- Centrism's biggest fan. Domestication of the wild horse is thought to have taken
place in Central Asia around 3500 B.C. As they became more commonplace, working animals were exposed to conditions that broke down or quickly
wore through their hooves. And so we developed a
solution, the horseshoe, a piece of metal we attached
to the feet of horses. (burps) Also, it's somehow taken seriously as centrist political theory. (ambient electronic music) The horseshoe theory
is political framework that proposes the far
left and the far right, rather than occupy opposing
ends of the political spectrum, get further away at first, but then bend back closer to each other, much like the ends of a horseshoe. This theory is obviously
correct because America. How exactly do think we
settled this country? You think we road pigs
across the frontier? Nah. Pigs is food. That's why we use horses, which taste very bad
when compared to pigs. Horseshoe theory is attributed to French writer Jean-Pierre Faye, whose name translates
from French to English as status quo guy and serves pretty much as the full justification for centrism. Centrism, you know, rationality. Being smart and
understanding that directly between two sides of an argument there is most certainly the truth. Somewhere in the middle is the truth. That's the truth. Everything that's outside the
center is extreme and evil. (gurgles) Boy, this country's gotten so polarized. Everybody says agreeing with each other about how everything should be. (moans) I know that my personal truth
lies somewhere in the middle. If I had to guess, I'd say that I think you
probably understand pretty well that I think that stuff has
been jammed into our heads our entire lives and it's not that valid. To talk about centrism, I want to bring up thought leaders. This is something that
I think in the abstract bothers a lot of people, but most of us lack
the language to explain what's really just so
grating about the idea of a thought leader. More and more lately, you see people lamenting the fact that expertise is viewed with suspicion. How dare you question the experts? But in the same breath they'll criticize The New York Times for
hiring a climate denier to write about climate change. Let's make a quick distinction. Thought leadership is not expertise. It's lifestyle marketing
made to look like expertise. Expertise is specialized knowledge. It is not charisma. It also can't sell a product
line or an agenda on its own. Expertise has been conflated with the neo-liberal concept
of thought leadership. Thought leadership is TL;DR
level quote-unquote "expertise" paired with the willingness to
accept corporate sponsorship. We need to make facts
fun in order for people to pay attention to them is a gateway to but we have to have native content written by thought leaders. Experts talk about their (whip whacking) specialized knowledge. Thought leaders make facts fun and accept money to push
products and agendas. Thought leaders are the human version of an advertisement
tailored to make you feel as though you are making the right choice. Thought leadership works to
validate the thought leader as well as the people following them. I like to call this a validation gang because everybody likes to
consider themselves a leader as opposed to a member of a collective, but they all need that validation within this supposed meritocracy, because that's how you
get and keep a job, right? Being an expert and a
thought leader is looked at as the same thing as an expert now? Yeah, you get it. When discourse, the creation
and implementation of ideas have been marketized, the marketplace of ideas
needs salespeople of ideas. Thought leaders are the
salespeople of ideas. Now markets are all pretty
much manipulated in some way, so let's take that a step further. Since the marketplace of ideas is awash with plutocrat cash, it can be very difficult to stand out. And in my own opinion, that's pretty much the point
of being a thought leader, the standing out, the wish to be a leading
voice within thought. In many ways, it's a savior complex, but it's also a business tactic. If you stand out, the rich will want you on their side, which of course there are benefits to. The rich have access to the media and the media is how you get attention, and I've said it before
but I'll say it again, attention is currency in
the marketplace of ideas. Attention. Attention is what I'd like to assert is the functional currency
in the marketplace of ideas. Not practicality, not useful application, not wholesale validity, but how engaged people
are and for how long. Simply having a unique outlook
and a brand that goes with it has become increasingly profitable. The thought leader is more
of a marketing gimmick than a philosopher, and that's why every thought leader is eventually funded in some
