I used to love this pithy quote but reflecting on it more recently this doesn't seem like something limited to fascists or fascism. Indeed, this kind of thinking is used by those of any political leaning when ideology becomes more important than principles. An obvious example is the USSR.
Authoritarianism is the umbrella term describing the behaviour of both fascist states and various others. AFAIK all fascist states have been authoritarian - but it’s a common outcome anytime the people running the government are replaced en masse.
Good point, and much harder to challenge. If the majority is against an authoritarian there's protests and sabotage of social structures. If the majority oppresses a fringe group, it's often socially encouraged
For these reasons, I personally believe authoritarianism cannot be opposed without a solid foundation of individualism. The problem becomes that explaining ideological nuance is rarely politically expedient or even rhetorically effective. Appeals to collectivism are more easily digested by the masses.
that's kind of what the USA is going through right now but it's more aptly described as "tyranny of the plurality" because Trump didn't win either majority of of registered voters or majority of the actual vote.
Regardless of tiresome partisan hyperbole, I don't regard the substance of this administration's actions as any more authoritarian the previous or the status quo. In the specific instances where state power has been expanded, I regard it as part of the general trend of expansion. The trend is more indicative of the overall incentives and structure of governance, rather than specific political actors. Similarly, partisan recriminations fit with the same pattern.
This is a great example of the horseshoe theory of politics [0], which I believe in very strongly. I made a separate post if anyone cares to discuss it. [1]
It’s based on the flawed assumption that politics can or should be understood on a single axis. It can’t and shouldn’t be. That heuristic is wrong.
If viewed on a 2d axis, the “cohorts that appear similar” on the ends of the horseshoe are still on opposing ends of one of the axes, despite being near each other on another axis.
Horseshoe theory has always read like a Pythagorean epicycle to me, an attempt to redeem a broken model. For a reductive political model, I prefer the 2 dimensional Collectivist-Individualist, Authoritarian-Libertarian axes. No need to literally contort the outdated Left-Right spectrum.
An added benefit is you get to avoid annoying semantic battles such as whether Nazis or Fascists are Right wing or Left wing.
Plus you get to add other axes as needed. My favorite, perhaps relevant today, is principled vs. expedient: do we apply principles like this "Rights" stuff impartially, even to people with whom we disagree, or do we just git 'r done?
To me, the horshoe theory is just a step in the right direction. It shows the limits of a straight 1D line to describe politics, and is a stepping-off point for deeper exploration.
Ideally, maybe we would describe a person's politics with something like a tensor, where each value is the person's support of a specific policy.
Hmm. I guess I feel that "The Horseshoe Theory" is worse than useless. It implies that as someone gets "too much" Right or Left, they inevitably become authoritarian, as if centrists cannot be authoritarian. It equates "weirdness" with "bad". I'd argue that we should skip straight to identifying "authoritarianism" as the problem, and the not having weird or even extreme leftist or rightist ideas.
Absolutely. See "the only moral abortion is my abortion".
Republicans can play all sorts of games because their mistresses will always be able to get an abortion on the DL without consequence, while "single black mom? 25 to life for murder!"
