Thanks for the article- Got to love "Chainsaw" Argentina's President, Javier Milei. The guy the Woke / Marxist's love to hate. Woke Marxist's seem to create slavery in the name of freedom- "The Chainsaw " Javier Milei freed them from the yoke of overspending.

http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Left-Right-Political-Spectrum/dp/0197680216

By Oxford University Press.

Even Foxy put out a link (from Caltech) a while back talking about the fallacy of defining the political landscape as a simplistic Left/ Right dichotemy- conveniently (for Woke/ Marxism) relegating founding Traditionalist views to extremism.

There is the Political Spectrum Wikipedia article...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum

Using the Left/ Right dichotemy seems to be a function of lazy stupid thinking by media journalist's and pretend academics and hanger onners.

John

I agree with almost all you say, but with one important difference. I think the methods of both Hitler and Stalin were rooted in their ideologies, and the similarity of method reflects some similarity of ideology. Both had collective totalitarian ideologies that elevate the perceived interests of the group above the interest and rights of individuals. This was the basis for their ruthless suppression of opposition and dissent. Both had agonistic worldviews based on conflict between groups that makes oppression of the perceived enemy not just a necessity but a virtue. This was the basis of the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews and Stalin’s treatment of the kulaks. They did similar things for similar reasons.

They are not the same, though, and I agree with you that much label-calling today fits the definition of association fallacy. That’s why I like Paul’s horseshoe image – it doesn’t say the far right and far left wind up in exactly the same place, but pointing in the same direction. I think that also fits my comparison of “far right” libertarians and “far left” anarchists. “Far right” may be a valid description of Leyonhjelm’s ideology, but in some ways his worldview is closer to my old anarchist mates than Hitler or even Sussan Ley.

Reading some of these comments is a clear indicator of the stupidity of indoctrination educated Westerners !

Good posts John and Rhian,

One thing is for certain, you can't be a half decent despot unless you have good old fashioned "class enemy" real or imaginary. For Pol Pot the class enemy were people who wore glasses, for the Kudos Kid here, its all those billions of Woke/Marxists running around the place.

Just on the author of this article, David Leyonhjelm, and his claims to be a libertarian,. Leyonhjelm used the falsely named Liberal Democrat Party to gain political advantage. He fooled many into voting his way, but came unstuck when exposed as a fraud, he's neither liberal or democratic.

Rhian,

I think you’re right to emphasise how both Hitler and Stalin subordinated the individual to the “group.” That’s the shared authoritarian method Hayek was describing, and it’s a useful reminder.

Where the distinction matters, though, is which group each ideology elevated. For Stalin it was the proletariat, defined in economic terms. For Hitler it was the Aryan Volksgemeinschaft, defined in racial-national terms. Both crushed individual liberty, yes, but in different ideological directions.

That’s why I’m cautious about calling them one category and labeling it “collectivist.” It flattens important differences and drifts back into the oversimplification that “collectivism = left, individualism = right.”

The Nazis weren’t collectivist in the socialist sense; they were collectivist in the racial sense. Calling both simply “collectivist” is like saying a cult and a trade union are the same because they both value loyalty to the group - technically true at a distance, but misleading in substance.

So yes, there’s a family resemblance, but also a real divergence. Both matter if we want clarity.

And to clarify, I wouldn’t call Leyonhjelm “far-right.” Given his anarcho-libertarianism, you’d need the two-dimensional map to place him accurately. The horseshoe works for showing how extremes mirror each other, but it doesn’t capture someone like David, who sits outside that authoritarian arc altogether.