Centrism is often relative.
Someone who is a 'centrist' between the far-right GOP and the centre-right Dems is probably just a shy Republican.
Someone who is a 'centrist' by the perceptions of Lemmy could be anyone who isn't a devotee of Mao, depending on which part of Lemmy you're talking to.
Ah, the good old claiming that "everybody not with us is a commie" so beloved by Fascists coming from the guy who posts memes where the toon who doesn't agree to vote for Zionist-Genocide-loving Biden is wearing a red shirt with a white sickle and hammer.
It's really interesting to see neolibs using the same kind of argument Nazis (I KID YOU NOT!) used which was basically calling everybody not with them "Communists".
Well, it does make some sense given that the pro-Oligarchy politics of Neoliberlism aren't that much away from Fascist politics, the main difference being that Fascism thinks the State should be above the ultra-wealthy and then after that comes the powerless riff-raff whilst Neoliberalism thinks the ultra-wealthy should be above the State and after that comes the powerless riff-raff.
Lemmy was literally started by ML. Who misidentify as Communists. Giving communists a bad name. There are literally people here who regularly defend lenin, stalin, Mao, Soviet russia, china, North korea, Etc. He's not wrong. And if you feel attacked I think that says more perhaps about you than anyone else.
I Trend left libertarian/ anarcho communist. Yet I regularly get called a neoliberal by many of the Marxist leninists around here for not playing Simon Says group think. Far more often than I get called a tanky by right Wingers who visit. Which is saying something because being anti authoritarian I critique both pretty regularly.
Quick Edit I don't stand behind everything PJ posts. Some I think is in bad taste as is much of Ozma's. But they're definitely not wrong in this case.
Semi-serious question, what made you want to engage with this guy in like, some kind of debate? It's pretty obvious he's just like, a basic bitch bad faith neolib poster that's going around and inciting pre-election division, probably get suppress voting or some shit, idk. But like, why engage with him? What's the point, really?
i think this is vastly misrepresented. A conservative "centrist" would be your traditional conservative, what we would refer to as moderate right, or center moderate right. Where as on the lefty side, it's a little bit more like "i just don't like the conservatives" and that's kind of the extent of it.
moderate lefties would be like, socially progressive people, for example. Anything past that and you start getting into harder left wing camps. The left just isn't as fractured and extremist as the right is in certain aspects, there are definitely extremists, but the vast majority of people fall into the more "centrist" definition of political alignment.
Binarism is a sop for people who desperately want to cling to a self-affirming label, but can't come up with any justification better than "the opposition is worse."
Savage.
I tend to avoid anyone that feels compelled to define themselves by a political ideology. It just becomes an identity and the identity becomes more important than anything the ideology was supposed to represent.
You really aren't required to wear your team colors or even have a team. If you have a point- make the point. If any part of your point depends on declaring your political identity- it's not a solid point.
Counterpoint: If my existence as a marginalized individual has already been politicized by conservatives, then I lack the privileged position to simply "Make the point and shut up", which is what you are effectively suggesting. When my identity as a human being (by blood, not beliefs) has been made a political argument, then no I'm sorry, my identity is also political... and that has been forced on me. Nothing about that invalidates the points I have to make to argue for my continued existence.
All I'm saying is, you act like identity is an abstract thing from politics, but for some people it can never be. Just being quiet means they are still people arguing for your death.
I tend to avoid anyone that feels compelled to define themselves by a political ideology. It just becomes an identity and the identity becomes more important than anything the ideology was supposed to represent.
Please reevaluate my comment with focus on the phrase 'political identity'. If you're talking about sexuality or gender- that's not a 'political identity', That's who you are as a human being as much as being black or white or tall or short. I recognize and sympathize that those facets of humanity have been brutally politicized but I'm speaking of 'political identities' that people necessarily choose or willingly accept, not the 'identity' that comes from just being born as you.
my long standing, and proven litmus test of politics is "if you have an opinion, it's wrong"
Because without fail, people will just say shit, that's just wrong. The second that politics comes into play.
