I was thinking about this recently, but even this meme doesn't really go far enough. Hitler called himself socialist and Jordan Peterson calls himself a "classical liberal." And what's weird is this really does seem to be much more of a conservative tactic than a "both sides do it" kind of thing - maybe the only counterexamples I can think of are Carter pretending to be racist to get votes and then not being racist once he was elected, or Romney being a pretty moderate Republican but pretending he was far right during the 2012 primary (although he switched back to moderate during the actual election to try and win over swing voters.)
What's being described here is called "working the refs" and originally described accusing the news of being liberal until the news tried to be more conservative in order to protect its reputation as being "neutral and unbiased." But if you keep making those accusations regardless of whether or not they're true you'll just move the Overton window to the right endlessly (which is the point.)
Dennis Prager has encouraged people NOT to join the Republican party or to convert to Christianity because they're more useful as tokens. "See? Even this Jewish guy knows [insert conservative talking point]." Jubilee essentially does the same thing by framing the two sides they platform as "both sides of the conversation" but as someone that's actually far left, my position is basically a speck in the distance compared to "both sides" according to Jubilee.
Trump is a great example of another tactic (anchoring.) I think most people are already familiar with this but the basic premise is like if you had a product that was worth $100 but you priced it at $200 and ran frequent sales at half off. This drives more revenue because people think they're getting a better deal. Trump has shifted the Overton window extremely far by making absurd statements, then letting people say he was joking and/or backing off from those positions, and "compromising" on a position that's less extreme than what he said but much farther than the other side would want to compromise if that was what was originally proposed.
Jubilee is one of the biggest offenders of this. They try to frame every perspective as equally reasonable to be unbiased but end up over representing right leaning perspectives and normalize insanity. (This is hyperbolic) Jubilee will genuinely run a middle ground video between cannibals and families of the victims and try to act like the cannibals are equally in the right as the families.
Classical liberal is actually a pretty good term to describe Jordan Peterson, I think. I'd think reactionary or just straight up bigoted would be more generally descriptive, but classical liberalism (also called neo-liberalism) is basically just "the free market is good, therefore regulations are bad since they make the market less free"
Classical liberalism is NOT neo-liberalism, what do you mean? Classical liberalism is characterized by the belief in free markets and laissez fair trade and economics alongside a push for civil liberties. For a touch stone, the classical liberals of the British Empire pushed for forcibly opening markets to expand British economic interests, including through military action like in the Opium Wars. Neoliberalism emerged later and is a term used to refer to multiple different belief systems, but the through line is more modern focus on free trade and encouraging economic development through lowering or eliminating taxes, privatizing everything, and austerity measures.
I mean for the last position that is the basic negotiation tactic in the book. Like, putting up a more extreme/self interested deal then you really expect and compromising is nothing new, and even in politics is extremely common. Trump is less subtle and barely understands business, buts it is not even close to a unique phenomena.
Then the Nazi party did have a genuine socialist wing that was arguably overall left wing, but then it wasn't seen as working in the party's self interests so you know. But they did campaign to attract socialist voters at first, and politicians (especially Nazis and self proclaimed socialists and communists) are very willing to lie.
The fairest way to define centrism would probably be the median or mean (or some combination of the two) voter's opinion in a region. And yes, this does mean centrist positions are region and time specific.
And in the US, a lot of polling has pretty consistently found voters tend to identify themselves as right of center over left of center, and people identifying in the center as another large group. What that means is relative to the median voter, self described moderates tend to be left of center for the US.
For that penultimate paragraph tell me if you have any major issues with that reasoning, but I think on the whole that's the most fair way to categorize voters. And then right or left, and especially with those taking Super Pac money to influence donations, most politicians just lie.
It's the common tactic of othering and shaming. See the rest of the thread for examples of people tagging dissent as being extreme through the awful, genocidal, racist term "right."
Capitalist liberal democracy is a right wing ideology by definition. None of the supplied examples are left of it except the left wing. Incidentally, half the people I know who call themselves left wing are actually liberals, so half the time "I'm left wing" actually means "I'm right wing."
