I often see on here that someone that says they are Center just means they are right wing.

Eg. this post https://piefed.social/c/wikipedia@lemmy.world/p/2492350/centre-party

Center Party = Far right.

And I get that that is often true, but that got me thinking, when is someone actually "Center?"

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[–] 3 points 4 hours ago*

You're better off asking somewhere where actual centrists congregate, rather than Lemmy where there essentially only different flavours of left-wing.

But critical to any understanding of this topic is that the terms are all relative. There's no "true" centre just like there's no "true" left or right - these terms only make sense in relation to each other and to established norms. A centrist is therefore someone who has views that are somewhat in the middle of mainstream politics for their context.

Leftism has always suffered from a lot of internal division and purity testing, so when you ask in a very left-wing space like Lemmy, centrists will always be accused of being right-wing, but so will anyone who isn't a raging communist - they've failed the test so they're with the others - the right-wingers.

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