Centrists find value in conservative politics and entertain them. We have known for a very long time now, including having had access to the fucking book it’s from, that it is designed to screw over poor people and benefit the owner class. You don’t need to be a full-blown communist but all centrist politics have ever amounted to has been “I won’t directly attack gay people but I won’t stop anyone, either, and I will shake hands and laugh with the people that want them dead.”
Fuck centrists. Buncha spineless losers.
Like the DEMOCRATIC people’s republic of Korea.
or the democratic republic of congo.
TRUE
“I’m neither right not left” = far-right. Always.
Yep, it’s called Fish Hook Theory:
Nah it’s not that complicated. Nazis are just lying manipulative fucks. That’s their main thing.
Note that there is no such theory outside of Internet slang. There is no merit in it. Just as horseshoe theory is without merit. There are complex, underlying causes for it making so much sense, but do not be baited by comfort.
The only part of horseshoe theory that tracks is that if you go far enough left you get your guns back.
The part that tracks is that authoritarians exist orthogonal to left/right.
And that those unwilling to compromise on anything with anyone tend to get authoritarians
Funny, it’s usually the centrists who partner with and allow authoritarians into power
In a german state election the BSW, a left wing splinter party, just just gave their support to the afd, an extreme right-wing party, getting fascists in to power within germany for the first time since WW2.
“authoritarianism” is a concept made up by an anti-semetic CIA stooge in order to be able to equivocate between Nazis and communists. Its a completely meaningless term where every definition is either so broad that it describes all states (and almost just all social structures organised for any purpose) or so narrow it is just a synonym for whatever designated enemy you are being told is evil. It’s about as cogent as “badguyism”.
Tankie tears is music for my ears
?
links please, this is certainly unfamiliar
Sure, what would you like links for? The stuff about Hannah Arendt or the critique of the theory of “authoritarianism”? The first I can provide, but let me know more specifically what so I dont overwhelm.
The latter I cannot since the link is just Hannah Arendt and successors works’. I’d encourage you to actually read it with a critical eye and notice how vague it is. It is a theory that only cares about whether a state does stuff, not why or how or for whom or with what support. This is completely silly. Every state is authoritarian, every hierarchical organisation is authoritarian. Its a word used to make you think negatively of a group - Like how enemy states do not have governments, they have regimes and their VPs aren’t VPs they’re “hand picked successors”.
What I would really recommend is that you read “Blackshirts and Reds”, “Inventing Reality” and Engels’ “On Authority”
“Horseshoe theory” is the idea that I don’t really care if I’m being killed by Hitler or Mao if I’m being killed.
Death by centrist is impersonal. It’s your fault for not hustling hard enough for AC.
I personally care a lot more about what the state suppresses, how it does it, for whom it does it, against whom it does it, why it does it, with how much public support it does it and what the effect of it is, rather than some simplistic black-and-white view that merely cares about whether a state does things or not.
The main difference between “neither left nor right” and far-right is hypocrisy.
Or sometimes denial
Don’t forget idiocy.
also notice the confusing “centre party” means they are “both sides”, its to trick would be voters into voting for them who dont care enough to read past thier party name.
Some green parties tried the same nonsense for a while, though I think they all admit to being left by now. The argument was that they’d work independently of party blocks with climate as the only issue.
Of course right wing politics are always an environmental disaster, but sometimes you would see unusual constellations in local politics.
Reminder that the Nazis literally called themselves National Socialists. They were the opposite of course and swiftly destroyed any trace of socialism once they were in power. That’s what far-rights do.
Wasn’t fascism originally about being neither right nor left, but then it got sort of absorbed (or bought out) by the right to combat the left? Thats atleast how I’ve understood it, and of course there is so much more to fascism than that but thats just how i’d summarize it
I only know that the Nazis presented themselves as the “third way” between communism and capitalism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Röhm
That didn’t last long.
Just like the AfD in Germany today.
