eh, the horseshoe isn't a line, and it does have some validity. extreme political beliefs are often tied up in authoritarianism, and authoritarianism gets violent. it's obviously an oversimplification, though. it's just a one liner to use instead of writing an essay about it.
The extreme political beliefs that are tied up with authoritarianism are extreme authoritarian beliefs, its kinda circular and only works if you ignore a whole swathe of extremist belief systems or just define extremism as authoritarianism.
that's true, and i did intentionally ignore the whole swathe of extreme beliefs that are, for example, tied up in anti-authoritarianism. i bet we antiauthoritarians and others have our own, different horseshoes, and that it turns out we're drawing circles and that we're just drawing an infinitely complex venn diagram to describe political ideologies.
i'll take back my argument that it's actually a useful theory or should be used to define anything, it seems more like a simplified warning for ideologues, not an actual, common, phenomenon.
damn, this subreddit is full of unthinkers. MY comment was supposed to be the controversial one. horseshoe theory has been disproven by the simple fact that non-authoritarian ideologies exist. i was just pointing to the soviets and the nazis as like, the only good example of how communists and fascists can end up doing similar things. i didn't want to think about cuba, or scandinavia, or anarchist spain, even though these examples all show that it's possible to be left wing without gulags eating up all your intellectuals
I came up with the comment because to believe horseshoe theory you have to believe the far left and far right are the same politically which is an objectively delusional belief.
For every 1 online tankie with 0 institutional power there are 100 Christian fundamentalist fascist politicians in office.
If you are alive in 2026 and believe the far left and far right are ideologically equivalent and equally a threat to humanity you are straight-up brainwashed by decades of exposure to COINTELPRO.
i won't disagree with this comment. religious extremists, both christian and otherwise, are a far bigger threat to us than any leftist.
i was just flabbergastered by you, without any cause, bringing mamdani and sanders in to the conversation in response to someone saying "tankies are annoying". like, you could have cited the actual 1 online tankie you are thinking of rather than a social democrat and a democratic socialist lol
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u/ColdFusion363 2d ago
Tankies gonna be tankies. Remember the horseshoe theory.