both pretty extreme

Americans are so far to the right that minimum wage, affordable housing, free schools and healthcare is considered "far left". These are given and common sense in the rest of the world 🤣
- In developed countries*
  I'm not sure if the USA qualifies for that status
  
  Even in developing countries, governments do their best to provide free services for those in dire poverty, especially those considered "poorest of the poor".
  
  Welfare policies are common even in developing countries. They simply don't have the kind of capital accumulated by European welfare states because they don't outsource their industrial manufacturing to poorer countries. Hence, the implementation is difficult and bureaucrats are often corrupt. Reagan won an election calling universal healthcare 'communism' and actually opposing something so obviously in favour of people -- this would not have happened in most poor countries. At least in mine, people consistently vote in favour of better healthcare, public transport and free food regardless of ideology. Fear mongering about 'commmunism' has been tried in urban areas, where people have the luxury to care about something like that, and it backfired spectacularly. The phenomenon of voting against one's self interests because gommunism and freedom seems to be a uniquely American thing.
- Did you know theres even a subminimum wage in America? 2.13$ an hour.
  
  Gotta love our "Tipping culture". The more this country is going down I'm reminded of Mr. Pink's quote "I don't tip because society says I have to. All right, if someone deserves a tip, if they really put forth an effort, I'll give them something a little something extra. But this tipping automatically, it's for the birds."
  It's gotten to the point where the US needs a real change and yet the 1% really don't want that change and would rather die on their hills. Which, imo, maybe they should while others watch?
  But alas, who am I to judge the wealthy when I'm just a measly common worker.
- All American major parties are considered extreme right from an EU point of view.

The more... favorable right wing points I've heard are more along the lines of "I've busted my ass for what little I have! How dare you ask me to pay to subsidize the lives of people who aren't trying to work?"
Completly ignoring the fact that better welfare programs should help them to not have to work so damn hard for so little in the first place. Or the fact that the welfare cliff and other various systemic problems make it that much harder to get out of that pit no matter how hard you're trying.
It's not even quite "fuck you, I got mine" because so many of them barely "got theirs" as is, which makes them even more protective. The ones that do have, have latched on to this idea of the entirely self made man, which ignores all the public welfare systems they used on their journey. Like schools, or roads. You can hardly exist in modern America without using multiple tax funded public works/welfare things every day.
Then you add in the hard spun rhetoric that taxes they already don't want being taken from them might be paying for things they personally disagree with and things get extra firey.
Meanwhile the richest people on earth have spent more money than is comprehendable on convincing people that going after rich peoples' money will just make everything more expensive for the normal folk.
But that would imply that they were currently leaving potential profits on the table. They're already charging absolutely as much as they can, and constantly trying to shift it higher. I'm sure they'd still fuck us on the way down, but we're never going to fix things unless we find some way to adequately tax the rich.
- The "barely got mine and defending it" thing really sticks in other ways too.
  When I wanted aid for school "sorry, we ran out. Should have gotten here earlier."
  When I wanted to get food stamps "sorry, you don't meet the qualifications on a technicality."
  When I finally got Medicaid but couldn't use it "not enough spots for you to be seen, sorry."
  Many times the administrators that gave me this news implied it was because too many people asked for it. Being young and stupid (and let's face it, indoctrinated), it made me put the blame on the other people asking for aid. If there were less people that asked for aid, I wouldn't be starving and sick. I thought that I was more worthy of the aid because some people are cheating the system and I deeply resented them.
  Fortunately I grew the hell up and pulled my head out of my ass. It's all a distraction we get fed from the news that other needy people are the reason why we suffer. It's so hard to fathom how much the rich actually waste when all we see is our fellow working class folk.
  
