I just noticed that one of the news communities here discourage the use of least biased/centrist news sources and I saw some people who put that they hate centrists in their bios.
All is that is kind of weird to me and does not make sense, as I thought that all sides should encourage ideas from centrists and least biased sources.
Is there is something that I miss here?
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Depends on how you define “centrist”. Most lemmy users would call me a centrist. Most Americans would call me a radical leftist.
I vote democrat and believe in sustainable immigration, progressive tax rates, single payer system, abortion, and a lot of other democrat policies. I have been called a fascist because I also have a deep understanding of history and have spent a significant amount of my studies and spare time reading about Western European/American history from 1600-1950.
Any general survey will help you grasp why capitalism (not mercantilism, feudalism, or cronyism) is the most ideal system for general overall personal freedom. But that makes me a fascist.
Also, people get upset when I say things like if you are against British occupation of India, then you are against women’s rights and the rights of the working class. And while colonialism was tragic for some (mainly upper class men in the countries being colonized) it helped end slavery in Africa, which was started and perpetrated mainly by Africans and middle eastern Muslims. You cannot deny that evangelical Christianity ended slavery in western democracies and most of Africa/Middle East.
Also, ask yourself things like is Hong Kong better under Chinese rule, or colonial rule by the British. Ironically, the British empire was more an accidental empire that they stumbled ass backwards into. They actually didn’t want to manage the colonies and preferred to just “find the ruler… trade with ruler… the end” but because of their advanced tech were often asked by those rulers to help take enemy tribes if they wanted To continue trade.
TL;DR because I get the feeling that investing any more energy here is a waste of time:
and
(E: one of the main things OP seems to be missing is that capitalism is just as much a system of oppression as racism, sexism, and the rest are)
Yep, even MLK was saying it decades ago:
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
For some reason I don’t think OP will ever read that letter tho…
They are reading the replies, but from their replies they just don’t care about their own question. They’re just a debate me chud.
Account is 3 days old, and of course OP couldn’t resist implying this is a new account after their old one was deleted/banned in that little blurb no one fills out
They’re not here for genuine discussion
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Exactly which “good right wing ideas” are you referring to? Criminalizing LGBTQ? Ending elections? Killing the immigration system? Shoveling money at the rich?
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In reality:
- Persecuting brown people, and breaking the system to make legal immigration impossible
- Only applicable to things that help the poors, not applicable to billion-dollar military boondoggles or handouts for corpos
- Legalize union busting and selling sawdust as food
not applicable to billion-dollar military boondoggles or handouts for corpos
You asked what good ideas to which he responded limiting government spending. Then you rebuke the notion that limiting wasteful spending is a fundamental good idea by criticizing politicians for not doing it in military boondoggles or with corporate welfare. Those are critiques of politicians not the ideas, as those negative examples are when the idea isn’t applied.
I agree that we should curtail wasteful military spending and corporate welfare. But in advocating for those you yourself advocate for the idea of limiting government spending.
My point is that the right doesn’t care about actually reducing the deficit, they make noises about it when a Democrat is in office but the second they get power it magically disappears. It’s just an excuse to be awful.
Remember Trump’s big tax bill? 10 TRILLION in extra debt, mostly to cut taxes for the rich. What did he cut? A few million worth of stuff that actually helps people.
Centrists tend to advocate a middle view, hard to have a middle view for eradicating trans people, for one obvious example.
“Centrist” is a phony identity. It’s a put on, like journalists who pretend to be “objective”.
The whole thing is a reification of the concept of political “spectrum”.
Self identified centrists are usually people who’ve only been recently engaged in politics. They imagine themselves as neutral arbiters; the consumer that chooses the best ideology. They represent themselves as above politics, when in reality they’re operating on an elementary understanding.
Politics is values. The left values equality while the right values hierarchy. No human being has ever valued the midpoint between hierarchy and equality.
There is no political center between the current left and right parties in the United States. For example, one is pro-choice the other is pro-life. There is no middle on that issue. This is the post-truth world and we are now in different realities. You can’t believe half of the Q stuff and then believe half of the Bernie stuff. If you don’t follow politics enough to have an opinion you wouldn’t call yourself a centerist.
Describing yourself as a “centerist” in today’s conditions usually means you support Trump but are too embarrassed to say it out loud/you know you’ll receive backlash for saying it.
For example, one is pro-choice the other is pro-life. There is no middle on that issue.
Individuals should have full autonomy over their bodies, including to abort. However, the practice itself is a very sad decision for individuals to make and should be discouraged where possible.
Maybe that’s just slightly left of center
Nobody is eager to have an abortion. Jesus fucking Christ. There sheer ignorance of the right in that regard.
That’s just normal left.
Right-wing extremists nearly always identify as “centrist.”
And call people who want healthcare like every other 1st country “communists”
Left-wingers identify nearly everyone who doesn’t agree with them or doesn’t share their delusions as “right-wing extremists”.
So on the right, you have people who don’t want an entire subset of the population to exist. On the left, you have those people who are fighting for the right to exist. Tell me where a centrist falls in this situation. How can you meet in the middle?
You could be fine with the people existing but differ in how to correct past or systemic injustices.
Or let’s say you think the prices of some things should be set by supply and demand, but you’re against gouging in emergencies and think some basic necessities (food, water, medicine) should have price controls.
There’s plenty of middle ground, and the people who say you’re with us or you’re for the Nazis may have forgotten what the Soviet victory meant for Eastern Europe.
Great, but as to the point about wanting huge swaths of the population to cease to exist? You know, the actual question the OP asked.
Who is the OP here? Because I can’t see from the post itself or this comment thread who is arguing that.
