That guest is Dominic Sandbrook, one half of the excellent "Rest is History" podcast.

You can't make an omellete without breaking a few eggs, after all. That was Lenin, supposedly.

edit: spelling of "one"

Idealists in the sense of a simplistic worldview.

It is worth a watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf-bSAnW_E0 but it itself is a somewhat simplistic take.

It's probably more accurate to say they were reductionists -- it's easy to imagine an ideal system if you ignore the complexities of reality.

Which is why they all failed.

I bet it's related to the tendency for narcissism where you believe that you alone have all the right answers.

On the contrary, Stalin was one of the most brutally pragmatic politicians of the 20th century.

This is what's scary about Elon Musk talking about 'sustainable abundance'.

I think the obvious conclusion from my post is that I don’t find any of those people credible. At all.

I’d go so far as to say I think anyone peddling horseshoe theory is a politically illiterate fool regardless of their supposed qualifications.

It’s funny that you want me to read the imitation though.

“ Several political scientists, psychologists, and sociologists have criticized the horseshoe theory.[3][4][5] Proponents point to a number of perceived similarities between extremes and allege that both tend to support authoritarianism or totalitarianism; political scientists do not appear to support this notion, and instances of peer-reviewed research on the subject are scarce. Existing studies and comprehensive reviews often find only limited support and only under certain conditions; they generally contradict the theory's central premises.”