How was it? The right says “we want to do genocide”, the left says “no, we don’t want any genocide”. So the right responded “ok, so let’s just do a little genocide”, and the left responded “no, we don’t want any genocide”. And the centrist said to the left “see, You are the extremists, you don’t want to meet in the middle”.
Meet me in the middle, says the unjust man.
You take a step toward him. He takes a step back.
Meet me in the middle, says the unjust man.—A.R. Moxon
On a related note, I really hate how our political system in the US tries to force parties to meet in the middle by allowing election results where neither party has the majority required for the government to actually function (pass laws and other critical functions)
This is perfect. The right has gone so far to the right that meeting in the middle is still very much on the right.
The lesser evil, still being evil trope.
Fake might be the wrong word. To me it feels very real and very entrenched both due to our voting system and those two powerful parties being the ones with the power to change it. Plus both are beholden to interests other than those of the general population, so their stated platforms aren’t necessarily real. (This is not a both sides comment, one side is still far worse than the other)
It’s an emergent thing from other flaws in the system, and it is bad, but it feels all too real.
We should not allow conservatives to get away with calling themselves centrist. “Centrists” are just conservatives who realize conservatives are definitely the bad guys.
In international terms, even the Democrats are right of center.
There’s an old Soviet joke about Americans being so decedent that they required two fascist parties.
“International” meaning certain select European countries, ignoring the other shitty European governments of course
Certain Governments may be right of the Democrats but, in comparison to European (and international) parties, the Democrats are right of centre.
Pure Right, with some being Hard Right.
(I was going to say that the Hard Right were ultra-Neoliberals rather then Fascists, but then I remembered Biden’s actual military support for ethno-Fascists - who are the most violent and racist kind of Fascist there is - so maybe it’s more complex than just being hard core Neolibs).
Both the left and right can be fascist.
I find it helpful to consider authoritarian/libertarian on a different axis to small government/big government.
Whilst I agree with your point about two axis, Fascism is Right-wing + Authoritarian and has nothing whatsoever of Left-wing in it.
Left-wing + Authoritarian would be the kind of Communism practiced in places like the Soviet Union - highly centralized and were people are supposed to obey the dictates of the Party.
Neoliberalism is Rightwing with a different form of Authoritarianism: whilst its practitioners claim it’s Libertarian, their policies do things such as using Wealth in gate-keeping access to opportunities (via things such as Private Education) and similarly using Property Rights (mainly Land Ownership and related) to limit most people’s access to what they require to satisfy their basic needs, de facto forcing them to produce wealth for the Asset Owners in order survive - it’s Authoritarianism through removing people’s freedom at a systemic level with access to all basic needs gatekept via Wealth and Asset Ownership so that everybody not born into the Asset Owner class has only the “freedom” to starve and be homeless if they don’t want to work to create more wealth for the Asset Owner class, a more subtle use of force (as Force does get used, to enforce Property Rights) that the rather more direct “boot in the face” kind of Authoritarianism of Fascism.
Fascism is Right-wing + Authoritarian and has nothing whatsoever of Left-wing in it.
Authoritarian certainly. But Mussolini was fascist, but held left wing beliefs like welfare and relief for the poor and government intervention and ownership.
The rest I agree with.
US Libertarians should theoretically be closer to anarchy than authoritarianism but the need to group together distorts the thinking. Liberalism is probably a better counterweight for authoritarianism.
Mussolini was fascist, but held left wing beliefs like welfare and relief for the poor and government intervention and ownership.
Welfare for the in-group is not (exclusively) left-wing. The Nazis had welfare for blonde blue-haired ‘aryans’ that produced lots of children. Also, neoliberal and conservative western governments love giving welfare to corporations and rich people. Even if your in-group is “all Romans” (in case of the ancient grain dole that Mussolini was inspired by) or “all Italians”, if the motivation for welfare is to empower the in-group to exploit the out-group, it’s right wing.
Government intervention and ownership are not (exclusively) left-wing. The original right wing - the monarchists in the French parliament - were pro-government intervention and ownership, with the government being embodied by the king. Government spending is consistently higher among Republicans than Democrats. Large ostentatious state projects with kickbacks for the in-group are bread and butter of pretty much every right wing government, from the massive Nazi government-owned holiday park Prora to the Space Launch System. Right-wing governments often forcefully nationalize projects run by the out-group, like Jewish shops in Nazi germany or Black Panther community support networks in the US.
The right wing may cloak themselves in the guise of the free market or of individual liberty or decentralization of power, or in the guise of community and centralization and rights that must be defended at the cost of freedoms. They will present themselves as underdogs and punks and outsiders or as rightful inheritors, powerful leaders, loyalists and patriots. Often they will switch narratives from topic to topic, going from underdogs fighting against the liberal elite who says you can’t say slurs anymore to patriots bemoaning the lack of solidarity of people kneeling in protest at a flag.
The one thing that unites them, the one thing that is consistent, is to exploit and oppress the out-group to benefit the in-group.
Contrast communist authoritarianism and mass murder, which were generally justified as being for the good of all mankind.
We are agreeing that fascism is much more strongly associated with the authoritarian/liberal axis than the left/right axis.
government intervention and ownership
I think you’re confusing the Authoritarianism elements with it being Left-wing, possibly because what you were taught was Authoritarianism was the Soviet Union and the Nazis, with the focus on the latter being all about their Militarism and violent Ethnic-purity policies (namely, the Holocaust) rather than their Economic policies.
