Bronze-level articleHorseshoe theory

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The '''horseshoe theory''' in [[political science]] stipulates that the [[Moonbat|far-left]] and [[Wingnut|far-right]] are more similar to each other in essentials than either are to the [[centrism|political center]].
 
The '''horseshoe theory''' in [[political science]] stipulates that the [[Moonbat|far-left]] and [[Wingnut|far-right]] are more similar to each other in essentials than either are to the [[centrism|political center]].
  

Revision as of 21:31, 17 October 2013

All bigots and frauds are brothers under the skin.
Christopher Hitchens
It doesn't stop at the water's edge:

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The horseshoe theory in political science stipulates that the far-left and far-right are more similar to each other in essentials than either are to the political center.

It was formulated by the French post-postmodernist philosopher Jean-Pierre Faye, who believed that the extremes of the political spectrum both represented totalitarianism of different kinds; this meant that the political spectrum should not be described as a linear bar with the two ends representing the far-left and right being ideologically the furthest apart from each other, but as a horseshoe in which the two ends are closer to each other than to the center.

Contents

Examples

Diagram of the political horseshoe

On the left side of the horseshoe are placed communist countries such as the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Cuba under Fidel Castro, North Korea, and, well, every other communist country, with "happiest-barrack" countries like Hungary under "goulash communism" and Yugoslavia furthest from the end.

On the right side goes (in order from the end) Nazi Germany, militarist Japan, Fascist Italy, Franquist Spain, and various clerical-fascist regimes, military dictatorships, and monarchies.

In the center is the center-left to center-right continuum occupied by mainstream political parties in the countries that have adopted democracy and liberal capitalism.

One rather explicit example of the horseshoe theory in action is third positionism, which intentionally blends far-left and far-right politics. Fringe political movements such as the one initiated by Lyndon LaRouche also take ideas from both fringes of the spectrum.

Authoritarian parties

Authoritarian type parties on the hard-left and hard-right may not represent the furthest ends of the political spectrum but still mirror each other in significant ways.

Take the anti-pragmatic side of the United States Republican Party (especially the Religious Right) and compare it to the modern Communist Party of the Russian Federation and you can find quite a few similarities (besides the obvious one that both are ideologues focused on the "purity" of their movement), especially on social policies. In fact, if each parties leaders avoided talking to each other about economics they would find more common ground than they may expect, especially considering their vehement hatred for each other. For instance:

Bob Altemeyer's research backs the theory that authoritarian types tend to mirror each other, even if they aren't as extreme to the right or left as they could be.

Objectivism and Marxism

Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism has frequently been described as the "Marxism of the Right," mainly by its critics.[20] For example, Whittaker Chambers, in his review[21] of Atlas Shrugged, suggested that Rand's materialism, despite all protests to the contrary, was functionally almost identical to the Marxism that she so despised.

Birchers and Communists

Historian Richard Hofstader has noted the similarities between the recruiting methods used by both radical left and radical right groups when he notes, "The John Birch Society emulates Communist cells and quasi-secret operation through 'front' groups, and preaches a ruthless prosecution of the ideological war along lines very similar to those it finds in the Communist enemy." Hofstader also quotes New Right leader Barry Goldwater, who said "I would suggest that we analyze and copy the strategy of the enemy; theirs has worked and ours has not."[22]

TERF's and ultraconservatives

One of the more extreme wings of feminism, trans-exclusionary radical feminism, has worked closely with right-wing social conservatives in the past on some sexual matters, despite their fervent hatred of each other. The two seem to get along on matters that have to do with wanting pornography and prostitution to be banned, being hostile to the transsexual community, and a dislike of certain other sexual minorities (BDSM, bisexuals, etc.).[23]

In fiction

One of the most famous demonstrations of the horseshoe theory was in George Orwell's Animal Farm, a satirical critique of Soviet communism and how it had betrayed its working class revolutionary roots. The animals' revolution, after overthrowing the farm's cruel human owners, quickly turns into exactly the same sort of tyranny that the humans had once imposed upon them -- all in the name of stopping counter-revolutionaries, of course. To represent this evolution, the pigs, the leaders of the revolution, start taking on an increasing number of human-like qualities; this metaphor is made even more explicit in the 1954 animated adaptation, where the pigs literally turn into humans at the end.

In religion

The horseshoe theory can be seen in other ways besides far right/far left politics. Anti-Catholicism and Traditionalist Catholicism, seemingly opposites, share the same predilection to anti-Semitic, anti-Masonic, and New World Order conspiracy theories, and to conspiracy theories about the current Catholic Church leadership. One can see similar parallels between the conspiracist views of Mormon writer W. Cleon Skousen and anti-Mormon writer Ed Decker, and between New Ager David Icke, and fundamentalist Christian, anti-New Age writer Texe Marrs. Both may also follow a consistent life ethic (if they aren't militant).

Similarities

There are several common features of far-left and far-right politics and political movements.

Use of othering in rhetoric

Both far-right and far-left movements portray their enemies in a dehumanizing manner as a faceless mass. Often the enemy group is portrayed as having much more power than they actually have, approaching the near-omnipotence of Satan.

