I can't remember what it's called but there's an astral codex 10 post about how socially acceptable an idea is affects what kind of people believe it. When being gay was taboo for example, the average pro-legalising-homosexuality advocate would have been a really unusual and probably quite deplorable person. Now that being gay isn't taboo the average person with pro-legalising-homosexuality views is almost the same as the average person.
I'd say I'm far-left and being honest I'm probably also more sympathetic to far-right ideologies than the average person. But I still think horseshoe-authoritarian-psychology-theory is wrong just because the connection between being fascist and communist in liberal society is probably just having a tendency to go against the social norm. In a fascist society I'd probably be more pro-communist and more pro-liberal than average. In a communist society I'd probably be more pro-fascist and more pro-liberal than average. I don't think there's any inherent connection.
Thanks for the Thomas Costello reference! A good post. I remember from Bob Altemeyer's "The Authoritarians" (and from Leor Zmigrod?) that ideologue-authoritarians have strong fears that are obviously not shared by freethinkers. They crave certainty and so a style of thinking that provides it - absolutes, Truths, either/or distinctions...
Regarding your discussion of bonding ideologues: I remember Hoffer ("The True Believer") noting that the Nazis had success converting communists, but not freethinkers.
I prefer the Political Compass to the Horseshoe metaphor. Any reasons you don't mention it?
Thank you for comment, I think you are probably right to prefer the Political Compass to the Horseshoe metaphor. It was more of a stylistic choice (perhaps incorrect) to talk about the "more engaging" Horseshoe Theory <3 .
Hmmm, I think this is more due to how the words "far" and "extreme" get interpreted in these studies. Take a belief like anarcho-primitivism. Clearly this a more "far" or "extreme" version of regular left wing hippies, but they are not authoritarians, and it's mostly eccentric philosophers that advocate for this view. Even though that worldview is far left of the regular left wing (more extreme) we don't think of them as leftwing extremists. It almost becomes a tautology, "far" and "extreme" in horseshoe theory do not mean far from the mainstream, it means "prone to authoritarianism", so exclusively Stalinists etc. When we measure these "far" and "extreme" leftists we find that... they are prone to authoritarianism...wow.
I say this because a lot of people who vote for "non-extreme" candidates might have extreme views. For example, I mostly vote for social democrat types, but I would also want to create and join a hive-mind. This belief is much more far/extreme than a MAGA person wanting Trump to become a dictator, dictators are aplenty in the world, yet I'm not considered "extreme".
Or from the other side, a lot of people in the tech blogosphere vote for mostly neoliberal types but also want to create and be ruled over by a benevolent all powerful AI. This is much more extreme than leftists wanting to replace all for-profit companies with worker coops, but they're not considered "extreme". I think the moniker of "far" or "extreme" just gets put on people who are authoritarian and not on people like me or the anarcho-primitivists (who are actually extreme) because we're not a threat. The word is closer to an imputation than a description.
I understand your perspective on extremist views. In fact, as I would venture to guess most people do, I too recognize that I hold some strong beliefs that some could classify as extreme. But I am not sure if this invalidates what I see as the main takeaway from the literature.
What surprises me about this literature is that people who are measured as being on the extremes on both the left and the right (and this is assessed through standardized political questionnaires) tend to be more cognitively rigid, be more dogmatic and employ less analytic thinking. I was surprised by this because, a priori, I thought that people on the far right or left could even be more cognitively flexible than the general population.And, perhaps more importantly, I saw no reason for there being a symmetry between the two sides of the spectrum regarding analytical thinking. What do you think about this symmetry in particular?
If I had to guess, I would say it is probably due to material conditions of the individuals, and the dynamics of coordination.
Popular revolts, both those on the left and the right, are created by those who have very little. Political analysis takes time and energy, and if you have to work two jobs to be able to live paycheck to paycheck (or worse) you simply don't have the time and energy to delve into it. But the hurt you're feeling is real, so you know you need a seismic change in the status quo for the hurt to go away, but you don't have the time and energy to create a complex political analysis.
Contrast this with people who are doing fine under the status quo. They have an incentive to more or less keep it this way, to be a moderate, but since they're doing good they also have more free time and energy to spend on political analysis. Analysis is not free, it costs time and nutrients, so we should expect those that can afford more free time and nutrients to do more of it.
The second factor is coordination. If you're powerless it is extremely hard to get into power, so if there's a groundswell of people that are hurting under the status-quo (and they're living paycheck to paycheck so they don't have the time and energy to create complex coordination mechanisms) they have an incentive to coordinate around a central idea/dogma/leader. If you're all pushing for different ideas and visions of the future, if you're internally divided, those in power can simply ignore you. The only way you're going to get into power is if you all take the same dogma and push it together, becoming such a big front that those in power can't ignore you anymore.
Meanwhile, those in power don't need to coordinate, because they're already in power. If their political analysis comes to a different conclusion than their coworker, well, so what? You're both still doing well, there is no threat hanging overhead that if you fail to coordinate you will stay poor and powerless, because you're not poor and powerless. You have the luxury to not be dogmatic.
One thing about the original Right-Wing Authoritarian scale: Bob Altemeyer and his co-authors tried to clarify that they meant "right wing" in the sense of "respecting what they believe to be the established order" instead of referring to any current political division. They specifically remarked that one might very well call Stalin or Mao members of the extreme left, but once they had taken power and become the established order, a loyal Stalinist would be very likely to score high on the RWA scale. Meanwhile, they didn't find many "left wing authoritarians" that had the relevant personality traits and also wanted to burn the system down and replace it rather than prop it up and make it better.
