The Ancient Case Against Horseshoe Theory
At the time when I sent the first draft of this article to the editors, the nation was in shock. Millions had watched in horror as a car driven by a white supremacist plowed into a crowd of peaceful protesters in Charlottesville, killing a young woman named Heather Heyer. Over the next week, other videos surfaced. A group of men gathered around a supine black men in a parking garage, kicking and beating him with poles. As one man tried to ward off a crowd of Neo-Nazis with an improvised torch, someone in the crowd turned and fired a gun at him, point blank. In the wake of the tragedy, the president’s statement that both sides were responsible for what happened was met with the condemnation it richly deserved.
Then, just before we went to press, the events at Berkeley unfolded. According to a Washington Post story (“Black-clad antifa members attack peaceful right-wing demonstrators in Berkeley”), “about 100 anarchists and antifa members” entered a march against hate and scuffled with a rather small rally against, apparently, “Marxism in America.” All of a sudden, major news outlets — including the Post—were rushing to confess that the left does have a violence problem after all. The editorial board of the Post wrote that the groups in Berkeley “only help the hateful forces they claim to oppose” — a headline that suggests Antifa might not even be about what they say they’re about. Another editorial in the same publication, by Marc A. Thiessen, declared “yes, antifa is the moral equivalent of the Neo-Nazis.” The justification for this claim was that since Antifa — an antifascist organization — “believe that physical violence ‘is both ethically justifiable and strategically effective’ they are no different from Neo-Nazis.”
For once, if you really wanted to, you could almost understand the president’s seemingly permanent state of confusion about why he’s perceived the way he is by the press. After all, what’s the difference between what the Washington Post just published and what he said? Is what Thiessen said maybe even a little worse? Is that really the whole difference between whether it’s good or bad to say “both sides do it?” Is the problem with what he said really only that it wasn’t true in that specific case? Or is it the case, as I think — hope, anyway — most sane people believe that if white supremacists are there, white supremacists are still and always wrong, no matter what else is true?
There’s an easy place to start answering this question. Antifa and Neo-Nazis are obviously not equivalent. If it were true, as Mr. Thiessen says, that Neo-Nazis are essentially defined by their belief in the efficacy of violence to achieve their goals, then it might be true — but Nazis, of course, are defined by their white supremacy. They do believe in using violence to achieve their goals, and so, it seems, does Antifa. But then again, so do most nations that exist in the world, which is why we have an army and an armed police force. That doesn’t make Antifa right — I don’t think they are, but while what makes nazis nazis is actually their being nazis, what makes Antifa Antifa, first and foremost, is their desire to stop nazism. You don’t have to defend them — I’m not planning to — to recognize the distinction.
But the surprising fact about American politics today is that the position that the far left and far right are indistinguishable isn’t only coming from the right itself. Instead, a number of centrist Democrats have also thrown around a theory, called “horseshoe theory,” that really has only one tenet: that the political spectrum is not arrayed in a line, but instead in a horseshoe in which the far ends bend together. Horseshoe theory, however, is really horse-something-else — as Herodotus, the “Father of History,” already knew in the fifth century BCE.
In the days before Charlottesville, “horseshoe theory” was a common accusation used by Democratic centrists to undermine critiques of the party leveled by the leftist groups that have surged in the wake of a bitterly contested election. We can concede some things to it immediately. There have certainly been violent incidents, both in American history and world history, motivated by radical left politics. There have been recent incidents — notably the shooting of Steve Scalise at a congressional baseball practice. And there is Antifa violence, and it seems increasingly likely that more rallies, either for hate or against, will mean more violence of various sorts.
So if the question is “Can leftists be violent?”, the answer is yes. If the question is whether leftists can be violent to advance leftist goals, the answer is also yes. But we don’t give up the right to judge leftist politics as a whole because of these things, and we don’t have to judge a whole part of the political spectrum by the actions of some of its members. You might ask why, then, we should judge Neo-Nazis for being Neo-Nazis — but that question, of course, answers itself. Despite horseshoe theory, there are many things that being a lefty can mean, both historically and in America today. But being a Neo-Nazi can only mean the one thing —and that’s where Herodotus comes in.
In the third book of his voluminous history, Herodotus explores the nature of political institutions in the form of a dialogue between nobles of the Persian court arguing about what form of government is best. The occasion is the death of a usurper — a supposed usurper at any rate — who needs to be replaced. A noble named Darius, after organizing the assassination, organizes, as well, the discussion of what should happen next.
Sober Otanes goes first, making the case for rule by democracy. He notes, first, the many faults that kings are prone to: they are often arrogant, capricious, and violent. They are jealous of their power, peremptory, and utterly beyond constraint. In contrast, the people — he says — will be moderated by their very mass, and by the wisdom they possess as a whole. Moreover, everything they do will, of necessity, be in full view of each other. Thus, they will act more rightly than a king who isn’t ruled by anybody.
