I Don’t Buy That Claim That “eating Whole Foods And Avoiding Toxins” Is A “horseshoe” Alliance Of The Far Left And Far Right

Palko pointed me to this news article, “How the Right Claimed ‘Crunchy’”, which states:

Once, eating whole foods and avoiding toxins was associated with a lefty worldview. Now, being a “crunchy mom” is more often about “health freedom.” . . . As Kennedy [RFK, Jr.] evolved, so did “crunchy,” into a “horseshoe” alliance of far left- and far right-leaning home-schoolers and homesteaders, hippies and religious believers suspicious of conventional medicine who like to grow their own food. . . .

I’m highly suspicious of this claim. Here’s my personal anecdote. I do much of my food shopping at Whole Foods and I buy organic vegetables–so feel free to criticize me as a yuppie (“Whole Paycheck”) or a corporate slave (Amazon) or whatever. Anyway, the people in the store seem pretty normal to me–they don’t look like any kind of “horseshoe alliance.”

I’m suspicious of “horseshoe” arguments more generally. In this case, I think a lot of people want to eat healthy. It’s a kind of cultural reaction: Americans eat more and more junk food, so healthy eating becomes more of something you would have to decide to do. Kind of like how Americans have become less and less religious in the aggregate, so that religious attendance is more of an active statement than it used to be. So, sure, there’s something going on. But I see no reason to believe in this horseshoe thing here. It doesn’t make a lot of sense and I haven’t seen any data supporting it either.

I sent the above to Palko, who responded:

For a much more insightful look at the horseshoe, I do recommend this New Yorker piece from 2017, “Aromatic oils have become big business. But are they medicine or marketing?”, commented on here.

In his post, Palko writes that the “deep dive into the world of essential oils illuminates one of the most interesting corners of 21st century pseudo-science, the medical quackery that somehow appeals to the audiences of both Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop and Alex Jones’ InfoWars.” I’m guessing it appeals to many people in the middle too.

I sent the above discussion to Weakliem, who responded:

I don’t really agree with the horseshoe model–there seem to be a lot of pathways from various points on the left to various points on the right (and vice versa). You couldn’t really get at this with survey data, but it would be interesting to have a biographical analysis of notable figures.

Horseshoe theories are appealing and in some way comforting as it’s a way of dismissing the extremes. When someone seems to start on the far right and moves to the far left, or vice-versa, yes, this can happen, but often I think it means they weren’t originally so much on the right or the left as you might think. Meanwhile, lots of beliefs that are nutty, wrong, or just not mainstream can be held by people all over the political spectrum. We’ve discussed a few times already on this blog how, until recently, anti-vax attitudes were not associated with the left or the right, but journalists loved talking about anti-vax liberals. It was just a framing that fit the sorts of stories they wanted to tell.