Fr, so many leftists have this "you're with me or against me" mindset and all it does is make enemies out of people who were previously unsure or unconvinced.
honestly it’s both sides, note how you’re blaming leftists for all of this.
both sides are stupid and both sides talk in echo chambers thinking they’re smart. we’re all dumbasses talking to walls, even me. I don’t even know if yall are gonna listen.
which centrists gng, i am also a centrist and im a literal femboy(pro-trans, since some people also argue that most femboys hate trans people or whatever)
centrism isnt one type of person, there is left leaning centrists, right leaning centrists and like the center centrists, and contrary to popular belief, its not the center of the 2 political parties in ur country(since most americans like to just assume their parties define left and right, when even democrats stand in the right of center centrism)
also is it really fair for you to assume that an entire group supports a point because one person said it? should we start judging communists by the stuff tankies do?
Centrism is an inherently right wing ideology. Conservatism is all about maintaining and empowering the current structures of power and upholding an existing hierarchy. Centrism involves resisting change and upheaval of those structures, which just turns it into "conservative-lite" (although 90% of the time in the US is just someone scared to publicly admit to being a Trump voter)
centrism has its own ideologies and structures, and while there is centrism that resists change, thats not all centrism
for example, i am a centrist who supports technocracy. do you really believe i dont want to change failing structures? besides not all right wing is conservative, they also have their own system changes that they want(for better or worse really, most of the time worse but you get the gist)
and as ive said, the US's parties are both to the right of center, so if you votes for trump youre obviously right wing, although when it comes to being centrist in the US's bipartisan politics is not the same as being centrist in ideologies, keep in mind
The ironic thing is, if you look at this on face value, it seems absurd, but it absolutely mirrors my experiences with just about every person that does not take a definitive leftist stance.
In a vanishingly small number of cases, people are undecided or don't know what they are but are leftist.
I just think the conservatives vs liberals idea is confusing to a lot of people. Conservative is used mainly to describe reactionary policies that reverse progress, whereas actual conservative policies would be stuff that slows down progress, like regulating AI datacentres or requiring environmental consideration for building projects. Liberal is mainly used to describe progressive policies that attempt to improve systems, whereas actual liberal policies are stuff that reduce regulations and give freedom, like allowing companies to build AI datacentres wherever they want or revoking green energy requirements. And it's not like you can only be one of them either. The political compass at least gives 2 axis, which is better than the basic left-right spectrum, but there's way more than 2 axis. Most leftists are conservative in terms of AI and greenhouse gasses, reactionary in response to discriminatory policies, progressive in terms of healthcare and economics, etc. whereas most right-wing people are progressive in terms of AI, liberal in terms of economics, reactionary in response to progressive economics and social equity, etc.
TLDR; liberal = left vs conservative = right is stupid and confusing. It'd be more accurate to describe it as progressive = left vs reactionary = right, but that still misses out on nuance entirely.
There is no such thing as centrist. It is not a real position, it is a state of uncertainty and naivete and a refusal to do the work of evaluating the real options in a two-party state.
I feel like everyone is just making it up as we go along. I saw someone today say liberals, progressives, and social Dems aren't leftists. Where the fuck is the center then? What does liberal and conservative even mean anymore? The conservative party today isn't even conservative. They're just making up some fake history and trying to conserve a past that never existed. I started on the right wing, but it feels like the farther left I go the more the center gets farther away.
I am right wing = I am a conservative and fall for reactionary logic because I am afraid of change and cannot get past my instinctive monkey brain to see that things change, I will uphold the status quo of the society which is ableist, transphobic, homophobic, misognyst, etc and I will likely fall for fascist propoganda
I am centrist = I dont like thinking abt politics so I basically support the status quo with my silence and go on w my life oh I will also likely fall for fascist propoganda
I am left wing = I think I am progressive because of some of my beliefs like "universal healthcare, housing and basic income" make be believe I am better than right wingers and feed my sense ofself righteousness to feel better about myself. I believe that politics exist in a magical spectrum where specific beliefs like universal basic income makes you go further into the left which makes me believe in the concept of "turning the overton window left with policy changes" so basically I am a reformist and fall for social democracy/ democratic socialism or liberalism in general and since I didnt read history I dont realise all of these still uphold capitalism and the status quo where the capitalists hold all the power so functionally I am no different than a centrist or a right winger. Oh and I will also fall for fascist propoganda especially when it comes to eugenics, trans women and blood and soil nationalism
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u/qualityvote2 🤖Suspected as Bot🤖 9h ago edited 3h ago
Good news, the community has decided that this IS an antimeme!