way by a corporate source, whether it be sponsored native content that reads like an article but is actually an ad for something, or they're hired in as a consultant or get a job with a think tank that acts as an intermediate between a corporation and a politician. You know, a lot of profitable positions a single person can be
in that they benefit from and look really cool and smart and great, get to go on talk shows
and sell their books and feel really important, and I'm definitely not
parodying them at all with the title Very
Important Documentaries. No, that's not the whole
idea or anything like that. This class of paid-for intellectual typically espouses a centrist viewpoint. Why? Well, people generally believe in freedom. Freedom is not any specific ideology. It is simply the rejection of control by another entity on oneself. So in a free society, how is it justified that
massive corporations somehow are allowed to
hoard wealth and resources in an effort to retain
control over the populace? To do that, we could
frame things like this. Too much freedom is bad, which is not wrong. If you were allowed to kill
people because you wanted to, that would be bad. And corporate totalitarianism is also bad, which I don't even really think
I have to explain that one. That makes sense all on its own. So these two things are our two choices, but neither of them is
really good on its own, so maybe if we look
somewhere in the middle we'll find the answer? Then we just wrap these both around because we think they're both bad, and voila, a horseshoe. Centrism is an outlook
that supports the balance of a degree of social equality with a degree of social hierarchy. This is essentially an expression of ancient Greek philosophy
that originated with Aristotle called the golden mean. Here's an example. Aristotle called courage a virtue, but if you had too much courage, you'd be a reckless jerk, and if you had too little, you would be a weeping, bumbling coward who lurks in the shadows
for fear of being found and sustains themselves
on the crumbs of society, for they have no backbone. But the big problem there
is that it is an argument that does not prove its own assertions, a logical fallacy. This one specifically is known
as the golden mean fallacy, or the argument to moderation. The truth doesn't have to be found as a compromise between
two opposite positions. The opposite of Nazi is not Nazi, so the golden mean or the
argument to moderation is kinda Nazi, I guess? And I don't really see
how you could kinda Nazi, like, I don't get it. What, do you give the
Jews a little bit of gas? Like, don't put the pedal
all the way to the floor? I mean, that's bullshit in itself, but eventually the Nazi
version of Sammy Hagar is gonna show up and be
like, I can't drive 55. This kind of argument
isn't typically looked at as a bad thing. In fact, it's pretty much how they try to get Americans to think. And don't you dare tell me that everything doesn't encourage you to find the middle. From your kindergarten teacher
to the South Park guys, it's all about finding the right answer somewhere in the center. Everybody who's outside
the center is an extremist. In order to figure out where they stand, centrists capitulate
with the Overton window. The Overton window is essentially
a descriptive spectrum of the range of ideas
the public will accept. However far to the left
or the right we've gotten and depending on how much
space in between them, you find your center. And where you find your center, you find your centrists. (whistling) You know, those brilliant thought leaders who don't see in black and white, but instead in shades of gray. Being a centrist is the
equivalent of saying I don't think anything needs to change. I'm good. I've got what I need. If we do stuff that goes off
to the left or to the right, things are gonna change for me, and I don't like that. Thus the incentive to paint
anyone out of the center as an extremist makes itself obvious. If intelligent, well-spoken thinkers are able to express their opinions that ultimately endanger my position, you know, reduce my
ability to appear unique, remove my foot in the door
from the corporate hierarchy, well, they may cut off my cash
flow and I don't want that. I want things to stay the same. I am an expert right now. I am respected right now. I am looked to. I am asked questions. My opinion matters. It drives the world, in fact. I am perpetually correct, and the conditions that exist
right now allow me to be that. There's a certain
vulnerability to centrism, and I kind of think I understand it. See, centrists always feel
like right now is their time, and nobody ever wants
their time to be over. But it is. ♫ It's done ♫ The party is done ♫ It's over and done ♫ The panic is done ♫ The politics done ♫ Hypocrisy done ♫ The party is done - So you may noticed that I am not exactly centrism's biggest fan in the world, and I can give you a pretty
simple explanation as to why. You see, centrists defend
centrism with crap like this. Now I'm gonna go at it and say this is probably the worst one I've seen that is still somewhat
