The "Horseshoe Theory of Politics"

Is Bourgeois Horseshit

Let’s dispense with this stupid, childish, and liberal-elitist gaslighting thing called horseshoe theory.

The “horseshoe theory of politics” was developed by the bourgeois philosopher and novelist Jean-Pierre Faye.  Faye claimed to discover that that real politico-ideological spectrum wasn’t a linear progression from communism and socialism on the left through a bourgeois-liberal center and on to fascism on the right. Instead of being a straight line between ever-more-removed positions from left to right, Faye argued, the real configuration is more like a horseshoe, with the two extremes – communism and fascism - bending down magnetically towards concurrence with each other.

Faye based his theory on what he thought was the alignment of  fascist and communist parties with each other in early 1930s Weimar Germany – and on the short-lived Stalin Hitler Non-Aggression Pact of 1939.

It’s horseshit. Let’s start with the historical argument.

Non-Convergence (to Say the Least) Between Communists and Nazis in Weimar and Nazi Germany

The Weimar-era German Communist Party had a failed line (eschewing collaboration with social democrats in common opposition to the fascists) in connection with the Soviet-directed Communist International’s “third period” diagnosis, but it was not ideologically aligned with the Nazi Party and the Nazi Party wasn’t ideologically aligned with it, to say the least. The German Communist Party fought many street battles with the German fascists and leafletted and agitated against the Nazis during the Weimar period.  

The Nazis beat and killed German communists before taking power in 1933.  They justified their abolition of Weimar democracy after the Reichstag Fire as necessary to crush the “communist menace.” They sent thousands of communists to political concentration camps once they were in power. 

That’s not exactly politico-ideological confluence between fascism and communism

Adolf Hitler’s bestselling autobiography Mein Kampf was as virulently anti-Marxist as it was anti-Semitic and combined these two hatreds by calling for the elimination of “Judeo-Bolshevism.” Hitler and his ruling racialist/racist Nazi Party considered Eastern European and Russian Slavs to be "Untermenschen" (subhuman).  They linked Jews to communism and claimed that Slavs in the Soviet Union were being ruled by "Jewish Bolshevik" masters.

Non-Convergence (to Say the Least) Between the Third Reich and the USSR and the Reality of the Stalin-Hitler Pact

Hitler promised to restore and expand German national greatness and racial superiority by invading and subjugating the people of Eastern Europe and Russia to Moscow, Leningrad (the Wehrmacht reached the edges of both Soviet cities) and beyond. In 1941 and 1942,  Hitler launched a massive military assault on the Marxist Soviet Union, killing more than 20 million Soviets along the way, all very much in line with the promises made in Mein Kampf and Hitler’s speeches in the 1930s.

That’s not exactly Third Reich and Soviet Union convergence.

Buying Time to Build Up Soviet Military Power

The Soviet dictator Josef Stalin did not sign the 1939 “peace agreement” out of any politico-ideological affinity for the Nazi Third Reich. He did so only to buy Russia some time before the virulently anti-communist Hitler’s promised massive, initially Western-backed, and industrial-scale attack on “Judeo-Bolshevik” Russia was initiated.  The mainstream website History gets it right:

“The Molotov-Ribbentrop [Stalin-Hitler – PS] Pact was a non-aggression pact signed in 1939 by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union shortly before World War II. In the pact, the two former enemies agreed to take no military action against each other for the next 10 years. With Europe on the brink of another major war, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin viewed the pact as a way to keep his nation on peaceful terms with Germany, while giving him time to build up the Soviet military. German chancellor Adolf Hitler used the pact to make sure Germany was able to invade Poland unopposed. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact fell apart in June 1941, when Nazi forces invaded the Soviet Union.”

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There was no relevant politico-ideological merger between communism and fascism in the 1930s or since. Fascism was and remains militantly and violently anti-socialist/anti-Marxist/anti-communist as well as viciously racist and nationalist and attached to the capitalist system. Actual communists, by contrast, were and are anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, and anti-racist. The notion that German fascism and German and Russian communism were laying in much the same ideological bed is idiotic.  