I was born in a country - Portugal - which had Fascism and the Government did way more intervention and owned far more things than it does now, 50 years into Democracy.
Centralization of control is as common in Authoritarian Right-wing systems as it is in Authoritarian Left-wing ones.
Yes, my definition of left vs right is purely bigger government vs smaller government.
But I’ve just read another definition which is equality of decision making (left) vs hierarchical decision making (right).
How are you defining left vs right?
Fascism specifically centers around a hierarchy based on race, ethnicity, place of origin, sex, gender, sexuality, or some other (for the most part immutable) characteristic of a person. It also may specify heavy corporatism (as what governments like Mussolini’s Italy structured their economy around).
Leftism centers around abolishing all unjust hierarchies, including those that fascism relies upon. It is also anti-capitalist and, obviously, anti-corporate.
“Fascism” doesn’t just mean “authoritarianism”. Fascism doesn’t even strictly need a state – it’s mostly social and economic in its nature, and doesn’t say anything about the structure (or existence) of government. Anarcho-capitalism, for instance, starts to decay into fascism, where there may be no “government”, but rather private entities (like corporations and individuals) restricting or blocking the social and economic participation of certain groups based on a social gradient, or in general depriving people in those groups of rights (like enslaving, harming, or killing them, denying them food or healthcare, etc.). There are always enforcers of fascism, as it’s an inherently unequal and oppressive ideology, but whether the oppressors’ power ultimately comes from governmental organizations or non-governmental organizations doesn’t matter. You could argue this does constitute authoritarianism, and I wouldn’t disagree, but my point is that “big government” and fascism are entirely different concepts.
For the most part, fascism can be considered an ideology of emphasizing a supposed “former glory” of a nation or peoples, which co-opts socialist critiques of capitalism and twists them to emphasize immutable characteristics like ethnicity or masculinity as being the cause of economic woes, rather than class; Fascism, while taking significant influence from leftist ideology in its rhetoric, turns it on its head and repurposes it for the “Volk” (some population/identity based on generally immutable characteristics) rather than the worker. It ends in the dismantling of trade unions and other leftist structures, and an economy comprised of corporatoid organizations which is kept afloat by the constant drive for “purification” (the enforcement of a bigoted hierarchy) which never concludes, resulting in the gradual narrowing of who is included in the “in-group” (cannibalizing itself) after a certain point.
Leftism puts class warfare above all else, and while some leftists could incorporate fascist elements into their beliefs – that being, social conservativism, as elements like misogyny and homophobia aren’t impossible to find in the belief systems of self-identified communists (mostly apologia for the errors of authoritarian communist governments) – the socioeconomic structure of socialism compared to fascism is so radically different that it’s impossible to fit full-on fascism into a socialist structure. Fascism praxis perhaps may be observed as “welfare for a very specific class of peoples, reliant on the oppression of lower classes of peoples”, where the “out-groups” are forced into to the lowest classes, and the “in-groups” who are of lower classes may see a limited amount of welfare. Fascism combines class-based hierarchies with “they’re different than me”-based hierarchies; this very stark class division and exploitation of lower classes completely conflicts with core leftist ideology.
An excellent essay. And we agree that the simple left/right categorisation is woefully inadequate.
No they can’t. Fascist is not a synonym for authoritarian.
Ok. I’ll be more precise. Fascism is authoritarian, but not all authoritarians are fascist.
Mussolini was fascist, but held left wing beliefs like welfare and relief for the poor and government intervention and ownership.
At that level of discussion, a simplistic left-right characterization makes no sense.
What makes a fascist fascist is that they only defend welfare for the people they deem worthy and submit, who represent and strengthen the “nation”. That is not “left”.
What is usually called the left usually sees welfare as an end in itself and not exclusively as a means to strengthen the nation.
I think we are agreeing.
Left wing ideas are not fascist, but people with left wing beliefs can also hold fascist ideas (e.g. Mussolini).
It is a mistake to assume that only the right can be fascist.
Our Overton window is rammed so far right in America Bernie Sanders here is considered a radically dangerous communist, but in any other country he’s a slightly left democratic socialist.
It’s dangerous to our discourse and continually shifts sentiment further and further right beyond all sanity.
US politics have moved so far to the right that I’m pretty sure contemporary moderate Democrats are nearly interchangeable with Reagan-era Republicans.
That’s the first time I’ve seen that comparison but FUCK are you 100% right…
I hate to admit it but if the repugnicunts had put up a sane pre-reagan quality era candidate, I wouldn’t have voted for Biden.
Imo liberals are the real centrists because they understand that capitalism is failing society and the planet, but liberals still try to serve both the donor class and the public despite the fact that the interests of capitalists are diametrically opposed to democracy, society, workers, and the environment.
Not wanting people to die is a leftist thing now?
It’s more the idea that everyone counts as people. The further right you go the smaller the group you assign full person status becomes. Liberals are OK with a bit of genocide and/or slavery as long as the victims are sufficiently poor, distant, and profitable.
Not wanting people to die is a normal and sane idea.
People are still who they are but the world we live in has for the last half century significantly shifted to state authotorian and fascist idealogy has flourished in our ego centric rewarding capitalist economy
Political Left in the US aligns with center in Europe. Only adding to the evidence that political labels are arbitrary and subjective.
