How "Moderates" Serve The Right

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If being a centrist makes a Commie-Nazi, then I plan to be the best damn Commie-Nazi I can be.

Today's moderates are most often tomorrow's conservatives. Moderate is a non-position defined by where the right and the left happen to be. Moderates have a tendency to oppose change as much as conservatives, but demand to be treated as free thinking individualists who are "above" partisanship. Their position often boils down to "I support liberal social causes on paper, because doing otherwise is increasingly indefensible, but I condemn liberal social causes in practice bc they do not ask nicely enough."

MLK had some great words on the role of moderates in enabling conservatism:

Conservatives and moderates carefully ignore this so they can be dismissive of modern civil rights movements while claiming to be the true torchbearers of King's anti-racist legacy. If a social movement has been vindicated by history, it's a safe bet that moderates at the time didn't have strong opinions one way or the other.

Moderates have taken a stance already - they're allied with the conservatives.

Example:
Social-Democratic Parties in Europe used to be the the party for the common people - workers and the proletariat in general.

They opposed the greed of the capitalism and libertarianism/conservatism, but also opposed Socialism and Communism.

They got very popular with the people because they allowed both a capitalist system (the Means of Production in the hands of private companies) with a combination of high taxes especially for the wealthy.

These taxes were spent on the establishment of a Welfare State where pensions were being made for the common people, and the quality standards for public run hospitals and other institutions should now be at the same level as the private ones.

However the Social-Democrats were never for the people in the first place. The communists have figured this out already as the various workers strikes for decent wages and better working conditions were being shut down and banned.

As the workers increasingly turned to the Communist Parties and other far left parties - the Social-Democratic Parties had no other option than to give in to the demands of the workers, and throughout the 1970s the Welfare States of Modern North-Western Europe were made. They had a very high quality unlike todays welfare states.

Since the 1990s after the fall of the Berlin Wall - the communists had no threats to use. The Soviet Union was dead and gone, the only thing that kept the Social-Democratic Parties to keep their promises for a better society for their workers was now gone.

This lead to the downfall of the Welfare States of Europe, which is now in ruins.

The Social-Democrats keeps making promises of more fundings for the welfare states and better pensions and all this - but when they get the political power (seats in government) they ALWAYS ignore their promises to the people.

Moderates, centrists and what else you call them - are nothing but big as*holes.
They screw the proletariat, the working poor, the sick, the elderly, the disabled.

They're always allied with the Conservative and Libertarian parties, but while pretending to be "opposing the views of the right, and keep the economy safe and sound".

They appear as if more funding for the welfare programs is "irresponsible" to the economy. They're in-fact defending the greed of the capitalist system and offering nothing to the proletariat and working poor.

This is why the Americans voting for Biden was wrong.
The voters should've chosen Bernie Sanders instead.

This is why the Europeans should vote for the Red and Green parties - and not the Social-Democratic Parties.

In the UK, many people whose instincts are liberal will actually vote conservative for the simple reason that most of their wealth is tied up in their home and the one thing the Conservative party does really well is ensure that house prices are always rising.

This lets in a lot of very unpopular right-wing policies.

Since capitalism has gone global, the only way to fight back against multinational corporate exploitation and gain even basic welfare states is an international workers movement. As soon as capitalists gained the ability to move their factories anywhere in the world to seek lower wage costs and avoid taxation, welfare state funding became less secure, forcing neoliberal "reforms" that increased poverty. An international workers movement is needed, but this is difficult in the "west" because the majority still benefit from imperialist practices to some degree. Toxic right-wing nationalism is another barrier that the capitalist owner class always goes to to prevent international cooperation between workers... even as the capitalist owner class harms the same people they shove their phony nationalism on. Even the idea of going to war with China is absurd given the same corporate owner class that promotes right wing nationalism voluntarily moved their production there to prop up their bottom line.