Enemy groups used by the far-right can be defined by ethnicity or class; common targets are local ethnic minorities, as well as international bankers and foreigners in general. The far-left largely uses class to define its enemies, such as bankers (these guys just can't catch a break!), industrialists, and other Bourgeois Capitalist Oppressors; however, some anti-colonial and similar movements associated with the left-wing, such as Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, use race or ethnicity as the defining factor.

The "othered" group is portrayed as having to be swept aside in some way in order to make things better; this has led to the groups in question being marginalized, or further marginalized, or subjected to mass slaughter as in Nazi Germany, the Holodomor, communist Cambodia, the slave trade etc.

Insistence on orthodoxy

Far-left and far-right movements often require adherents (or all people in their jurisdiction, if they get into power) to adhere to a very rigid set of beliefs, expelling or punishing heretics and dissenters. These beliefs are often accompanied by an ad hominem to be used against any dissenter; for example, that a non-communist has false consciousness, or that a non-Nazi is of Jewish descent, or that an opponent of apartheid in South Africa is a communist, or the simple "sheeple."

The most obvious manifestation of this is the hundreds and hundreds of splinter-sects that have grown out of right and left-wing movements through disagreements on fairly minor points, with more infighting than cooperation going on between them. This was satirized in the film Life of Brian as a dust-up between the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea.

Pseudoscience promotion

Quite a large number of extremists have but little regard for science, and are often openly dismissive of it, seeing it as part of the bourgeois/liberal/Jewish/what-have-you establishment. As a result, they are very prone to promoting various pseudoscientific theories. Well-known examples include:

  • Fundamentalist wackos deny anything contradicting their religion, such as evolution or global warming.
  • The Nation of Islam, also denying certain parts of evolution, teaches that white people were created by a mad scientist six thousand years ago.
  • Racist groups deny any scientific findings suggesting that the races are not separate sub-species, or something of that description, while promoting dubious claims such as those found in The Bell Curve, or outright pseudoscientific theories such as scientific racism.
  • Marxists promoted their philosophy as "scientific socialism."
  • The Soviet Union, especially under Stalin, banned scientific disciplines that contradicted their view of society, such as genetics and Darwinian evolution.
  • Fringe groups on both the left and right are prone to promoting crankier forms of alternative medicine, often accompanying it with conspiracy theories about Big Pharma.

Criticism

The horseshoe theory has come under some criticism — mostly from extremists who see themselves as being complete, utter, Manichaean opposites of the people on the other side of the spectrum. The simplest criticisms are from those who acknowledge the similarities between the two extremes, but say that they are fighting for the "right people" while their enemies are not.

On the right-wing side, the criticisms are often couched in terms of religion, with right-wingers claiming that they are completely different from left-wingers because they believe in different "gods," or different takes on the same God. One example is the contrast drawn during the U.S.'s Second Red Scare between Christianity and "Godless Communism."

A common gambit on the left-wing side[24] is to claim that none of the communist states are representatives of True Communism,™ which has nothing in common with the evil right-wing fascist extremism. This is the No True Scotsman argument.

Another variant of the same argument is that the term "left-wing" refers to philosophies that promote broader democracy, political participation, and social equality, and that any form of government straying from this ideal is automatically right-wing instead. In considering this criticism it is instructive to look at the origins of the term "left-wing," which originally referred to the people who sat on the left side of the National Assembly during the French Revolution. Among these original left-wingers was Maximilien Robespierre, on whose watch the revolutionary government, still seated on the left wing, staged a series of political purges, executing about 40,000 people in the space of ten months.

See also

Footnotes

  1. http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100329/158350370.html
  2. http://theglobalcommunist.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/russian-communists-attack-liberalism-and-abortion/
  3. "Zyuganov declared that national culture and morals are being deliberately destroyed in Russia"
  4. A popular talking point for Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and others
  5. Damn liberal media!
  6. Damn pro-Putin media!
  7. "The peaceful development of the USSR was interrupted by the perfidious attack by Nazi Germany and its satellites."
  8. Such as Texas "revising" textbooks to fit an Americentric far-right point of view
  9. Or wingnuts such as Glenn Beck who claim MLK was a conservative
  10. They openly call for the "Re-Stalinization of Russia." Seriously.
  11. http://americablog.com/2013/02/can-the-gop-be-saved-from-its-obsession-with-the-1950s.html
  12. "They're snuffing out the America that I grew up in",
  13. Who'd have thought the commies don't like taxes either?
  14. http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/boer311212.html
  15. Wanting to outlaw flag burning is common for wingnuts and commies
  16. See link #14
  17. This can be said for many other political parties, but they are especially abusive.
  18. Stop the lies about the Founding Fathers and slavery!
  19. Stop the lies about Stalin and Lenin!
  20. For example, George Monbiot, in this article for The Guardian.
  21. Chambers, Whittaker. "Big Sister Is Watching You", National Review, 28 December 1957.
  22. Richard Hofstader, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (Boston: Harvard University Press 1964) p. 33 ISBN 0674654617
  23. Janice G. Raymond, Ph.D., Transsexual, Transgender, and Intersex History, 1998, [1] (See radical feminist Janice Raymond working with Jesse Helms.)
  24. See, for example, Noam Chomsky discussing how non-socialistic the Soviet Union was: [2] [3]
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