Centrism

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How does one figure that out? I've seen Harris supporters generally called centrists, and centrists compared with nazis.

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This comic is mocking a specific kind of "centrist" who isn't actually centrist at all.

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Centrism is the range of political ideologies that exist between left-wing politics and right-wing politics on the left–right political spectrum. It is associated with moderate politics, including people who strongly support moderate policies and people who are not strongly aligned with left-wing or right-wing policies.

The issues described in the comic/thread is that when you have one 'extreme' calling for the removal of rights/the lives of one group, and their opposite 'extreme' is calling to not do that, Centrists ask for some middle ground that cannot exist. You call the top right panel a ridiculous strawman, but go into any thread about immigration, women's rights, etc, and you will see (slightly less hyperbolic most of the time) comments that line up with that panel. What's the Centrist reaction to abortion bans? Partial bans. So all the Right has to do is ask for the entirety of something (abortion ban, force striking workers back to work, etc) and Centrists will give them part of what they want.

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lol thanks, and that's actually not surprising.

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That US politics has screwed up definitions of left and right, making the cartoon meaningless when applied to it.

Majorllama

I don't consider myself a centrist, but I do consider myself between the two parties currently.

I don't like the "both sides are wrong" mentality often associated with centrists. I don't think I am inherently better than either side. I think I am disillusioned by both sides.

I was a Leftist/Democrat for the majority of my life. Then at some point ~8-9 years ago saw the pipeline that leads to radicalized righty thinking and said "fuck that" but when I turned around and looked back on my old party critically I also didn't want to walk back through that door either.

Basically I think both "sides" need to shut up and stop slinging poop at each other. Occasionally you need to listen to the other side. Neither one is always right or always wrong. Some of the moderates from either side can admit this and they hang out in the middle ish with me. But most people just sprint farther to either side when their ideas are challenged.

But since everyone has this "us vs them" mentality over every little thing I don't see communication or collaboration getting any better going forward.

Iceblade

Yup, fact is a majority of people in thd US agree on many of the most important issue, yet the governing structure seeks to "otherize" people from each other as much as possible in order to prevent meaningful discourse and foster division.

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Okay, I'm Canadian, but let's play ball:

Republicans (right-wing) want to ban abortion.

Democrats (*left-wing) want to not ban abortion.

What's the Centrist solution here? Is it... some bans on abortion by any chance?

(*I'm aware they're basically right-of-centre at this point, but not wanting to ban abortion is a 'left' stance.)

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The part where they are similar is that both the far left and far right are willing to use authoritarian violence to achieve their goals. And the representation of the left as just "oppression is bad" is overly simplistic. They too believe in oppression of particular groups (see oppression of academics/scientists/bourgeoise/etc in almost all communist take-overs). Centrists can also have very differing views as well but the reason they are located where they are on the horseshoe is because they would rather problems be solved with slow beauraucracy/well-defined protocols and not revolution or political violence.

This is not an admonishment or support for any of these things from me personally. Just pointing out in more detail the idea behind horseshoe theory.

Majorllama

Can't have the population working together to take out the elites. They need us good and pissed off at each other so we are too busy to see them taking everything and giving us scraps constantly.

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There was literally a slip in the first international. You can't blame those aligning with the lesser influential side for the things the authoritarians did. "The Left" is a far too broad concept to apply the No True Scotsman fallacy to.

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Both sides are bad and very close to the same in result. They differ in method and the only thing they both agree on is they can't stand someone who wont endorse one side or the other. I'm not a centrist. I'm a victim of both parties. I want to see them all in jail. The root cause is the type of person who seeks out power. They should never be allowed power. Of course we now have the perfect suck of power hungry trash backed by all the other power hungry trash. They will continue to pit us against each other. Just like these types of cartoon where they insist the centrist are the problem and not the foaming at the mouth zealots on the right and the left. There are at least three sides. The corrupt democrats. The corrupt republicans. Their victims. If you endorse either side is being better or worse you are not a victim.

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When has the right been correct about things? Lmao

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I've actually never met anyone like this. I think people on social media want a binary so they simplify all opinions into fascism vs antifascism and then point and laugh at those who try to bring the details back into the discussion. They claim that centrists are somehow "splitting the difference" between fascism and antifascism.

It's so illogical I can't help but rule it out when trying to understand someone's train of thought.

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Well, Elon and German far-right politician Alice Weidel claimed in a reason talk that Hitler was a communist...

Majorllama

Do you people have any amount of self awareness?

Do you legitimately believe that anything and everything the right has ever said or done has been wrong?

Most people would say that Hitler was a terrible person (and they would be right), but even the evil as shit Hitler did some Good things in his life even if some people refuse to admit it.

Hitler is credited with pulling Germany out of the post WW1 economic slump. One of the major contributors was his insistence on building the highway/Autobahn. It enabled Germany to expand faster and years before other European countries could catch up

Him and the Nazis were among the first to recognize the health benefits with not smoking and he is credited with pushing Germans to quit smoking but especially pregnant women and kids.

If you want a more recent example:

During Trump's first Term he made it easier to prosecute financial crimes. The main way he did this was by requiring businesses to report their true owners. No longer would they spend as much time and money digging through shell corporations to figure out who is truly responsible.

If you want a less recent example:

Nixon created the EPA.

Not everything the left does is rainbows and perfection. Not everything the right does is evil and ruins the planet. You need to stop thinking in absolutes and recognize that things are more complicated.

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Far left is mostly also authoritarian. They say they want everyone to have the same rights but get angry or try to silence people that don't agree with their radical ways. I'm not talking about the left in general but the far left. Tankies definitely are authoritarian.

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Are they far left? No? Then it doesn't apply to the horseshoe theory since it doesn't become closer aligned again

ObjectivityIncarnate

You don't understand what centrism is. There is no such thing as a single "centrist position".

Centrism defines a collective of views; it describes a set of points of view that lie on both 'wings', such that it's not really accurate to label that person as either.

Defining centrism the way you just did is kind of like defining bisexuality as being attracted only to a person who is a 50/50 mixture of male/female (which of course doesn't actually exist), instead of someone who is capable of being attracted to males and females. And just how most bi people have a preference 'lean' toward one sex over the other, centrists also tend to 'lean', based on where the lion's share of their values sit.

Basically, anyone who describes themselves as "left/right leaning" is a centrist, specifically who has volunteered a bit more specificity about their set of values.

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I just think if we long term want to build a stable system that works for everybody we can't just keep rerolling dice hoping a revolution would magically fix it all. I like my politics boring if it gets the job done and keeps improving and iterating on a better system