Centrists are just closeted right wingers that don’t want to be criticized for their right wing views.
or outright cowards too afraid to have a stance on anything for fear of being wrong or unliked
Huh. Now moderates are literally Nazis.
It’s best to be an Epicurean and stay away from politics. It’s just miserable. People say, “But the ship is going to crash! You don’t care?” Sure, but when there’s a mob fisting fighting over the controls, the best thing to do is just vibe.
You sound like someone who’s not first in line to be killed
What a pathetic way to look at the world.
“Boy that looks hard, best just let those people die. Doesn’t affect me, I guess.”
Like I said. Of course I care, but when there’s a mob fisting fighting over the controls, it’s not just hard. It’s impossible. You guys are going to have to learn how to get along with people. When you do, I’ll quit dancing and come look at the wheel and see what I can do.
You just gave to have a dialog with the rabid pack of dogs gnawing on your legs!! Stop hitting it and talk to it!
Seriously, do you expect us to compromise with just a little genocide, as a treat? If you want the fist fight over the controls to end, and you have any preference one way or the other, then get involved. Start throwing punches.
If you don’t do that, you don’t care. You’re content to sit back in your privilege and let the chips fall where they may, safe in your knowledge that as a cis straight white male (I can only assume from the disdain dripping off your post about anyone trying to change things for the better), you will be unaffected by the goings on.
I don’t have disdain for anyone trying to change things for the better. I have an aversion to people throwing punches.
Great so you can understand that the people throwing punches are the ones TRYING TO DO A GENOCIDE THE WORLD OVER. if you think you can talk your way out of that, you’re just dumb.
I genuinely don’t believe you actually care like you say you do. It is incongruent with you decision to let the cards fall where they may.
You’re the second person I’ve seen who agrees with Ghandi that the Jews should have just committed suicide during the Holocaust.
“Mob” is such a classic term for elitist simpletons who wrinkle their noses at a population fighting for democracy.
Funny how no one made any specific statements about policies or support for political parties, yet you still decided that “the centre” is “moderate”.
“Lets kill some minorities”.jpg
In my case, I was a closeted left-winger.
Are you claiming this to be the case for the majority of earth inhabitants?
Majority are left wing
US only. I’m not knowledgable enough to understand hiw the rest of the world views their internal politics.
In america*
This article is about The Netherlands.
Yet people are repeatedly likening it to actual moderate behavior and not people who pretend to be so they don’t appear to be supporting far right sentiments, even on this page rn they’re doing it.
Not every country is a authoritarian shit fest.
Not every country is a authoritarian shit fest.
But many are headed that direction if they aren’t there yet. Ford in Canada, La Pen in France, the AfD in Germany, Bolsonaro in Brazil, right-wing movements are gaining ground all over the world. And even where they aren’t we’re still seeing the collapse of privacy and personal liberties. Pretending it’s just a USA problem is a sure way to be surprised when your own country follows suit.
Fascists often hate being called right wing. It comes from a lack of self-awareness and general lack of emotional intelligence. If you can’t understand other people and their views, you are inclined to see your own position as the reasonable center. There are also, of course, some fascists who cynically portray themselves as the center, knowing full well what they really are. The leaders of AfD and the Reform UK are examples.
Analogously, people on the right often use the word “political” as a derogation. They hate the idea of their beliefs being political, preferring to call them “common sense”.
In a nutshell, there is a commonality across many people on the right of being unable to empathize and understand perspectives outside their own. This is why they always view their own use of government benefits as justified while others are thieves or criminals, and why anyone different from them is a threat.
See also: “Silent Majority”
They better stay silent alright.
Fallwell is fortunately in hell, he can rant all he wants down there.
I choose to believe in a metaphorical Hell just so he can be down there
Of which they are neither
I dunno, the fact that the silent majority voted NSC BBB and D66 says it all, centrists are not to be trifled with.