  To add a voice to the choir, I was raised like this too. We went the other direction of feeling guilty for needing aid though.
  Like they weren't completely wrong, you really should be able to raise a family off a single full time job, the problem is that said jobs don't pay enough for that. But the broken system is good at defending itself, and politicians are quick to point out all the ways it does work, so you wind up with a 'well, it works for them, guess I just have to try harder' mindset. Like, I spent hours each week as a teenager helping mom do the extreme couponing and do stuff like take a cart through another line to get around limits on sale items.
  I've been shit at math for my whole life, so maybe I'm just hoping I'm not alone in this, but I really think a lot of people are number illiterate. I've spent so much time learning to be grateful for my shoe-string budget, I have a hard enough time envisioning double my salary, and that'd just make me middle class. I literally don't have a way of conceptualizing what 200x my salary would be like.

Getting everyone's basic needs met is more of a centre-left ideology.
Many centre-right parties believe in things like public healthcare, because it has a net-benefit to the economy.
Centrists don't sit in the middle of every issue or make an exact 50/50 compromise on everything. That's a really poor strawman argument from someone who clearly doesn't understand global politics.
I guess you're confused with people in the U.S who think having views somewhere in-between those of democrats and republicans makes you a centrist.
That U.S-specific 'centrism' is really just right wing politics.
- Maybe we should stop with left, right and centrist all together.
  It's a stupid way of defining politics. If you ask a random person what being left means it can vary from anything between hugging a tree or wanting good health care.
  By calling yourself "green" or "social" you are immediately putting a label on yourself and a lot of people won't vote for you because they're too dumb or lazy to actually read into what a party is about. I saw an article here on lemmy that pointed out some moron that voted for Trump in hopes he would save his farm, if he would have read into politics he would have known that Trump was the worst possible choice but here we are...
  I'm from Europe and I see the same shit happening here. Call yourself green or left and people will scoff at you.
  If there is anything the current "left" parties absolutely suck at its marketing. Call yourself the freedom party or whatever but stop using idiotic terminology that people can't relate to. Almosr no one will vote for the "environment party".
  I hate the extremist conservative parties here but i have to give them credit for being able to market their party in such a way that people are literally voting on them AGAINST their own best interests.
  
  The biggest party in the Netherlands is called the freedom party, their mainly anti-immigrant and against the freedom of religion and the freedom of education. Totally agree they're great at marketing (though it's more about being loud and talking about social problems than it is about having ideas of how to solve them). They're considered to be far-right populist, their leader (Geert Wilders) is aligned with Marine Le Pen and Georgia Meloni. The left has lost their working class-base traditional base to them because of them being more relatable (and less high-brow) than the labour party, the socialists and the greens.
  
  The word you're looking for is pluralism.
- Centrists don't sit in the middle of every issue or make an exact 50/50 compromise on everything.
  I seriously don't understand how fucking difficult this is to understand. It's why I largely ignore political discussions on Reddit/Lemmy/all social media.
  I don't look at one person saying "Murdering 5 year olds is bad", look at another person saying "Murdering 5 year olds is good!" and try to find a way where both are right.
  
  I don't look at one person saying "Murdering 5 year olds is bad", look at another person saying "Murdering 5 year olds is good!" and try to find a way where both are right.
  This is literally what centrists all over the world (well, the parts that show up in English-language news anyway) think about Palestine, though.
  
  Now do it with gazans
- You are right, that centrists don't actually sit as a 50/50 middle. But that means that "centrists" always actually side with fascists and the far right when forced to take a position. If you aren't fully willing to confront capitalism, it means that you will side with fascism before even mild socialism.
  
  Am I understanding you right that you are saying that all centrists will side with fascism over socialism? Because I have some news for you in that case.
  
  That's your opinion, not a fact.
  And the issue with that is you're only seeing it as two sides and a fence-sitter.
  Centrists form their own views and positions, independent of the parties on either side.
  There's no forcing them to take a position, they already have one.
  And when they have to vote for/against legislation changes, they'll side with whichever option aligns most closely with their views.
  US pseudo-centrism is right wing though, which might be what you're confusing real centrism with.
  
