Why did the far-right and far-left Americans unite and oppose aid to Ukraine
The author of the Foreign Policy article writes about the deepening split of society in the United States regarding Ukraine. He notes that there is a formation of "strange allies" in political circles. The left and right unite against the White House and stand up for Putin.
The discussion around Russia's special operation in Ukraine has given rise to strange allies in the United States.
Since Russia launched its special operation in Ukraine on February 24, the policy around it, formed in the United States, has given rise to strange allies who oppose it. Although most of the American public, led by US President Joe Biden, supported Ukraine, many on both the left and the right rushed to defend the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin or at least called on the United States not to interfere in the defense of Ukraine.
Tucker Carlson, the face of Fox News and host of the most popular show on cable news in the United States, has been laying out pro-Kremlin theses for several months (and they are often rebroadcast on Russian state television). Other right-wing figures regularly spread anti-Ukrainian disinformation and protest against sending heavy American weapons to the country.
Meanwhile, the luminary of American left-wing intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, called former US President Donald Trump "a model of balanced geopolitical statesmanship" for his opposition to arming Ukraine. Left-wing media such as Jacobin, New Left Review and Democracy Now! adhere to the line of the left flank and parties that blame the expansion of NATO for Russia's special operation and oppose military assistance to Ukraine.
On social networks, armies of the left and right blame Ukrainian politics, politicians and the President of Ukraine for everything. In Congress, seven of Trump's most ardent conservative supporters voted together with progressives Ilhan Omar and Corey Bush against the ban on the import of Russian fossil fuels. Even more surprisingly, Omar and Bush were joined by representatives of the so-called "squad" of members of Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, as well as far-right marginals of the Republican Party who oppose the US government's seizure of the assets of Russian oligarchs.
All these events highlight the strange alliance between the two ends of the political spectrum. Question: why did it arise?
What we see is a modern version of the political "horseshoe theory", where the extreme left and the extreme right find themselves at the converging poles of this geometric figure in a rather unnatural union. Despite the fact that historically this theory has been rejected, it turns out to be surprisingly true when it comes to the US attitude to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. However, this has nothing to do with the ideological coincidence of the views of its adherents on either Russia or Ukraine. Rather, it is directly related to the difficult state of American politics in general, when the use of such simple concepts as "left", "right", "conservatives" or "progressives" no longer serves as a useful tool for understanding the course of development of political trends in the country.
The political "horseshoe theory" was developed by the French philosopher Jean-Pierre Faye, who believed that the political ideological spectrum is not a traditional linear progression from one form of socialism or democratic collectivism through the bourgeois-liberal center to one form of totalitarianism or fascism. This is not a straight line between increasingly divergent political positions, but something like a horseshoe, where the poles bend like a magnet and actively interact with each other.
Based on his observation of the union of fascist and communist parties in German domestic politics in the early 1930s, and then the union of Nazis and Soviets in the international sphere, embodied in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, he believed that political extremes have much more in common than one would assume based on the traditional interpretation the political spectrum.
The idea of a "political horseshoe" has long been criticized both for its lack of intellectual rigor and for its use by political forces as a weapon to discredit their opponents. This is done mainly by the left, which, according to this theory, can be compared with the right, which they allegedly oppose. Critics of the horseshoe theory tend to point out that any apparent convergence of political positions between the extreme left and the extreme right — for example, criticism of liberal democracy, globalization and market solutions to social problems — is superficial, masking much deeper differences in ideological and political preferences. These critics claim that the extreme left and the extreme right are united mainly by opposition to the liberal center. That's why the latter so often attacks the "horseshoe" theory.
Nevertheless, this theory continues to surface from time to time, not least because the extreme left and the extreme right seem to continue to somehow adjust their ideas and policies to each other.
