A brief musing on political centrism

Sunday, February 12, 2023

I’ve struggled with the concept of political centrism. I’ve found its positioning as “moderate” or “in the middle” of a left/right continuum at odds with its political incoherence and its totalising tendencies. I think centrism is better understood as a form of populism - bourgeois populism - if you like. It bundles up the shibboleths of the “metropolitain elite” (incoherence) and decries opposition as uncredentialed ignorance, and therefore illigitimate (totalising). As such it is little different from national populism, except that it centres “the people” on the better-credentialled professional classes, and demonises opponents not like them.