Megabyzos goes next. He starts by seconding Otanes’ condemnation of kings — this is important — but adds a condemnation of the masses as well. Megabyzos, apparently an aristocrat’s aristocrat, argues that an oligarchy, while avoiding the vices of kings, will also steer clear of the stupidity of the people. Plus, after all, he argues, nobles are raised and taught to rule over others — would they not be better at the job than peasants who have never been taught what to do?
Darius himself brings the conversation full circle, making the argument in favor of kings that people have always made for kings: that a good king, an enlightened monarch, is better than anything else because such a king could act the most swiftly and effectively to deliver to the people what they need. Darius wins the day and becomes the next king of Persia.
What we need to notice about this conversation is that all three debaters talk about kings, and all take very different positions — or rather, Otanes and Megabyzos take a different one than Darius — but, nevertheless, nobody lied. Kings can indeed be good or very bad. Since the nature of the institution typically means you can’t control which of each you get, the modern West has typically made different choices than these Persians. But there is easy recognition, in this text, that no form of government, and no political stance, is composed of all the forms it can possibly have at once.
More than that, what the disputants recognize is that different forms of government are prone to different strengths and weaknesses, different spheres of what they can be. Within that sphere, each is not inevitably going to be its weakest form. Kings may have certain clear drawbacks, but it is still possible to have a good king or a bad king, the best version, or the worst version. It is possible to have a democracy act well or poorly. It is possible for oligarchs to avoid certain sins, or to form a conspiracy against anyone else.
What I’d suggest is that this spheres metaphor is a much better one than the horseshoe. For one thing, while it may be possible for Antifa to occasionally behave like the people they oppose, they by definition can’t be the same because the one opposes the other. Meanwhile, nothing exempts us from having to consider what Neo-Nazis want in addition to what they do, which is to say, they want everyone with the wrong skin color or religion to leave America to the descendants of white Europeans. You don’t have to think Antifa should do what they do to be able to tell the difference between the spheres each inhabits.
Additionally, the other reason horseshoe theory is inaccurate is that Antifa is far from the most visible manifestation of the American far left. That would be, instead, the Democratic Socialists of America. Love them or hate them, too, it’s easy to figure out what they want, and you don’t have to use a faux social-scientific theory to do it: google works fine. They want gender and racial justice, better cheaper health care, better wages, better jobs, lower prices, and a lot of social services. And generally, they want to pay for it with high taxes on the rich. You can think achieving those goals will make America appreciably worse without being so foolish as to think those goals are not different from those of Neo-Nazis.
Meanwhile, while fascism is very generally the sin that lives in the sphere of right-wing politics, I see no reason to think Nazism must inevitably be there, too. Most likely, Nazism isn’t a sphere at all, because the concept of the sphere allows for the possibility of good and bad forms. In this case, it’s just a terrible little dot, at the bottom of the scale. But, unfortunately, it’s also true that Nazism is there right now, camping, wanted or not, in the sphere of contemporary right-wing politics, and it’s just as ridiculous to ignore that reality as the other. The most egregious thing the president did in his speech about Charlottesville was pretend it was essentially a rally about a statue that had some negative elements. That’s the lie — the negative elements are the thing. At Charlottesville, they were shouting “blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us.” It wasn’t easy to miss unless you really really wanted to.
So, there is no purpose to general conversations about the sins lefty politics and righty politics are prone to because contemporary realities are right in front of us. We simply have a white supremacist problem in our country and its leaders simply are emboldened by current trends in Republican politics generally. This is an ugly truth, but ugly truths need to be faced without getting distracted by both-sides-ism. In this case, leftists can certainly do bad things, and we can condemn them. And it will still be the case that there is no good form of Nazism.
After all, if we concede that the problem with Nazis is only that they’re violent, which is the only way they’re like Antifa, we open wide the door to the idea that, whenever they’re not, they’re actually fine. If they have the right permits, if they’re just making speeches, they’re fine, it’s no big deal.
Don’t tell that to Jews like me, or of any of the other faiths they hate. Don’t tell that to people of color. Don’t tell that to anyone they want to get rid of, just for existing in front of them. They may have some rights — they’re never okay. And, of course, of course, everyone has to acknowledge immediately that there isn’t a single white supremacist goal that could actually be achieved peacefully. The question of whether we all deserve to be here is not going to be settled by a game of H-O-R-S-E. If they can behave themselves, of a Sunday in a park, it’s certainly better than the alternative. They should never feel comfortable being out in the open, nevertheless.
