Is over the past several decades, our discourse progressed something like this:
Guys, they’re racists.
Sensible Center: No, they just believe the very important science that suggests that black people are stupid. Also, crime and poverty. Black people are poor and get arrested a lot and stop&frisk is not racist so stop saying that. QED
Guys, they’re white supremacists.
Sensible center: No, they’re just celebrating the very important heritage of the Confederacy, which is their history, even in places like Pennsylvania and Ohio, which were very important Confederate states. I don’t see any actual Klan hoods. Maybe they are white nationalists, which just means they want to preserve their culture. QED
Guys, they’re Nazis.
Sensible center: Actually, I don’t see much evidence (some, but not too much) of anti-Semitism, which seems to be an important feature of Nazism, right? I mean, the obsession with George Soros and the word globalist is simply political. Obviously they have some views about race which liberals don’t support, but it isn’t racism, and it certainly isn’t Nazism.
Nazis: hey, uh we’re Nazis.
Sensible center: No, I really don’t think you are.
Nazis: No, really, we’re fucking Nazis. Heil Hitler! Check out my Nazi tattoos! We’re Nazis!
Sensible center: This is disturbing, but Stalin was bad, too, so, really, both sides.
Having just suffered with being dragged into a twitter conversation where one of those people was seriously trying to argue that as long as rules and behaviors don’t actually, literally use the “N word”, they aren’t racist, I am familiar with this logic.
When will we learn? More importantly, when will the media learn? When someone says they’re a centrist and starts making excuses for the right, we just have to say, “Fuck that guy.”
Yeah, some people are incredibly wedded to the idea that they are a centrist. There was one of these reasonable centrists who said he was sympathetic to Trump’s complaints about media bias. Sure was crude (there is nod to the left), but he saw no evidence at all that Trump was racist (node to the right). I pointed out the actual lawsuit against Trump and his father, linking to a small number of tweets where Trump quotes bogus status about black or mexican crime or other of the typical tropes. His response: “nope, that isn’t racist at all.” That is when I realized he wasn’t an uninformed centrist; he was a himself a racist who couldn’t see racism and just played the part of reasonable centrist.
as long as rules and behaviors don’t actually, literally use the “N word”, they aren’t racist
It reminds me of the “liars for jesus” – in order to lie, you have to know the truth. In order to minimize racism, you have to know that what you’re dealing with it racism. Otherwise, why bother?
Reminds me of the recent nazi punching thread, where a person actually argued “Wearing a swastika armband is not an infallible sign of Nazism anymore than wearing a Napoleonic hat by a psychotic is a sign that the wearer is the man himself.” Apparently this is all just part of a “fad” Americans have “for seeing Nazis under their beds.”
well nope the “center-est” are not racist no sir. they just do not think any change is necessary, it is too scary to make changes, and all those loud scary guys do not bother them their OK.
just conventional fools who always support the status quo when they are not lying.
racist through and through and lovers of authority
uncle frogy
When the demographics of the media itself—including ownership and senior management—no longer reflect those advantaged by obfuscating the presence of covert Nazis, overt Nazis, and attendant Nazi-compatibles (“I Can’t Believe It’s Not Nazi!”®).
And also when poses of “neutrality” or “sage centralism” are no longer financially viable.
I’ll probably be dead by then.
Still learning,
Robert
“When will the media learn”? It occurs to me there’s a big effing hint in the story directly below this one; “centrists”, who are predominantly straight white wealthy Christian cismales, will always go out of their way to launder hate groups and protect their place in the national conversation, because even if those centrists vehemently disagree with everything Nazis stand for (legitimately!) Nazis will always be a useful tool for protecting the status quo that gives special status to garbage human beings like David Brooks.
Even if the David Brooks types aren’t directly asking Milo to attack their “fat bitch” colleagues, the Nazis and the KKK and other scum can be reliably counted on to attack liberals and anyone else who challenges the status quo from which centrists predominantly benefit, to the harm of everyone else.
“When will the media learn”? It occurs to me there’s a big effing hint in the story directly below this one; “centrists”, who are predominantly straight white wealthy Christian cismales, will always go out of their way to launder hate groups and protect their place in the national conversation, because even if those centrists vehemently disagree with everything Nazis stand for (legitimately!) Nazis will always be a useful tool for protecting the status quo that gives special status to garbage human beings like David Brooks.
Even if the David Brooks types aren’t directly asking Milo to attack their colleagues, the Nazis and the KKK and other scum can be reliably counted on to attack liberals and anyone else who challenges the status quo from which centrists predominantly benefit, to the harm of everyone else.
The center is the right.
Center is also a really bad term because it sounds like middle but it’s not. We need a better term for it. I vote either Neoliberal or Stupid.
Should have just called them a Quisling and be done with it.
Centrist is not really a political position at all. It’s just defining yourself as somewhere close to the midpoint of polar opposites. Which means that your belief system has to move every time there’s a shift in the political landscape. Which is ridiculous. I think Jim Thomas has nailed it: it’s not a political stance, it’s camouflage for detestable opinions.
“Squatting in between those on the side of reason and evidence and those worshipping superstition and myth is not a better place. It just means you’re halfway to crazy town.” Some guy with a beard.
One of the founder members of the ‘Sweden Democrats’ in Sweden, Gustav Ekström, was a member of the SS and worked under Himmler in Berlin during the war. I’ve managed to get my disgust with the ‘Sweden Democrats’ across to people by telling them that Ekström wore the same uniform as some of the people my father fought against in 1944. It seems to be the only way to get through to them that nazis are not just another type of politician.
It’s bizarre how far from reality this depiction of centrists is. One wonders if the author is depicting us this far off the mark on purpose, or has been fooled into believing that cranks like kek trolls are actually centrists (far from it).