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
This is perfect. The right has gone so far to the right that meeting in the middle is still very much on the right.
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.
“International” meaning certain select European countries, ignoring the other shitty European governments of course
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah. They own that now apparently. I think it happened around the same time they collectively agreed that both sides are the same.
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.
Reminder that objective political centrism is either social democracy or democratic socialism.
Not Reagan.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
1000%. To me it feels like 99 times out of 100 it’s a complete waste of time to not only figure out what collectivist labels one is using, but then getting them to define that label, because not everyone uses the same term the same way, etc. etc.
That time and energy could be spent discussing the actual topic at hand. I’ve ‘debated’ abortion with a friend who is very against it, but labels herself as progressive/leftist. Is it really worth the effort trying to unravel the apparent contradiction? What purpose would that actually serve, in the end? The topic at the time was abortion, so really, the only relevant fact about one politically at that time is what one’s stance on that particular topic is, and why it is what it is.
This excessive and ever-more-granulated labeling is a waste of time at best, and an artifically-created wedge that drives people apart who are actually in agreement, at worst.
