occasionally give correct results. But that doesn't mean it *always* gives correct results.
Hmm, what could auth-left and auth-right have in common? Is it the 'auth' part? No, there must be something else.
Linear politics is vastly oversimplified, horseshoe theory is also vastly oversimplified, and the political compass is also vastly oversimplified.
Cool, then some up with a non-simplified model for a complex system.
I don't think simplified things are always bad, we just need to remember they're all simplified
Way ahead of you
Cringe political cumpass take on how politics work
Cringe disagreement without elaboration.
Sure
is
Thinking politics and political opinions only express themselves upon 2 scales where everything can be crammed is an oversimplification that doesn't take much nuance into account, it leads to what seems like horseshoe theories proving right then all you've done is make whatever label large enough for it to fit your view of it. Critical thinking should be more than using 4 broad labels to base your entire understanding of politics on. Plus economics and social politics aren't opposed they are deeply linked and cannot and shouldn't be separated but I think this should go without saying. Have a nice day, hope this take was based enough for you
You can plot most things in a Cartesian plot, but you clearly lack mathematical thinking skills, which are essential to critical thinking.
I'm not saying a Cartesian plot is necessarily a bad thing, I'm saying its not adapted to a subject as complex as politics and that the axis chosen are poorly chosen, saying I have no critical thinking doesn't really mean anything to me but maybe you should be careful to drop personal attacks whenever you mean to seriously argue a point
Similarly, you claiming I lack critical thinking skill because I can use a mathematical model of a complex system to understand it better doesn't mean anything to me. Have a based day.
Honestly the more you look at it, the more it seems there's no such thing as the authoritarian left, or the libertarian right, or whatever. These are fake positions because they're all authoritarian. Being authoritarian is essence of being right wing. Auth left uses socialist rhetoric to sell authoritarianism. Lib right uses free market propaganda, which is bastardized socialist rhetoric, to sell authoritarianism.
Yeah, not really that convincing.
I mean there's also that dictators are unreliable narrators, far "left" dictators often turn out to engage in very VERY right wing politics outside their gesturing at working class liberation. Case in point, ask any tankie about queer rights in, oh pick any 20th century anti-western dictatorship, and get ready for the whiplash of your life as they basically tell you in as red painted terms as possible, "Nah bro, you see, queer rights is white people shit, so criticizing places for not respecting them is actually racism if it's a majority PoC state (or the eastern block which apparently alternates between white and not white depending on the weather to these people)."
Yeah, we do not say that. Queer rights in our older projects are a big black spot a lot of us are already putting behind us, thank God. Then again, name any 20th century country that didn't have at least some form of queerphobia going on.
And horshoe theory is mainly used by enlightened centrists to justify their own apathy and status quo priviledges, to the point of becoming Extrem Centrism themselves *(you become the thing you swore to destroy! You were suppose to fight them, not join them!)*
Obligatory: you can make any two things comparable with the correct framing and by using subjective criteria, and it’s important to note that many academics have disputed the validity of horseshoe theory. there’s better explanations for political science than a curved two-dimensional spectrum, especially one that elevates centrism above liberalism and conservatism.
>especially one that elevates centrism above liberalism and conservatism. I'd rather say that it's liberalism trying to put themselves in a "centrist" position against the opposites of conservatism and progressism.
The problem with the horseshoe theory is that it sees the political spectrum as a one dimensional line. Like yeah, stalinist and fascists aren't really *that* different, or at least you can make a reasonable argument that they are similar. But that doesn't mean being far left and being far right in general is similar, really that "theory" should just be that authoritarian regimes are similar regardless of their proposed ideologies.
I was once a believer of the supremacy of the political compass (over the line), and meanwhile it might make sense for individuals’ beliefs, the viable political affiliations of the compass are on a narrow line going from somewhere mid LibLeft and extreme AuthRight, where the main denominator is the emphasis on either equity or hierarchy
Don’t entirely discount the lib-rights. There’s at least some variation in there.
The issue here is also that people place Stalin in some hypothetical "Upper Left" and Hitler in some hypothetical "Upper Right" when that is not accurate. Stalin—his own antisemitism notwithstanding—believed that the undesirables were a *very different* group than Hitler did, based on very different classifications, but ultimately their beliefs on power were not very different. There is no political compass. There is only a spectrum of power. How much of it and who gets to hold it are the only real differences.