  Fascism is not the same as capitalism. For capitalism to work properly, it is required that market power is minimized and that companies cannot influence politics. The fact that they have been able to do so is not capitalism.
  Milton Friedman – In Capitalism and Freedom (1962), he argues that government intervention should be minimal and that businesses should focus on profit rather than lobbying for special advantages. While he doesn’t explicitly state that capitalism requires private companies to stay out of politics, he warns against corporate influence leading to cronyism.
  Adam Smith – In The Wealth of Nations (1776), he warns against “the merchants and manufacturers” using their influence to gain monopolies and special privileges, which distort free competition. He emphasizes that capitalism works best when businesses do not manipulate laws in their favor.
  James Buchanan (Public Choice Theory) – Buchanan and other public choice theorists (like Gordon Tullock) argue that when businesses influence politics, they engage in rent-seeking, which distorts market efficiency. They emphasize that government should limit corporate lobbying to prevent economic inefficiencies.
  Luigi Zingales – A more recent economist, Zingales argues in A Capitalism for the People (2012) that corporate political influence undermines free markets and leads to a system of “crony capitalism,” where economic power translates into political power.
- far left and center left are relative to your own position anyway
  
  They are relative to global politics which most Americans know nothing about, it seems.
  Republicans have always been pretty hard right and as of the Trump administrations they are pretty much extreme right. Democrats seem to randomly oscillate between centre right and right.
  
  Some issues are not relative or negotiable. Rape, murder, war crimes, pedophilia, etc. If you want to be soft on that stuff then you lose my vote, period. Now and in the future. If that means we collectively burn this place to the ground, well if thats what it takes, thats what it takes-- lets get it over with.
- Centrists don’t sit in the middle of every issue or make an exact 50/50 compromise on everything.
  In practice, they just capitulate every time.

Meeting everyone's basic needs isn't even far left. This is how far the Overton window has shifted to the right. Meeting everyone's basic needs is left-of-centre. Far left would be state owned and controlled everything, redistribution of wealth via any means necessary, all public services fully state funded and free for all at the point of use.
- Far left would be state owned and controlled everything, redistribution of wealth via any means necessary, all public services fully state funded and free for all at the point of use.
  "Socialism is when the government does stuff, and communism is when the government does all the stuff. What is a mode of production?"
  God I fucking hate how the capitalist authoritarian states of the last century managed to gaslight everyone into believing this shit.
  
  I am responding according to the context of the original statement. Yeh, you could go even further left and have anarchy, but that would be utterly impractical in today's world.
- It's from the USA perspective. People not dying of easily preventable diseases, or children not going hungry, are extreme left for them.
  
  Many of us would disagree with that, but in aggregate we’ve just elected “burn this motherfucker down with us inside” instead of the alternative who was still way too far to the right for most of us here on Lemmy, so you are unfortunately correct.
  If you proposed children not going hungry to some of my conservative relatives, even in a room of mixed company they would say out loud something like “why should I have to pay to feed the kids they can’t afford because they can’t close their legs or put down the crack pipe long enough to get a job?” (Racist dog whistle very much intentional)
- Noam Chomsky is Far-Left, and he advocated for a stateless society. But yeah the idea of liberty has definitely changed in ~~America~~ The U.S.
  
  It's because Marxists/Communists and Capitalists like to pretend Anarchism isn't half of socialism because it hurts their arguments.
- Meeting everyone’s basic needs isn’t even far left.
  When saying "Please stop bombing Palestinian children" is the most ultra-Tankie Iranian Revolutionary Guard propaganda printed in modern history, it does appear that public amenities are outside even the farthest fringes of left-wing ideology.
  Far left would be state owned and controlled everything
  I remember Elon Musk calling himself a socialist. And now that I'm looking at how he and Trump are running the country, I guess this does fit the above definition of Far-Left.
- No, that's authoritarian left as pure left is communal ownership. Market left would fit better and would use worker and consumer cooperatives and market syndicates rather than state ownership. I hate how Marxists convinced everyone they were the only form of socialism despite people like Pierre-Joseph Proudhon coming before him.