Please for the love of god, stop engaging with politics, it's worse than reality TV, because we live here.
Please for the love of god, stop engaging with politics,
If you live in anything resembling a democracy that's basically surrendering to whatever opponents of your rights want to do to you. If you're that submissive I guess that's your only option but I'm saying if you have any strength of will at all 'engage with politics as an individual, just don't imagine yourself as representing or represented by a team.'
"everyone has to be a raving lunatic completely committed to following one herd or the other, regardless of what they actually think. Any individual thought must comply with hard party lines"
Is that what this means?
It's Ozma were talking about. It 100% is. They will always sabotage the achievable in favor of unobtainable perfection.
The hallmark of Fundamentalism.
Imo, the issue is that political opinions are more complicated than reducing them to a location on a 1-dimensional line.
Any way we talk about this is going to be reductive, the system we are talking about cannot be summed up in easy terms.
I think what you can say however is that one of the hallmark indicators of centrists (speaking from the context of US politics here just because that is what I know) is that they have no true ideological beliefs. The way a centrist determines right and wrong isn’t by thinking about the problem and applying ethics and critical analysis to it like leftist generally does (and conservatives loudly pretend to do), rather a centrist defines wrong as unpopular.
Centrists are always running an average function over the Overton Window and just adopting whatever the algorithm says as what they believe. This isn’t news to leftists in the US dealing with US centrists, but the unfolding genocide of Palestinians in Gaza has written it across the sky in big blazing letters that centrism is a catastrophically dangerous way to reach a consensus in a society undergoing crisis and in need of deep reform.
The good thing is that because centrists by and large don’t actually have beliefs, we just have to shame them into realizing the hateful positions they have (that they don’t perceive as hateful or not hateful, just average!) make them an outcast and they will fold as they always do to whoever controls the narrative.
At this point in US politics I cannot see a difference between centrism and liberalism, there is nothing ideological to locate among the political center of the US, calling them liberal implies something is going on other than being ideological penguins who are afraid to be on the edge of the circle so they waddle into the middle and attempt to disappear into the crowd as they squawk away.
Any way we talk about this is going to be reductive, the system we are talking about cannot be summed up in easy terms.
Great strides can be made by simply trying to avoid reductionism. Ofc, FPTP isn't helping this cause.
Centrists are always running an average function over the Overton Window and just adopting whatever the algorithm says as what they believe.
Is that not what a centrist is, by definition? I don't mean that a centrist is literally doing what you are describing, but a centrist is someone who sits in the middle of the left/right dichotomy. By this fact, they would have to be right in the average of the Overton Window.
The good thing is that because centrists by and large don’t actually have beliefs
This is a strange statement. Centrism is by definition a political position, and, by extent, requires beliefs.
At this point in US politics I cannot see a difference between centrism and liberalism
Liberalism is not dependent on the left-right dichotomy, and it is not nebulous like centralism. It is quite well defined in poli-sci. You can read about the beliefs that it encompasses here.
calling them liberal implies something is going on other than being ideological penguins who are afraid to be on the edge of the circle so they waddle into the middle and attempt to disappear into the crowd as they squawk away.
One important thing to clarify is that when the term "liberal" is used as a pejorative, it is, generally, and weirdly, not used in reference to liberalism (at least that's how it seems to me), but, instead, as some vague reference to the also nebulous term "leftist".
My favorite is "socially liberal but economically conservative", like those things are exclusive of each other
"I hate poor people but I also like weed"
Yeah, it's basically "I'm in favor of a social safety net, but I'm also in favor of starving all social programs of funding" 🤦
"I'm in favour of Freedom as long as it doesn't negativelly impact the priviledges I was born into when I popped-out of the right vagina".
It's the "Fight For Equality" that very purposefully keeps away from the one kind of discrimination of treatment is which bigger than all the others combines by quite the margin: Wealth Discrimination
"My parents are entitled to social security, but I really hate paying taxes"
well no it's different than that, it's more "i don't believe in upholding the previous methods of societal progress, and control. But i prefer our economy stay minimally involved with most things."