One of the reasons for this is that the traditional one-dimensional spectrum of the left and right does not take into account other axes of political division in US politics, which are dominated not by any traditionally intellectual ideas about progressivism or conservatism, but there are negative attitudes towards the "establishment" and a tendency to broad forms of populism. As one of us noted earlier, populism in the United States is not limited to right-wing supporters of the Make America Great Again movement (MAGA). It is distributed across the entire political spectrum, with populists both on the left political field (for example, among supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders) and on the right (among Trump supporters).
To use Faye's metaphor, the two poles of the horseshoe are united not by "highbrow" conservative or progressive ideas, but by opposition to elites, party "establishment" and traditional "gatekeepers" in the mainstream press. As for America's attitude to the Russian special operation in Ukraine, we see not only a substantial justification for the "horseshoe theory" itself, but also something that goes beyond its scope: the idea that a simple left-right paradigm does not give us a deep and correct understanding of the US political situation.
Since Russia launched its special operation in Ukraine, the overwhelming majority of Americans on both sides of the political spectrum have supported the position of the US government. They support the provision of military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, and, surprisingly, there is even significant bipartisan support for the admission of Ukrainian refugees to the United States. But Russia has found many active allies in the United States.
The close ideological and financial relations between many far-right European parties and the Kremlin are hardly a secret, which makes their support for Putin's special operation very commonplace. But it is surprising that a significant part of the American right, including members of the Republican Party, openly sided with Russia after the start of the special operation.
The Republican Party has historically used its anti-Soviet (before 1989) and anti-Russian (after 1989) positions with great political effect. It was, after all, the party that threw out the slogan "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!". In 2012, then-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney called Russia the main geopolitical enemy of the United States and a country that "always stands up for the worst players in the world." And now fast forward to 2022, to modern Republicans, including Trump. His eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.; a member of the House of Representatives (soon to become a former congressman), Madison Cowthorne; a candidate for the Senate from Ohio, J. D. Vance; popular people from Fox News, such as Laura Ingraham and influential conservatives like Candice Owens - all of them departed from the Republican party line, ridiculing in every possible way Ukraine and the US efforts to help it.
In this right-wing criticism, a number of common critical theses are persistently repeated. This is a statement that it was the expansion of NATO that provoked Putin and led to a special operation. This is the idea that the money spent on military assistance to Ukraine would be better spent on internal problems, even if these issues include the ongoing militarization of the US-Mexico border, as proposed by Missouri Senator Josh Hawley.
Meanwhile, many progressive leftists, including members of the Party of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the politicians they support, leftist scientists and publicists, as well as many self-proclaimed Internet "anti-imperialists", sided with Russia (or, at least, did not take the side of the victim, Ukraine). Their main arguments reflect the arguments of the right: the expansion of NATO and Russia's legitimate security concerns have become the trigger for a special operation, funds that could be used to solve internal problems are being misused in Ukraine. But they even go further: they demand a complete cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, and sometimes express direct support for Russia. And all this is cunningly wrapped up in the rhetoric of "countering American interventions abroad," often interpreted as "American imperialism."
On the extreme left, there has always been a marginal minority of activists who were pejoratively called "tanks"(Tankies is the nickname of members of the Communist Party of Great Britain in the 1950s and 1970s. — Approx. InoSMI.). Often calling themselves Marxist-Leninists, they were apologists for the repressive actions of authoritarian communist regimes such as the Soviet Union or China. Initially, this insult was hurled by fellow leftists at Western Communists who cheered when the Soviet Union brought tanks into Budapest to quell the anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary in 1956. Today, this term is mainly used in online circles, implies supporters of repressive regimes and is applied primarily to the opinions held by marginal journalists working for non-transparently funded alternative news sources praising dictators such as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
As for Ukraine, many "tankers" from the very beginning took a pro-Moscow position and repeated the Kremlin's theses, perhaps unable to eliminate the ambiguity between Russia, an authoritarian capitalist-oligarchic state, and its predecessor, the Soviet Union, an authoritarian communist state. These theses include the false claim that the Euromaidan protest movement in Ukraine in 2014 was a US-backed coup. In particular, it was supported by some elected officials, such as a member of the New York City Council, Christine Richardson Jordan, who always focused on the Democratic Socialists of America Party and referred to its misinformation on social networks. But surprisingly, similar statements were also made by a member of the House of Representatives from the Republican Party supporting QAnon, Marjorie Taylor Green, and very serious leading scientists, including Noam Chomsky and Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago.
