Thinking a lot of the schism around political terms like "centrist" and "neoliberal" comes ascribing them to multiple political groups.
People like Obama, Clinton, Macron, Merkel, often parse as "centrist" (or, mind-numbingly, "leftist"). They're right-wing demogogues, really.
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What Merkel did to Greece, what Macron is doing to France, what Obama did for Wall Street and Clinton for US foreign policy...
Historically, all of these things are exceedingly far right in terms of "security" or economics.
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Yet they parse as centrist, which is also how someone who rarely agrees with any of them but is not socialist, anarchist or ethnonationalist would self-describe.
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Centrist may well be a completely useless term, because the political centre shifts with the Overton window modulo domestic politics.
I am a centrist in Norwegian terms, or was when I lived there. In the UK, the mainstream calls that 'hard left'. In the US, it is unspeakable.
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All these terms may have political science definitions, sociological definitions, local definitions, idiosyncratic definitions
And here we are, idiotically arguing the Meaning.
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As for neoliberal, this term seems to have merged with centrist, since ideological neoliberals often dogwhistle with centrist or 'progressive'.
So now, centrists who are not neoliberal (because of their local context) often self-describe as neoliberal! It's a horror show.
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There needs to be a real shift in left (and some 'centrist' rhetoric) to address policy and its presumptive consequences, over subverted labels.
It doesn't matter that neoliberals have unfairly appropriated the center. If you go after "neoliberals", you rouse non-opponents.
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I've been a very slow on the uptake with this myself, so I hope I reach some other obtuse centrist/leftist/progressives/whatevers who oppose neoliberalism-as-ideology.
Stop going after the people and their self-identification, "neoliberal" or not. Go after the facade itself.
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The idea that the sort of policy implemented by Obama, May or other austerity-mongerers helps poor people is laughable. So show it is.
Show why that matters to everyone, not just the downtrodden. People becoming vain and self-centered under our culture tells you where to push.
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Or we can keep complaining about the mean 'centrists' (or whatever you call em) fragilizing our economies and cooperating with racists.
I'm sure the people in charge of that project are completely altruistic and interested in you. Any day, now, they will realize their error...
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