Does anybody else hate centrists more than they hate ardent right wingers? I have a dad who is has the most obnoxious centrist views. The shit he says actually disgusts me. For example, he frequently says stuff like this:
"Trump won because the he average American is extremely racist and sexist"
"I'm no Tory, but I feel bad for Theresa May. Its not easy being a woman in that position"
"I think part of the reason that populism is on the rise is because the working class is jealous that millions of poor people around the world are being lifted out of poverty"
"I think that rather than raising income tax on the rich, countries should raise the national sales tax. Thats the best way to fight inequality because the rich can't avoid sales tax."
The thing that saddens me the most is that he used to be a solid leftist/ Irish Nationalist, but after reading books like "The End of History and the Last Man", he actually bought into the whole Tony Blair/ Bill Clinton Third Way bullshit. Meanwhile, he thinks is some kind of intellectual because he is above the fray off the left and the right. (I obviously don't hate my dad but he pisses me off sometimes)
Meanwhile, I have friends in school who are actually full blown Trump supporters, and I get along with them fine. Even when they talk about politics, they don't piss me off for some reason.
yes. my dad is one of those "who needs a party lol lets just let the people pick independents and get rid of them whenever they want also i will defend the right of free speech for everyone and mccain just did what he thought was right and i respect that". at least right wingers hold serious convictions instead of just being a self-righteous little shit who enables the right.
What's funniest is when you get "militant centrists", defeating the entire purpose of being some enlightened pacifist.
What they don't realize is that vehemently defending the status quo; willing to commit violence for it, makes them kin to fascists. There's no such thing as centrism.
Easton Anderson
This has become quite clear in the UK in the last couple of years, with Brexit and the rise of Corbyn. You get a lot of 'moderates' openly expressing a loathing for the people and for democracy.
Yes everyone hates them more. Atleast people on the right and left recognize the status quo is fucking over most of the population. Centrists are just wealthy upper middleclass assholes that want to maintain the status quo because it benefits them. Most of them also want to avoid talking about it in their personal lives because it is "too negative" i.e. they enjoy their bubble and being confronted with the suffering their success is built on is less important than their continued ignorant bliss. Then what is worse is they are smug about being above it all because they have convinced themselves that being a coward who only acts in their own selfish interests makes them better than everyone else.
Mason Davis
I want to stab people in the fucking face when they complain about "bad energy" or "bad vibes" when you express even an inkling of doubt about society.
John Garcia
Continued… Atleast white nationalists and nazis want what is best for a group of people and not just themselves. I will be joining pol on their "night of the rope" if it means I get to kill some boomer centrists. sorry OP but your dad has to die
Zachary Jenkins
this is true though. The average american man and women are the most reactionary, racist, retarded people on the planet. They would sell out their own children into slavery if it meant not hurting their bosses bottom line. They are everything wrong with the planet and the best of their "centrists" is as bad as the most ardent far right extremist in europe in terms of turning the gears of neoliberalism's death machine.
My mom does this and I tell her not to vote then. If you are going to be willfully ignorant that's the least you can do.
Hunter Rodriguez
This, I fucking lol every time someone says that he won because of muh jobs and muh lack of industry. America is the closest to hell we'll get on earth.
Levi Robinson
This liberal talking point was debunked by T.J. Coles in his book “President Trump Inc” —even the average Trump voter (which is a very much a minority of the population) favored amnesty for illegal immigrants and more greater legal immigration. Yep, Donald won because the American people are ultra-right racists alright…
Coles has an abundance of evidence dismantling the myth that the average American is not right-wing in his book btw. It’s a favorite myth that liberals use when they lose elections but it isn’t true and it hampers our ability to organize and spread our politics when people have predominately negative views about the people they CLAIM they are trying to help.
I despise them because they're the biggest obstacle to a leftist society.
Jacob James
This is what happens when people passively accept the lies they are spoonfed, instead of thinking about what has been said.
Oliver Turner
Your dad sounds like a bit of a moron tbh. Though I get the feeling he always thinks he's the smartest guy in the room. Get him reading some books dude. "Super Imperialism" by Michael Hudson is a good gateway.
Lucas Nguyen
Does he still say this? Point out the dude won with 3 million fewer votes.
Oh, God. I met a passionate neoliberal once, guy was an apologist for the East India Company, too. Like some of them explicitly do that.
I don't think this is centrism, it's just retarded. He's advocating raising one of the few taxes that still manages to take hundreds of dollars from unemployed homeless people. Fucking ridiculous.
Nicholas Allen
My “liberal” dad gets fucking triggered whenever I talk shit about cops or John McCain.
Thomas Lee
I think liberals are soaked in a racist culture, and are thus racist themselves too. I'm NOT american, thank god.