What would Herodotus’ interlocutors say about American politics today? I think Otanes would be depressed by what democracy has delivered us, while Megabyzos would feel vindicated. Darius, though a much more competent monarch than America’s president, might nevertheless suggest that Trump should run roughshod over normal order, and more, as he has threatened to do on his worst days. But, I like to think Otanes would press on — despite the fact that qui custodiet ipsos custodes is what’s led us here, to where we’re asking whether well-behaved white supremacists can be better than anyone opposing them if the circumstances are right.
More than that, I think Otanes’ belief that the eyes of other citizens would keep democracy on course has a dark side, that we’re seeing—no one wants to admit they’re wrong, or that they’ve made some unsavory friends, in front of people they don’t like. Especially when they’ve been trained to believe that negative news of any sort is a kind of conspiracy. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a bright side, too, since we’re in the sphere, not on the horseshoe: what democracy allows that Herodotus’ other spheres don’t is that we can also be the remedy to the threat we have posed ourselves. As long as we have the right to vote (and for the record I believe we should be trying to expand and preserve the franchise) we have the chance to make positive change and stand in the way of what is dark, and wicked around us. Indeed, while most days I dread how many people there seem to be around us who simply hate others for being who they are, it’s clear too — Charlottesville made it clear, and Boston soon after — that hate is not something that any of us has to stand against alone.
But we can’t let anything keep us from saying that the Nazis are the problem. Not false equivalencies, not moral relativism, not the chance to score a few political points. Not the belief that we’ll look more objective, and more credible across the aisle — I’m looking at you, Washington Post — if we sacrifice a sacred cow or two. We can’t let fears about free speech or anything else put us in the position of defending what we should abhor — let them speak, as in Boston, but let them be surrounded, and drowned out, and overwhelmed, too. Since white supremacy exists and is strong we, most of all, can’t look the other way and live with it because that seems better than our political opponents winning elections. Neo-Nazis feeling emboldened and supported quite literally isn’t better than anything.
And so we have a duty to remember we were right the first time, and Trump was wrong. Antifa did something they probably shouldn’t have done, and are about something they probably shouldn’t be about. Talking about that is fine. Making it appear, in any light, as a mitigating factor with respect to the mere existence of the other side is not. I get it: we all want to appear reasonable, and objective. Most of us likely even have the impulse to grant part of an opposing side’s argument in the hopes it will make ours seem reasonable enough to carry the day — even if we don’t believe what we’re saying.
But to treat the question of what Antifa should do as in some way related to the question of the rightness of the other side is to invite spectacles, like the one last Thursday, where Sean Hannity’s guest host Jonathan Gilliam appeared to blame Heather Heyer’s death on her, for marching with Antifa — which, for the record, she wasn’t. If you have the inclination to give that argument any kind of fuel, don’t. And if you’re really afraid of what Neo-Nazis can do in American society, if you think what happened to Heyer wasn’t an aberration with respect to what these groups will do — and again the car incident was far from the only instance of Neo-Nazi violence that weekend — it is, at a minimum, more difficult to entirely condemn what Antifa is about than it is to condemn the shooter of Steve Scalise.
So we can, and must, consider the question of Antifa’s behavior separately from that of the Neo-Nazis for the very good reason that it’s not capable of make Neo-Nazis seem right. And it’s not capable, either, of making all leftist points seem wrong. Because, while Neo-Nazis can’t ever be anything else than what they are, leftists can be all kinds of things. While individuals and small groups can act poorly or well, Neo-Nazis can only act poorly. And most of all because we would never want to suggest even implicitly that there’s a way Neo-Nazis can be in America that would be remotely okay, even if only to suggest that there’s an equivalency there with anything else.
And so we can’t allow ideas like horseshoe theory to distract us. And we can’t allow both-sides-ism to make us think there’s some kind of debate. In the spheres of all our politics, as Herodotus suggested, there is good and bad, and different kinds of powers to work both. And then there is the way things actually are, right in front of our faces. And there, in front of us, is a bad so big that none of us should look away.
In the words of that most famous of Classical aphorisms, we must beware of Nazis bearing permits. We must beware of Nazis anywhere. We must beware of empowering them in governments, and pretending they’re not there because of who we want in the Supreme Court, or because of what we want to happen with taxes. We must beware of empowering them because we find their critics annoying, or because we want to be fair, or to appear to be fair. And there is never a good reason to judge white supremacists primarily by what they and those who oppose them do on the specific days that they meet. Some things are not up for debate, no matter what happens. What we have, in America today, is a problem that needs to be solved, and we have to keep showing up to solve it.
Andrew Tobolowsky teaches Classics in the state of Virginia, and knows what side he’s on.