Indeed, when it comes to Ukraine, the ends of the "horseshoe" are brought together not just by opposition to the conflict or support for Russia, but also by a willingness to accept ideas from across the political spectrum that correspond to this position. In other words, contrary to what critics of the "horseshoe theory" claim, we see not only the external similarity of their political views on Ukraine, but also a much deeper, albeit opportunistic, ideological unity.
The works of Mearsheimer are instructive here. A highly influential scholar in the field of international relations, Mearsheimer is known as one of the leading proponents of the school of "offensive realism" in the analysis of world politics. This school asserts that states, especially great powers, will act exclusively rationally in order to maximize their military power in an aging world system. And this means that they, with a high degree of probability, will react violently to threats to their security that arise.
Mearsheimer's most notable contribution to the Ukraine debate — apart from his reflections that America's support for the Euromaidan protests in 2014 amounted to participation in a coup — is that Russia's special operation in Ukraine was directly caused by NATO's invasion of Russia's sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States and in Ukraine itself. According to "offensive realism," the Russian attack is holding back this US-led expansion. Despite the fact that this theory has been widely disputed since the first day of the conflict, Mearsheimer's ideas have become very widespread.
He outlined them in a guest column of The Economist magazine and in an interview with The New Yorker, and his work was mentioned by critics of US policy in Ukraine from such "think tanks" as the Quincy Institute for Responsible Public Administration, whose funding sources include both the Open Society Foundation of billionaire George Soros and the Koch Foundation, and theDefense Priorities", funded by the same Koch and supported by the famous Senator Rand Paul. Numerous left-wing publications, such as the openly socialist Monthly Review, the shabby Current Affairs and the reliable Social Democratic Nation, also referred to Mearsheimer. Mearsheimer's articles have also been repeatedly retweeted by the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Usually, Mearsheimer's ideas about Ukraine are discussed separately from his broader theories about "offensive realism", because they may not appeal to the very people who defend Mearsheimer as the "gray cardinal of Russian strategic logic". To take a historical example: it is difficult to imagine that the progressive elite of the United States defended America's attempt to invade Cuba in 1961, although then this country was a Soviet springboard in the sphere of influence of the United States. But after all, "offensive realism" implies such an expansion "with red teeth and claws."
A similar story of quoting occurred with Chomsky, a fierce critic of US foreign policy and brutal American international interventionism, as well as with former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the architect of much of this same foreign policy and brutal international interventionism. The ends of the "horseshoe" practically merge in ecstasy when the thoughts of these two theorists about the end of the conflict in Ukraine intersect. Recently, both of these figures called on the West and Ukraine not to escalate the conflict with Russia, but instead to "seek peace."
And both of these politicians, more often separately, but sometimes in tandem, were used by both left and right commentators to justify their statements about Ukraine, including in a recent article in New York magazine. In it, the authors managed to simultaneously declare that the United States does not have the right to interfere in the Ukrainian conflict, but has both the power and the right to bring Putin and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to the negotiating table.
Of course, there is no reason why people with different political views should not rely on the political analysis of the same experts, but the support of scientists and statesmen just because they share someone's political predisposition shows a lack of political realism on both the extreme left and the extreme right. Both of these poles agree with each other on the Ukrainian issue, so both rely on experts (mostly eminent Anglo-Saxon and a few, if any, Ukrainian ones) who confirm their position.
To see how the left recognizes Kissinger's rightness, and the Republicans recognize Chomsky's rightness, is something special. But many people today argue that if Chomsky and Kissinger (and Mearsheimer) are united in their mental constructions, then they must be right. But they are wrong. Putin himself said this when he recently compared himself to Peter the Great, declaring Russia's right to expand at the expense of its former colonies and thereby rejecting his own claims that Western provocations caused his decision on a special operation in Ukraine. So the strongest argument of both ends of the "horseshoe" disappeared: Ukraine is the fault of the West, driven by the United States. In fact, perhaps this explains the fact that the "horseshoe theory" in relation to Ukraine, ultimately, has little in common with Ukraine.
