The Horseshoe Theory and the Left

Someone asked The Omnivore if The Omnivore actually believed the Horseshoe Theory. The theory is that in the far left and the far right are actually closer (the case Wikipedia cites is anti-Jewish rhetoric) than the center or the general left / right.

The topic is too complex for Twitter, where the question was raised, so it gets a blog-post answer.

There Are Different Groups of Far-Left and Far-Right

On the ends of the Horseshoe are categories that contain reasonably unlike things. For example on the far-right end, you've got:

• The Tea Party: (Yeah, less prevalent today). Basically a strong dislike of Obama, vocal anti-tax philosophy, no outright racism.
• The Alt-Right: Actual Nazis. Ask about "The Jewish Question." Throw Nazi salutes. This includes the KKK.
• The Trump-Right (Also called the Alt-Light): Breitbart-reading, Trump-believing core of voters who think everything is terrible in America because of (a) Obama and (b) Craven Republicans.

On the left we see, for example:

• The SJW Left: The extreme, weaponized, sometimes pro-violence (or, at least, rhetorical violence) end of the social justice spectrum that results in things like defending BLM (demonstration) chants of "Pigs in a blanket" (killing police officers), aggressive call-out culture and privilege-check lectures, and so on.
• The Sanders-Left: The Omnivore hates to tar Bernie Sanders with all this--but there's no way around it. The core of Sanders voters who flipped over to Trump after he lost the nomination still consider themselves "left" (somehow). Includes Glenn Greenwald appearing on Fox as a friendly.

These are not all the same thing.

Which Of These Are Alike?

The Omnivore is going to use three criteria for looking at "the closeness"--these three criteria are the key drivers of extreme behavior. These are the source of most of the toxicity that comes out of the "far" designator and makes behavior the least tractable to reason.

1. Importance of Minority Racial Politics vs. Majority Racial Politics.
2. The, erm, "JQ" (that's "Jewish Question").This is about markers of a Jewish conspiracy of international bankers and such. The use of Anti-Jewish symbolism and language. Actual policies can be quite complex. Anti-Semities who rail against Israel hate being called on it and defend their attacks as purely policy based. Conversely, a lot of people who believe in a malevolent Jewish conspiracy liked Sanders even though he is Jewish (sometimes they don't know. Sometimes they dismiss him as 'secular.'). Finally, plenty of people who hate the Jewish bankers like Israel because it hurts Arabs. As noted, you can usually look for the use of anti-Jewish symbols and rhetoric as the 'tell.'
3. Importance of conspiracy theory to the organization's philosophy.

We can also note that these filter out almost all mainstream politics. While the left may pay more lipservice to race, neither the left nor right is promoting or at war with any race. There is no antisemetic plank in any major platform, and while it's unfortunately less common on the mainstream right, most voters still trust the Mainstream Media for the majority of their news.

The Test: Let's Compare Three And See How The Horseshoe Holds

The Sanders Left and the Trump-Right

Rating	Sanders-Left		Trump-Right
Category	Rating	Rationale	Rating	Rationale
Racial Politics	LOW	The Sanders hard-core was never that in to Black Lives Matter. They also weren’t preaching white supremacy.	LOW	The Trump-Right had Confederate flags--but did not practice racial politics like the Alt-Right did. There was racism--but no textual white supremacy (and it was anti-illegal immigrant more than anti-black--which is different).
Jewish Question	HIGH	Israel is EVIL in the Sander’s Left world. To a startling degree the Palestinians are GOOD. Iran isn’t planning Nuclear Bombs, that’s a CIA lie. There is also a serious dislike of International Banker Jews (like Soros)	MED	While the Trump-Right Loves Israel and hates Arabs, they are also wary of International Bankers. Anti-Jewish symbology flourished on the Trump-Right and not JUST in Alt-Right contexts (although much of it originated there).
Conspiracy Theory	HIGH	Bernie was literally sabotaged--direct action was taken and the emails PROVE it. Votes were changed or altered in multiple states to deny him his rightful victory. Hillary is a serial killer with a literal string of bodies she has killed or had killed. The MSM is the enemy.	HIGH	The Republican Governance allowed Obama to have his way because they are cowards. Obama is an unconstitutional Tyrant. Jade Helm is a prelude to Martial Law. Etc. The MSM is the enemy.

Analysis: The Horseshoe theory works pretty well here. The difference is specifically around Israel, but it's suddenly no mystery about Greenwald on Fox.

Now Let's Compare The SJW Left to the Trump-Right

Rating	SWJ-Left		Trump-Right
Category	Rating	Rationale	Rating	Rationale
Racial Politics	HIGH	The SJW progressive approach is all about race (and class, and other axes of privilege).	LOW	The Trump-Right had Confederate flags--but did not practice racial politics like the Alt-Right did. There was racism--but no textual white supremacy (and it was anti-illegal immigrant more than anti-black--which is different).
Jewish Question	LOW	While there is dislike for Israel, there is no grand Jewish Conspiracy.	MED	While the Trump-Right Loves Israel and hates Arabs, they are also wary of International Bankers. Anti-Jewish symbology flourished on the Trump-Right and not JUST in Alt-Right contexts (although much of it originated there).
Conspiracy Theory	LOW	The “Hands Up - Don’t Shoot” story was bad reporting and a rumor--but it wasn’t a conspiracy theory. The SJW Left still mostly trusts the MSM for their news.	HIGH	The Republican Governance allowed Obama to have his way because they are cowards. Obama is an unconstitutional Tyrant. Jade Helm is a prelude to Martial Law. Etc.

Analysis: The Horseshoe theory fails here for these two factions. The SJW-Left is incompatible with the Trump-Right in almost every area.

Conclusions

If you hate the horseshoe theory, you're probably not going to like this--even though it fails one out of two tests. That's because if you hate the horseshoe theory, you're likely closer to the one that passed.