mainstream acceptable, at least among centrists. In the center we see liberalism, which I would like to note is neither automatically socially progressive
or socially regressive. Secularism, which doesn't
really mean anything regarding beliefs. It's just kept out of the discourse. Classic feminism and equality. Now, all of these things are conflated with science and accuracy, I guess. The implicit stance taken
by including accuracy in a region of the horseshoe is that the other regions of the horseshoe don't have accuracy. So the statement being made in the subtext is kind of obviously the correct
thing to be is a centrist, and if you aren't a centrist, then accuracy, science, equality, and all these things aren't
really a big concern of yours. So let's just head to the far right. The first thing I want to point out is that Islamism has somehow made it to the right of fascism. Here's the problem. Islam is a religion and I don't believe in
it or agree with it, but if Islam acts anything like fascism, then it's fascism. It's not Islamism. Fascism is fascism. That's how that works. And I'm not going to say that entirely buy that Islam or Christianity are religions of peace themselves, but the vast majority of
normal religious people tend to specifically know
the peaceful teachings of the religion they follow and that's the reason they follow them. But let's also just say this. If anybody ever does
use the word Islamism, it's basically guaranteed to be ignorant. So as we move to the left, we have fascism and nationalism, which are really two
sides of the same coin. You can't do fascism without a scapegoat, and that scapegoat is
immigrants 99.9% of the time. And if you want a democratic society but just for your race or nationality, you're a fascist. Male chauvinism somehow between nationalism and conservatism. Once you get to conservatism, there's no male chauvinism at all. That's the border for that. Stops there. To the left of conservatism
is Catholicism, which is somehow further
right than corporatism, but absolutely nowhere near Islamism. Climate change denial is also tucked away between two labels, right and far right, so you don't really notice it, but it's there. Quickly peering over to the exact opposite on the other side, climate change denial is the opposite of anti-vaccine sentiment, apparently. That's news, huh? Directly to the left
of center is hedonism, which to me seems like a
very strange thing to place at the very beginning of your
journey towards the left, hedonism being the pursuit of pleasure, or at its most complex, an ethical theory that
pleasure is the highest good and the thing that you
should strive to attain while alive on this planet because, well, that's what matters. That's not really a political ideology. As if every step you take left is more and more pleasure-seeking. It's not about solving
the problems of inequality inherent to our economic
and social systems. It's about getting off. And I'm not pointing this out to discredit people who seek
pleasure as a high ideal. If a society is truly free, obviously people should
be allowed to do that. But the point here is to hand wave away all leftist ideology as just some folks looking for their jollies. Next is altruism, which is, you know, the belief that selfless concern is important in the world, not a political ideology. Environmentalism coming next, which is a category of political concern and not an ideology all to itself, and then at the absolute
furthest from conservatism is socialism, the first ideology
actually mentioned here, at least on the left. Feminism, which is up in the
center as classic feminism, is, I mean, a left-wing ideology. But after we get past postmodernism, which is a philosophical
approach or methodology, again, not political ideology, we get to our second
actual left-wing ideology, third wave feminism, which classical feminism
and third wave feminism are apparently different
things to a centrist. Classical feminism is in the past and therefore unlikely to change anything, being it's already made the changes that it set out to do. Women can vote, for instance. That was a big part in classical feminism. The reason there is still feminism today, though, is because there are still things that need to be done regarding
actual equality for women and also feminism has also
been historically centered on, well, white women, cis white women. There's a reason why
people say white feminism. It's the same reason why
people say white liberal. In a system like capitalism
that intentionally exacerbates the inequalities between
various groups of people, you can be a nice,
rational, friendly centrist, but because those scary extremists
on the left and the right are always shaking up your world, it might be just a little bit too hard to bring yourself to fight
