A linear scale and even the 2d “compass” is only useful for the most basic introduction to political parties but sometimes ya gotta meet people where they are at 🤷♀️
A linear scale and even the 2d “compass” is only useful for the most basic introduction to political parties but sometimes ya gotta meet people where they are at 🤷♀️
If only the real world was a straight line, and there were nothing such as authoritarian coopting of collective efforts, resembling right wing fascist authoritarian, wearing the corpse of an attempted social movement.
Why animal farm exists
Why the ‘national socialists’ came for the communists and socialists first.
You’re representing a high dimensional ecosystem with oversimplified boundings being flattened into a linear scale, and the ‘horseshoe’ is moreso adapting the simple heuristic to better represent the more complicated reality.
Sometimes the meaning of words is opportunistically changed, or the people directing a group change, and we actually have to comprehend and adapt to that.
A better representation of the political system is like a body where a bunch of organs seem to think cancer might be the best shape to be. Cancer as in ‘defining wider boundings of surrounding systems as exploitable environment’ usually ignoring how the surrounding body is literally necessary for sustaining life for the cancer itself. This is also where we would talk about things like instrumental convergence in natural/human systems.
So the linear line doesn’t really explain the constant rugged individualism usurping spaces in our complex high dimensional social reality. Ergo horseshoe heuristic.
Animal Farm is a fictional narrative based off George Orwell’s interpretations of the events surrounding the Russian revolution, not an accurate piece of political history or theory.
History is much more accurately depicted through nonfiction texts, not fictional narratives. You should read actual political theory if you want to learn about the Russian revolution. It was a very interesting event with many complexities and it liberated so many people.
Although I do agree with some of your later points. Although I think horseshoe theory is unjustified as well, and you seem to agree. Politics is much more complex than a line or even a bent line.
Politics is a complex web of ideas that form as a result of certain conditions. The far left and far right do share some values, but usually for completely different reasons. For example both Nazi Germany and the USSR had very strong centralisation of power in the state, although that power in the USSR stemmed from the workers to oppress the bourgeoisie but in Nazi Germany the power stemmed from the Bourgeoisie to oppress the working class.
i just enjoy the use of animal farm/1984 as little heuristic environments to convey simple ways that collective efforts are derailed, with a great simple short set of events that show how a movement can be slowly converted into something antithetical to the original collective effort.
a problem that still hasn’t been solved, despite any elaboration that could be had on the specific happenings in the USSR.
i care about the heuristics because they do map really well to other and current happenings, in ways that are useful for framing to people things such as the decades of neoliberal progressive rugpulling, or how the heritage foundation and types have been slowly reshaping the environment to benefit them, in a recursive corruption of existing systems.
it’s definitely more complicated than shown in animal-farm, but people already react as if this is the deep-end, and trying to copy and paste a textbook on USSR specifics would also have me back explaining the difference between patterns and substrate, which honestly shouldn’t be the case with animal farm, but it seems even (american?) leftists seem to have read it as ‘commuism bad.’
I didn’t interpret it as communism bad, although that’s how we were taught it (because of course I studied it in school). I think Orwell’s take is that power corrupts and no one should be able to hold power for a significant period of time.
I disagree with Orwell’s opinion because he places too much emphasis on great man theory. It’s not realistic for any individual to truly dictate an entire country like a farmer or pig might dictated over the farm.
Does it really map current events accurately? Animal Farm doesn’t really consider the fundamental difference between different states with different class dynamics. Animal Farm can’t explain how socialist states, modern and historical, always continue to improve living conditions for workers as much as possible despite having strong centralisation of power. Meanwhile, conditions are getting worse for workers in capitalist states despite having generally lower (albeit increasing) levels of government involvement.
Also I’m curious by what you mean by neoliberal progressive rugpulling.
by neoliberal progressive rugpulling i’m talking about democrats/liberals running on progressive platforms, only to rugpull and basically be a more moderate version of rightwing corporatism.
a good example here in canada is when smaller progressive parties started gaining traction on voter reform to avoid the 2 party extreme of this context as we see in the united states. the liberal party (basically democrats) started running on the same voter reform platform, as well as the ‘responsible’ vote for ensuring that conservatives aren’t in charge, in our near two-party system.
after winning they said “oh that’s what voter reform means? oh we didn’t mean that at all lol bye.”
also like how carney got an easy win by not being an openly psychotic fascist, but is still pushing hyper conservative and pro-corporate political changes.
so it’s the same kind of ‘corruption’ of collective effort, in a different ecosystem.
we need ways to recognize and respond to this type of exploitation of shared environments and efforts, which is made difficult due to high populations with low reading-comprehension or ability to make sense of complex or contradictory environments.
people need to recognize when the body they are using to achieve a collective goal is being usurped or changed for usually antithetical reasons, and animal farm is all about the different ways this can happen.
the casual silencing of dissent, or obscuring/changing of wording or rules, or outright lies. again, the point of animal farm is that the system can be gutted or changed in essence, into the same oligarch serving capitalist system, despite being the ‘revolutionaries’ that escaped from their capitalist overlords.
you could even make the parallel to MAGA, since half of MAGA seems to think their movement is going to do [socialist policy,] just with the depth of obscuration needed to fool flat-earthers. so they will sign up for a direct crypto rug-pull i guess. no veils needed.
yeah, a lot of it is just that humans are dumb and can’t fucking communicate, or comprehend text past a socialized misrepresentation which most people just accept is the context i guess.
nobody else in this thread seems to comprehend how that doesn’t mean ‘communism bad.’ i wouldn’t really know, because the dogpiling comes mostly with “BAD BOOK, NO READ,” rather than any actual reasoning.
not every heuristic or example will always be useful in every situation, but i find animal farm and 1984 do a good job conveying certain tools or framings that are extremely relevant to current corruption and political happenings. whether it’s character assassination like hasan or other progressives, or direct assassinations like MLK. misrepresentations of people or their motives, which you see with basically every group that defends themselves from imperialist aggression, or even mild dissidents being framed as ‘terrorists.’ many academics and anarchists are bringing up polysemy and exploitations of context/system framing and other things, but shitty vague groupings like liberal/progressive/left make it hard to draw the clear boundaries of where systems start being treated like exploitable environment, which is the more general shape of the problem. we can actually model this stuff with modern academic framing, but the heritage foundation and types are actively in the government trying to burn and scorn as much progressive academia as possible.
again, you’re appreciated for actually interacting with my words, even if i still haven’t convinced you. thank you.
My bad for procrastinating reading this for 23 days (it’s been at the bottom of my unread inbox) If we’re going to continue this conversation let’s keep the messages short (if possible) so my adhd brain doesn’t get overwhelmed. Also since it’s been 23 days I won’t be taken aback if you don’t reply.
Thanks for telling me what you mean by neoliberal rugpulling.
Although I can understand the use of heuristics to simplify complex things (when the simplification is reasonably accurate) I just don’t see the russian revolution turning out that way, and I think most Russians would agree.