The horse shoe theory - slightly different way to visualize political alignment

[woolfe9998]

To me, political extremism means being rigid in one's belief and unable to accept disagreement, which ultimately in practice means authoritarianism. It isn't really about the political stances. Even a "centrist" - one whose stance on issues is in between right and left - can be an extremist, if they are intolerant of diverging opinions and willing to use coercion to enforce their own views. The spectrum of beliefs on political issues is really a separate thing.

Even partisanship isn't directly related to "extreme" views. Some people who are relatively moderate in their views are quite partisan. There are a few right here on P&N who fit that description. I suppose it's also possible for people with more "extreme" views on issues to not be that partisan. Hatred of the opposing group and unwillingness to compromise (i.e. partisanship) usually track to extremity of views on issues, but not precisely.

 

[mikeymikec]

Trying to put authoritarism on the same sliding scale as economic and social perspective is like comparing apples to elephants: There's no reason why a political centrist couldn't be a hard-line authoritarian or the opposite, at least in some respects. The same applies to anyone on any level of such a spectrum.

The level of authoritarianism comes down to what a leader is willing to do to bring about their idea of an ideal society, or at the very least what they're willing to do to stop those who seemingly are attempting to subvert that idea. It's not about the idea itself.

- edit - come to think of it, tying together economic and social perspectives is just as silly. While I would agree that there are some common correlations between the three, there's no reason why one couldn't have a person who doesn't believe in capitalism or property and who wants to kick out all the non-whites and is willing to use all or no means of force to achieve any of those three

 

[Cozarkian]

Don't forget that the Nazis outlawed labor unions, and jailed socialists.

But Hitler demanded equal rights for all citizens (before gassing socialists, gypsies, jews, homosexuals)!

You missed the part where citizens was defined as Germans. Which was of course then twisted to a "true German" fallacy, so anyone disagreeing wasn't a true German and therefore wasn't a citizen and was not entitled to equal (or any) rights.

 

[agent00f]

I think a good example would be Stalin and Hitler. Communism represents an ultra-left ideology and Nazism an ultra-right one. (no conservatives, Nazism was not leftist) When put next to each other, were Hitler and Stalin really that different? I don't think so.

The "left" ie western liberalism is generally defined as fulfillment of enlightenment trends. "Socialism" or such is pretty arguably leftist, but it's also pretty questionable how socialist or such stalin et al was. Modern western states are unquestionably more socially liberal than the soviet bloc, and not hard to argue for econ, too, in terms of individual ownership of production means.

The crux of any confusion on the topic stems from what methods might work towards some political goal. Old time degenerates of course favor royalty like their birther king to preside over the land. That seems to me rather different than democratically elected leaders with term limits, etc. A basis of hegelian history was that humans gradually become enlightened enough to progress onto various phases of development. "Gradually" in this case takes a very long view, and even I have to admit our relative degens today are relatively progressed compared to their last century counterparts.

 

[agent00f]

To me, political extremism means being rigid in one's belief and unable to accept disagreement, which ultimately in practice means authoritarianism. It isn't really about the political stances. Even a "centrist" - one whose stance on issues is in between right and left - can be an extremist, if they are intolerant of diverging opinions and willing to use coercion to enforce their own views. The spectrum of beliefs on political issues is really a separate thing.

Even partisanship isn't directly related to "extreme" views. Some people who are relatively moderate in their views are quite partisan. There are a few right here on P&N who fit that description. I suppose it's also possible for people with more "extreme" views on issues to not be that partisan. Hatred of the opposing group and unwillingness to compromise (i.e. partisanship) usually track to extremity of views on issues, but not precisely.

Personally I'm quite rigid in the belief that 2+2=4 along with many other factual/objective matters. There are quite a few here who are reliably on the other side of such issues and not fans of education in general, plus those rather tolerant of them for whatever reason.

You're saying there isn't people on the far left advocating for a powerful state??

A "powerful state" is just a means to get things done, in the same way that an effective CEO might. Of course smart people some time back realized the drawbacks of this which resulted in numerous mechanisms to ensure such means are used responsibly when possible. People who don't want anything done are naturally opposed to any of this.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

The problem with the horseshoe or any such representation is that it not topologically complex enough to represent the variables within ideologies. We have left and right and within those we have authoritarians and liberals, but on the left and right we have what I call the civil obedients and those with anarchist tendencies.- Antifa and Sovereign Citizens for example. There's more than left and right and I think we need something more perhaps corresponding to more complex 3D space, like a color volume. Decidedly more complicated but would allow for more complete inclusion of relevant terms.