for anyone else's rights. You've got yours, right? Good stuff. - Being friendly and being a friend, I think, are two different things. I think there are many whites who act friendly toward Negros. A fox acts friendly toward the lamb. The wolf doesn't act friendly, and therefore the wolf has more difficulty in getting the lamb chop. - So anyway, postmodernism,
anti-vaccine sentiment, and third wave feminism are
all basically the same thing, and then we have communism, which is more hedonistic, more altruistic, more environmentalistic, more anti-vaccinationistic, more postmodernismistic, more third wave feminismistic
than all that stuff. But since it's the opposite of fascism and fascism is not the extreme, obviously Islamism needs
to have its counterpart, and that is anarchism, which just makes no sense whatsoever as something that is
somehow close to Islamism. Anarchism is real and political ideology, while Islamism, like I said, is not real, not political ideology, and it's just kind of a roundabout way of demonizing a specific
religion, but nyeh. Somebody who believes
in a political horseshoe and believes that the
center is somehow the ideal, which are two things that
make up a Venn diagram that is simply one circle, somebody sat in that area politically believes that only the middle is accurate. Only right now is accurate. Only the status quo is accurate. Everything else has to be inaccurate. That means pre-civil
rights was inaccurate, but so is BLM. People seeking to change
things are inaccurate, and therefore people fighting for their rights are inaccurate. This is how centrists, whether they are kind or
nice to marginalized people, are at least accidentally
aligned with bigotry, because bigotry hasn't been beaten and beating bigotry would require ideology that is out of the center, and so therefore it is inaccurate. And in the perceived meritocracy of the United States of America, being wrong is bad. But centrists, oh, they're accurate. Compromise, that's how we
stopped the Nazis, right? (nervous laughing) Not really. And you might be thinking to yourself, wait, so they want the status quo, but they capitulate around an
ever-changing Overton window. This is an inherent contradiction. Something's up here. You're right. The problem with doing everything you can to preserve the status
quo is that it will always slide into regression. Whether consciously or subconsciously attempting to preserve the status quo, one is fighting progress. In doing so, it lays groundwork for those that fight
progress a little bit harder. In order for those extra-smart centrists to be right about everything, the positions and
approaches of the opposites at the end of the spectrum
would have to have quite a bit of overlap to be
considered similar overall. So let's talk about several categories of political concern and
the positions and approaches that the far left and right take. Leftist ideals typically attempt
to redistribute the wealth in order to create generalized welfare. Now Nazi Germany, a
far-right totalitarian regime on the absolute end of
any legitimate spectrum, had social programs as well, but these programs were built
on the theft of property through military annexation
as well as seizure of Jewish property in Germany and was meant exclusively
for German-born Anglo-Saxons. Jews were routinely denied
access to these programs because they were Jews, and the Nazis and Jews, you know. Leftist social programs are intended to be available for all people and are funded through
progressive taxation or collective ownership. National Socialism, or Nazism, was not socialism. It was simply just
ethnonationalist superiority distributing wealth. It's important to note
that National Socialism is not socialism, it's fascism. They intentionally create underclasses, that is to say, people who do not have the same rights and privileges as other people. The whole point of every
single leftist ideology, communism and its various
approaches to get there, such as socialism and anarchism, exist specifically in
resistance to the idea of class, and if communism was
actually fully achieved, it also wouldn't have a state. On the issues of equality, far-right regimes typically
regard the situation that we're already in as one
that has gotten out of hand. People of far-right ideology want to regress in social issues, whereas economically progressive positions are designed to work with
socially progressive ones. If all of the people are
not explicitly included, then it automatically
trends towards the right because it is a superiority situation as opposed to a legitimately
egalitarian one. Now on healthcare is when we start to get into an interesting area. The left-wing position on healthcare is that all people should have healthcare, whereas the centrist position is some should have healthcare
if they can pay for it, which is kinda eugenic-sy. And on the far right you
have specifically approved as biologically superior
people getting healthcare, which is, you know, very eugenics-sy. On the issue of environmentalism, let's bring the Nazis up again. They actually were
