Mastodawn

"Many liberals, after the double shock of Trump and Brexit in 2016, confessed their supposed mistakes and performed contrition, along the lines of: we failed to pay attention to the “left-behind”; we must book political safaris in Appalachia; we must closely study Hillbilly Elegy to demonstrate compassion for the heartland. Of course, self-criticism and checking one’s priors is a good thing. But behind the ostentatious displays of “we failed to listen” was also a profound narcissism: if only we acted (or at least talked) differently, all would be well. Only liberals, or so the assumption goes again, have agency; performing contrition reinforced that flattering image.

Even worse, this narcissism keeps shoring up the right’s claim that there is a “real America” and that only they speak for it. As any viewer of Sunday-morning shows has noticed, Republicans can malign city dwellers without anyone batting an eyelid; Obama saying something about guns and religion in rural areas triggers a multiyear scandal. It would not even occur to anyone to demand an apology from GOP members for insulting all urban dwellers. The asymmetry is taken for granted; liberals just accept it. This is what victory in a culture war looks like: Democrats accept the cultural framings enforced by the other side, even though polls would suggest that the liberals’ positions are often more popular (or, dare one say, reflect more about “real America” than the far-right fantasies pushed by Fox and its far-right friends)."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/03/anti-woke-liberals-helped-trump-win

#Liberalism #Liberals #Centrism #ReactionaryCentrism #Fascism #Woke #AntiWoke

Beware of ‘anti-woke’ liberals: they attacked the left and helped Trump win

So-called ‘reactionary centrist’ pundits proclaimed that there was a global ‘vibe shift’ in favor of the right. They were wrong

The Guardian

Miguel Afonso Caetano Feb 1

"In a newspaper column, reactionary centrism can seem like level-headed pragmatism. But proximity to power reveals its dogmatism and incoherence. The theory is that validating national populist or even fascist values and moving towards them on policy will capture some of the voters seduced by the promises of parties further to the right. Every time Labour tries this, Reform gains ground and Labour’s own coalition disintegrates further. Yet the party remains committed to the strategy.
An actual pragmatist would evaluate and change course. Someone who understood public opinion might notice that anti-immigrant sentiment responds to media coverage, not objective reality. They might reason that this is not a problem that can be addressed by policy concessions because policy is not what is causing it. They might even consider offering a different narrative and seeing whether that makes a dent. A truly daring politician might consider telling the British public the truth: that they are being lied to by the right-wing press about the cause of the country's problems, and that Reform is capitalising on this for political gain.

The government does not seem inclined to do any of this. Despite understanding themselves as critical thinkers, reactionary centrists are conformists at heart. And they are so unmoored in our current age because, increasingly, there is no social consensus for them to conform to. Affluent countries the world over are balkanising into fascist and anti-fascist factions. One must simply pick a side. There is no longer such a thing as “British public opinion” (if there ever was). Rather, half the country supports socially illiberal parties and half supports (broadly speaking) liberal ones, similar to the split in the Brexit referendum. If we follow international trends, the values of these two sides will only grow more irreconcilable."

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/70966/what-is-a-reactionary-centrist-does-uk-have-them

#USA #UK #FarRight #Fascism #Centrism #ReactionaryCentrism #Propaganda #Disinformation #Ideology