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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In Finland, the "centrist" Center Party is in actuality the right-wing countryside party. Recent "Centrist" government implemented heavy austerities in the education system, damages of which will be felt for years. Let's see if I can ever do my science in Finland again...
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I really hope you can do your science again. Crossed fingers.
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Thank you! That said, I have a respectable postdoc position in a high-ranked East-Asian research institution. I am doing alright. Just a bummer that being able to work in Finland with the thing I have special expertise on does not seem like a possibility.