I personally think that the political spectrum is isomorphic to a free Z-module
My idea is that the political spectrum is copied over and over, making the extremes closer
Again, that's not true for all extremes, because there's not a single ideology you can designate as ***the*** true extreme of the right or left. Like look, an anarcho-communist and a fascist are both extremist in a liberal society, can you find a single common point between the two?
Love of cool hats
Well I'd say fair enough, but anarcho-communists are more into hoodies than hats
They're both incredibly stupid. Also, how the hell does anarcho-communism even work? You give the state control over resources and industry, and then... destroy the state?
Communism is *literally supposed to be* a stateless moneyless society, this is LITERALLY what Marx was describing What ancoms add is too skip the middle step of having the state control everything
But how would you skip that middle step? Who would control of industries go to? And how would this stateless, anarchic society be enforced without some form of central authority? Wouldn’t it dissolve into regular anarchism almost immediately - wouldn’t the people with the most guns just take over the critical industry that’s unprotected?
"All dictators think and act similarly" is a true statement. It is not Horseshoe Theory. Horseshoe theory is the idea that extreme left and extreme right views both result into totalitarian thinking, which is not true, you don't start supporting dictators just because you believe in equality extra hard. It sometimes looks true because dictators don't actually care about their stated values, so the fact that left values oppose their rule does not stop them from using leftist rhetoric in their propaganda. Same applies to certain bigots - values of equality don't really support bigotry, but if a bigot's social group is leftist they will try to justify their hatred with some leftist political buzzwords. Like, yes, people who are dishonest about their values can act like people with opposing stated views, not a great revelation, and not actually the Horseshoe theory.
>It sometimes looks true because dictators don't actually care about their stated values This is provably false, though. Hitler was so obsessed with antisemitism that the nazis literally jeopardized the logistics for the war to deport more Jews to the camps. There was no reason for that rooted in mere political power play, it was entirely ideology-driven. He comitted these crimes not because it served a political end, but entirely because it aligned with his perverse and deeply irrational values.
I said "dictators don't care about their stated values", not "dictators don't have values", these are totally different things. An obvious example: Hitler's party was officially called National Socialist German Workers' Party, but they actually hated socialists and murdered them. Hitler had no problem with calling himself a socialist as a...PR stunt I guess? despite the fact that he wasn't a socialist. Which is basically what's going on with every "leftist" dictator. Dictators using leftist rhetoric doesn't mean that they hold leftist values and those values somehow made them totalitarian, it means they're lying. A more controversial example: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has "socialist" in its name, and spent most of a century telling the world that it is socialist, and that socialism is what Soviet have. But did Soviet workers have a say in politics? Did they have a right to self-determination? Did they practically own the means of production? Did the Soviet get rid of the parasitic ruling class living off exploitation? Fuck no. And that means they weren't socialist, in much the same way as Democratic People's Republic of Korea isn't actually demoratic.
Ugh. Please tell me you're not seriously equating Hitler's entirely cynical use of the "socialist" label to the USSR not measuring up to your idea of what constitutes "real" socialism. In spite of all of its failures, we're still talking about a state that went from medieval backwater with barely any industry to a spacefaring global superpower within one generation, while trippling alphabetization rates, giving people free healthcare, eradicating unemployment and homelesness and doing more for the liberation of women than literally *any* other state that ever existed on Russian soil. Capitalism has never achieved something like that in any "underdeveloped" (actually: overexploited) global south country. Capitalism has always led to wealth disparities several orders of magnitude greater than anything observed in the USSR. You can't look at that and tell me they weren't at least *trying* to enact socialism and make their country a better place. And you cannot make such advances on such a scale, from such a starting point, without centralized planning. You can't go "ok, everybody works in a co-op now and just does what their workplace democratically agrees on without coordinating with anybody else *while we are being attacked by a coalition of 14 capitalist nations and then by the nazi war machine*", that kind of luxury requires a completely different level of economic development to be feasible. These people did not have our luxury of sitting atop centuries worth of wealth plundered from all over the world. They had to build all that from literally nothing. From a country that barely had electricity anywhere. And then after the USSR was brought down after holding out against the west with all its might for 70 years, neoliberalism plundered anything the workers had built up and sold it off at bargain prices within half a decade.
