The paper released in 1998 entitled "Repression and Ideology The legacy of discredited centrist extremist theory" is a very good way to understand the increasingly polarized political discourse resulting from a slow pace of progressive political and economic change that leaves a growing number of people behind
Liberals love Clinton and Obama while despising the Bushes who preceded them. They don’t seem to notice that our government continued to move to the right under both Democrats and that neither repealed any significant policies of their GOP predecessors
with more precarious future individual economic security. 2 parts, in particular, that point out a focus on individual aberration and liberal and neoconservative cooperation with state repression are of primary importance.
The time period following the report release has included 2 popular vote losers the G W Bush and Trump presidencies and Obama and Biden presidencies. Supporters of the latter 2 Democratic presidencies have marginalized the Democratic left by calling them puritopians, emoprogs, firebaggers or simply too far left and unelectable nationally only locally. A split has emerged within the Democratic Party on what it means to be 'pro Israel' as some 'pro-Israel' Democratic elected officials and candidates call themselves progressives while being less progressive on one issue. Others calling themselves progressive call the exceptionalism PEP or progressive except Palestine.
Eitan Hersh has received an award
for his work building support for the horseshoe theory of politics. The Seth Klarman family foundation, the Genesis Philanthropy Group sponsor of the Jewish (actually zionist) Funders Network Ilia Salita award, showed they are neoliberals cooperating with the far right neoconservative state repression in 2015 when the Boston Movement for Black Lives called Israel an apartheid state. The Boston JCRC and Combined Jewish Philanthropies (counterpart to Jewish Federations in other cities) walked in lockstep, funded by Seth Klarman’s foundation, to advise their supporters to be wary of supporting BLM. Ex-president Don Trump built on the false equivalence between BLM and antifa with the white nationalist far right from 2020 to 2022.
The statement from the JCRC, which has previously attacked Arab community organizations, is not a surprise. The Combined Jewish Philanthropies, funded by millionaires or billionaires Sheldon Adelson and Seth Klarman, is one of the JCRC’s major funders. The Klarman Foundation is invested in oil and weapons firms which profit from constant war in the Middle East, to which Israel contributes. For that reason the repression of Palestine is a major “interest” of the Klarman Foundation and those, like the JCRC, whom it supports.
The Klarman Foundation, in addition to its charitable support for the JCRC, supports “People-Centered Economic Development,” which seeks to destroy the state welfare system and replace it with private business. This is a racist agenda which disproportionately hurts poor Black communities, and is part of a broader economic war on Black people.
Recipients of Seth Klarman hedge fund investing also built the Iowa Democratic party caucus counting app that slowed vote counting to dilute Bernie Sanders early return win with a narrow "Platitude Pete' Buttigieg win. Seth Klarman advanced the horseshoe theory with an award. Software a company he invested in weakened support for a Presidential candidate whose supporters were later attacked for allegedly making anti-semitic statements. What was mistakenly too-often called anti-semitism was actually anti-zionism that is not a prejudice. Anti-zionism is dissent based on universal human values of prophetic Judaism against the policies of governments of nations. Twisting political disagreement into prejudice is not a good thing if the goal is a final status peace between Israel and Palestine. Previous bilateral peace treaties between Israel and Jordan, Egypt, the UAE, Sudan, Bahrain and Morocco (latter 4 countries branded as the Abraham Accords) have failed to create a final status Israeli-Palestinian peace. The Abraham Accords have normalized the unsustainable status quo by removing the linkage of Palestinian rights in recommendation 17 with diplomatic recognition of Israel by Arab states. The normalization of more bilateral international relationships with Israel undermines international solidarity with Palestinian rights that Israel continues to abuse.
The horseshoe theory of politics makes a false equivalence between left and right political extremes that can lead to violence against property or people. Supporters of the USA domestic
economic policies of I-VT Sen Bernie Sanders are falsely equated
The horseshoe theory holds that rather then a straight line from the far left to the far right it actually looks more like a horseshoe where the far right is closer to the far left. They defend their candidates and refuse to accept any criticism or analysis. When challenged they quickly become very defensive, resort to personal attacks, or claim that person is bought and paid for by opponents. The ideological purity of the socialism Sanders espouses has caused the far left to become almost as impractical as the Teabaggers on the far-right.
to the 2010 election cycle 'tea party/teabaggers." Those teabaggers of 2010 became Trump supporters in the 2016-2020 election cycles. A report of April 7, 2009 by the Department of Homeland Security entitled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment" refuted the claim of the horseshoe theory of politics that the far right and far left are an equivalent risk of political speech turning into violence against property or people. Of course the far right complained and attacked the author of the report who defended themselves here.
The so-called 'far left" and "far right" do have some interests in common and ways of bridging the gaps in polarized political public discourse can be found by examining differences between a liberal and a progressive stated here.