Non-Convergence on the Democrats and Capitalism

Despite its historically absurd foundations, horseshoe theory remains attractive to liberal, centrist, and moderate thinkers today.  As supposed evidence, these liberal and centrist devotees of equine hoof-wear cite how the US “radical left” and the US Republifascist right both criticize the Democrats as an elitist establishment party and how they both criticize US foreign policy in Ukraine. Horseshoe players take these Venn diagram overlaps between “left and right extremes” to mean ideological union.  

Never mind that actual radical leftists and the US Amerikaner right oppose the in-fact establishment Democrats and the Ukraine War for diametrically opposed reasons.  The problem with the Democratic Party for revolutionary communists and other actual left radicals is that it is “a militantly capitalist and imperialist organization” (I am quoting myself from numerous previous publications) – a perfectly accurate description of the Democrats. By sharp contrast, the problem with the Democratic Party in the eyes of Republi-fascists is that it is a “radical Left socialist” organization – a ridiculously inaccurate description of the Democrats.  

The actual radical Left is anti-capitalist while the ever more mainstreamed radical Republi-fascist right is not.  The former criticizes the Democrats for their embrace and advance of capitalism-imperialism and seeks to replace US bourgeois democracy with a revolutionary socialist state.  The latter conjures up the myth of a “radical Left Democratic Party” as part of its argument for moving US capitalism’s political superstructure from previously normative bourgeois democracy to Christian white nationalist neofascism.

There’s no horseshoe convergence, notwithstanding simultaneous but very different critiques of bourgeois democracy.  Revolutionary communists advocate a revolution of liberation in the superstructure that reaches down into and transforms into material base to radically replace the exterminist (see below) capitalist mode of production with a socialist one. The Amerkaner US right advocates a “revolution of reaction” (as Mussolini once accurately described fascism) in the superstructure to preserve the capitalist mode of production.

Non-Convergence on Ukraine

Let’s look at the differences on Ukraine. Actual radical Left opposition to the Ukraine War is about anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism.  Revolutionary communists hold no brief for the world’s top aggressive imperialist state, the USA, or for the corrupt neoliberal Ukrainian regime, or for the revanchist and fascistic Russian capitalist-imperialist regime. They (and this would include me) consider the war in Ukraine to be primarily an inter-capitalist-imperialist proxy war between the US and Russia.

The US right takes a very different stance on Ukraine. For starters, half of US Republikans back US funding and equipping of Ukraine’s conflict with the Russian invader. At the same time, those parts of the US right that oppose the Ukraine War do so for reasons quite unlike what drives radical left opposition. The more moderate wing of anti-Ukraine War Republicanism does so out of neo-isolationism, arguing that US global strength is enhanced by shifting the burden for European defense to Europe and by spending more money on US southern “border protection” rather than on Ukraine. The more virulent and full-on fascist section of the MAGA right (the arch-Trumpist Matt Gaetz and Steve Bannon crowd) opposes funding Ukraine also and largely out of a Christian white nationalist identification with Russia linked to their hatred of the United States (mis-)understood as an “ethnically and racially diverse and feminist Woke democracy.” It’s Putin friendliness that still is about its hostility to abortion, gay marriage, affirmative action, black and immigrant civil rights, transgender rights and the like. Many on the US hard right identify their political goals with what they view as the Russian white nationalist Putin’s culture war achievements, including his attack on Russia’s feminist and LGBTQ communities. Putin’s war on Western Wokeness had been trumpeted by the former top Trump advisor and leading neofascist MAGA influencer Steve Bannon. Putin and Russia are seen as culture war comrades by hardcore MAGAts.