Centrism doesn't mean that you can't choose between democrats and republicans, it means that ideologically, you believe in a balance between capitalist ideas and socialist ideas. For example, you can believe in the Hayekian idea that the many interactions between individuals in the market is better at creating prosperity than a centralized government that distributes all goods and services. But you can also believe that the market can't do everything on its own due to market failures like monopoly power, externalities, assymmetric information. There exists a compromise between the two that is negotiated through politics. A core necessity for this to happen is that democracy is maintained. Democracy is not maintained when elections are bought by companies.
What is happening in the US now is that politics has been taken over by the private market. No economist would have agreed with this (unless they were paid to). It is against everything that we know. This is not a left vs right stance. It's a democracy vs autocracy stance. Autocracy can happen from both the right and left, and it doesn't matter who.
The one thing I dislike about the idea of centrism is the idea that you can't decide on everything because you remain agnostic about every issue. I think a much better idea to advocate for is pluralism: the idea that your opinion on specific issues is not dependent on your politcal stance. Every issue is unique and doesn't automatically identify you with left or right. You can have different opinions on different issues.
- It’s funny because from my European perspective there’s no (visible) left in the USA. Democrats are centrist. Sanders could be social democrat. Otherwise I fully agree with you.
  
  The US political spectrum has shifted so far. What is right in the US is far right in the EU, and what is left in the EU is far left in the US.
  
  I think this has only happened because of manipulation of the masses.
- Lately I've caught myself thinking differently. The left is progressive because they want to progress civil rights. The centerists are conservative because they just don't want things to change. The right is regressive because they want to turn back the clock. Honestly I think we need to stop calling people on the right conservative and give them the new label regressives.
  
  Conservatives want to go back to the days when mediocre white men were greatly rewarded just for being white.
  
  You have to see conservativism and “the conservatives” as separate things. One is a group that can hold many different views and another is a view point itself.
- If americans could read, they would be very upset.
- The boss: steal most of the profit
  The worker: hey stop stealing, i'm the one working
  Idiotic centrists: hEy MayBe You CaN JusT LeT Him SteaL A LittLe BiT
  
  You can advocate for wealth taxes, unions, and other welfare measures within a capitalist system. I’m from one of the most egalitarian countries in the world and we are capitalist too.
- I consider myself Centrist because I would rather eat 10 pounds of fried bugs than align myself with either absolute clown show of a party.
  I'm a free agent, and the haters can't stand that they can't have me.
  
  That doesn’t make you a centrist. Ya’ll seriously have lost your ability to see anything objectively it’s wild. The Democrats aren’t left wing except for a few people I could probably count on one hand but nearly the entire country, and its inability to pay attention even across its northern border, believes that the Democrats must be left wing since the Republicans are right wing.
  You may very well not be a centrist, or maybe you are, but basing that on anything that suggests that the Democrats are left, and left to a point where they balance the extremism of the GOP, renders he whole thing worthless.
  We’ve been screaming at the US for years to get a fuckin’ clue PLEASE just become moderately politically literate we are begging you.
  
  This only makes sense if you insist on reducing complex multidimensional concepts to a single scalar value. Even intuitively it doesn't make sense. You place yourself in the centre between two philosophies you disagree with? What?
  
  Why do you think voting for a party aligns yourself with that party?
  If two people want to attempt to unalive your mother with a 50% probability that they will succeed, and you have the chance to stop only one of them, reducing the chance to 25%. Does it mean that you align with whoever you do not choose?
- agnostic are agnostic because there is no foolproof evidence basis.
  with politics you can clearly see how some stances have been done and their effects. and other instances you also have a basis even in the most unclear case
  just had an issue with the negative connotation implied here talking about agnosistics :D
  
  I think we can all agree that adding religious parallels to anything is a waste of everyones time.
  
  Yeah since people cannot be expected to have full knowledge of the evidence, you have to recognize you can be agnostic about some issues. It’s virtuous to seek evidence and knowledge, and you should make choices based on the best information you have.
  I’m not advocating for independents btw. I think you should clearly pick a party to vote for, but the two party system is a horrible system for people who are pluralistic in their views.