Fascist attack normalcy and misinformation adds to confusion. You have to believe its us and them, you have to pick a side.
Decent people stay true to what they are, causing the people who are fooled to listen to fascists to now label you a vilified left. You then have the option to confirm to your centrists peers or to stay true to your original ideals.
Currently i am aligned with far left anarchism But i can perceive plenty of context and societal structures where my identical ideas could be perceived as conservative.
America’s political compass is weird. On one side you have a party that mostly just wants to keep the status quo, only really doing changes where it is already desperately behind the times. And on the other side you have the conservatives.
I had a weird experience with this “have to pick a side” issue just a couple days ago on a different lemmy. According to the moderators there, not being willing to use violence against protestors was the same as defending them
Pacifism being perceived as hostile by both sides of modern politics is a great summary for the state of things.
Also a huge red flag for what may still come, we may not all realize it but very important parts of our collective history are being decided on today.
Let’s hope for a good outcome
Yup. Not wanting to get into an argument about what defines a “real women” gets you banned from posting.
Lemmy does not imply free speech.
Ehh, just get to the next instance over :/
Political Left in the US aligns with center in Europe. Only adding to the evidence that political labels are arbitrary and subjective.
Dutch right wing conservative parties are further left than the US left. Not all of them, obviously/unfortunately, but they’re there.
Basically.
For example, tens of thousands of people die every year in the US because of inadequate access to health care. Universal payer would be cheaper and result in fewer preventable deaths. Centrists do not support the policy and thus are willing to let people die in order to support the parasitic insurance industry.
The genocide in Gaza, homelessness, prison industrial complex, climate change, etc. all get people killed in preventable ways. But we have to protect the owner class so we’re not going to do any of the clear solutions. Letting people die needlessly is an acceptable result.
This sounds like the plot of a post modern movie about society collapsing
Has been for a couple of years now.
That is quite sad to read, but thank you
Well it’s certainly not a right-wing thing
Yeah. They own that now apparently. I think it happened around the same time they collectively agreed that both sides are the same.
I’m sorry if this is a stupid question. Both sides of what?
I hope this is a genuine question because they are referring to the Political Spectrum.
A “spectrum” can exist on a line, a 2D graph, or even a 3D graph. I’m unsure of the 4th & 5th dimensions, though.
It was! I didn’t quite get that considering they’re fighting over each others differences
Reminder that objective political centrism is either social democracy or democratic socialism.
Not Reagan.
I have no idea what you think “objective” means here, which I think makes your claim not particularly useful. It’s not wrong, it’s just based on a different set of definitions than most people appear to be using on this post.
I’m not sure calling democratic socialism a centrist political system is reasonable. The intended changes to society are still radical and their gradual implementation doesn’t change that. The intended outcome is still some flavor of communist utopia, and that’s still reasonably leftist I’d say.
I’m not sure calling democratic socialism a centrist political system is reasonable.
Why though? What makes it a centrist system in your view? Elaborate.
My own political vantage?
Modern democratic socialism as an idea is well over 200 years old at this point. It’s moved beyond the leftist fringe and it’s ideas have become relatively institutionalized in a lot of developed nations (at least partially).
Hence, the window has shifted and what was once seen as radical policies of Democratic socialism have become relatively mainstream.
I see your point, and it’s true that a lot of earlier propositions of socialism are already implemented and seen as desirable by most people, but I think that’s something to be said about left wing in general. We’re no longer fighting to abolish 20 hours work day, instead it’s 32 hours work week now. As the window has moved, so did the policy. I’ve never heard about there being a stopping point in regards to how far left socialist democracy system is supposed to push before it’s “principles” are satisfied, but my understanding was that it’s at least until capitalism is abolished (and socialism emerges) or capital class is weak enough to be defeated via revolution of some sort. And so, since it’s intended purpose is to push much further left instead of mantaining the current system and it’s status quo, and some changes required to implement it’s propositions are radical, I feel like it can’t be reasonably called centrist system. Unless your definition of political center differs from mine, but it would require it not to account for both how far left the system intends to shift the society eventually, and also how radical the changes are in comparison to the current center. That, or what we understand as socialist democracy differs, wikipedia page for it mostly fits my definition, and I don’t know where to look for more ‘common’ view on it.
Status quo shifts. That’s the very nature of the Overton window. The modern political zeitgeist has historically shifted to the left. The longer you go in one direction the more the previously held radical ideologies normalize and cohere towards institutionalization, as I said.
There is no limit on the axis of political ideology. One trends towards order and the other liberation. But people aren’t one dimensional.
the intended changes are radical but good for everyone, and involve no sacrifice or tolerance for mess in getting there, slowly and conservatively enough that nobody’s too uncomfortable at any point except the people who were already DEEPLY uncomfortable and fucked by the current shape of things, not rocking the boat too much, etc.
that’s, like, the definition of moderate. it’s the psychology and strategy right wingers claim to have when they’re pretending to not just be evil monsters who get off on oppression, applied to ‘make the world better’. that’s almost the definition of centrist.
actually, I might even call it “the farthest right political idea that isn’t just evil”
It’s true it’s moderate and push for gradual changes to ease everyone in, but it being appealing to more people doesn’t make it centrist, I don’t think. It’s purpose isn’t to balance in the center between the left and the right, but rather to use softer kind of force to move society left.