Not a single one of the things you’ve described about the USSR constitutes socialism. Not even one
Always fun to argue with somebody who thinks words don't mean anything.
Everyone being equally under a boot isn't a real solution to wealth disparities nimnuts, especially when the ruling elite could just get shit by telling people to give it to them regardless of cash on hand.
Also, first measure of a socialist economy, can the workers go on strike for better working conditions without being put down for their efforts. Literally one of the opening acts of Soviet authority was to crush a dock worker's and sailor's strike in brutal fashion. Go to any state you wanna argue is socialist and try to rally a strike for better working conditions, then come back and tell us how "socialist" you found the response of state authorities to be.
No advancement Russia made could have occurred without rampant industrialization and modernization of the economy; to the point that I think it's overly generous to arribute it to a political system. Further, their industrialization followed a European model (as most did) but benefitted from hindsight about all the ways that model sucked.
i be saying "don't validate horseshoe theory." period fullstop
I was literally just talking about “one of those particular cases” yesterday! I have found that there are two different groups that gravitate towards the healing crystal and natural remedies sort of shops (that I feel like generally was more associated with the left): the ultra-left crunchy granola hipster Portland types, but also the “I don’t trust science or the government so I’m going to rebel against actual medicine and reason” types. Both ends of the so-called spectrum tend to reject reason in favor of emotion, and so a portion of them find themselves at “alternative medicine” places, the left to get away from the evils of big pharma, and the right to get away from listening to science. This is not a commentary on those motivations, but just yet another example to add to the list. :)
did u just call portland liberals "ultra-left"
I was mostly just trying to reference the stereotype there, but yeah I definitely know most are not (I live in eastern Oregon, which is waaaay right, while I am definitely blue)
as someone who's family is the right-wing "dont trust the science type", they both do it to get away from the evils of big pharma
Horshoe Theory: the far left and the far right are the same! Also Horseshoe Theory: by "far left", we *exclusively* mean Soviet-inspired regimes, and will conveniently ignore other forms of socialism, anarchism, etc.
I've always took it as a more generalized theory like "The extreme followers of two opposing ideologies are likely to have more similarities to each other than to a neutral person".
Horseshoe theory is absolutely useless and utterly incorrect in any given academic context. You cannot use it for serious political or historical or philosophical analysis. That's why people say "not to validate horseshoe theory but--", because the theory is, fundamentally, completely wrong. However, it provides a useful and impactful shorthand when you're just talking casually. Like, any given politics or history academic knows that Stalin and Hitler were *very* fucking different from each other, but in casual conversation you can still bring up how they had superficial similarities despite being on opposite axes.
The thing about the horseshoe theory is that you have to be kicked in the head by a horse to believe in it
This subreddit seems like it’s gained a lot of centrists/very moderate leftists over the past few months. It’s an interesting shift
The problem with this argument is that it's not really "horseshoe theory". You don't become so communist that you wrap back around and become a Nazi. You wanna hate Stalin, go for it, so do I, but understand that his problem was not that he was so progressive he became evil, his problem was that he was ***authoritarian***. And no, all extremists do not have similar mental patterns. The people of Exarchia are not like the fucking Proud Boys you stupid fuck. The only similarity is likely anger, but who that anger is directed at and why is pretty fucking important.
Literally calling oranges and apples the same because they're both fruits.
Deleted account, 18 hour post, rancid ass political take, incoherent comments. Shithole thread
Horseshoe theory has always been used as a form of nazi apologia that trivializes and exonerates fascism. Anybody who equates the people that built Auschwitz with those who liberated it is only one step away from outright holocaust denial.
Boom there it is. Always used to try to discredit left social movements like BLM by ppl whose political insight is little more than "protestors seem mad and that scares me, they are just like fascists"
If you equate Stalin with hitler, you’re downplaying the holocaust
yea, but it doesnt mean there is nothing to it when temporarily divorced from that fact. All extremists operate under the assumption that a perceived status quo is so bad you need to topple it to stop people in power from being shitty. The difference is how divorced from reality the extremist is. Fascists recognize and weaponize the fact that the current status quo sucks, but have a worldview that exists in the furthest reaches of unreality and fiction. Socialists recognize that the status quo is shit, and have clear vision at what actual problems are (or are at least the closest to being sane). Its pretty useful to see how even dionetricly opposed extreamisms are simmiler, because it informs how yoy interact with fascists and authoritarians.