I can't remember what it's called but there's an astral codex 10 post about how socially acceptable an idea is affects what kind of people believe it. When being gay was taboo for example, the average pro-legalising-homosexuality advocate would have been a really unusual and probably quite deplorable person. Now that being gay isn't taboo the average person with pro-legalising-homosexuality views is almost the same as the average person.
I'd say I'm far-left and being honest I'm probably also more sympathetic to far-right ideologies than the average person. But I still think horseshoe-authoritarian-psychology-theory is wrong just because the connection between being fascist and communist in liberal society is probably just having a tendency to go against the social norm. In a fascist society I'd probably be more pro-communist and more pro-liberal than average. In a communist society I'd probably be more pro-fascist and more pro-liberal than average. I don't think there's any inherent connection.
Hope that's a helpful perspective.
edit: here's the SSC post: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/04/respectability-cascades/
Fantastic article!
Thank you so much!
Thanks for the Thomas Costello reference! A good post. I remember from Bob Altemeyer's "The Authoritarians" (and from Leor Zmigrod?) that ideologue-authoritarians have strong fears that are obviously not shared by freethinkers. They crave certainty and so a style of thinking that provides it - absolutes, Truths, either/or distinctions...
Regarding your discussion of bonding ideologues: I remember Hoffer ("The True Believer") noting that the Nazis had success converting communists, but not freethinkers.
I prefer the Political Compass to the Horseshoe metaphor. Any reasons you don't mention it?
Thank you for comment, I think you are probably right to prefer the Political Compass to the Horseshoe metaphor. It was more of a stylistic choice (perhaps incorrect) to talk about the "more engaging" Horseshoe Theory <3 .
Hmmm, I think this is more due to how the words "far" and "extreme" get interpreted in these studies. Take a belief like anarcho-primitivism. Clearly this a more "far" or "extreme" version of regular left wing hippies, but they are not authoritarians, and it's mostly eccentric philosophers that advocate for this view. Even though that worldview is far left of the regular left wing (more extreme) we don't think of them as leftwing extremists. It almost becomes a tautology, "far" and "extreme" in horseshoe theory do not mean far from the mainstream, it means "prone to authoritarianism", so exclusively Stalinists etc. When we measure these "far" and "extreme" leftists we find that... they are prone to authoritarianism...wow.
I say this because a lot of people who vote for "non-extreme" candidates might have extreme views. For example, I mostly vote for social democrat types, but I would also want to create and join a hive-mind. This belief is much more far/extreme than a MAGA person wanting Trump to become a dictator, dictators are aplenty in the world, yet I'm not considered "extreme".
Or from the other side, a lot of people in the tech blogosphere vote for mostly neoliberal types but also want to create and be ruled over by a benevolent all powerful AI. This is much more extreme than leftists wanting to replace all for-profit companies with worker coops, but they're not considered "extreme". I think the moniker of "far" or "extreme" just gets put on people who are authoritarian and not on people like me or the anarcho-primitivists (who are actually extreme) because we're not a threat. The word is closer to an imputation than a description.
I understand your perspective on extremist views. In fact, as I would venture to guess most people do, I too recognize that I hold some strong beliefs that some could classify as extreme. But I am not sure if this invalidates what I see as the main takeaway from the literature.
What surprises me about this literature is that people who are measured as being on the extremes on both the left and the right (and this is assessed through standardized political questionnaires) tend to be more cognitively rigid, be more dogmatic and employ less analytic thinking. I was surprised by this because, a priori, I thought that people on the far right or left could even be more cognitively flexible than the general population.And, perhaps more importantly, I saw no reason for there being a symmetry between the two sides of the spectrum regarding analytical thinking. What do you think about this symmetry in particular?
If I had to guess, I would say it is probably due to material conditions of the individuals, and the dynamics of coordination.
Popular revolts, both those on the left and the right, are created by those who have very little. Political analysis takes time and energy, and if you have to work two jobs to be able to live paycheck to paycheck (or worse) you simply don't have the time and energy to delve into it. But the hurt you're feeling is real, so you know you need a seismic change in the status quo for the hurt to go away, but you don't have the time and energy to create a complex political analysis.
Contrast this with people who are doing fine under the status quo. They have an incentive to more or less keep it this way, to be a moderate, but since they're doing good they also have more free time and energy to spend on political analysis. Analysis is not free, it costs time and nutrients, so we should expect those that can afford more free time and nutrients to do more of it.
The second factor is coordination. If you're powerless it is extremely hard to get into power, so if there's a groundswell of people that are hurting under the status-quo (and they're living paycheck to paycheck so they don't have the time and energy to create complex coordination mechanisms) they have an incentive to coordinate around a central idea/dogma/leader. If you're all pushing for different ideas and visions of the future, if you're internally divided, those in power can simply ignore you. The only way you're going to get into power is if you all take the same dogma and push it together, becoming such a big front that those in power can't ignore you anymore.
Meanwhile, those in power don't need to coordinate, because they're already in power. If their political analysis comes to a different conclusion than their coworker, well, so what? You're both still doing well, there is no threat hanging overhead that if you fail to coordinate you will stay poor and powerless, because you're not poor and powerless. You have the luxury to not be dogmatic.
One thing about the original Right-Wing Authoritarian scale: Bob Altemeyer and his co-authors tried to clarify that they meant "right wing" in the sense of "respecting what they believe to be the established order" instead of referring to any current political division. They specifically remarked that one might very well call Stalin or Mao members of the extreme left, but once they had taken power and become the established order, a loyal Stalinist would be very likely to score high on the RWA scale. Meanwhile, they didn't find many "left wing authoritarians" that had the relevant personality traits and also wanted to burn the system down and replace it rather than prop it up and make it better.