Is there any truth to Horseshoe theory?

[Commander Keen]

It's only true insofar as the arbitrary left right spectrum ends at two different forms of authoritarianism. Police states will tend to resemble each other in function regardless of their ideology of origin. Otherwise it's just a bunch of fallacy of the golden middle crap.

The left vs. the right is a terrible way of describing politics and I wish it would go away.

It won’t unless you radically alter the way we measure political ideology. Every graph, scale, any sort of image describing politics uses the left-right method.

People are tribal, we want to be part of a group. Saying you lean left or right helps you identify with others who feel similarly. If we took all that away and started concretely defining just what exactly we are, a lot of people would be alienated since we would lose our membership on the “team”.

People already are a bit too intense, imagine is everyone developed a flag or polandball for their ideology and paraded it around all the time. It’s bad enough dealing with the handful of people who do it already, I don’t wanna live in a world where everyone does it.

 

[Flying_with_the_Penguins]

Extremists on either end of the spectrum are broken human beings who are too autistic to realize that not everyone thinks exactly the way they do. In that sense horseshoe theory could apply not in terms of ideology, but as a personality type which might be prone to extremism and a refusal to see any other legitimate point of view.

 

[spurger king]

I don't think it's a useful idea really, it's just that different groups of people want the same thing, just for different reasons. White nationalists are very good about not culturally appropriating stuff (except anime).

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

I don't think it's a useful idea really, it's just that different groups of people want the same thing, just for different reasons. White nationalists are very good about not culturally appropriating stuff (except anime).

But you see the glorious Nipponese peoples are the Aryans of the East so

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

Human nature is just a garden variety of extremes on both sides of various playgrounds.

I can't think of one following to any ideology that doesn't have an extreme, even fringe cliques that barely represent the core value per ideology.

Edit for context:

Obviously apologist cliques and taboo organizations are circular-structured, such as socialists and cannibal tribes, just two examples, to a sane and self-aware person there's no horseshoe, just circles of evil.

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

I can't think of one following to any ideology that doesn't have an extreme, even fringe cliques that barely represent the core value per ideology.

Ancaps may be crazy but they're pretty internally consistent.