rixed 13 hours ago

Seriously, if you believe that you can simplify human thoughts about politics with a one dimensional rule, be it straight, curved like a horseshoe or a more fancy shape, you should take it as a sign that you haven't quite spent the time required to form a proper opinion.

  • consumer451 7 hours ago

    I agree 100%. It seems ridiculous that we represent the real world via tensors, but something as complex as politics is a single axis on a graph.

    However, that doesn't mean that adding one modifier to the 1D view isn't valuable. I would argue that in-fact, horseshoe theory shows how inaccurate the 1D analysis really is, and leads the reader to think deeper about the entire situation.

spankibalt 17 hours ago

Ah, the horseshoe! One of the toolbag essentials of any self-respecting "critical thinker", crank, centrist, or "heterodox" illuminary. :D

Already bizarre when invoking the Soviets of all people, who were socially, outside of some avantgardists which were only tolerated as long as they were considered useful or irrelevant, extremely conservative.

But then again, to many a conservative, a leftist or progressive of any kind, is "a commie", and the difference between social democrats, different breeds of socialists, or communists for that matter, is already as lost on them as code is to a cat. Shit, according to recent trends, Hitler was akshually a leftist anyway. ;)

The same goes for contextualizing political violence; it's all the same, everywhere, all at once.

  • aaronchall 16 hours ago

    > Hitler was akshually a leftist

    Have you not read his very consistent and personally defended party platform? He also said that the communists were close enough in ideology to join his party.

    The idea that the communists were the opposite of the Nazis and fascists was an idea spread by the communists to create confusion and try to improve their own image.

    • rixed 13 hours ago

      For some definitions of "close enough" that includes sending each others in camps, making it a crime to defend the other opinion punishable by machine gun, and of course, full scale military invasion of the other country.

      But yeah sure, they both talk like they want big changes, so they are the same.

      The only thing that the horseshoe theory got right is the inflated self importance of the center.

    • spankibalt 16 hours ago

      > "Have you not read his [...]."

      Delivered as ordered, lol. It never fails.

duxup 17 hours ago

>Proponents point to a number of perceived similarities between extremes and allege that both tend to support authoritarianism or totalitarianism;

From my experience that is the case. Surprising amount of people on the far right and far left when they drift into talk of violence and disruption talk about the same acts against the same people.