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And guess what: she was right, that was indeed her greatest achievement.

That's what happened throughout the West: the ideological takeover of the "left" by "social democrats" who had no substantial difference to their opponents across the aisle. And in order to maintain the pretense that they were different, they decided to focus their platform on cultural and identity issues while abandoning any challenge to economic or imperial power - reducing civil rights struggles to convenient diversions from questions of class and systemic change. It's not the left that's unpopular, it's this sanitized ersatz of it. Voting essentially became a choice between the same product with different packaging, the illusion of choice.

Even more contemptible: candidates who emerged who were actually on the left, who wanted to drive actual substantial and meaningful change, were endlessly demonized with some of the most dishonest and disgusting tactics in politics. Jeremy Corbyn in the UK is a perfect example of this - smeared as a national security threat (and an antisemite) not just for his economic program but for questioning the wisdom of NATO expansion and opposing Western imperialism. In France we're currently seeing much the same playbook being applied on Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

This ties back to the concept of "extreme center" described by thinkers such as Tariq Ali, Pierre Serna or Alain Deneault. A radicalized form of liberalism that presents itself as moderate and reasonable while actually taking extremist positions in defense of the status quo - whether through unwavering support for imperial adventures abroad or the suppression of democratic alternatives at home. This centrism is 'extreme' in how viciously it reacts to any genuine left-wing challenge to the established order, whether through media smear campaigns, lawfare, or the cynical weaponization of identity politics to defend both domestic inequality and imperial power.

The irony and the situation we today find ourselves in is that this "extreme center," in its zealous defense of neoliberal orthodoxy and its refusal to address fundamental economic grievances, ended up creating the very conditions of social instability and political polarization it claims to stand against. And, ultimately, the conditions of its demise as we're currently seeing throughout the West.

The sad result though is that because the actual left has been so thoroughly demonized, legitimate popular anger and resentment largely get directed towards nihilistic movements that, far from solving our fundamental problems, channel these sentiments into scapegoating and division. These movements won't solve our fundamental problems - while they may break with certain aspects of neoliberal orthodoxy, they mostly offer the aesthetic of rebellion while dropping even the pretense of serving the common good.

That's where we are: the victory of the 'extreme center' over the left has proven to be simultaneously absolute and self-defeating. Thatcher's boast about Blair might have been premature - her true legacy may not just have been making the left compatible with neoliberal economics, but creating a world where our only choice is between the plague and cholera.