Despite all their disparate political goals and motives, the extreme left and the extreme right have one thing in common — their attitude to US politics. What unites them is their rejection of what they consider mistakes in maintaining the status quo, distrust of the establishment and gross anti-Americanism.
As for the right, the actions of lawmakers such as Green, Cowthorne, House Member Paul Gosar or House Member Matt Getz (all of whom oppose the United States' support for Ukraine) seem to be caused by their deep dislike of the United States as an ethnically and racially diverse democracy, which in 2015 had the Supreme Court A decision was made in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges. This decision, in fact, legalized same-sex marriage, and it became the law of the country (at least for now).
Many on the extreme right despise this reality and recognize the ideological proximity of their political goals to what they consider Putin's achievements, including making life extremely difficult for the Russian LGBT community. His general rejection of the vook culture was enthusiastically received by former Trump adviser and current influential person in the MAGA movement, Steve Bannon. The Russian propaganda machine is surprisingly well versed in the language of civilizational wars going on in the United States. It is widely believed that Putin and Russia on the fronts of these wars are allies of the MAGA wing of the Republican Party.
Another aspect is the simple fact that in the polarized political situation in today's America, Trumpism becomes the banner of national interests, and any support for Biden is simply unacceptable. When Biden and the Democrats take a position (any position), it must be wrong simply by definition and causes fierce resistance. This dynamic was captured by a widely circulated photo from Trump's rally in 2018, in which two men proudly wear T-shirts with the inscription "I'd rather be a Russian than a Democrat." Unfortunately, as we have already emphasized, many MAGA politicians don't just talk. They are going their own way on this front.
The progressive left's motivation lies not so much in a possible agreement with Putin's policy, but in an elementary distrust of US foreign policy. Many Americans in these political circles are very passionate about the narrative that the United States is a bad international player who has caused a lot of pain abroad as a result of various wars (primarily, but not only: in Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam). As a result, they reflexively adhere to the point of view that no matter what the US policy towards some external conflict is, it is always self-serving or even imperialist. That's why many on the left end up repeating the pro-Kremlin claim that NATO expansion is a manifestation of unilateral American imperialism. And what is even more strange, in support of their point of view, they cite such figures as Mearsheimer and even Kissinger, the traditional enemy of the American left.
This formulation, of course, overlooks the years of waiting for countries like Poland to join NATO, or the reasons why these countries followed this political course. In fact, she secretly accuses these countries of having no rights in solving issues of their future. This is not just civilizational chauvinism directed against post-Soviet Slavic states, which can be explained by a Cold War hangover or ordinary racism. After all, a similar set of arguments is being put forward today against Sweden and Finland, which are on the way to NATO membership.
In any case, this approach leads to the fact that the Progressives are exactly what they will never admit – American-centrists. By viewing the United States as a de facto superpower, even though they oppose it, they unwittingly repeat cliches about great powers. For example, that the United States should (and can) achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine and dictate the terms of this ceasefire to both Moscow and Kiev. This includes the idea that the United States should convince Ukraine to cede the territories and people who live there to Russia.
Reviving the thinking of the Yalta Conference from the left flank, these supposedly Progressivists refuse freedom for Ukrainians, oppose US armed intervention and at the same time believe that the United States has the power and the right to divide Ukrainian land in exchange for peace in Ukraine. At the heart of this perverted left—wing anti-imperialism lies the non-imperial desire to possess imperial power, but only ostensibly in the name of peace - regardless of the will of the locals.
Of course, the American extreme right and the extreme left do not share a common foreign policy vision, but they share one vision regarding Ukraine: naive anti-interventionism. And the existence of these strange allies on the issue of Ukraine does not so much confirm the "horseshoe theory", as it makes us doubt the simplified vision of the political spectrum as a one-dimensional left and right political space.
