I often see on here that someone that says they are Center just means they are right wing.
Eg. this post https://piefed.social/c/wikipedia@lemmy.world/p/2492350/centre-party
Center Party = Far right.
And I get that that is often true, but that got me thinking, when is someone actually “Center?”
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You either have empathy or you don’t, it’s a yes/no question. You’re either an arrogant narcissist or you’re not, it’s a yes/no question.
The political spectrum shifts, so what it means to be a centrist can change a bit over time.
It generally means that policy-wise or ideologically you fall somewhere between two major political ideologies.
Right now, in the United States, being a centrist means you’re a coward idiot. Because right now, what the sides represent is so wildly contrary that to be a centrist you have to be too scared to choose between right and wrong and/or too stupid to see that there is no middle right now. There is no fence you can sit on between fascism and democracy.
I’m more thinking in general, yea the US is cookeda but, a symptom of the two party system
I’d say a centralist is someone who wants things centralized.
But yes, some people describe themselves as centrist when they mean “I don’t view my positions as extreme but neither do I care to justify them”.
And some people describe themselves as centrist when they’re politically apathetic.
And some people describe themselves as centrist when they have a grab bag of views and don’t feel they fit neatly in the right or left wing.
And some people describe themselves as centrist because they’re contrary and can’t bring themselves to agree with anybody.
And, very rarely, there are people who describe themselves as centrist because they are in the process of changing their mind.
A true centrist is someone who considers both left and right positions carefully, then sides with the right.
Centrism is rarely a coherent ideology and to most people it’s seen as the “default” or “starting” position of politics. In reality, issue by issue, there is rarely a coherent ‘in between’ position. Centrists tend to be politically naive, and navigate the world by intuition (they call it common sense). The Right dominates people who think this way.
It’s pretty much naive realism applied to politics.
Sorry, no. Politics is about tradeoffs. The defining tradeoff of politics is how you balance individual freedom from interference, with public services like public transport, sanitation healthcare. Most people would prefer to be left alone by the government and to be able to get on with their lives, but most people would also like there to be a social safety net and convenient things like buses and trains which can only really be tackled with government involvement.
But in order to have sanitation, say, you need people to drive bin lorries, and so you need to convince people to drive bin lorries (maybe by paying them, or maybe by punishing people who are allocated to driving bin lorries by the government and don’t do it) which involves a curtailment of freedom - either because the government is taking money off its citizens, or punishing people who don’t do what it says, or whatever. There will always be jobs that people want to be done but don’t really want to do if given a completely free choice.
And so, there is a tradeoff: how much does the government interfere to make those jobs get done? Whether it’s charging taxes or job allocations, the better you want public services, the more the government interferes.
And because it’s a tradeoff, there is a continuum of reasonable positions. It’s not that you can only consistently think we should have Marxist-Leninist communism, the state tells you what job to do and if you refuse you are sent to the gulag, or an anarcho-capitalist hell-state where nobody ever collects the garbage because nobody wants to pay for it.
And that’s only the most important tradeoff - there are infinitely many other tradeoffs where fulfilling one shared goal impinges on another and how you resolve it can be expressed on a continuum. People tend to have a broad direction on all of these - left wingers prioritise public goods over individual freedoms (but still think both are good), while right wingers prioritise individual freedoms (but still think both are good). Even the MAGA “healthcare is communism” morons still think that there should be healthcare and transport and so on (they just disagree about how it should be provided and paid for and what form it takes). Even the communists think freedom is good as long as it doesn’t interfere with some greater goal.
It doesn’t have to be an ideology.
People don’t fit neatly into boxes or necessarily have to subscribe to an ideology fully.
Centrilsts might be politically naive yes, but that doesn’t just make them Right wing automatically?
you’re trying to be rational and thoughtful here.
that makes you an evil centrist, clearly.
the people on lemmy here don’t want to discuss things, they just want to label you as awful for not being as politically hardcore or pure or whatever as they believe themselves to be.
Centrism is the ideology of not having an ideology. If you’re not working from root axioms, if you’re just winging every moral decision… that’s being a loser, not politically intelligent.
oh, praytell us wise sir, what are these ‘root axioms’ from which you are so intelligent?
It’s comments and people like you that divide us
lol no.
It’s people like you who insist labels are more important than beliefs that divide us. Genuinely, your ignorance is beyond vile in this context.
No it isn’t… I’m not feeling very divided by that guy.
Speak for yourself
Ok
A centrist is someone who believes that there even is a such thing as a center. Everything is relative, and those who call themselves centrist are more often than not just pushing the Overton Window to the right.
what do you call leftists who call each other centrists because the aren’t left enough for each other?
You’re better off asking somewhere where actual centrists congregate, rather than Lemmy where there essentially only different flavours of left-wing.
But critical to any understanding of this topic is that the terms are all relative. There’s no “true” centre just like there’s no “true” left or right - these terms only make sense in relation to each other and to established norms. A centrist is therefore someone who has views that are somewhat in the middle of mainstream politics for their context.
Leftism has always suffered from a lot of internal division and purity testing, so when you ask in a very left-wing space like Lemmy, centrists will always be accused of being right-wing, but so will anyone who isn’t a raging communist - they’ve failed the test so they’re with the others - the right-wingers.
