US Politics |OT|

[curl-6]

zorg1000 said:

curl-6 said:

Horseshoe theory is definitely a thing in that the far left is every bit as hateful, intolerant, and authoritarian as the right, they just direct it at different groups.

The far left for example are very open about calling for murder, rape, and torture of those who disagree with their opinions about gender, are openly racist towards white and Asian people, (who they label as "white adjacent") openly sexist towards men, openly ageist towards older people, and try to destroy the lives of pretty much anybody who doesn't conform to their beliefs, to the point of trying to get people fired from their jobs or harassing and doxing people for expressing non-left views.

Thankfully, the far left currently holds fewer positions of official power compared to the right, in the US anyway, but they're just as big a threat to society and if they had their way we'd be living in a totalitarian dystopia.

I don’t think what you are describing is horseshoe theory though, basically what you’re saying is that violence & intolerance can exist regardless of where you land on the political spectrum.

It's more that the further you go towards the extremes of both left and right, the more you encounter a lot the same behaviours; bullying, moral absolutism, a hatred of certain groups of people based on sex/gender/ethnicity/etc, a belief that the ends justifies the means and that everyone else must be forced to conform to their ideology, heavy restrictions on what people are allowed to do and say, intolerance of any difference of belief, the use of coercion, ostracization and censorship to silence and punish critics, etc.

That's not to say that the left and right are equivalent of course, that's not what I mean at all, more that extremists of both stripes exhibit a strikingly similar playbook.

Last edited by curl-6 - on 31 March 2024