So on the right, you have people who don’t want an entire subset of the population to exist. On the left, you have those people who are fighting for the right to exist. Tell me where a centrist falls in this situation. How can you meet in the middle?
Here’s what I wrote in response:
You could be fine with the people existing but differ in how to correct past or systemic injustices.
Someone might be viewed as centrist if they were in favor of civil rights but have some reservations about affirmative action.
If your argument is simply that anyone who thinks gays have the right to exist is left and not a centrist, I think your definition is not aligning. People say Democrats in the US are center-right. Many Democrats support gay rights. So therefore they are left?
What are these left-wing “delusions” lmao
Here’s a delusion: Maduro is right to suppress free speech and association because he needs to keep the right from retaking power in Venezuela.
I don’t think this is at all something leftists in general think and I see a lot of them calling out what’s going on in Venezuela right now as large human rights violations. This is pretty much only something I see said by tankies (which is a small fraction of leftists).
Very good point. People online like to read one comment from someone and put them in a group then prescribe the values of that individual to the entire group.
Like they read a disingenuous comment from a far-right person claiming to be a centrist, and then they hate on all centrists? I could see that.
So any left-wing delusion I post can be dismissed as “not all leftists?”
Check my other comments in this post and call me a right-wing…
Hey pickle, I get the feeling that the conversation happening here is about a specific scenario that you aren’t personally involved in. No need to take offense.
I’m not taking an offense. I see that the discussion is going towards US political landscape but I think the issue is more global. We as the people are slowly losing the ability to compromise and fall into 1-or-0 narration.
It’s hard to compromise when one side wants more than anyone to roll back basic human rights.
I don’t agree. As I said in other comment I consider myself as a centrist. And my view on the world is a reasonable one (in my opinion). I’m pro same sex marriage, abortion, women rights, same salary for the same work for both genders, public health care and education. But I’m also against unchecked illegal immigration, pretending to be woman so you can win in sports and social handouts. Why does it make me a target for right wingers and not left wingers?
Yep, conservative pretending to be centrist. See the left actually has empathy for people, which you clearly lack.
Please, explain like I’m 5 how do I lack empathy for the people.
The controversial part is equating “centrist” to “least biased”. Being a centrist is a political position, and like all others, it comes with its share of bias.
Beside, the “center” views depend in the country, year, and even on who you ask. A man can go from right wing to center to left without changing his stance on anything if the countries politics shift right, and the reverse is true. There were right-wing communists in the USSR, tho they were not right wing by capitalist standards.
There are objective ways to judge a news outlet: Whether they name their sources, whether they’ve been known to post updates and errata when an info they’ve posted turned out wrong, whether they’re independent, state-funded or dependent on a company, and in the two later cases, are the state or company known to make use of their influence on the news…
And the website quoted by the bot accounts for some of these… But political positioning, while worth mentioning, shouldn’t be used to calculate the reliability of an outlet. Doing so doesn’t fight bias, but just favors some bias over others.
As a (roughly) centrist myself, I don’t think they hate us. They just see us as an obstacle to progress. Which we are, but we’re also an obstacle to backsliding. Even from within it’s easy to see that centrism is a weak position and it’s not surprising it would be despised by those with strong convictions.
But me, I’m fine with being an obstacle. If they think their way is better, they can prove it; then they’ll have my support.
An obstacle to backsliding? In what way? Look around the western world: right-wing governments everywhere, voted in by centrists and the conservatives that profit from fooling them with easily digestible status quo ideals.
but we’re also an obstacle to backsliding.
Everywhere except reality…
Centrists turn off Dem voters allowing Republicans to take office and fuck shit up.
If Hillary hadn’t literally taken over the DNC in the primary to ensure she won, trump would still be a failed reality TV show host who ran a hilariously inept presidential campaign 8 years ago
Centrist bullshit has real life consequences even if you refuse to acknowledge them.
“The left” on Lemmy is unfortunately dominated by an extremely rigid and pretty outdated brand of Marxist-Leninism which tends to reject nuance and compromise in order to “protect” their extreme and reactionary stances on a number of issues. These types run some of the biggest news and politics communities and swing the ban hammer very freely.
Without getting too into the political science weeds, more contemporary views on leftist philosophy essentially holds that every anti-capitalist framework kind of boils down to various degrees of harm reduction within various material scarcity models. MLs don’t like this because it pokes a lot of holes in their revolution fetish and denies them the fan service they crave. This is why they almost seem to hate liberals and centrists more than actual fascists and right wingers. Because the right gives them purpose, righteousness and validation, whereas liberals give them difficult questions.
Three things are happening:
- It is easier to dismiss someone’s argument outright if you can put them in a box without needing to engage with anything they’re saying
- Historically and particularly in the 1990s, Democrats were sort of corporate dogshit, so a lot of the left got used to opposing them (often bringing up MLK’s “white moderates” speech)
- There are a lot of shills on Lemmy who really want Trump to get elected, and do it by attacking the Democrats “from the left” with various dishonest talking points, and if you point out that any of what they’re saying is objectively false, they will call you a centrist as a way of dismissing you (see point #1)
The center isn’t automatically right (often in the American political spectrum it works out as the average of killing all the immgrants and free school lunch, which is not a happy central point to reach). But also, simply applying a label to someone and dismissing them doesn’t automatically mean you’re right either, no matter how popular it may be.
- Agreed. People do put others into boxes, and dismiss them.
- Not historically and especially in the 90’s, but also currently. The dems are absolutely still corporate dogshit.
- Speaking of putting people in boxes, everyone criticizing from the left is a secret trump supporter, and lying about their values.