That's not even far on the left, that's just some middle of the ground left. Real far left would be burning government buildings while having a heated discussion about the order of the colors for the flag to be raised over the rubble.
- Thank you, I know lemmy is left leaning and so am I but let's not lose our touch with reality here. People can downvote as much as they want but I'd say you're objectively right. Or does anyone want to place some counter argument instead of downvoting? Because I can't think of any
  
  You're right except that my (EU) view of Lemmy is that it's not really left leaning.
  The large amout of anti-Trump/Musk post doesn't make it so.
  A large part of it is US dems/libs making those posts. They are center-right at best.
  And I should know since I point that out to them and see the reaction.
  Massive downvotes and an avalanche of vicious comments.
- To some degree, I agree, including the tendency for infighting among leftists. It's why I've never liked this meme or its variations much. On the other hand, I've recently seen only one side actually mobilize to attack government buildings and harm people inside, and it wasn't the left.
  Anecdotally, this week at work, I heard a self-identified rightist argue for banning gay marriage. Others sitting around their table agreed. I've also had the privilege of hearing we should get rid of social programs, and too many jokes about killing people they don't like. Last time I talked to a tankie and they defended oppressive policies saying the ends justify the means, folks around us made fun of them and moved on.
  I think one of these groups might not be a real issue. At the very minimum, they're definitely not as dangerous as the other one, right now. So, is the meme a bit silly? Sure. Does that matter? I don't feel like it does.
  Please don't reply re: proper tankie political classification. It's beside the point, I'm using them because it seems to be what most imagine when they think "far left."
  
  My point, simple and plainly put is that wishing for an egalitarian society (or whatever it is called) isn't an extremist believe (as in far-x) and most people would usually agree with it.
  I just think it is just how much mass media controls most people's perception, and how is that the key factor antagonizing with finding common ground.

Oh c'mon, I consider myself to be on the left but this is a strawman and you know it
Edit: if you want this to be more accurate then add this at the end of far left section: "at all cost. And I mean ALL cost.". And reminder, we're talking about FAR left here
- Yeah someone needs to study the death toll of far left policies.
  
  I'm not sure that's fair. The "death toll of communism" has more to do with authoritarianism and political maneuvering than economic policy. Also, the people quickest to point out this fact don't seem to be using the same measuring stick to tally up the equivalent "death toll of capitalism."
  It's just propaganda that doesn't hold up to serious scrutiny. All governments - including 'centrist' ones - have an awful lot of blood on their hands. Enough blood that I wouldn't say there's a significant difference due to economic policy alone.
  
  Indeed, studying it is the best way to learn that the huge numbers that get thrown around in pop-history are completely made up cold war propaganda.
  
  More people die every year due to the lack of food, medicine and clean water than whatever made up number you can come up with for "far left" policies.

Party A... We want to kill 1.000.000 people
Party B ... We want to kill 0 people.
Centrist.... Lets just kill 500.000 people.
Sometimes there IS no centrist position
- The Democrats aren't Party B here. At best, they're the "centrists".
- But Party B gets less than 1% of the vote.
  
  Irrelevant. When its war crimes at stake you do the right thing anyway even when its hard or you know you will lose. We're not exactly arguing over school vouchers here are we.

A more real scenario.
European country bans far right candidate with conections with Russia trying to poison their democracy.
Le centrists: What about muh freedoms!?.
US Government forces Universities campuses to remove degrees of students for protesting (by threatening cutting funds) and threatens foreign students with deportation if they protest.
Edit: Just read the news that an University caved to Trump's demands to be able to get funds. Among the demands is for police to be able to arrest students.
Le centrists: Well they were asking for it...
- Centrists in the EU don't think like that at all. Centrists can hold strong opinions, their position isn't just do not pick sides and play devil's advocate at all times. As a centrist, both scenarios boil my piss.
  You've just described two extreme situations, that any centrist would instantly notice are extreme.
  
  Define centrism.
  
  Really because I'm not at all on board with allowing self-serving oligarch to play act as being a legitimate political positions.
- European countries haven't banned the far right, the AFD, Sweden Democrats, Front Nationale, Orban, etc. are not banned and they are the results of their own political failings. Not that Putin magically conjured them forth with a wave of the hand. Playing into the meme... Germans do anti-semitism and fascism Germanly... "what are we, a bunch of Russians!"
  
