RationalWiki:Articles for demotion/Horseshoe theory

Horseshoe theory | Result: Promoted to no brainstar, also made significantly problematic

Horseshoe theory (edit|talk|history|protect|delete|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Promote to no brainstar

1. There are just so many problems with this article. First of all is that it has seven uses of "citation needed", which should be unacceptable for bronze let alone silver. Secondly, this article doesn't take a clear stance on whether the horseshoe theory is valid or just false balance, and it needs a general cleanup. Thirdly, the "Anecdata" section is a total mess; some sections just don't belong there, like "Islamists and the Western far-right" (both of these are right-wing groups, so horseshoe theory cannot apply), Anti-Semitic ethno-nationalists and Jewish ethno-nationalists (wow, two groups of ethno-nationalists are both ethno-nationalist), Palestinian nationalists vs the Israeli far-right (same problem, though this section does have a bit of obfuscation between "nationalist" as in thinking your country is the best and "nationalist" as in wanting your group to have a country), there's other problematic sections like "Identity politics on the left and right" (both groups having strong opinions on an issue, even if they are the opposite opinions, is apparently horseshoe theory) and "Immigrants and Nativists" (comparing their economic backgrounds rather than political views). Overall, this article just has a lot of problems and doesn't deserve a brainstar, and honestly, Third positionism and National Bolshevism do a much better job of covering the same topic. Plutocow (talk) 03:02, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
2. Horseshoe theory is considered fringe by actual political scientists for a reason. Vee (talk) 03:10, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
3. The extreme lack of sources (I just discovered some) might qualify this article to be 'significantly problematic' as well. Andrew5 (talk) 16:04, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
4. Plutocow generally got it right.-Flandres (talk) 16:16, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
5. Bongolian (talk) 16:25, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
6. This article is absolutely repugnant. It makes extreme generalizations, commits a number of logical fallacies, and overall is extremely Anti-communist. Horseshoe theory is, as @Vee has corrected noted, not accepted among academia. It really only exists in radical centrist internet circles and as a small part of meme culture. Wisconcom (talk) 23:02, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Goat

• This article was demoted by 5-0 consensus to silver back in December (see RationalWiki:Articles for demotion/Horseshoe theory 2021.) None of them picked up the quality issues and the tags were added afterwards. Andrew5 (talk) 16:06, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
• Post close comment: article was demoted to significantly problematic. Wow, that was a fall from grace (Level 3 to 0). Andrew5 (talk) 21:33, 26 November 2022 (UTC)