somewhere environmentalist, but it's not good. Nazi environmentalism
was rooted in the idea that the traditionalist, and keep in mind
traditionalist is the key word, farm life was viewed as good because the modern life
was, quote-unquote, "the results of Jews owning banks." So it's not like they were funneling money into solar panel development
or something like that. They just used the earth as another way to demonize Jewish people. Leftist environmentalism
is rooted in science, which is essentially the
opposite of traditionalism, and finally, ideologically
the far left and the far right could be literally no more
different on the issue of labor. Fascism subjugates labor
and Nazis eliminated labor unions and encouraged businesses who were quote-unquote
"down for the cause" to become monopolies,
cartels, and oligopolies, and they did this by removing regulations and even funding these companies as long as they were willing to, you know, do the Nazi. On the other side, left-wing ideologies such as communism, anarchism, socialism,
and everything in between all have different ways
and means of doing it, but the intent is to
ensure that the worker owns the means of production
and therefore their labor. I'm sure somebody out there is thinking, but the USSR. But China. But Venezuela. Well, it's quite possible
to call yourself communist but really be totalitarian regime bent on exploiting labor
for your own profit. What you call yourself
doesn't really matter if you're not doing it. And to be totally frank, these regimes are not represented properly by basically anybody in the United States, so the stuff I just said
doesn't even really matter. The point is entirely of perspective, and for a centrist, the perspective is constantly shifting. What is considered
acceptable by the public is an ever-changing thing. At one point in time, this meant finding the center
between blacks can vote and blacks can't vote, and obviously that puts the centrist siding on a platform where
black people can kind of vote? That's a false middle. That's not a valid choice, I mean, unless you're terrible. And see, here's the thing. There might be some similarities between both the left and right, but that doesn't actually mean anything. Here's a crowd. Here's another crowd. Both groups of people in one place. Same thing obviously, right? Wrong. An issue can be taken on by
both the left and the right, even systemic ideas, but the approach is always
invariably different. If you employed full-blown
communism for white people, for instance, it's not communism because it's the establishment of class. There is a class that gets the privilege of participating in that
so-called communism. Everybody else, whether
they be people of color or just people of a
nationality that is not the nationality of the country, are an underclass and
essentially that negates the idea that was put forward. If a socialist idea doesn't
actually help everybody, it's not actually socialist. It might mechanically be vaguely similar to socialism in some respects, however, the exclusion of some people, the creation of an underclass, automatically implies totalitarianism, because those people are
going to be exploited in service of the upper class. So in that respect, horseshoe theory gets kind of close? But close only matters in
horseshoes and hand grenades. Antifascism is not the
same thing as fascism, and as much as media outlets love publishing narratives
that act as though each one of these incidents is
one singular individual act, these events aren't just
things that happen randomly, totally unrelated. If you go back, you can find repeated incidents of the right being
violent towards the left, and as much as liberals
may not like the tactics of antifascist action, it's direct action in an
attempt to stop more of this. These incidents are connected. They are part of an
overarching series of events that have escalated due to
the right wing, not the left. The left is resisting this escalation. People really need to
stop saying alt-left. Within the framework of centrism, it binarizes leftism
as alternative ideology and therefore validates the alt-right. Trump realized this, and that's why he co-opted the term. It's really hard to argue
with your own point. - What about the alt-left? They came charging at the,
as you say, the alt-right. Do they have any semblance of guilt? You had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent
and nobody wants to say that. - People who are in fact for the idea of everybody having healthcare or radical changes in the
criminal justice system or LGBT rights. Frankly, the left just really doesn't like the whole inequality thing, and that includes between
genders or between classes, and the further left you go, the more that manifests. Calling anyone left of center the alt-left puts them on the same level