  The most popular romanian fascist candidate (who allegedly was supported by Russia) has been banned
- That real scenario is BS.
  European country bans far right candidate bcs LIBERAL party is trying to poison their democracy by paying for that social media campaign.
  Monolith European regime press blame Russia as usual.
  When the facts came out they suddenly were real quiet and didn't feel that was newsworthy.
  Better to let people believe the lie bcs that fits their narrative, and it worked apparently.
  
  Only people arguing that far rightr parties are not part of russian warfare and destruction of europe are on russias payroll.

Americans with their white or black bullshit

Narrator: The left did not, in fact, get everyone's basic needs met.
Both Democrats and Republicans have been moving steadily to the right for the last 40 years. So Democrats are now where Republicans were in the 1980s: friends of banks, insurance and pharmaceutical companies. And the right has moved all the way into an insane asylum.
- Whoever told you Democrats are leftists told you a big BIG lie. With some exceptions, like Bernie, and maybe AOC, most democrats are centrist, or even "economically right wing".
  
  People not realising this is what's so baffling.
  Narrator: The left did not, in fact, get everyone’s basic needs met because it hasn't been in power for nearly half a century. And incidentally, every time it was represented in government there were major strides in "getting everyone's needs met".
  Don't believe me? Do a Google search for "most liberal/leftist US presidents", click any of these listicles and try to find the most recent leftist president. Notice how there isn't a single one more recent than 1969?
  For most of you reading this, the last actual leftist government predates your parents' birth.

- Let's not suck off the left too hard, they have some splaining to do for this mess as well.
  For not supporting Jill Stein? Agreed.
- Why would they do better when you vote for them no matter what they do?
- The left has "splained" that genocide is not negotiable enough times already, and now you're just being tedious.
  And best of luck trying to get republicans on "your side".
  When you're waving glocks around to try to get republican votes you arent getting them on your side, youre going over to theirs and canibalizing your base across every demographic.

Dumb. The centrists are not the same as the non-voting. But I guess this is a far-left circle-jerk, and it's none of my business.
![Kermit drinking tea] (https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/4886e3a9-8b73-4788-b5ab-ed822c80bee1.webp)

in my book far left are hexbears hence centrism is something like social democrats a la usa bernie
gotta hate politics and its muddy definitions but I unironically like to call myself centrist. Then I am surprised how controversial it is on the interwebs because apparently everyone has different definitions. They routinely make them up on the fly 🪰
For me centrism is a fine art 🎨 of staying far away from the madness of extremism 🤪. I love centrism. I huff centrism. I breathe centrism.
I fuck with centrism.
It is deeply based in the sense of superiority and moral high ground. As all politics but this is a fundamental part of centrism. Centrism is saying "You all suck" I am better than you and enables feeling of superiority over the biggest swath of ~~Redditors~~ internet activists 🤓 which is a lovely perk. It is a true essential trick of the ultimate hedonist. If politics were about sex, centrist would be someone jerking it off to the mirror.
- Ah yes, despicable Hexbears, and their, checks notes, support of trans and anti-Imperialist struggles. I love being a centrist and hating such tankie-ism.
  
  Nice cherry picking chef. Might try career in confectioning 💩
- I think you might've accidentally added sarcasm tags to your admission.
  
  sarcasm tags are for the weak willed, we don't do such things even in the autism central online. What happens, happens
  I have unironically read my comment 10 times already just to savor how perfectly and tastefully it is composed. Truly a masterpiece of some kind.
- Yeah the far leftists kinda have the problem of full com is never going to work in the states at least not for a while. We're going to have to deal with capitalism in its current form, and that means changing how housing is done and how politics works. Eat the rich can work with centrism. Theyll say oh centrist that means you ally with the fascists! No... there are people on the right who arent that extreme that can come back left
- Far centrist.