As in the example you used, what we consider right and (nowdays even far right) manages power without much fuss from the society, and is appealing to some despite it’s facist undertones. Would you consider Republicans to be centrist? Because if you wouldn’t, I’d argue that any democratic socialist party wouldn’t be either.
I think the intent matters more than public opinion, you could sway the public with charismatic enough figurehead without changing anything about policy. I see the ‘center’ as more of the tendency not to change anything either way or balance between the ‘extremes’, and democratic socialism intends to be polite about beheading the capital class.
I said “good for everyone” not “popular”. exterminating the brutes is usually popular. it’s not good for anyone, long term.
the insane fascists who reject every policy that 60% or more of americans favor, like legal weed, single payer healthcare, doing SOMETHING about climate change, and making abortion legal in at least the case of a child rape or a pregnancy that would not result in live birth endangering a the pregnant person’s life, who haven’t won the popular vote once in my lifetime, are popular? you’re so thoroughly wrong here it took me a minute to figure out where to even start taking this apart.
you think intent matters more than public opinion, but you conflate popularity with doing good? I don’t understand how your conclusions follow your arguments, and your arguments seem to contradict each other. I’m genuinely having trouble understanding you, what you’re saying, and how you came to the arguments and conclusions you did.
i feel a bit dizzy right now, so it could be me. can you try to explain another way?
The popularity I’ve talked about referenced your point about it being moderate and easy on everyone nerves. I’ve oryginally started my previous comment by saying, that full blown socialism right here and right now would be good for everyone and it would be considered pretty leftist, but deleted that after deciding this part was pretty much obvious. Something being good doesn’t make it centrist. That’s why I stayed on point of public sentiment, which you seemingly invoked by defining center as moderate in the eyes of voters.
Say whatever you want about their hienous ideas, there wouldn’t be an issue in USA right now or anxiety about Trump winning if they weren’t reasonably popular. And I’m not conflating that popularity with doing good, but using their example to reject your argument about popularity making a political system ‘centrist’.
I don’t understand where did you get popularity = ‘doing good’ from me, but before we get into argument about that, I don’t see how either of those would make a system centrist. ‘Good’ is relative, and further left would be ‘better’ by this logic, right? So how does that make a democratic socialism ‘centrist’ if ‘doing good’ is the measure you’re using here? It being moderate is for the sake of popularity, gradual shift to the left so no one has any major complaints, and I think I’ve spoken enough about how I don’t see popularity as reasonable measuring standard here.
Democratic socialism wants to overthrow the capitalism, bring socialism, give everyone free healthcare, have worker co-ops as default mode of working, UBI, yada, yada, all of those propositions are radical (as in fundamental) and definitely leftist. Instead of violent revolution this system proposes a reformative approach, and that’s basicially the main difference from wide range of socialist systems that would attempt to implement the same things. So how is that centrist? Moderate, I get. Popular, sure. But center would refer to either a midpoint between the furthest right and left ideologies, or a minimal degree of change from the current political system, depending on how you want to define that word. I can’t see Democratic Socialism fitting either of those definitions, so it has to be a leftist system. I don’t see how it being moderate or popular would even influence that.
you’re saying my arguments are incoherent because I was trying to go after your arguments, which did not seem coherent. I was saying the insane fascist policies from both major american parties, as an example, are both harmful AND unpopular. you’ll notice that the harris campaign dropped all her popular ‘radical’ policies now that she’s running against trump rather than whoever she was against in her congress run, because she doesn’t have to look good now.
worker co-ops are leftist? how so? what is ‘leftist’ in your definition? does that just mean “not ridiculously fucking evil” now? I feel like it’s used like that sometimes.
again, I wasn’t working on my definitions; I was trying to understand yours, could you please explain them?
how is that centrist
I think I already explained that.
I never said anything like that. Are you sure you’re not confusing this thread with some other discussion you’re having?
I’ve yet to meet a person that wouldn’t describe socialism as “far left”, and one of the main principles of socialism is ownership of the means of production by the working class, which is exactly what worker co-ops are. As such, those would be “leftist”.
I’ve already described what centrist system is in my view and argued against your arguments about it being rooted in being moderate as opposed to shift in society the system intends to implement. I’ll reiterate my argument against classification of democratic socialism as a centrist political system - it intends to implement fundamental changes (which already makes it non-centrist if you wish to use subjective definition of centrism, where it protects the status quo) that will lead to fall of capitalism and rise of socialism (which is a far left political system, and that would make democratic socialism non-centrist by ‘objective’ definition, in which centrism is a mid point between furthest left and right).
You claimed that being moderate is the definition of centrism and then used right wingers as example of using it as political strategy. I see that as a clear contradiction. By your own admission right wing use the veil of moderate politics to smuggle through their evil policies. So are they the center if they mask their intent, or are they right wing? If they are right wing, despite using moderate politics to disguise their plans and garner popularity for their policies, then democratic socialism would be left wing for exactly the same reason.
That’s my reiterated argument against moderate politics = center. You’ve never described center as anything other than moderate politics, not shaking the boat etc. - which I wouldn’t say inherently applies to democratic socialism either, but that’s a whole different discussion. I’ve disagreed with this definition of centrism, as it’s unrelated to political spectrum - you can be moderate anarcho communist just as well as nazi that doesn’t want to rock the boat, so they remain popular with the public.