Cooper Powell
It depends on what you mean by centrism. The only kind of "centrists" I dislike more than rightists are the ones who think doing nothing and supporting the status quo puts them on some kind of moral high ground. The type that genuinely believes in shit like horseshoe theory. Those people are some of the only that I find genuinely reprehensible because they either reject or refuse to develop their beliefs. Still though, I would rather be around them than fucking nazis.
Depends on who you're talking to. I've seen some compelling arguments for both social democracy and social liberalism as centrist positions, and both have solid philosophical bases.
Do you expect anything better from this board?
Brandon Jackson
I wasn't being sarcastic, I was making an observation. I realized that far right movements actually have genuine worker factions. Sure they get betrayed, yes, they might die in wars, but even when crippled by their own class collaborationism, the far right shows concerns and makes some effort to improve their lot. "Enlightened centrists", on the other hand, shit on the workers and get them killed in wars, while treating the poor with absolute contempt, and tell them to shut the fuck up and fall in line.
Is turd positionism, so it's "philosophical" base is trash.
Carson Edwards
That point and debate not withstanding, if even Trump voters are to the Left of Euro right-winger parties on the issue of immigration they typically want no immigration of any sort then it doesn't make sense to say that the American people are the most reactionary and racist on the planet as argued in this post:
If American liberals are also racist, despite giving lip-service to the notion that difference of outcome between groups can only be explained by racism (ex. I have literally seen an American liberal say that the difference between black and white abortion rates can be explained by "racism") then racism doesn't explain why Trump won. Racism is thus a constant on both sides of the election and doesn't really explain things either way.
If Clinton had won, some radical leftist or reactionary could ascribe it to "racism" in some manner but the facts are someone is going to win the election and candidates chosen by the imperialists are the only ones who get to play. We also know that poor economic performance and economic crises empower the opposition party frequently in American political history. So, Trump being voted into office wouldn't be a departure from the historical norm in the same way Obama getting into office wasn't a departure. I do consider Trump voters to be more reactionary than the average American but at the same time the average American is neither a committed Trump supporter or right-wing. Close to half of eligible Americans didn't even fucking vote.
Btw European electoral systems are more representative of the electorate than American ones, so by that logic, if Europeans wanted anything different from neoliberalism or right-wing populism–then we'd know it.
Noah Moore
The far right are not concerned with even the white working class as a whole; this is exactly the lie they are trying to push on the white working class. They want the whites that submit to their idea of what it is to be white, and typically what it means to submit to the nation-state and capital as well. Disagree and you're only a few steps above the non-whites. They only care about the working class so far as the working class is working for them. If you think, in pursuit of their ideology, they wouldn't butcher the working class at a level equal to or higher than liberals you are mistaken. The only difference is they haven't had the chance on the level that liberals have. Perhaps me not being white is the driving factor in my disappointment at seeing supposed leftists admit that they feel fonder for fascists, Not Socialists and white nationalists than centrist liberals, but then I don't feel bad about preferring the theory/policy of people who don't want to either have me killed or have me forcibly removed from the land my family has inhabited for generations. Obviously I disagree with it as well, but disagreeing with a political philosophy is not the same as denying that it exists, which is what the person I was replying to was doing. Because this is the internet I can't be certain, but I can almost promise you that far more educated and politically active thinkers than you or me helped develop their theory.
Juan Nguyen
That's because there is nothing complicated about opposing them, especially when they wear their convictions on their sleeve, and actually have coherent beliefs and goals. "Centrists" are fucking snakes that don't believe anything, up to their eyeballs in hypocrisy they call "nuance", infuriatingly patronizing, while having no roots in reality, and are bigger gravediggers of socialism than fascists ever were or ever hope to be.
Their premises are false so all their theorizing amounts to nothing. It's called GIGO.
Why are you trying to run damage control for your imperialist, fascist state filled with scum?
Lol.
Colton Anderson
...
Owen Perry
The ruling ideology of any society is the ideology of the ruling class (Or the ideology they permit).
Wow it's almost like I never said that. However, your country is the "most" imperialist. If you want to use a childish metric.
Aiden Turner
The type I hate the most are the ones that act like they are above ideology and that they come to all their positions based on facts and logic while really all they've done is internalize the ruling ideology to their core. Bonus points if they claim centrism is just a methodology not a set of beliefs. Like okay buddy, so anyone from ML to fascist can be a centrist if then by that standard if they're rational enough.
Parker Campbell
Ironically, the latter sentiment could just as easily belong to a right-winger fearing "anuddah shoah."
Jason Lewis
I find faggots who ban me for bringing up men's issues in left wing spaces.
Faggots who use the thought terminating cliches/ "That is identity politics, we don't do identity politics."