We need to stop pretending politics is a one-dimensional line with two end points and a center. In general, conservatives want to either maintain the status quo or turn the clock back to some past "ideal" period. Liberals have no consensus on how to go about change, they only agree that change is necessary. The left is always divided because it's like the frayed end of a string with different strands going different directions. Conservatives are more unified ideologically because they all want things to stay the same or go backwards.

This isn't to say conservatives have any better way to implement their goals. Just look at Trump. He pretended he was going to move manufacturing back to the US with tariffs, but that mostly failed. He was unable to turn the clock back as he claimed. The problem is global capitalism is a chaotic process with it's own entropy. It's similar to how opening a box of feathers allowing the wind carry them randomly is a lot easier than collecting them and putting them back in the box. You can't fix problems just by turning the clock back.

I don't have all the answers, but I really feel like the linear political spectrums we construct don't represent anything important. They are more about personality tendencies that those in power manipulate to create voting blocks.

"Moderate" is often an inaccurate way to describe people that do not fall into the tribal politics. They do not always take "a little of this, a little of that" approach to issues. They might be both as anti-Trump as any progressive and anti-woke as and MAGA.

I'm anti-Trump. I never liked any presidents we've had in the last 30 years. I'm anti-woke as well. I'm progressive in a way that I wish we could do away with supply-side economics. As for MAGA, I fear it will come at a price. I imagine radical right-wing hillbillies pitchforking my intestines for not being 100% with their beliefs.

According to this argument, the Right got a set-up where everyone is on their side by default. I know this isn't just applied to moderates, but third-party voters, the politically disengaged (me), "mild" liberals, etc. Even if you're not supporting the Right in any way, you're still supporting the Right just by not being on the Left. But to support the Left, you must explicitly support the Left. I don't get how the Right got this set-up, why the Left didn't get it for themselves, or how the Left does things like win the presidency when everything is apparently stacked against them.

A moderate used to be called a blue-dog democrat. It was used to describe someone who was socially liberal and fiscally conservative.

If one side largely represents reform and the other is largely hostile to any reform everything that contributes to delaying reform is effectively part of the anti-reform bloc.

This
It's the same basic concept as: neutrality benefits oppressors because neutrality benefits the status quo. Neutrality is inaction. Inaction does not cause change. Inaction benefits conservatives who want things to stay the same. Moderates are those who are content enough with the status quo that any change to it that does not come at a snail's pace makes them clutch their pearls.

Social movements vindicated by history are applauded by moderates and conservatives alike--in hindsight, decades after the fact. Conservatives resist change bc Change Bad. Moderates resist change bc Change Happening Too Fast Is Scary. To the moderate, change to society almost always comes too fast, and is not achieved through means they consider justified--until they Evolve their Views when it becomes Convenient. To contemporary moderates: women were given the vote too fast; civil rights went too fast and was accompanied by too many riots. Of course, the moderate considers these changes totally justified--after the fact. They just come around to that conclusion sooner than conservatives do and expect applause for it.

Conservatives: "Change to the status quo is bad, unless it reverts us to a previous status quo!"
Those who benefit from the status quo: "I like your way of thinking."

Moderates: "Change to the status quo is bad, unless it is slow and carried out through means I consider respectable."
Those who benefit from the status quo: "I like your way of thinking too."

Progressives: "The status quo is awful, and trying to change it through means the establishment finds acceptable is a recipe for change not coming at all."
Those who benefit from the status quo: "I like you much less than the other guys."

Ahh, the old "you're either with us or against us", just dressed up with more words.

A lot of truth but the big fallacy is the apparent assumption that all change is good. If all change is good any opposition to any change is a form of enabling the bad status quo. Otherwise, somebody has to say no or slow down. Slowing down gives people time to realize a mistake has been made and correct course and limit damage.

Is it not better to have good changes come about in a way that does not damage property, injure and kill people if it can be avoided? Some change can not happen by peaceful means. In other words, different status quos need different fixes and different ways to accomplish them, or no fixes at all.