So in other words, narcissists with psychopathic tendencies
as someone who thinks “left” and “right” are fake politics, my experience has led me to think about the range as the scope of your compassion. the further “left” you are, the more you care about the people as a whole. the further “right” you are, the more you care about yourself.
eventually, you get so egocentric that you cannot even fathom an opposing perspective so the “common sense” becomes your only basis for thought. the way you perceive your own stance literally shifts back towards the center as your actual position gets more extreme.
source: was raised by one
If fascists weren’t lying they wouldn’t have anything to say.
They’d yell slurs all day
I think the second case is much more frequent. They know what they are and they how it sounds, so they just lie.
At the leadership level, I agree. I do think a lot of the young men following them are simply stupid and fall for a bill of goods. The right is a coalition of the evil and intellectually feeble
Fascists often hate being called right wing. It comes from a lack of self-awareness and general lack of emotional intelligence.
That’s part of it, but its also just the result of lacking political education.
There’s constant strugglethreads these days about the upcoming elections in the US and the people rabidly supporting the democrats think they are not fascists - Even though the democratic partys policies all fit within that ideological framework.
They are confused when people call a genocidal group of imperialists fascist because there’s another group they think is worse and because their genocidal imperialists nominally support civil liberties like gay marriage.
Meeting of the Centrist-Moderate Coalition (2026)
I mean, the joke of the 1930s was that National Socialism absolutely was a centrist position between Monarchism and Communism. They struck a chord with central Europeans by advocating a broad ethnic sovereignty that expanded the “in-group” of would-be aristocrats while still flattering the egos of chauvinists and religious bigots. Fascism takes the founding myths of the aristocracy and extends it to a subset of the proletariat as a means of mobilizing them as a large populist unit.
The end result is a militant faction far larger and more industrial than the royalist elites, but one that still has scapegoats and class enemies among the various minorities and small neighbors on the periphery. It really is a philosophy that lives at the “center” of the historical political discourse.
You just have to come at it recognizing politics (particularly in Europe) as even more narrow and reactionary than what Fascists advocated for publicly. You also have to recognize Fascism as fundamentally unstable and quick to collapse, either into a more egalitarian socialism or a more hierarchical aristocracy, once it exhausts itself of minorities and neighbors to plunder.
What people often refer to as “left” and “right” are really “southwest” and “northeast” (respectively) on the typical political compasses that you see online. Fascism grants no civil liberties (far north, meaning authoritarian) and it has a mixed economy (neither west nor east).
The political compass is completely asinine
Eh. It’s introducing the idea of political spectrum rather than binary (R/D) or linear (Left/Center/Right) politics.
But it’s hard to visualize outside of a 2D plane. And it’s even harder for people to conceptualize ideology that isn’t their own. So… an imperfect model of a complex system.
Do you have some good texts to point towards for more reading? Might want to give them to the other commenter as well
If you want an example of the burnout side of things look up the end of Francoist Spain and how it transitioned into modern Spain. It’s a whole mess but kinda interesting for how fascism just kinda runs out of steam and burns out after awhile, though it should be noted that Spain basically moderated at least partly because Francoist fascism was relatively utilitarian so when the project collapsed there was enough salvageable structure to just kinda moderate.
Either read Marx and apply your analysis from there, or read The Doctrine of Fascism and use that as your definition of fascism. All of UnderpantsWeevils claims about fascism have no basis except just going off vibes
This is the worst interpretation of what fascism is I’ve ever read
Fascism is when Yiff Bezoos launches space dildos to pierce the heavens, using your tax money, while telling you your mexican neighbor is why you are broke.
What a cogent rebuttal, thank you for your useful insights, really great contribution to the discussion you’ve brought here.
how so? this is literally how the capitalist class appeals to the white working class (white here being someone with privilege and proximity to power) so that there can be an in group of class traitors who will sustain the status quo of capitalism as the inherent failures of system expose themselves.