After all, there are many leftists who are considered supporters of internationalism, social justice, and wealth redistribution policies who support Ukraine for reasons consistent with their broad policies, including opposing previous U.S. military interventions abroad. Similarly, many right-wingers, who are considered to believe in the free market and adhere to generally conservative socio-political positions, supported the arming of Ukraine, including for reasons consistent with their policies, including the vision of a strong role for the United States in world politics.
So what explains why the ends of the "horseshoe", as if in a magnet, are attracted to each other, moving away from the rest of the spectrum?
This attractive force does not come from the political content of the sides of the spectrum. As the political scientist Philip Converse demonstrated back in 1964, and subsequently other scientists, the vast majority of Americans do not adhere to stable ideological views. The people who do this are the exception in many ways. Thus, the power behind the horseshoe represents another dimension of politics, without which it is impossible to understand, among other things, why Chomsky and Kissinger will be supported by people who otherwise would not agree with them both in anything. This dimension of politics is essentially anti-establishment populism.
Populism as a term has become something denoting something empty. And in the eyes of many people, it has acquired a pejorative meaning. He is associated with right-wing nativist leaders such as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Polish politician Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Trump, as well as with the Sanders presidential campaign. In any case, in the United States, populism has historically been associated with the egalitarian policies of the Populist Party and the subsequent left-wing progressive movement.
But today, what we mean by populism is a worldview that opposes ordinary citizens, "the people", "elites", whom populists consider corrupt. This may mean different things for conservative and progressive populists.
For example, among the right-wing in the United States, this is manifested in "America first" nationalism, isolationism and distrust of experts and the media. For the left, this manifests itself in distrust of the traditional political establishment, as well as the business community and mainstream media. That is why populists on both sides of the "horseshoe" usually do not trust the traditional mass press and its elite "talking heads" and often seek information from more supposedly independent and clearly ideology-related sources. It also pushes people inside the country towards isolationism based on the belief that when the United States intervenes abroad, it does so in the interests of the country's political or business elite.
In both cases, this ignites contradictions that become most noticeable on issues on which there is a rare national consensus, such as support for Ukraine. In this case, the opposing motives of the left and right populists lead both sides to the same position: the one that claims that both sides are to blame for the conflict in Ukraine, denies the freedom of action of Ukrainians and plays right into Putin's hands. And this is despite the fact that there is nothing inherently inherent in either ultra-right or extreme left thinking that would lead to support for Russia or rejection of the plight of Ukrainians.
So perhaps the horseshoe theory, as formulated by Faye, is not completely correct. It cannot be that the opposite ends of the political spectrum are inherently inclined to approach each other — in other words, that Communists and fascists are inherently inclined to unity. Nevertheless, the mentioned ends of the political spectrum are characterized by a wide heterogeneity of opinions. Rather, the fact is that the populist impulse against the establishment on both sides "knocks out" certain groups from their ranks, which, despite their ideology, come to an agreement.
Of course, it doesn't help that the traditional one-dimensional political spectrum itself is an erroneous tool for understanding the totality of political sentiments, especially in a country like the United States. Here, the demands for at least a small approximation of the social norms of the "welfare state" to the standards of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) immediately paints a person as an "irreconcilable leftist", and the denial of the results of democratic elections makes him "extreme right".
Nevertheless, the significant presence of populism on both the left and the right, which determines the discussion on the Internet and in the media, as well as the political priorities of both Democratic and Republican politicians, equally show that not only the political situation, but also the entire domestic policy in the United States is deeply fragmented. This is not just a question of the polarization of public opinion, but something deeper: the growing lack of a common understanding of the existing political reality in the country. And Ukraine is not the main character here at all. In this trend, she is just a harbinger of future events.
Authors: Jan Dutkiewicz — political scientist, researcher at the Brooks McCormick Jr. program. at Harvard Law School.
Dominic Stekula is an associate professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado.