Regarding popularity, because your argument about Republicans not being popular still seems weird to me, it’s not related to ‘doing good’. Nazis were popular, won the democratic elections, you know? Some people just like facism, but others are drawn in by charisma and stuff like that. You accused me of conflating popularity with good, and I still have no idea where you got that from.
I’ll remind you we’re discussing whenever democratic socialism is a centrist political system or not, not how far left it is. And re-reading your first comment, I’m not even sure we define this term in the same way, so I’ll just point out the definition on wikipedia is mostly compatible with mine. You seem to think that perhaps the Democratic Party in US is democratic socialist party, judging from your remarks about Harris policies? Because if so, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
I’ll be honest, I’m very confused with your replies. I’m trying to address what I ‘think’ you’re talking about, but I feel like you came to this conversation with a baggage of context (or misunderstanding) that I’m not privy to.
That sounds like a claim that centre means conservative (dictionary conservative rather than political party)
They want change to be done slowly.
Okay buddy far right winger.
Where did you get the right wing there? I’m seriously confused, since nothing that I said about democratic socialism was negative. Radical changes are needed and utopian societies are good. I just find calling democratic socialism a centrist political system inaccurate due to its intended radical change, as opposed to social democracy or, you know, centrism as it is understood.
Democratic socialism is fundamentally anti-capitalist, definitely not centrist!
What, you mean there are in fact objective political positions? And some of those are less radical, or more centrist, than others?
Crazy.
Leaning of political system would be measured in degree of proposed changes. The center shifts, but even without accounting for that, democratic socialism is still not a centrist political system by any measure. Democratic socialism proposes radical changes, as it attempts to dismantle capitalist estabilishment, eradicate class structure and all that. Those changes are touching fundamental aspects of the current system, which make them, by definition, radical. As opposed to centrist position of mantaining the status quo.
I thought you had some sort of insight about democratic socialism being actually a centrist position, and wanted to hear it out, but it seems you’re either unwilling or unable to engage with that topic. Suit yourself.
I’m pretty sure centrists think we’re bad because we want to abolish private ownership of the means of production, unless “leftism” means something else where OP is from.
The political center wants to maintain the status quo with regard to private property.
Edited for clarity.
A big problem of this entire argument, particularly when Americans are making it, is that nobody seems to agree on who the “centrists” and “leftists” are supposed to be.
Turns out social democrats are pretty sure they’re leftists, but everybody else self-identifying as a leftist is convinced they are indistinguishable from free market liberals, while free market liberals think they’re center left while social democrats are pretty sure they are indistinguishable from neocons.
Unless you’re in the US, where apparently social democrats are both far left and communists, the word socialism has about as much meaning as a Rorschard test card and hard left people seem to be a figment of an AI’s imagination in that they appear to exist exclusively online.
So yeah, I really don’t know what the OP is talking about, honestly.
This shit right here is why I hate to argue about labels or whether someone is/isn’t liberal/leftist/centrist/conservative/whatever. At best, they’re an extremely vague, ill-defined, hyper-individualized label that means different things to different people. One person says “I’m a leftist,” and they mean it as “I’m a progressive Democrat who supports heavily regulated capitalism, labor unions, LGBT rights, and am pro-choice.” Another person says “I’m a leftist,” and they mean it as “I’m an anarcho-communist who believes billionaires should forcibly redistribute their wealth, and I don’t give a rat’s ass about LGBT or minority rights because they’re a bourgeoisie distraction from class consciousness.”
I don’t care about your label, I care about your policies. Those actually tell me something about you.
An anarcho-communist who thinks gender identity is a bourgeoisie distraction, is actually a Soviet flavored fascist.
Not an anarcho-communist.
Edit: who exactly is the liberal in the original post?
ITT people conflating liberalism with centerism.
Liberals in Australia are our right wing hypocrites so it’s tracking for me
Is the US the only country where liberals aren’t clearly right-wing? I know liberals in the US that sincerely seem to lean left (they agree that capitalism is destroying our planet, that we need more worker co-ops, co-op housing, etc)
Well you guys did have that big party swap so idk
Idk, I find it hard to seperate liberalism from centerism (at least in the US). I know lefties usually argue that liberalism is a right-wing ideology, but there are liberals who sincerely lean left so the party is in a weird place where it isn’t truly left but it isn’t truly right either.
Hold up… Are centrist people now lumped together with right wingers?
Centrists are seen as fence sitters because they are ok with the horrible things the system has baked into it, as they are comfortable enough to refuse to take a hard stance against it. Right wingers are people who actively destroy things.
I’ve been accused of being centrist, usually by American left wingers, on multiple occasions. I don’t go about defining my political views with a specific side, much less American sides, but if I am indeed an example of someone centrist, then I can safely say your statement is bullshit.
I could explain why, but I’m not sure if I’ll be spending half an hour writing something that nobody is going to read.
I’ll read it
sometimes writing is a great way to organize your thoughts!
the problem is that people are called centrists because their major opinion is simply “the status quo is fine”, which is effectively just being a conservative but without the active outspoken racism.
The centre party here in sweden meanwhile actively promotes LGBT rights and obvious things like that, they actually have opinions on both sides of the spectrum and a vision for the future, and that vision is one that you might not consider optimal but it’s not obviously fucking evil.
But then they’re not centrist. If these people are conservative minus active racism, then they’re just “RIGHT WING lite.”
