One of the Best Things I've Cribbed from this Sub

[u/GhostWriterJ94]

Thanks to this user! I felt like this might bring a lil chuckle to these shittastic times 🤣

[u/SensationalSaturdays]

Seriously though the problem with Horshoe Theory is that it only looks at actions and not the context behind them.

If you only view actions then punching a fascist and punching anti fascist are the same thing. But once you include the context then it becomes punching a Nazi vs punching someone who stands up to Nazis. And those two things could not be more different. 

[u/Comptenterry → u/SensationalSaturdays]

That's pretty much how all centrists operate. The BLM protests are the same as Jan 6, questioning our understanding of gender is the same as vaccine denial, and affirmative action is the same as segregation. If centrists don't throw all context behind those stances out a window then they lose the precious moral high ground that makes them feel better than everyone else.

[u/paintsmith → u/Comptenterry]

I believe David Graeber best described the dilemma of modern centrism. The unearned feeling of having the moral high ground is the central organizing principle of centrists. They aestheticize their politics by telling themselves that they are the only grown up mature thinkers grounded in reality. They hate the left not only because we challenge their power, but more because nothing offends centrists quite like being outflanked on a moral issue.

What they're really doing is operating from the assumption that the best way to do things is to compromise and carve out caveats on all fronts because they feel that this is both fair (lol) and because most of these compromises benefit traditional power structures, allowing the upper middle and upper classes to keep their money and power while making token efforts towards progressive ideals to placate the masses. They have no firm ideology or larger political project. Just short game tacticking that will be outmaneuvered by any ideology willing to game out a long term strategy.

[u/SkirtNo6785 → u/SensationalSaturdays]

TL:DR - It is silly to try and reduce political philosophy to a one or two dimensional model.

Horseshoe theory makes some sense if you look at something like the political compass, which uses an X and Y axis, rather than simply an X axis. Something like Stalinism sits on the authoritarian left, while fascism sits on the authoritarian right, so on the compass, if you draw a line between them that runs through the very centre of the compass, it creates a U shape.

As opposed to something like anarcho-syndicalism which sits on the libertarian left and shares zero qualities with fascism, so the horseshoe idea doesn’t work.

But the idea of trying to fit ideology onto a one or two dimensional chart is ridiculous in the first place. Political, social and economic philosophy is far too complex to reduce to such simplistic representations.

I’d also argue that shoehorning yourself into one political ideology is also dangerous, as it causes inflexible thinking and in inability to engage critically with what’s actually going on around you.

[u/corbyns_lawyer → u/SkirtNo6785]

Follow this guru to a mountaintop hideout and await the ATF.

[u/PracticalReception34 → u/SensationalSaturdays]

Which context?

[u/strawberrysoup99]

You go left enough you get your guns back is all I know. I'm not a political theosophilosophist.

[u/Makal → u/strawberrysoup99]

You also go far enough left and you get chemtrails, anti-vaxx, lizard people, etc.

My ex-wife's family was 24/7 Rush Limbaugh small town Midwest, and they bonded with crystal healing, anti-vax, and anti-fluoride shit with my leftist West coast hippy family.

I've seen it in action. Plus, as was touched on the Celestial Seasonings episodes - you go far enough hippy and you're right back to eugenics and anti-Semitism.

[u/strawberrysoup99 → u/Makal]

Why do you think I am reverse-engineering the Jewish Space Laser?

[u/TitanDarwin → u/Makal]

Antivaxx esoteric bullshit is the real Querfront.

[u/Garethx1]

I thought it meant centrists were bottoms.

[u/UNC_Samurai]

I’ve come to believe the theory is partially correct. People who are anti-establishment but haven’t put any thought into why they hate the establishment are susceptible to bad-faith actors pulling them from leftish to far-right positions. Rather than describing similarities between extreme ends of the political spectrum, it describes the ability to weaponize discontent.

[u/Pneumatrap → u/UNC_Samurai]

There are also some similarities of a more incidental nature, like accelerationists enabling fascists, making the difference between them largely semantic.

[u/codyashi_maru → u/UNC_Samurai]

Exactly. To steal from Doppelgänger by Naomi Klein, they get the feelings right but the reasons wrong.

[u/RabidTurtl]

Thanks u/ShinStew for that definition of horseshoe theory.

[u/big_guyforyou → u/RabidTurtl]

i bet sophie wants to hit robert with a horseshoe after he goes on another kratom-induced rant about how democrats are just as bad as republicans

[u/Spiritual_Theme_3455]

This is the way

[u/oliversurpless]

When the figurative becomes literal!

[u/Hollowassasin11]

4 stars go home to your mother tell her you’re brilliant

[u/GhostWriterJ94 → u/Hollowassasin11]

A fellow Technocrat, I see 😎

[u/Delmarvablacksmith]

Right up there with “Brickin” theory

[u/GhostWriterJ94 → u/Delmarvablacksmith]

I have that t-shirt!

[u/Effective_Trouble_69]

Pro tip, a nylon rope tied through one the nail holes in the horseshoe allows to hit a whole bunch of horseshoe theorists

[u/ZZartin]

How many points if you hook it around their esophagus?

[u/Disastrous-Beat-9830]

All of my classes have nicknames. It's usually some riff on my surname or a pop culture reference.

I'd be lying if I said I hadn't tried to find a way to one of my classes as The Peppers.

[u/Loud_Cartographer160]

Beautiful.

[u/ThurloWeed]

The "center" is in fact, its own extreme