They are the way they mean it. Indivual freedoms such as legal abortions, gay marriage, drug legalization, etc, just not big on a welfare state.
Weed should be legal so I can sell it to the people being crushed by capitalism.
i don't think that statement implies that they're mutually exclusive of each other. This has been a long defined standing that people will hold.
I've lost track, who's turn is it tomorrow to post that's same 'meme' tomorrow. Gosh it's just so original and fresh the 75th fine seeing another, "if your centrist your basically a Trumper!".
It's okay, buddy, I believe you're not a Trumper.
You're just not a centrist either, because that's not a real thing.
You can support the oligarchal control of the means of production without believing in a specific oligarch's policies. That doesn't make you more left, it's perfectly right wing to believe in human rights. It just means you think exploiting labor is one of those rights, as equally important as the right to self defense and freedom of speech and protest.
And you believe in those, right?
Exploiting labor? You mean two people entering into a contract voluntarily?
Person 1: I will pay you $X to paint my house
Person 2: I accept the terms of this agreement
DragonTypeWyven: isn't there someone else you forgot to ask?
centrism is real, and like schrodingers cat, it's both alive and dead until you look inside the box.
Someone who claims themselves to be a centrist, is often miserable. Someone who claims themselves to be socially progressive, or economically conservative (for example) is often best defined as a "centrist" since they often toe the line, and will in many cases, cross over the line depending on policy, and how they feel that year. These people are more analogous to swing voters more than anything.
It always cracks me up when they call Joe Biden the radical left. Republicans haven't got a clue.
Exactly. When they say "radical left Biden" I'm like "I WISH!"
Biden. The guy who wrote the precursor to the patriot act.
Lol, US is fucked up, imagine being centrist but forced to vote for either a corrupted crooked clown or a senile opportunist corporatist...
Its like the Matrix, you think you have the choice when in fact either way it is only keeping the establishment the way it always was...
I can't even tell which one you think Biden is but the fact you think they're that similar shows you've no fucking clue
They only share one thing: they are both very bad presidential candidate.
Its ironic that you didnt get the meaning of my comment, it is the perfect example how oblivious american are about their political system. You are unable to see that the problem is not the opposition, but the system itself that is nowhere near what should be called a democracy.
But yeah whatever, keep taking the blue pill.
Maybe if you insult them a few more times they will see the error of their ways and vote for your guy.
Maybe if we prod them to be loud about what their claimed values are their candidate will be less shit.
Undecided voters are Republicans who refuse to admit they're voting for Trump.
"Ayh aint tellin' yew who imma votin' fer!"
Hey, it's everyone's right not to reveal political affiliation, when you aren't actively campaigning for the other guy.
I can't find evidence of this but I swear the first time I heard of Dennis Prager he was selling himself as a 'centrist'.
I would call him the moderate wing of the neonazi movement but we both know he'd go full reich if he could get away with it
That’s how republicans try to redefine the Overton window - claim that conservative extremists are moderates and the majority.
Lots of card-carrying members of the "enlightened-centrist-that-won't-stand-for-anything-but-will-fall-for-everything" brigade coming out of the woodwork to justify their privilege on here.
Average centrist.
That's the thing... a centrist will never burn the bridges that takes them back to the right.
Yea, we liberals think the same thing about you buddy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
Populists, who's reactionary attention spans are harnessed by TV Media (right) or Social media (left) to drive up some corporations stock price
Okay so did you even read that? Your own link says it is a feature of "popular discourse" - ie not supported by actual evidence - and then says:
Several political scientists, psychologists, and sociologists have criticized the horseshoe theory. 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.
That's about as close as an impartially worded style of article can come to saying "yeah this is obviously bullshit".
Actually I believe the US is doing mostly will economically and the majority of the country lives better than most the planet. We could use a stronger social safety net, better health care, and something should be done to reduce education costs.
I don't agree with the nanny state bullshit. Fuck off already.
It's spelled AKshUaLlY
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
Aren’t we all here for the whole “non binary” idea?
What happend to that.