Why destroy the whole concept of centrism that way?
This issue doesn’t stem from the left, it stems from many self-proclaimed centrists actually espousing right wing ideology to the point it has become almost a dogwhistle.
dunno, but they always do it. ask any woman who dates men and has been single in the past five years.
Don’t you love how American commenters can’t see things like LGBT rights as obvious
Gay rights are human rights. No sane person cares what adults do in private. No sane person cares about who other people hold hands with and kiss
In general maybe not, in these lemmy spaces absolutely.
They often are, because they often are effectively supporting similar policies. I think MLK wrote about this quite well in Letter from a Birmingham Jail. If you haven’t read that, it’s well worth the 20 minutes.
On a more specific note, many centrist Democrats are actually corporate Democrats, and they’re supporting many laws that Republican politicians are also supporting, laws that benefit big businesses at the expense of everyone else in the world.
Here are the two paragraphs you’re referencing from the letter he wrote from the Birmingham jail in 1963
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured
From my point of view, virtually all of the people who call themselves “centrists” in U.S. politics are the people who say that both sides are bad, and when you dig into it, they think both sides are bad because they uncritically accept right-wing talking points (read: lies) and framing of the issues.
The problem with US politics is that there are only two sides, two parties. This lumps together all the worst elements of a particular point of view with the more moderate or logical ones.
The extreme elements of the American left are doing the incredibly ironic thing of reintroducing racist concepts, such as segregation, under the idea of it being somehow progressive. State that the slaves brought to the US were bought on African markets that existed centuries before Europeans ever took interest and you’ll get a veritable social media lynching mob come after you because it doesn’t fit in the idea that anyone with European origins need to feel shame for history long gone. I had an argument in Discord voice chats three times with some American leftists who were adamant that racism was entirely created by white people and that no other ethnic group in the world is capable of being racist (an ironically racist statement). These same kinds of people thought they could educate Mike Pondsmith, the creator of the RPG Cyberpunk, on racism because they wanted him to exclude black characters fram fictional gang called “The Animals” and didn’t like the existence of a Haitian gang called “The Voodoo Boys”.
In short; uneducated dumbasses who think they can speak for people who they never even met or consulted with, and get incredibly vengeful to the point of ruining people’s lives if you call them out on their bullshit. That is why someone can look up at how fucked up American politics is and say. without much difficulty, “Both sides are equally shit. Just choose a flavour”.
YES.
I don’t think centrists are against socialised health care.
There are people in this thread who think being centrist means you’re ok with a little genocide. What do you even say to that?
By answering whether someone like Joe Biden is a centralist and whether his actions contribute to genocide.
The reason your confused is because leftist have seen examples of people calling themselves centralist and also being okay with what is going on in Gaza.
By being okay I mean not trying to stop it actively.
It’s important to define what we mean when we use these terms/phrases.
It’s probably a bad idea to reply in the first place because I don’t really want to argue… at all, let alone about politics and what label I or someone else has, but fuck it.
I’m more confused about what you’re trying to say than what I think about Gaza. I don’t really care about Biden, I’m not an American. There’s nothing I can do about what he says or does. I can’t tell you whether he’s a centrist or not, frankly I don’t care.
Naturally, I don’t agree with any support whatsoever, financial, military, or otherwise of what Israel is doing in Gaza. The same applies for the vast majority of armed conflict… ever. It might apply to all of it, I don’t care to do a quick run through all of human history and make a judgement call on each and every one but… get this. War bad. Subscribe for more hot takes.
As to what I’m doing about it, I’m not protesting or arguing with faceless text online. I don’t have the time, inclination, or energy for it. I have a lot of things to worry about that are a lot closer to me. Elections happened, and are coming up, and I’m gonna vote according to my interests which happen to include not supporting Israel.
Having said all that, I’m not even sure how disagreeing with killing innocent people and supplying weapons for killing innocent people is a political alignment factor. Shit’s crazy, what the fuck.
As far as I’m concerned, both the far left and the far right have completely insane dealbreaker things I never want to see happen (again). The reason I think I’m centrist is that there are ideas on both sides that are a lot tamer that I think could help us all live fulfilling, comfortable lives. When I think about compromising with either side, it’s about trading between these tamer ideas. I think it’s strategically worthwhile to not get everything you want from those tamer ideas immediately so you can at least get some of them.
Surely I won’t regret typing this out.
As far as I’m concerned, both the far left and the far right have completely insane dealbreaker things I never want to see happen (again).
I’m so curious what dealbreaker things the far left has.
But overall, you misunderstood my point. It was that centralist could mean being okay with genocide as in they literally want to meet halfway between fascism and reasonability.
Like if one side said let’s not do slavery, and one side says let’s do slavery, a centralist compromised means being okay with some slavery.
My comment was more about:
Halfway between justice and injustice is still injustice.
You see it as fascism (the far right) and reasonability (the far left). I don’t really have anything to say to that other than, that is not reasonable. I come from a formerly communist country. I won’t entertain that bullshit.
Edit:
Like if one side said let’s not do slavery, and one side says let’s do slavery, a centralist compromised means being okay with some slavery.
This is completely batshit crazy, what the fuck. I’m a few more drinks in right now and don’t have the same filter, but “not slavery” is not what the far left is.
