"Meet me in the middle" says the unfair man. You take a step forward, he takes a step back
"Meet me in the middle" says the unfair man.
In western capitalist dictatorships, "centrism" means an acceptance and non-opposition to the status quo of capitalist rule, liberalism, and landlordism.
Any opposition to poverty, homelessness, hunger, or rule by capitalists, is deemed "radical", and outside of respectable discourse, even though these should be just a baseline of human decency.
Some resources:
A centrist is a privileged person who can act like politics is pure sports and play "devils advocate" for fucking pedos.
Losers, the lot of them. Take an actual stand on something.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
Strawman centrists are drawn as people who think the right choice between genocide and peace is only-killing half. This is obviously nonsense, yet you'll see it a lot even in this thread.
A proper centralist is someone that disposes with political tribalism and instead chooses their position on issues individually. Sometimes they'll agree with one party, sometimes another. It depends who has the better policy. They believe that no party has all the answers.
I would say that if everybody did this it would be fantastic.
However, they are rarer that rocking horse shit.
Depends on your definition. If it's someone who agrees with different sides on different stuff, that's fine. If it's someone who just doesn't take sides, then yeah that's bad.
https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
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.
MLK's perspective on centrists is perennial. They're Judas goats.
centrist
Which axis? How are the maxima defined on both ends?
Centrism, as in what? The center of the Statesian political parties? Then yes, considering both parties are right-wing. The center of two arbitrary points? Depends on the points. "Centrism" is inherently an irrational way to describe political views, being in the center of two points adds no value. If someone says we should kill everyone with glasses, and someone else says we shouldn't, we shouldn't kill half of the people with glasses. What centrism does in practice is give people cover to obfuscate their actual views, it isn't a position by itself.
give people cover to obfuscate their actual views
which are usually right-wing, since those are the ones ashamed about their own views.
Yep.
I think the centrist approach would be to kill people with monocles
Or maybe only maim people with glasses
If we are talking US politics than yeah i fucking hate em. Moderate dems are just blue facists.
I don't believe the words 'good' or 'bad' are useful to describe people. We can, and should, aim to be more specific.
As Cowbee pointed out already, 'centrism' is a vague concept, especially since this site isn't just people from the USA. Does it mean people who are apathetic about left-right politics? People who intentionally position themselves in the middle? People resistant to changing this terrible tragedy?
Even in my country, and my country is progressive compared to the USA, both the center-right and center-left parties (I'm using Wikipedia's evaluation here because I object to the left-right political scale) are funneling wealth up to the rich, destroying our environment, compounding housing issues, supporting an ongoing genocide and scapegoating immigrants. Seeing either of these parties as acceptable is a serious issue, and is complicity in the crises these issues create.
That doesn't mean I absolutely judge these people as 'bad', perhaps ignorant or misled but not bad, there are many sincere and caring ways through life that lead people to these harmful positions, but it's a seriously harmful political position which we, as a society, are obligated to shift. And yes, apathy is a political position too, there is no 'apolitical': the status quo is just the ideology of the ruling class.
I'll add to this that a common rationale for centrism is that significantly changing course is dangerous. However, this is obviously relative, with an implication that the status quo is not as dangerous. Lots of unnecessary everyday death and suffering is normalized, often ignored by a centrist, but any death and suffering caused in the process of fixing these problems is counted!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_murder
The Two Terrors - an extract from Mark Twain
There were two "Reigns of Terror," if we would but remember it and consider it;
the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood;
the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years;
the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions;
but our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak;
whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break?
What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake?
A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over;
but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror--that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
Mark Twain, 1889. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Ch. XIII.
Centrism is okay during good times, when managing the country is all it takes and the political climate isn't poisoned. During times of crisis, however, it's horribly ineffective, because centrists are usually quite averse to any large-scale reforms and their ineffectiveness will only benefit (usually right-wing) radical parties.
Centrism is okay during good times
Good times for whom?
In an ideal world, you have conservatives and revolutionaries. The revolutionaries want to make changes to try and make things even better. The conservatives act to maintain the status quo. When they balance properly then you get steady change, but slow enough to detect and fix cascading problems/failures.
In this situation, the centralists act as the balance point, being swayed one way or the other to set the path.
Unfortunately the only place this is actually close to accurate is Sci-Fi novels.
In another word : they’re useful idiot
Anyone who believes the ficticious idea that if everyone is mad at you, then you're making the right decisions is certifiable.
There is a tendency for some people to think anyone who's not exactly like them is bad. If they're saying that about centrists, it probably extends to anyone actually on their side of center but not in the right way, as well.
They aren't "bad" they are irrational. The type of self identified centrists I seem to meet think all people including nazis deserve to have their ideas heard and responded to rationally. They believe in the "market place of ideas" but there is no rational response to irrational arguments. Expecting rational dialog to come from irrational ideology is irrational.
Its fucking stupid to think the center is the correct position when the extremes are "Everyone deserves fair treatment regardless of ethnicity, sex, age, how rich their parents are, etc." and "everyone who is different to me should be a slave or dead."
It’s hard to justify centrism in the context of the US, where one party is radically attacking peoples’ rights and re-writing the constitution to support it.