At the same time, partisan hyper-polarization means that many Republifascists feel compelled to deny Joe Biden any support on anything. The simple fact of Biden’s funding and equipping of Ukraine turns them into opponents of that funding.  If Biden says 2+2=4, hyper polarization means that 2 + 2 must = 5.

This is not red-brown politico-ideological convergence.

Non-Convergence on China

Look also at the difference between how US revolutionary communists and Republi-fascists see China.  The actually radical Left accurately views that nation’s government as capitalist-imperialist since the 1976-78 coup that put the leading capitalist roader Deng “To Get Rich is Glorious” Xiaoping atop formerly Maoist China. The Republi-fascists cling to the preposterous notion that contemporary China is a socialist and even communist state.  There’s no radical left-right ideological convergence on China.

Non-Convergence on Israel’s War on Gaza

Or take a look at how “the radical left” and the right line up on Israel’s war on Gaza.  The American Radical Left opposes the war on the grounds that it is a criminal war of genocide being waged by a mass-murderous and racist occupation and apartheid state with the full backing of its imperial sponsor and protector the USA. By contrast, most of the Republi-fascist right, including its MAGA hard core right, backs the war out of a Christian fundamentalist attachment to the Zionist state and a related racist hatred of Arabs. The small part of Republi-fascist and flat out Nazi America that opposes funding Israel does so out of a combination of nationalist neo-isolationism and ugly anti-Semitism.

Confusing Pink-Brown Bullshit and Stupidity with Horseshoe Convergence

When I criticized horseshoe theory on social media recently, a left sociologist friend wrote this: “Uh-huh … then you’re sure there’s no such thing as red-brown convergence? Many of your great writings over the years on Trumpenleft, fascist bootlickers and Left-Putinists (or Assadists , or Ayatollah-supporting ‘leftists ‘) say otherwise.”

There is a serious misunderstanding here. My friend was saying that any "leftist" engaged in the idiocy he rightly (leftly) opposes – Trumpenleftists, Putinleftists, Assad-leftists, Ayatollah-leftists, (he could have added Xi Jinping-leftists) – is actually a left radical. In reality, however, these misbegotten fools prove that they are no such thing when they embrace Trump, Putin, Assad, the Iran theocracy, the Chinese state, etc. Jimmy “Boogaloo” Dore (for example) is not a communist who horseshoed over to the right. Neither is Matt Taibbi, Candace Owen, or Caitlin Johnstone. They are faux-left grifters who either do not understand what it means to be a principled Marxist or other kind of radical Leftist or who understand but reject such radical Leftism.

So just to be clear: yes, there are  left-identified people who are F’d in the head and/or heart. Of course.  There are also real efforts to reach out to left "populism" on the part of fascists. Fascism has always involved a bit of pretend egalitarian socialism-mimicking. But actual radical Left ideology and politics, like (in horseshoe theory) communism, actually converging with its existential enemy fascism? No. Sorry. I can’t help it if some self-declared lefties who never understood Marxism and international communism are so stupid, ignorant,  and/or corrupt as to try to make common cause with despicable fascists. But let’s be clear: that’s not horseshoe convergence of the radical left with the radical right. It’s stupidity and/or corruption.

So What’s it All About?...

Horseshoe theory is elitist horseshit meant in greatest part I think to smear legitimate and necessary anti-capitalist socialism and communism by nonsensically merging them with capitalist neofascism.  The elitist liberal and centrist, late bourgeois-democratic motivation behind the false equivalency is clear: depict people with actual revolutionary and liberating alternatives to the leading problem of our time –— capitalism-imperialism, which has brought four mutually reinforcing apocalyptic horsemen (ecocide, potentially nuclear war, pandemicide, and fascism) to humanity’s gate –— as akin to Nazis so you can keep on cashing in and feeling good about yourself for clinging to a lethally conservative world view while humanity circles the drain at an accelerating pace courtesy of a global bourgeois system that cries out for radical replacement by revolutionary socialism.