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Why "Neither Left Nor Right" Just Means Right Wing
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this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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Politics
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'Neither Left nor Right' is a fascist dogwhistle. Fascism has a rich history of marketing itself as the apolitical choice.
And there’s also the fact that in the US, you have the party of the far right and the party of everyone else; centrist is to the left of a lot of Democrats at this point.
Yes, everyone who doesn't align with your political view is facist. That in itself doesn't sound facist at all, does it?
We need to not just be careful about what some horrible people are doing right now, but also about what we become as we react to it.
We do need to be careful, yes. But this isnt a case of mislabelling views just because they disagree with their politics. Its important to call out far right nationalist parties for what they are.
As is discussed in the video, Omega_Haxor wasnt making a baseless attack on a belief they disagreed with. Authoritarian politicians do have a history of using this dogwhistle messaging.
No, it's a dangerous, generalized statement that if you're against what the far right is doing, you have to align with what we stand for. If not, you're the far right. That is literally what it's saying, and folks might add on some stuff in their head when they interpret it, or some additional hidden intention when they utter it. But ultimately, it will distill down to the literal meaning.
Who said you have to align with a certain set of beliefs to oppose the far right? (Beyond thinking nationalist, xenophobic views are shitty) All kinds of varying political views hate nazis. Anti-facsism is a very large tent.
Reminds me of all the "if you don't agree with antifa smashing up your city you must agree with the fascists" nonsense the other year. No, I don't want facism, I just don't think that bricking a Starbucks is going to help with that.
i think that's a bit of an alarming stance, to be honest. authoritarians have a pretty long history of characterizing protest movements as looting and rioting, characterizing protestors as "outside agitators", and other nonsense as a way to justify violent oppression, and the vast majority of the time for the vast majority of participants it really isn't the case.
maybe there's some people who would say that (are these like twitter guys or something?), but in the vast majority of cases the actual objection to "antifa smashing up your city" was "no, actually, the amount of smashing being done is much less than what right-wing media sources are saying, "antifa" is often broadly applied to the protest movement in general, and police officers coming in with tear gas and rubber bullets often leads to escalating violence from protesters in response."
I've seen Antifa and the Black Bloc disrupt otherwise peaceful protests in the UK long before they picked up in the US the other year. They're not a helpful force in my opinion and never have been.
Antifa and "the Black Bloc" are not organizations that disrupt protests, they are decentralized left-wing political strategies that do quite a bit of organizing for protest movements. they are just protesters, and the vast majority of the people who self-identify as antifa demonstrably don't do violence. but again, right wing groups designate any kind of left-leaning of liberal protest action as "antifa", so the actual utility of opposing "antifa" is kind of dubious to me. the entire BLM protest was called antifa by the right, despite the protest on average being quite peaceful.
Yikes. A lot to unpack here.
... nah can't be bothered, goodbye.
This. There is a distinct lack of awareness by both parties of just how fascist their tendencies are. The right has more of the authority-centric tendencies of fascism, and the left has more of the out-of-control virtue signaling, demonization, etc that can lead up to things like the struggle sessions that occurred during China's cultural revolution.
Anyone who says 'those who are not explicitly on our side are enemies' is deeply at risk of losing it to fascism, if they're not already gone.
The interesting thing about this aspect of fascism is how, although it leads ultimately to centralization of power and authoritative control, it's more of a decentralized, manipulative mob of social anxieties run amok.
this is such a weird thing to say. fascism is all about authoritarian shit, it is defined by ultranationalism, racism, bigotry, and centralized control, not by "virtue signaling", a phrase more common in right-wing spaces than anywhere else. we can quibble all we want about the left, but demonstrably, who is limiting the freedoms of minority groups, which states are attempting to disenfranchise voters, who has actual real ass nazi's hanging at their parties? it isn't the left, or whatever you think the left is.
like, don't get me wrong, there are very many ways a left wing government can demonstrably get authoritarian, but the term "fascism" is defined by being far-right on the political scale. i would just generally suggest reading some stuff about fascism, because you don't seem to be very well informed on what scholarship says about the ideology at large.
There's a big different between centrism and apoliticalism. Apolitical people are targeted by fascist/authoritative movements as they lack the understanding of the issues at play and are suckered in by easy answers, centrists understand the issues but don't think an extreme left/right solution is the answer but elements from both sides should be considered.
Half way between normal and fascist isn't a reasonable stance in any universe. That's how you get the democrats slowly dragging the country towards whatever the fuck trump was.
Yeah, I'm not a septic so I'm not going to view all political discussion by the framing of their two party system. You can argue American politics is broken, and I'd even argue there's some huge issues with the politics in my country right now too, but that doesn't mean you can just redefine language and concepts to suit you.
I just love how media can completely fuck up a word's definition and then when you actually come in with the correct version everyone yells at you saying "You can't just change the meaning of words like that" and for the record, yeah I can. That's literally the point of language.
Ok, I'll bite, link me to the definition of "centrism" that defines it as "fascist" then.
One party in one country in one time period does not a political philosophy make my friend. Maybe you're Dutch and that's your frame of reference, but that doesn't dictate what the word means worldwide any more than the septic political situation does.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ4nvCVAGw0
I get the theory but I don't 100% agree with it. Just because someone doesn't think rapid and massive change is the best way to bring society along with your ideas doesn't mean they think massive right wing changes are any better.
If "centrists" understood the issues they'd have rejected the concept of centrism existing at all.
The workers own the means of production or they don't.
The government exists to protect human rights or it exists to protect its heirarchy.
You do not earn progressive points for supporting gay rights and lose them for still thinking brown people aren't people, not matter what a "political compass" test thinks is worth +5 or -4.
You do not earn partial leftist or libertarian points for thinking the Divine God Emperor is bound by noblesse oblige.
The very idea of centrism, is, and always will be, a con on people that do not understand the core political divides, but think you can trade morality like currency.
Centrists exist because they listen to alternative views and can empathize with those views even if they don't quite agree with them or if they can't decide between the pros and cons. But to an extremist on either side, it looks like they are stupid, weak, or possibly just bad people, because if they were smart, Good people, then the centrists would OBVIOUSLY agree with THEM, and then they wouldn't be centrists. This lacking of empathy or inability to understand opposing viewpoints, and therefore assuming malice or evil as the motive of anyone not WITH them, is the hallmark of all extremists.
Oh yeah, also people hate centrists because they come across as smug. Sorry about that.
Think they do but typically show their ass as being completely ignorant of leftist politics.
Rarely, and typically more so the right.
There is no way "centrists" understand the issues because a majority of politics today is about trying to define what the issues of a country are. Centrism only works as a political philosophy when it is universally agreed that something is an issue. There is no nuanced center position when one side believes that climate change exists and another refuses to acknowledge the existence of climate change. You can't say that "climate change exists sometimes".
Centrists are only focused on the how of problem solving process, which inadvertently makes them choose sides before the what is even answered. You may be able to pull off being a centrist within a political binary, but until the what our problems are is answered across the political spectrum, it is impossible to be a centrist within the full political spectrum.