~~Centralists~~ ... they are Libertarian, which means they don't care what anyone else does, even if they are dictatorial or authoritarian, as long as the libertarian is left alone and are not affected. They wouldn't mind watching the world burn or even care so long as their part of the world was not on fire.
They are individualists, they care about others, all they care about is themselves. They don't want to see the world as a community of fellow equal humans, they see others are either servants to serve them, people they can exploit or individuals they can take advantage of.

I used to say that because I though "the left" was Putin and Xi Jinping
- Lol, how did you get the idea Putin was a leftist?
  
  No idea. It was when I was 14 or something

Far left: everyone must conform to my world view
Far right: everyone must conform to my world view
Centrist: just leave me alone
- Social murder is still murder, centrist.
  If your policy causes people to die from preventable illness or homelessness or police violence you aren't just being "left alone" - you're killing people.
  
  "You must conform to my worldview". QED.
- Choosing not to make a choice is still making a choice.
  
  I made a choice. It just doesn't conform to your worldview, and you just can't accept that someone else looks at things differently than you, can you? Thanks for demonstrating my point!
- "just leave me alone" but also pay me taxes, obey my law, submit to my government, and also my army will periods invade you.
- Neat fiction. Going to write a book?
- "we should stop attesting, torturing and killing minorities"
  centrist: leave me alone
- on a more serious note, you are speaking about performance rather then content, everybody could talk like that even centrist.
  Taking the legitimacy off things by calling them annoying is not fair and doesnt proof anything
  
  Neither side has tolerance for people who don't see things exactly the way they do. Someone who doesn't ascribe to either ideology is vilified by both. So from that person's perspective both sides are the same -- intolerant.
  Most of the responses here are a perfect demonstration.
- Far left: we should tolerate everyone's existence
  Far right: everyone must conform to my world view
  Centrist: we should do the same as the far-right, but be more polite about it.

The underlying split is that the right wants a homogenously united community while the left is united in the acceptence of their differences. This makes me wonder why the right doesn't want communism. Could this be like homosexuality, that the right secretly wants it and just doesn't dare to say it?
- Because the economic right is capitalism, not communism
  
  I'm not even sure capitalism is the right word, at least not in the US. I'd almost describe their ideology as neo-feudalism.
  The republicans have always paid lipservice to the idea of meritocracy, of an even playing field, and fair competition. But that isn't what we're seeing from them - they're merging economic and state power in a way that serves to lock in the existing class structure and remove what little social mobility remains. They may pay lipservice to the idea of a free market liberal democracy, but that isn't the government they're creating.

I thought tankies were the far left? Or are they.. further left than that?
- Tankies don't even really fit most definitions for leftism that try to use something more concrete than vibes. They just think they're far left because they like the aesthetics of governments that tried to be or at least called themselves communist.
- If we're using the original definition of left and right, they'd technically be on the right.
  The original meaning was whether or not you supported the monarchy. I'd say that a dictatorship is close enough that it applies.
  Of course, politics isn't one dimensional. Even the "political compass" isn't really enough, here, there's probably an axis of the political graph for each major axiom of governance.
  Honestly the best descriptor for tankies is just "authoritarian communists." That tells you where they stand better than any attempt at a spectrum or graph.

Or maybe we shouldn't exterminate anyone, nor let millions of people die in starvation in a failed attempt to "get everyone's basic needs met".
You know, the actual centrist position.
- I see people starving on the streets right now living in America. The fun part is homelessness and hunger isn't solved because it's turned into an industry. Money above all else babyyyy.
  
  That was my point, if you go in either extreme, far left or far right, you end up with a lot of homelessness and starvation... And yes, in my European opinion USA is extreme right even on a sunny day. Thus the rampant misery.
- Centrists spent the past year arguing that their genocide was the lesser evil.
  
  Who are these centrists you all are talking about? I have realized that what you Americans consider far left is actually center-leftists/social democrats. By that skewed lens I can only assume that centrists to you are pretty extreme right.
  You Americans need to calibrate your political compasses to global standards, because out here wanting universal health care is not far left, it is centrist, maybe center-left on a rainy say.
  