Edit 2: Yeah I probably could’ve phrased it better or just not answered. Sorry about that, shouldn’t have called you batshit crazy. If I were to phrase it better, I don’t believe that is a reasonable depiction of what the spectrum looks like. The far left isn’t a rainbow land of inclusion, acceptance, and happiness. I don’t really care to debate with communists the failings of communism, I’m not going to change my opinion on my experience and they won’t change their world view because of some random comment on lemmy.
formerly communist country
Far left doesn’t automatically = communism.
There are many flavours of socialism, including social democracies which I would call far left even though it has aspects of capitalism (it’s the end result that matters imo. If it’s more equality, that’s far left).
Which goes back to my original point, it’s really important for people to spell out what they actually mean when they use words or phrases that have been twisted by the other side.
Sorry if you’re fuming. Didn’t really mean to offend.
Thanks for waiving that little snafu, I appreciate it, sincerely.
As far as I’m concerned, social democracy is center left. Maybe there’s a difference between European and NA perspectives. I live in a social democratic country and I have to say life is pretty good.
This is what I mean by that depiction of the spectrum not being reasonable. I don’t see how someone can say that on equal distance from the center you have social democracy and genocide.
“Yes, you’re correct, as clearly demonstrated by the Gazan Genocide.”
Yeah what?
I thought secure socialized programs were left and “fuck you i got mine” system was about as far right as you could get.
The centrist position would be universal healthcare, but less available to higher incomes who can afford portions of health insurance. Thus reducing limitations of too much tax going toward a top-tier health system, neglecting other areas of the nation like education, infrastructure, aged care, etc.
“If you can afford it, you can afford it. Don’t neglect it and don’t abuse it.”
My brother called me the other day, and after explaining how nature isn’t “take or be taken from” when there’s enough to go around. We got more into the myths about humans we’re taught, and eventually he asked how I identify politically, and about the difference between a leftist and a liberal
I told him liberals want the system to work, to be fair. Leftists look around and say “there’s so much food we leave a third of it to rot, why the fuck are people starving? What the fuck are we doing? No one is happy with the world we’ve created, why are we doing it? Why don’t we start with the assumption that everyone gets to live, and figure out the details from there?”
Leftists/progressives say “the reason for all of that is the oligarchy hoarding all the resources, so we need to start with stopping them from doing that”
Liberals kinda want the same things as progressives, but they don’t want to "hurt " the rich to get it. But of course if 5 people are hoarding literally everything the only way to get more for everyone is to take it from those 5 people. Liberals just can’t get themselves to take that next step.
(This is US liberal btw, might be different in Europe)
liberals say they want the same things as leftists. they do not.
The rest of the world uses the name “liberal” for different things. I think left and (American) liberal are pretty much the same thing, but obviously since America has two words, America divides the left into two.
We used to think the conservative side of politics was fairly united, while the left was a mess, ranging from leninists through environmentalists through workers’ rights through people into the public good (and a thousand other divisions)
Now that conservative politics has been replaced by a radical mix of authoritarianism, individualism, anti-government, so I’m not all that sure they’re as united as they used to look
In Europe, the Liberal party is pretty far right, tbh.
I don’t think that’s true. At the heart of it …
Liberals want to fix the system. They want to tweak things to make it fair, to make it work better
Leftists want to change the system. They want to rewrite the rules in a way that works better, the way things are currently be damned
Maybe I’d say liberals think the system CAN be tweaked enough to make it work for the people, progressives don’t think it can and want to create a system that does… But I do think the major difference between liberals and progressives is liberals serve the oligarchy while progressives want to eradicate it
I think it’s more like the system is built for the oligarchy, and liberals want to preserve the system. They’ll often support things like taxes on the rich or worker protections - but they don’t like the idea of something more direct
Neo-liberals do directly serve oligarchs, because they’re liberals who operate under myths about how capitalism works - the efficiency of corporations, billionaires as innovators and job creators, voting with your wallet. They think if you fix the economy, everything else will work out, and for every social service they make sure to send a pile of money into someone’s pocket. Thank God this seems to finally be declining
I think what makes this topic so complicated is we’re taught a lie - that the political spectrum is a line. It’s not two dimensional or a horseshoe - tankies are leftist authoritarians, but they’re not further left than anarcho-communists. On some aspects they’re pretty close to christo-fascists, but it’s not because they went so far around that they’re curving towards the far right. They just also want their end goal enforced from above, and also are willing to overlook a little genocide of the “enemy”
Meanwhile, anarcho-communists are on the other side of a different spectrum. They don’t believe in a large system of enforcement from the top down, they believe in building community from the ground up. They don’t believe in a system of rules, they believe in social bonds
The end goal is the same, but the methods couldn’t be more different
My point with all this is that the left want change, the right wants the status quo. Conservatives want a hierarchy under de facto aristocrats, liberals want a system of rules, and anarchists want community rule
This doesn’t all fit on a 2d spectrum, but it all makes sense when you break it down in more dimensions - you can nail down any coherent political stance to a point in this multifaceted graph space.
American liberals are different from liberals elsewhere, but what they have in common is they hold the legal framework as sacred. We already live in a world managed by English common law, they all want to perfect the laws, but resist anything that threatens the status quo
I’m a centrist. I live in Canada. We have public health care here. Even right wingers here like it. People who are against public health care aren’t ideological, they’re in the pockets of private insurance.