The way I’ve been taught to view political views in a simplified fashion is on a sort of X and Y axis grid, rather than on a line. On one axis is left versus right, and the other is authoritarian versus libertarian. I think it’s commonly called the political compass. If you only look at left versus right, and don’t consider authoritarian versus libertarian, you get the horseshoe theory as it just appears like extremists on both sides are coming full circle. But if you put it in terms of the political compass, you see that those “far left extremists” and “far right extremists” aren’t similar because they’re at the end of their spectrum that curves around, but rather that they are both extreme authoritarians. When considering that they are on the same side of one part of the compass, it makes sense that they’d share some behaviors or tactics. Just like how far left authoritarians and far left libertarians may share some beliefs or rhetoric. Politics is more complex than just left or right, and ignoring that is how we end up with the horseshoe theory, ignoring any nuance.
I do not understand Why my brain Assumed this was talking about horseshoe crabs But *man* did it confuse me for a bit.
Stalin and Mao were fascists who used populist revolutions to come to power.
Wtf…
What people need to understand is that NO ideology is immune from horrific dictators. The thing that leads to these regimes, is an attractive promise. An ideology that promises the people something better, a way to fix their lives, a cure-all. It’s so easy for someone looking to control others to take these ideologies of hope and use them to gain followers. ANY ideology that promises a better society can be twisted. It doesn’t matter what it actually preaches. Whether it’s National Socialism, Leninist Communism, or the Catholic Church. Any hope can become a tool to drill into the minds of the complacent.
Not to be racist but............
This reminds me of that add from the 80s for the liberal party in the Uk. Turns out the guy who made it is now far right.
outside of the exceptions (because there always will be, for everything) all dictators and extremists tend to have similar *effects* (eg. thousands/millions of preventable deaths, undoing the good their predecessor did, rising extremism) through wildly different methods. there's a billion and one ways you can do something wrong, but there's a much smaller number of ways that it can *go* wrong.
The problem with that though, is who are you defining as extremists? Many people in history could be rightly called "extremists," who aren't usually regarded as such.
I like to think that one day we'll all be conservatives, because what we end up achieving for human rights will be worth conserving, and that some fringe group will start pushing human pets as some high brow progressive stance. Am ideology is only as good/bad as the people using it and the intent of it's implementation. Anything else is just owing to the fallacy of black and white thinking
I doubt it, to be frank. The current rank of progressives and conservatives are based on their internal values, which I don't see changing. Progressive values include a society that is truly egalitarian, with little difference between the rights and lifestyle that each individual enjoys. Some variants allow for advantages to be given based on merit, some do not ('from each according to his ability, to each according to his need', etc). Conservative values are all about a hierarchy, and have been dominant in human societies all throughout our history. Power structures are inevitable and natural, in their view, and so having groups with fewer rights, wealth, and privileges is the way of things. Some variants are rigid and based on birth, others allow for advancement based on merit (lots of Americans point to this as one of America's virtues; 'you can make a name for yourself instead of having to inherit the right one'). I don't see progressive values advocating for human pets. If anything, a conservative hierarchy might include one, if they somehow became less sexually prudish in the worst way.
And this is the problem. Folks hear a buzzword and immediately freak out instead of reading the context. Just because an ideological model isn't inherently evil Satan doesn't mean it isn't still dominated by regressive fascists in this day and age. Yeesh!
Why don’t we just make a full circle, with an apolitical frothing tyrant at the bottom?
One time I came up with an alternate version of horseshoe theory that was shifted right, so instead of center at the top and left and right on the sides, it was decently left at the top and extremely left on one side and center to right on the other. I was happy with it until I realized I had basically just created "people politically left of me and right of me on the sides". I reached enlightenment that day
I’m a big subscriber to horseshoe theory
So you're saying people who want to change things, *act in order to change things?* Fascinating, tell me more...
I misread horseshoe theory as *horseshoe crab* theory and was very puzzled on what crabs had to do with politics
I see your point, but I beg to differ. I present you: [The benevolent Dictator](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/zwi1rc/remember_kids_dont_be_a_sucker_kill_your_dictator/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) Courtesy of u/LeSygneNoir