  Those weren't really centrists. They were right-wing, but not as right-wing and authoritarian as Trump.

Dictatorships are dictatorships, regardless of the political ideology. Both sides did horrible things, like purging intellectuals and anyone seen as a potential threat, mass murder of entire social groups, maintaining informant networks to instil fear etc.
- Dictatorships are dictatorships, regardless of the political ideology.
  A dictatorship of the bourgeois is radically different from a dictatorship of the proletariat, both in form and in function.
  Both sides did horrible things
  Guys with their "Ask me about the War of Northern Aggression" baseball caps are constantly saying this
  purging intellectuals and anyone seen as a potential threat, mass murder of entire social groups, maintaining informant networks to instil fear etc.
  DSA: "We should open up the Medicare rolls to anyone who wants it and grant everyone in the country universal basic income through Social Security"
  Libertarian: "This gives the government way too much power. If you can give someone health care or a basic income, you can control who gains access to very fundamental basic human needs. And that will lead to tyranny."
  Also Libertarian: "I love the DHS. I love the DHS so much. Strong borders! Private prisons! Deportations without a court hearing! This is the network state I always dreamed of! Can't wait until Trump starts issuing EOs to form charter cities and America is just 1000 Singapores in a trench coat. Also, everything Javier Milei is doing in Argentina is fucking based. I love how MBS is running Saudi Arabia. And I can't wait to join the private mercenary army that reclaims Greenland from those weak-kneed namby pamby socialists in Denmark."
- First comment I have seen here that's even half intelligent. Most people seem to be confusing leftists with Democrats.

Who killed more Soviets? The far-right, or the far-left?
I’ll just take a pass on the far-anythings.
(Anyone who tries to paint this as pro Trump needs to reread it)
- Who killed more Soviets? The far-right, or the far-left?
  Flipping through my big book titled "Victims of Communism" and it says here that the German Nazis and Italian and Spanish Fascists were both Far-Left and Victims of the Far-Left. Also, I see hear that every unborn child out to the latest generation resulting from famines common to the 1930s through the 1960s is a Victim of Communism. Nothing in the fine print about lives saved through the universalization of health care, housing, groceries, and pensions, though. Neither can I find anything about the Peace Dividend reaped by the industrialized Soviet world following the end of WW2.... weird.
  Also, absolutely nothing in here about the Bengal Famine, its causes or the millions of tons of relief the USSR sent to end it. So strange. Michael Parenti, do you have anything to say about this?
  “During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime's atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn't go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.”
  -Michael Parenti Blackshirts and the reds

To some extent I’m still a centrist mainly, because I think that dems have their own hypocrisies and are a little too naive. However I side more with democrats for the fact that republicans actively spew hateful, dangerous, ideals that actively put others in danger and hurt people. So I might not always agree with democrats I would most likely never agree with a republican
- Thw democrats are considered "the left" in the us? As a foreigner i have always seen them as useless centrists.
- Don't worry, most of us on the left hate the Democrats too, just less than the Republicans. This has been said a million times so sorry if I'm overstating it but the Democrats would be a center right wing party in most of the developed world.
- The democrats are right wing

The far left and far right are both bad. If in doubt, look at any country which has gone down either path.
- Half of Europe would be considered "far left" from a US perspective. Affordable housing? Universal healthcare? Parental leave for long durations? Walkable cities and public transit? Try getting any of those to fly with the US neoliberals.
  
  Half of Europe would be considered “far left” from a US perspective. Affordable housing? Universal healthcare? Parental leave for long durations? Walkable cities and public transit? Try getting any of those to fly with the US neoliberals.
  Considered != is. Most of Europe has social democrat / labour parties which are left leaning democratic parties and committed to democratic principles. They're not far left by any stretch regardless of what anyone in America thinks. But Eastern Europe has certainly suffered the experience of far left governments in the past and has no desire to go back.

That's the dumbest centrist I've ever met then

That's not it. If it's going down it's going all the way down to be rebuilt on a new base.