If it’s not ideological, why is it always the conservatives in Canada and the UK trying to dismantle public healthcare? Come the fuck on.
Same pattern holds here in Sweden. It’s definitely ideological. The right wing ideology of “fuck you, I’m lining my pockets”
Yeah, US lefties are odd.
Where I’m from, if far left is 10, centrist 5, and far right is 0. You apply the US version to our spectrum and their left is like 5, centrist 0, right -5. Hell, not even, because the moderate-far right support universal health.
I’m centrist-left and I see the average US self-labelled lefties as generally more centrist or even right-leaning than me. Their whole spectrum and perspective is decades behind and heavy right-leaning.
But credit where credit is due, progress has gotta start somewhere and they no doubt see themselves as very progressive and left in their environment.
It’s not that the entire spectrum is further right, it’s more that the vast majority of society is dealing with actual praxis and thus living in some anarchocapitalist hellscape where fairly centre-liberal reforms are a big lurch left, while a small pocket of cosplayers are online pretending they’re about to start the February Revolution.
It’s not a one axis thing, either. Americans are also blissfully unaware of how hostile European leftism is against some of their cultural causes. We don’t talk enough about how it’s well accepted among Euro leftist circles that surrogate pregnancies are a form of human trafficking, or that all sex work should be banned. Culture is culture, left/right positions aren’t universal.
Ah, I see you’re a fellow “three-dimensional spectrum” person. Not the traditional two-dimensional one, or worse yet, the binary “If not this, than that. This and that are only options.”
More of a “people agree and disagree on different things, often for cultural and historical reasons, and the bundling of those things into pre-established packages is way less consistent than political traditions would suggest”. How much that’s the same thing I leave up for interpretation.
i like how this image is three different posts tied together precariously.
There is also a point for the left not wanting to alienate all their voters so they are wanting to start slow. Personally I see this as a progress point for how left a country is. If their left is saying a little genocide okay it’s probably a right leaning country.
Xx
Does anyone consider that there might be a large number of the people that consider themselves to be centrists are near the actual center, and that everyone dunking on them is imagining center of our current Overton window? I think about that a lot. (Not the guy in the meme, just in general)
I mean, even if not, why do both sides shit on them instead of trying to bring them closer to their side?
Do we not want to make change? Because you need people for that. Are we just concerned about being correct? Because that does nothing to solve our problems.
we’re talking centrists here, not liberals, not moderates, there’s a DISTINCT difference.
The vast majority of so-called centrists are people who just don’t like stress of having a hard stance. That’s why they piss off people on both sides. Impassioned people who understand that progress is a fight need fighters to join them don’t like someone saying that they need to compromise when there are lives and futures on the line. People who see the larger picture are going to be a lot more committed and able to weather criticism.
But most centrists think that they can somehow ride the line between the two and avoid being condemned by either side. This is a thing people do in many circumstances not just politics, and it always makes both sides mad. It’s just a very basic human social faux-paux to think that you can appeal to principled people with a butchered version of their ideals.
A more generous interpretation would be that an “appeal to principled people with a butchered version of their ideals” is basically the definition of compromise. From their perspective, they’re just trying to keep the band together. Maybe the band needed to break up a long time ago, and they’re just holding everyone back. But I don’t think intellectual cowardice / laziness explains all centrists.
See, I agree with you on everything here, and I even used to hold this same position:
But I don’t think intellectual cowardice / laziness explains all centrists.
I really, really wanted to be charitable, as a former conservative, as someone who grew up in the deep rural south surrounded by hardline conservatives, and then flipped a hard 180-degree later in life, I figured my own unique perspective allowed me to see both sides.
Then the fire nation attacked.
And by that I mean covid happened, and with it came off a lot of masks. Now I believe that not only is centrism intellectual laziness, so is ALL political dysfunction. It’s as close as I will get to a twinge of centerism myself, that I have seen into the hearts of people and have seen that they share a common factor that unites us all: laziness.
It’s too broad of a term, and would take an essay to define properly in this context, but at heart it’s what drives everyone, a desire to avoid challenge.
Learning and becoming politically astute to even a grade-school level takes some amount of effort and self-improvement and betterment and study and acceptance of new ideas, and we have left the age of self-challenge. Just look at the state of video games with quest markers to do anything, and 30-second popular video clips for the shortest of attention spans, or make a comment more than three paragraphs in a popular forum if you need evidence that people are not out to challenge themselves broadly. They set into a position that feels comfortable based on who they’re around and who validates them, and they generally stay there. We don’t celebrate people changing their minds, if anything people treat it with shame, and not without good reason. I have been shouted out of leftist spaces for saying I used to be right-wing in some of my views. (Purity testing appears to be another common trait.)
Well said! I’ve come to terms with being Fire Nation, myself. I try to be Iroh but too often end up Mai.
Covid did a number on me. I have a thing about germs anyway, but the vitriol around masks and the anti-vax stuff really reset my barometer for what I can expect from other people. I’m basically just now getting some faith back in humanity whilst trying to pull my head out of my ego. But still, there’s a reason I spend more time with A.I. these days. Without dredging up the loss of third spaces and the effects of social media, I just gotta say - it seems like we’ve forgotten how to help each other. Like as a species.
Centrists piss me off because inevitably they will treat civil rights as negotiable
No.
Yes. As a European centrist, I would be far left-wing in USA.
Centriside
