totally equal
totally equal
203 comments
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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".
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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
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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)
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This is perfect. The right has gone so far to the right that meeting in the middle is still very much on the right.
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The lesser evil, still being evil trope.
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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.
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We should not allow conservatives to get away with calling themselves centrist. "Centrists" are just conservatives who realize conservatives are definitely the bad guys.
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In international terms, even the Democrats are right of center.
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There's an old Soviet joke about Americans being so decedent that they required two fascist parties.
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"International" meaning certain select European countries, ignoring the other shitty European governments of course
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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).
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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.
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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.
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Not wanting people to die is a leftist thing now?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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This sounds like the plot of a post modern movie about society collapsing
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Has been for a couple of years now.
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That is quite sad to read, but thank you
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Well it's certainly not a right-wing thing
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Reminder that objective political centrism is either social democracy or democratic socialism.
Not Reagan.
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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.
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I'm not sure calling democratic socialism a centrist political system is reasonable.
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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.
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That sounds like a claim that centre means conservative (dictionary conservative rather than political party)
They want change to be done slowly.
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Okay buddy far right winger.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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"I don't want to think, but I want to pat myself on the back for being Above It All™"
Cool cool cool. Be proud of your ignorance I guess?
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Some are proud of their ignorance, some seem to think that hating everything means they are intelligent with discerning tastes.
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I know you are only speaking the truth but FUCKDAMN did you just depress the hell out of me.
Because I see it in so many self-righteously ignorant people. The state I grew up in was filled with people absolutely prideful about never once having read a book after graduating. AND they were so thoroughly convinced of their refined redneck discernment which in nearly all cases was just echoing the opinion of whatever authoritarian they were welded to at the time.
The more I go through life, the more I am convinced that the confident people don't have a clue what's going on, and the people that DO are generally never listened to because they present their ideas realistically, flaws and all, and therefore lack the bullheaded confidence that for some FUCKDAMN reason that humanity falls in line behind.
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Left, right, and center.
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If that doesn't work you can always Fedjacket, complain that all governments are evil, and insist that wanting progressive reforms makes someone a tankie.
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And here we see why reductivism isn't generally helpful outside of academic frameworks.
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Hold up... Are centrist people now lumped together with right wingers?
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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.
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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?
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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
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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.
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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.
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In general maybe not, in these lemmy spaces absolutely.
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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
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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.
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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".
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Apparently, yes, at least by some liberals and leftists.
It's clearly an extremist view. Nobody in their right mind would do so much to alienate people who they also want to vote for their party.
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YES.
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I don’t think centrists are against socialised health care.
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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?
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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.
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"Yes, you're correct, as clearly demonstrated by the Gazan Genocide."
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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.
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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."
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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?"
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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)
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liberals say they want the same things as leftists. they do not.
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In Europe, the Liberal party is pretty far right, tbh.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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Same pattern holds here in Sweden. It’s definitely ideological. The right wing ideology of “fuck you, I’m lining my pockets”
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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.
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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.
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i like how this image is three different posts tied together precariously.
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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.
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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.
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Yes. As a European centrist, I would be far left-wing in USA.
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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.
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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.
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The vast majority of so-called centrists are people who just don’t like stress of having a hard stance.
No, that's a bullshit definition imposed by nuance-allergic 'either you're with us or you're against us' ideologues. Someone who consistently avoids taking an explicit stance on issues is not a centrist. Fence-sitting is not centrism--they're only "so-called centrists" because ignorant people like you label them that.
A centrist is someone whose collective of views/stances is such that it would not really be accurate to label them with "left" or "right". Furthermore, people like you also, in my experience, don't seem to realize that, for example, "left-leaning" and "right-leaning" are in fact subcategories of "centrist"--the "lean" describes the direction that the majority (but not all) of their positions go.
The irony is that a lot more people can be accurately described as "centrist" than actually self-identify (or are accurately identified by others) as such (partially thanks to people like you constantly using the term incorrectly), while the hardline ideologues of both wings arguably hate 'people who agree with them more than they disagree, but won't go as far as they do', more than they do the ones at the opposite end of the political spectrum, and call them "centrists", instead of the ones for whom the definition actually applies!
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Centrists piss me off because inevitably they will treat civil rights as negotiable
No.
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That is absolutely not what a centrist is. Although centrists have a non-voting, disinterested crowd, it likely it isn't any larger, by percent, than, say, leftists, who have a difficult time getting people of their own party to vote. More likely it falls between the Democrats' less aggressive voter turnout and the Republicans' more aggressive voter turnout.
A centrist, in general, may agree with some aspects of either party, and, depending on the political climate and the overall weight and balance of needs, will vote one way or the other after actually thinking about the issues involved. This is because they are willing to take on the personal responsibility of making a fucking assessment.
..as opposed to extremists, who take the simplest, least nuanced, most insulting take they can of anyone with a different opinion, and assume that that is what those with a different opinion are doing.
This is, however, pretty understandable, because extremists are emotionally, mentally, and overall psychologically incapable of hosting two genuinely differing ideologies in their heads without going on tilt and asserting insulting shit about people whom they, in actuality, know nothing about except a label they have chosen to vent their hate on.
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Xx
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The problem with leftists (and I say this as a leftist) is they resort to name calling of anyone who disagrees with them. Instead of listening to their point of view and trying to convince them otherwise. There's a real "othering" going on.
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Tankie. Chinese. Republican. Child. Moron. Bot. Shill. Purity pony. Trumper. Jihadi cheerleading Jew hater.
This is what I've seen leftists and progressives called right here on lemmy. Yeah, leftists resort to name calling.
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When someone openly shouts heil Hitler, I think I'm justified in ignoring their POV and calling them what they are.
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I've said things like "you are literally alienating people who, being reasonable in general, would be voting for you this election," and been downvoted or argued against.
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Who are the centrists even. I am a pro capitalist and I am extremely pro universal healthcare and education in addition to free market economy. It seems what was meant by „centrist” is conservatives in the context of American politics.
Which primo is USA centric and secondo idk if even is a good definition of the word in that narrow context.
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Centriside
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Centricide. I'll be taking that.
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What the centrist so reviled here dislikes is being told we're no better than fascists for taking a small or piecemeal win rather than stomping our feet and going home if we don't get a full Marxist revolution today.
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Most people are judging you for allowing fascists to take over and dictate policy due to your ignorance, not whatever headcannon you've got going on.
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I'm judging him for being a neoliberal that thinks he's a centrist
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And not a soul in these comments noticed that the original post was about the "far left", not "the left". I'm "the left" and think the far left end of the bell curve is a bunch of fruits and nuts.
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And I'm the left, and I think the center left are capitalist cryptofascists, hypocrites who virtue signal about social justice to hide their opposition to economic justice, while ultimately achieving neither.
And I think the "far left" are generally good people who seek both social and economic justice. Some of their ideas for attaining justice are both moral and practical, while other ideas are impractical or would do more harm than good.
And I suspect, if I was a right-wing conservative, I would feel the same way about the center right and the far right.
All depends on where you stand, huh?
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The "far left" to the person in the post is most probably just anyone left of American corporate democrats. If you think we should have public healthcare, you're ""far left""
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true (talking about beathecult reply)
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far left happy to exterminate groups of people
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Exterminate.... feed and provide healthcare, you know, same thing.
edit: i realized that I had blocked the user below in another thread because they are obtuse, unkind and stupid. I won't get any answers from them unless I unblock them. Oh well. What's for lunch.
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