Horseshoe Theory

## Relations

> *"All bigots and frauds are brothers under the skin."*
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> -Christopher Hitchens
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The **horseshoe theory**, also known as the horseshoe effect, in political science is a claim that the far-left and far-right are more similar to each other in essentials than either is to the political center.

One possible explanation for the birth of horseshoe theory is the philosophical concept of 'conceptual schemes', also known as 'linguistic schemes' or paradigms. The concept explains how people can have the same method of thinking (conceptual schemes), but still have completely different worldviews, leading to the appearance of a huge similarity to the outside viewer.

## The Short History

Most famously formulated by the French post-postmodernist philosopher Jean Pierre Faye in 1996, he -definitely not being the first, but the most famous- 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.

## The Criticism

The concept of horseshoe theory has been critized in multiple institutions and multiple layers of society, and the supporting evidence seems to be a large collection of exceptional cases without much in the way of theoretical underpinnings. Simon Choat has noted that there is not much convergence between far-left and far-right on political policy and that few voters switch between the far-left and far-right when given the chance in a runoff ballot. Choat has argued that the perpetuation of horseshoe theory "is that it allows those in the centre to discredit the left and right. Historically it has been centrists and liberals - in Spain, Chile, Brazil and in many other countries - who have helped the far-right to power, usually because they would rather have had a fascist in power than a socialist."

### **From extremists**

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 is to claim that few, or none, of the historical communist states are representatives of 'True' (classical Marxist) Communism, which has *nothing* in common with the evil right-wing fascist extremism. One would be mistaken to think that this is an example of the No True Scotsman argument if it weren't for the fact that Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union, described it as 'State Capitalist' (as opposed to Socialist) himself, explaining that State Capitalism was a path to Socialism as proposed in his 1921 New Economic Policy. Leon Trotsky held a similar, more bitter take on the same idea, viewing the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin as a betrayal of 'true' communism and the ideals of the October Revolution.[15] A mirror version of this argument can also be found on the right wing among hardcore libertarians and anarcho-capitalists, who may claim that all historic examples of deregulated capitalism in action (e.g., Galt's Gulch Chile and other libertarian paradises) weren't *true* laissez-faire societies because there was still some degree of state intervention (or merely the existence of a state) that they didn't like.

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. To which is replied that this proves nothing at all, as just because they said, or even believed, that they were left-wing, doesn't mean they were if their actions contradict this. Notably, when in power, Robespierre was just as violent towards those on his left as he was towards those on his right.

### **From non-extremists**

From the other direction, abuse of the horseshoe theory can lead to the balance fallacy and appeals to moderation. This is a problem common among Very Serious People and radical centrists, who, in their desire to avoid slipping into one partisan extreme or another, often have the opposite problem and go out of their way to characterize both sides as being fundamentally crazy, even if one side or the other may very well be clearly in the right in this instance. More cynically, it can be abused by those in power to frame all opposition to their rule as extremist by connecting their more grounded, legitimate critics with the crazies. Also it should be noted that at one point or another throughout history, people who advocated for a lot of the things we take for granted in the modern West (democracy, abolition of slavery, rights for women, religious freedom, etc.) were often derided as extremists and that things that we nowadays frame as extremist (Apartheid, eugenics ,etc.) were considered to be moderate options at the time they were implemented.

Political centrism itself is not immune to radicalism and authoritarianism. As a historical example of this instance we've Napoleon Bonaparte, who in a period between fights of republicans and monarchists proclaimed himself to be the centrist in between the two options and then proceeded to establish a dictatorship (by assuming the role of an executive office with unlimited power) in the name of centrism and moderation, although this is a somewhat odd example since he claimed a syncretic politics that transcended left and right, whereas in the actual French Revolution "centrists" were often considered advocates of a constitutional monarchy. Although after he was exiled and King Louis XVIII became a French monarch, people who demanded a return of the Napoleonic empire were considered far-centrist.

Also, as the horseshoe theory relies on the mainstream left-right political spectrum, it runs the risk of over-simplifying political ideologies. One leading argument against a linear political spectrum is that it appears to have no place for ideologies which are less authoritarian than the political center, and as such, there exist alternative systems to delineate political ideologies, such as the Political Compass, the Nolan chart, and assorted surveys and quizzes with even more detailed analyses. For European parties, there exists a three-way system of free-loving vs. authoritarian, left economic vs. right economic, and pro-EU v anti-EU, which allows for eight quadrants — and there are parties at all quadrants. Furthermore, our conceptions of left-wing and right-wing, with "liberal capitalism" being the political center, are largely derived from a modern, Western take of politics. In countries such as China, for instance, the political center is dominated by reformist Communists, while in Russia the center is defined by Vladimir Putin's brand of nationalist politics.

Likewise, extremists themselves tend to have their own warped versions of the horseshoe theory, seeing extremists on the other side as having more in common with (if not mere tools of) the political mainstream than with them, and condemning them both. The definition between "mainstream" and "extremist" depends on perspective and background. On the far left, it is common to see fascism described as the logical end point of capitalism, the point where the bourgeoisie dispenses with the pretense of democracy and embraces nationalism and bigotry in order to more effectively cling to power and stave off the threat of a rising proletariat. On the far right, meanwhile, it is common to see capitalism and Marxism described as two sides of the same coin, both modernist economic systems that subjugate traditional values, religion, and community/ethnic/racial bonds and leave an atomized mass of people ruled by an atheistic, materialistic elite. When it comes to gender similar observations can also be made, as TERFs see trans people, sex worker,s and MRA's as part of an ant-ifeminist agenda undermining women's emancipation by proposing laws transgressing the autonomy of women while MRA's see feminists and transgender people/queer theorists as people who want to facilitate existing structures of male exploitation. During the Cold War, centrist liberal politicians in the United States and Europe also had histories of propping up and colluding with far-right governments in order to stop the rise of socialist ones, although before the Cold War peaked during the Cuban Missile Crisis, those same liberal politicians also funded several groups within the ant-icommunist left to overthrow fascist dictators who were hostile to the US.

Likewise, just because there are similarities between groups doesn't mean they are *exactly* the same. One example of this is that, while both fascists and communists claimed to adhere to revolutionary economic agendas and used authoritarianism to carry them out, fascist states largely protected the existing elites and gave them some leniency in what they were allowed to build and sell (so long as it didn't stand in the way of growing the military), while communist states overthrew the existing elites altogether (setting up new ones instead) and attempted to exert more direct control over the economy.

Not all members of all groups are also perfect examples of such an overlap. Eurocommunism is considered to be a communist ideology, but the adherents favor democracy over dictatorship and rejected the authoritarian policies of the Soviet Union.

Scientific research also suggest that Democrats and Republicans have a different brain structure. Although it has been suggested that American Republicans and Russian Communists have a similar brain, if we start to put a Democrat brain on the left and a Republican brain on the right it is rather difficult to justify that the sum of all processes in a far-left brain and that of a far-right brain lead to the same outcome in ideas and thoughts. It's very likely that those brains are different, but that political ideas can be acquired by both.

## Ties to the Centricide

In the Centricide series produced by Jreg, horseshoe theory is the womb and power source of the Horseshoe Centrist, who comically calls everything the same.

See Horseshoe Centrist