He jumped the horseshoe. The fringes of right-wing extremism and left-wing extremism often end up having rather a lot in common - it's easy for people who define themselves against the mainstream first (and only for something second) to find themselves agreeing a lot with people who are notionally at the other end of the spectrum.
In Russell Brand's case, that meant embracing anti-vaxism, Covid denial, climate change denial, 5G conspiracies, etc. George Galloway did it by embracing Farage and trying to get selected as a candidate for the Brexit Party. Claire Fox went from a pro-IRA Revolutionary Communist Party activist and co-publisher of the Living Marxism magazine to a Brexit Party MEP. In the US, you see a lot of notionally right-wing US Republicans now starting to spout anti-capitalist narratives. At the fringes of politics, this sort of horseshoe-jumping happens all the time.
SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The horseshoe theory does not enjoy wide support within academic circles; peer-reviewed research by political scientists on the subject is scarce, and existing studies and comprehensive reviews have often contradicted its central premises, or found only limited support for the theory under certain conditions.
Theories like this sound ok on the surface but as soon as you start digging into it, it falls apart.
theinspectorst@kbin.social 9 months ago
I'm open to your alternative explanation of the observed pattern of horseshoe-jumping: e.g. Russell Brand, George Galloway, Claire Fox, Piers Corbyn, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Wolf, Melenchon voters backing Le Pen in the 2022 2nd round - regardless of what theory explains the observed facts, there are a disturbing number of examples it.
SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world 9 months ago
You listed six people out of eight billion plus.
It’s a rounding error that doesn’t need a theory.
theinspectorst@kbin.social 9 months ago
I listed six politically high-profile individuals out of the set of politically high-profile individuals, which is a much smaller set than every person on the planet. If I knew the political views of every human on the planet then of course I would prefer to give you a more comprehensive picture.
I also listed the 16% of Jean-Luc Melenchon's 7.7 million 1st round voters who indicated they were backing Marine Le Pen in the 2nd round of the French presidential election last year - literally leaping direct from the far-left candidate to the far-right candidate in preference over the moderate candidate.
NuPNuA@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Oh no, the academics disagree so what we observe with our eyes must be wrong.