Capitalism doesn’t require class traitors to continue functioning, you’re just making moral and vibes-based claims about fascism and capitalism with no further explanation nor analysis.
that’s not what i was claiming, and i don’t recall saying anything about moralism (not particularly since i think moralism is a waste of everyone’s time and energy). what i was trying to say is that when capitalism is in decline, movements arise to figure out what to do next. a century ago the main movers in that space were anarchist trade unionists, communist parties, and democratic socialists seeking to implement a new economic system. fascism arises as a counter to these things by co-opting the messaging of people looking to make a better world but with the aim of maintaining the current one. their propaganda works by promising to extend the benefits of aristocracy to more white (still using the same version of the word as before) people in return for those white people degrading the living quality of their minority neighbors.
Books i recommend that brought me to this understanding of how fascist propaganda works so we can counter it:
- Settlers - J Sekai
- Inventing Reality - Michael Piaenti
- Ur-Fascism - Umberto Eco
- Fascism is Capitalism in Decay - Vladimir Lenin
- Song for a Hard Hit People: Lessons in Anti-racism From a Coal Miner’s Daughter - Beth Howard
In a similar vein: Denmark has the “Radical Left” party, which is centrist (liberal). It is an offshoot of that “Left” party which is also liberal - Or was supposed to be, its really just a front for agriculture lobbies.
The naming comes from when the left/right was about support for the king and since these parties represent the interests of the bourgoisie they did not support the king. It is funny these days though since the left/right is about support for capitalism, so bit of a misnomer to have a “radical left” party with a social-liberal ideology lol.
What’s even more fun is, in the Danish political system the “Radical Left” is considered Right-Wing
It’s considered right wing only be people on the left wing, and left wing by people on the right wing. Which points to it being centrist.
what kind of political madhouse is this D:
A multiparty system with proportional representation, a 2% barrier to get into parliament, and 150+ years of party history :)
The model we use is that the primary dividing factor, the original distinction being drawn was, “Should power be centralized or distributed?” with the right being the side that supported monarchy, nobility, tradition, and the left supporting empowerment, progress, equity. Obviously at the time they did not have a view of how this stances would develop over time, but it helps a lot in having a coherent understanding of the politics of yourself and others.
Who’da thunk that fence sitters would be right-wing?
people dint notice that? probably aiming at low information voters/or racists.
It gets better they went bankrupt in 1986 then a second party Centre Party '86 was created went down the same path and was banned in 1998. Then there was New National Party (Netherlands) which went down the same path again and dissolved in 2005. Ive pulled this info off the Wikipedia pages so I am in no way a expert on this topic I just found the series of events funny
the grift with these chuds is strong, you’d think the rubes would wake up but… racism
Not typical for parties wearing that name. That being said the German Zentrum (CxU predecessor) did in fact happily vote with the NSDAP in favour of the enabling Act which was the major turning point in establishing Nazi Germany.
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
North Korea
About as democratic as the US.
Incredibly typical for parties wearing that name. Bring an example of a centrist party actually named something like “the moderates” or “the centre”.
Das Zentrum is an example of a center party of the time.
The only thing I know about it was that catholicism was a big part of being a member and they voted for the enabling act, which seems quite right-wing to me. What anti-capitalist policies did they pursue? What did they do in reaction to the spartacists?
You are speaking without knowledge of the politics of the time. Those people existed in the context of their time and were a center standing against monarchists and fascists on the right and communists (stalinists) and socialists on the left. They did vote for Hitler, but this doesn’t put them in the far right. The core lesson about the rise of fascism isn’t that everybody is far right but about what the middle of the political spectrum does.
They had a falling out and their most well known member (Hans Janmaat) then founded the Centre Democrats. I remember Janmaat being the butt of many jokes, and for the rest he was widely ignored.
That’s some 1984 level shit
I hate George Orwell, he was a rapist snitch and a terrible writer, but he nailed it with “doublethink”
Damn, I didn’t even know Ed Sheeran was Dutch…
/s
They aren’t extremists calling for the end of all people, only minorities they don’t like, duuuh, so they are center.
feels like those “free speech” spaces and it ends up being mostly Racism