A lot of the centerists you call far right are also getting called far left by the right. Centrists tend to pick and choose left or right or neither on each issue individually and don’t pick sides.
Believe it or not, there are right beliefs that are not far right Nazi beliefs, the mundane day to day stuff. Genuine belief in lower government control and lower taxes for example. Unfortunately we didn’t see any of that come true with this presidency.
And to be clear, I am a leftist, but one who believes in human free will. As long as you genuinely believe in doing the right thing and not harming others, we can debate all day on what exactly that looks like, but the minute it turns into the usual grift, I’m out.
90% of lemmy leftist don’t believe in free will.
the concept of individual making choices is facism, or so I have repeatedly been lectured on here.
I often mention there used to be some sanity in the right but they have been abandoning principle since way before trump. I feel like you sorta need to go pre nixon to get back to where they should be. I know I for one will not accept the republican party as just a political party at this point as I feel they violated the constitution as a party. If conservatives find themselves and put up a new shingle and show a commitment to principles again I might accept them as legitimate.
Yes, the problem for the right is that their non-Nazi beliefs are wildly unpopular so they have to boost the signal with racism.
I think the main issue is that Left & Right really shouldn’t be a thing.
You can be Pro-Gun and Pro-Abortion, it should really be issue specific.
The two party system fucks us, or the US at least, which then fucks the rest of us
it’s not a US specific thing.
It’s a human being thing. People just want a reason to dismiss you and hate you, rather than talk to you. Political beliefs are just the latest thing people get upset about.
decades ago it was race or religion. but folks are less racist and less religious, politics has replaced it as the go-to reason to dismiss people as awful and evil.
and on lemmy, well, centrism is evil because everyone here thinks they are the sole source of all correct and good views on politics and anyone who disagrees with them is right-wing because they are good and right-wing is evil. as you can see from most of the comments here.
Even further for many things there is a question of absolute national do it anytime and letting local juristictions decide. So folks can be like absolutist about something or more locality while being for something. So basically being pro or anti can be a bit more in between itself.
I think the reason “Centrists” usually align with the right, is because the left is geared toward giving more money and power to the people, and the right is trying to prevent the elite from losing that money and power.
The “Centrists” hear both sides, feel icky about letting “men” in women’s restrooms, but also don’t want slavery or racism, so they decide to keep things how they are (what they consider “normal” or “the center”) which only benefits the people who currently have the power, which aligns with the goals of the right.
I consider myself left of center. Because the us is dominated by center (dems) and far right (rep). Our center appears to be in between the actual center and the far right. Or right of center. That makes me seem like some uber liberal by our media standards for wanting universal healthcare, progressive taxes, and regulation so that we live in a safe and pleasant environment. Now like news nation has tag lines like fox news used to. fair and balanced. news for all america. what they are talking about is the media center or basically giving both the center view and the ultra right view. So they call themselves a center viewpoint but its a right viewpoint.
A centrist is just someone that too cowardly to pick a side.
I’m probably further left leaning than the vast majority of people I know, but I’m for sure not as left as what it feels like your average person on Lemmy is.
Why I hate being left sometimes
I probably consider myself Center-Left but much more left than center
Have you ever noticed how many terms there are to describe the left? You can be communist, socialist, tankie, liberal, leftist, progressive, and all the various flavors of each.
If you’re right-wing, you’re just part of “the right” no matter what your beliefs are. Weird right?
It’s almost like there are people out there who want to promote right-wing solidarity while promoting as much division ans discord to their opposition as possible.
the problems is the folks in those camps are directly opposed to each other.
and they all argue that each other is not left, because of that.
they have no common set of beliefs.
In right wing ideologies, you can be a Nazi, conservative, Fascist, gender critical, white supremacist, Brahminist, Evangelical, Capitalist, Feudalist, Patriarchial, Casteist, Anti-intellectual, and, also Liberal.
Btw, liberal is a right wing ideology, not left.
I think the left does it to themselves, the video on my OG comment jokes about this actually. I hate it
I feel that way. Left of center but if I go a direction its going to be left of where I am.
I feel the exact same. But even suggesting you’re more towards the center would get you attacked on some places like Lemmty.
Just the video shows
I don’t mind being attacked like that. helps with my block list.
I don’t even know. All I know is that leftists (which I’m not truly technically part of, because my beliefs in prosociality and social responsibility, and being against usury and greed, come from the Qur’an and applied ethics and not Marxist literature) are actual humans and everyone that considers themselves “on the right” are heartless sociopaths or amoral morons who care only about their material fulfilment and fuck everyone else, and the centrists are usually the latter as well (from their posts here, I’ve never met anyone IRL who’s told me they’re a centrist).
centrist is fundamentally based on ignorance.
thinking the wealth of european countries comes from their own hard work, not colonialism and imperialism.
thinking we can maintain this wealth with our own “hard work”.
then wondering why it doesnt work, and instead of questioning their underlying assumptions, they instead blame everyone else but them on why it doesnt work.
everyone else obv being immigrants, leftists, feminists, etc.
nourishing a far right mindset, not because they actually hate minorities and supporting the evil of empire, but simply bevause they don’t know and dont want to learn.
that is centrism.