One party?
yup.
Pretty sure both parties are genocidal imperialists.
When Kamala Harris said to prospective illegal immigrants "do not come," when she said she was going to build the world's deadliest military, when she said the exact same shit about Iran as the Republicans, REALLY what she MEANT was "we're the party of rules and norms and we're the bulwark against fascism" obviously
Oh duh, should've realized!
I think the point is that the two parties have both moved right to the point where they have become one right wing party.
I don't think that's really the case.
I think we have one far right party that is willing to break any law and kill any person for power, and we have another party that is secretly willing to let it happen as long as it means they can pretend to be against it to get donor money.
The Democrats of today are the same as the Republicans of my youth. The Republicans of today are the same as the KKK and Neonazis of my youth.
It's really just theater, both uphold the interests of capital.
ok liberal
I think it’s important to differentiate fence sitting with centrism but both are bad
A fence sitter is someone with no real political values or positions. They may be stupid, uninformed, or just apathetic. They can be very dangerous because they are susceptible to propaganda and have little ability to critically evaluate their lives in relation to the world.
But imo a true centrist’s only political belief is for other people with political beliefs to compromise with each other and create the new 3rd way “centrist” position.
Centrists in Canada are just Liberals and while I disagree with some of their policies, they're not bad, just status quo. Centrists in the US are undoubtedly bad though because what the hell?
The status quo is bad if you view us of the periphery as equal humans whose suffering matters the same as you.
Sorry, what are you referring to exactly? If it's the treatment of indigenous peoples in Canada or historical collaboration with the US' imperialistic wars then I'd agree with you but I know the average Liberal voter isn't thinking about either of those things. While it's bad that it's not on their mind, I wouldn't call them bad people for it as I would do with enthusiastic supporters of Pierre Poilievre's CPC
I am talking about how the status quo of the entirety of the imperial core is built on and sustained by the pillaging and superxploitation of the periphery through imperialism and neocolonialism.
I'm very much critical of those topics, but they're a bit beyond the scope of my initial comment. Just to make it clear, I'm not a centrist nor a Liberal voter. My original point is that the average Canadian LPC voter is not voting out of malice for others but out of a desire for stability (especially now in a time where things are very unstable). For example, a Liberal would generally want existing social support systems like our socialised healthcare to continue being funded at the levels that meet people's needs but are generally anxious at the idea of funding new similar programs like pharmacare.
Most of these voters also have zero real insight or historical context on geopolitical topics such as neocolinialism and I can say confidently that they're not thinking about it when voting.
I think it's all ignorant, misguided and lacks vision but I don't consider it something that's worthy of being labeled "bad".
Not to be mean, but I think you’re approaching this from a place of pretty immense privilege, where it’s possible to sidestep the fact that the “stability” and social care you’re talking about are materially predicated on the largest, most advanced, and most comprehensive immiseration machine in human history, currently headed by the US and enforced by its hunting dogs.
I understand what you’re saying about intent, but I think you’re putting far too much weight on intent and far too little on material outcomes. From the perspective of people in the periphery, whether harm is done out of malice, fear, or ignorance doesn’t change the harm itself. The status quo imposed by the imperial core is anything but neutral; it is actively sustained through extraction, coercion, and violence, regardless of how polite or well-meaning its defenders may be.
The claim that Liberal voters “aren’t thinking about” neocolonialism doesn’t really mitigate anything. Apathy and ignorance aren’t accidental flaws of the system, they’re systematically reinforced. Liberal politics trains people to narrow their moral horizon to national borders and to treat global suffering as unfortunate but external. Wanting stability at home while refusing to interrogate how that stability is financed is still a political choice, even if it feels passive or unavoidable.
I’m about to make an inflammatory comparison, and before it’s taken the wrong way I want to be clear that I’m not calling you, or Liberal voters, Nazis of any kind.
What I’m pointing to is a similar moral logic to the “clean Wehrmacht,” but applied to liberalism: the idea that all the real harm belongs to the obvious villains, while those who uphold the same system in a more moderate, respectable way are merely ignorant, apolitical, or trying their best. That framing launders responsibility. It treats liberal participation as an unfortunate accident rather than a core function.
From the standpoint of those who live with the consequences of your stability, calling it “misguided but not bad” reads as a refusal to take structural violence seriously.
I view myself as a centerist. Left of center. Thing is that, in the us, there is no conservatives anymore. Closest would be the libertarians but even they are like basic scientology bringing the people in to then bring them into the thetan thing. Balanced bugets, pay as you go, respect for the history and past of your country while recognizing obvious problems and celebrating getting passed them to a better way, looking for consensus and regulating commerce and recognizing labor. Anyway this lack of real conservatives means its pretty much left or lunacy. Take your pick. Center is as real conservative as you get with any sanity. Since Im kinda left its pretty easy of a decision for me. Keep in mind center to me is not the middle of our republicans and democrats because again one is bat shit crazy. So someone trying to claim center because they are taking a bit from both viewpoints is not center to me. To me you have to take the center of sanity and not include crazy assed bull-trump.
the overton window in the us is doing tricks at this point
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