at white nationalists, which, you know, helps white nationalists. And I'm not gonna say that there aren't shitty people on the left, nor am I going to say
that anyone on the left hasn't proposed working
with the alt-right. It's just that the majority
of us know that's shitty, the vast majority. Yeah, there's some shitty
leftists out there. Some. There are zero people
who identify as alt-right that aren't shitty, and whether or not you believe in anarchy, placing it as the counterweight for an imaginary fascism-infused
Islam political affiliation demonstrates that the person
who made that horseshoe diagram doesn't know what they're talking about. And before you go, well, that's not every horseshoe diagram, sure, yeah. But it's a pretty popular one. A lot of people who claim
liberalism and centrism have posted that specific
diagram as a means to paint a political horseshoe as valid. In truth, if you want to
actually paint similarities between policies and what
their net effect ends up being, the center shares more in common with the right than the left, resulting in more of a fishhook. The fact is the center will
side with the far right if it ensures that the far left fails. Their capitulation will always end up with them siding with the
right rather than the left. For instance, both the
right and the center love their free-market capitalism. Both the right and center
think certain amounts of people should be excluded from healthcare. Both the right and the
center are uncomfortable with the social progression
of human rights. And both the right and
the center hate the left. Why do you think in the 1990s the Democrats went tough on crime? For fun? They were capitulating
to the center for votes, which, you know, allowed the right to pull the Overton window
further to the right. This is the result of the
ostensible left chasing the right. The second you call the center the left, the point in between
the left and the right, the center, moves to the right. And even if this weren't true, the fact that the center
has such a willingness to hear both sides, centrists will always at very least accidentally provide a means
for the extreme right to rise. Centrism is at its worst a mask or a cover to feed right-wing ideology to people who consider
themselves rational. But even at best, it's leaving the door open for people who want to consolidate power to put distance between themselves and those they consider
lower in a hierarchy to rule. In leaving the door open
for those types of people, you give them the ability
to do exactly that. Not everybody actually
wants to rule the world. Some people kind of want to just live. In fact, most people, the majority of people, like somewhere in the
neighborhood of 99% of people, and there's this 1% of people
that don't think that way, and yet for some reason
are able to maintain power. Every time you ask those people, regardless of how they identify themselves with which political party
or what values they espouse, for some reason they always hate the left. I wonder why that is? So is that polarization actually bad? If the extreme on one
side is full equality and the extreme on the other
is full totalitarianism, why would anyone pretend these are two sides of the same coin? Why is it so important to compromise with ideologies that result in
the marginalization of people by class, identity, or some other vector? Why is it that the only Nazis that matter are the ones in the history books? ("Pony" by Ginuwine) ♫ I'm in the center ♫ Ideas in a market ♫ Someone who looks at both sides ♫ Without even picking one ♫ You gotta be a liberal ♫ Or watch me as I'll pivot ♫ No matter what you say, I'll start ♫ Compromise 'cause I'm just so rational ♫ If you're corny, let's do it ♫ Ride it, my pony ♫ My horseshoe's waiting ♫ Come and jump on it ♫ If you're corny, let's do it ♫ Ride it, my pony ♫ My horseshoe's waiting ♫ Come and jump on it ♫ If you're horny, let's do it ♫ Ride it, my pony
Welcome to r/LateStageCapitalism
Please remember that this subreddit is a SAFE SPACE for leftist discussion. Any Liberalism, capitalist apologia, or attempts to debate socialism will be met with an immediate ban. Take it to r/DebateCommunism. Bigotry, ableism and hate speech will also be met with immediate bans; Socialism is an intrinsically inclusive system.
If you are new to socialism, please check out our socialism crash course here.
If you are curious to what our leftist terminology means, then please check out our glossary here.
In addition, here are some introductory links about socialism:
Albert Einstein - Why Socialism?
Pyotr Kropotkin - The Conquest of Bread
Friedrich Engels - The Principles of Communism
Vladimir Lenin - The State & Revolution
Rosa Luxemburg - Reform or Revolution
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels - The Communist Manifesto
For an extended list of works, check out our wiki or this masterlist.
☭☭☭
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
The fishhook theory is more accurate.