this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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I’ve learned not to lean into labels - the right seems to be as dangerous to democracy as the far left, as they seem to now embrace the tactics of what we used to consider “leftie” or communism. They want to maintain control and don’t care how they get it.
I’d say theory has been refined in practice.
Edit: And this is why I don’t like labels. You think you know what I said because I wanted to define your label.
Horseshoe Theory has many critics. I personally don’t think of it as elitism in the center and popularism at the ends. That’s not true - neither end is Popularist. These extremes just oppose whatever the democratic status quo is. They want extreme solutions and anyone who tries to moderate is labeled Elitist or Capitulant…both labels deny that most of us live in the center, trying to balance one sides wants with the other.
I reiterate: Labels are a bad idea.
I would add that extremism of any kind will never get full support of most of the population, so whenever they get any kind of power, it leads to the same authoritarian patters, brutal targetting of opposition, elimination of plurality of opinion, all-encompassing propaganda etc.
Extremism leads to structures which are antithetic to freedom, basically.
While they don’t get the same support, because they are so extreme, they get the most attention … in the press, in social media, in the general zeitgeist. They hover above all conversations and pollute downstream goal and choices.
I think it’s only once it gains mindset and traction does the forcers of Democracy kick into gear; the trick is to move democracy forward quickly before traction becomes entrenchment (like the Supreme Court).
Libertarian vs autoritarian. Left vs right.
You're comparing apples to oranges. Both the left and the right can be good. The problem is that people are hungry for power and money. Any system crumbles when the foundations are based on greed and corruption.
I really hate the left vs right fight, it is pointless. Both systems can be good, both systems have flaws, both systems can be exploited, both systems have been exploited in the past... A system isn't going to save you from a corrupted government and corrupted private interests
Libertarianism, IMHO, has always been a sheeps-clothing for Authoritarianism. All it does is break it down to “the wants of the individual overriding society”, but winking & knowing full well it only works when individuals collect and work as a group. Libertarianism === Authoritarianism.
That's just ignoring anarchism and libertarian socialism which is very much anti-authoritarian. That said, in the US libertarianism is pretty bastardized (right-libertarianism) and doesn't reflect what libertarian means around the rest of the world.
Again. Labels are bad. We should call them out for what they are - anti-democratic.
I don't disagree, so long as we're talking about similar distances from center when we say 'far'. At least in the US, people talk about the far right and the far left, except they're really talking about people who are slightly left. US doesn't have far left. Far left is the USSR and other authoritarian communist states (I'm unsure if any of these still exist).
Though honestly I think it just makes more sense to push back against anyone who's too far on the authoritarian scale as I feel like that's mostly what people have a problem. Governments (in my opinion) need to be at least a bit authoritarian in order to enforce laws at all, but a lot of the modern political sphere is pushing hard on overly authoritarian policies in nearly every space and country.
Totally agree.