Death of the Centrist

By Neil Gonsalves | Rather than blame the left or the right for polarization, we may find value in exploring how both sides colluded to strangle the centrist.

Written by Neil Gonsalves for Seeking Veritas on Substack

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

A lot of ink has been spilled in recent years dissecting and analyzing polarization in society. As a natural by-product of our inherent tribal nature we have a tendency to direct our ire towards one end of the ideological spectrum or the other, often embodying the very rhetorical divisiveness we aim to elucidate. Like just about everything else, polarization does not exist in a vacuum, it is the naturally occurring result of the push and pull of the social pendulum. Upon further reflection I have come to believe that there is more to the phenomenon than a sudden adherence to rigid ideological fealty. Our current state of polarization did not come into the world full grown, it was birthed in a bio-psycho-social ecosystem whose genetic code gave it all the predispositions necessary for its existence. And, in keeping with the natural cycle of life, its birth is aptly juxtaposed with the death of the centrist.

On the Right

Donald Trump’s recent success at the ballot box in 2024 has not been met with the same shock as his previous success in 2016. There were no pussy hats and mass marches this time around and few were surprised by his win. For one thing he won the election with clear majorities in the electoral college and the popular vote, but second and more notable was the fact that he was able to cobble together one of the most diverse coalitions in recent Republican history. However there is more to the story, I said this back in 2016 and it may just be worth repeating again. To view the initial rise and the resurgence of Trump in a uniquely North American context is myopic because he is hardly a trail blazer, on the contrary his success fits squarely in the middle of the global political bell curve.

For the better part of the last twenty years the global electorate have been shifting to the right. There has been a rapid rise of populist leaders and parties in power across the world since the mid-2000s. The prevalence of populism remains near its 30-year high. Several right-wing populists have achieved significant electoral success in recent years in countries such as Poland, Hungary, Switzerland, Denmark, Austria, Finland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Latvia, Sweden and Germany.

Even though some recent populists have been ousted from power such as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Slovenia’s Janez Janša, Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines and Sri Lanka’s Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the political landscape is still home to many others like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Narendra Modi in India, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Netherlands’ Geert Wilders, Andrzej Duda of Poland, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey and others cut from the same cloth. The far right has steadily ascended across Europe and a Marine Le Pen presidency in France grows ever more likely as French citizens continue to protest against the Macron government.

Populism becomes increasingly attractive to the public when there are real social and economic problems. Immigration and religion are often central to many populist movements but economic factors such as a perceived poor economy, imbalances in international trade, and increased reliance on artificial intelligence contribute to growing alienation among the citizenry, making nationalistic policies appear preferable. Chief among the grievances leading to feelings of disenfranchisement are the perceived impacts of globalization.

Indian economist Arvind Subramanian who coined the term “hyper-globalization” posits that globalization began slowly in the 1970s, accelerated through the 80s and 90s, and exploded into the twenty-first century. On a global level this forty plus year trajectory was generally viewed as positive and beneficial.

As Michael Cox states in his article Understanding the Global Rise of Populism - “The new economic order generated enormous wealth, drew in once previously closed economies, drove up the world’s GDP, encouraged real development in countries that had for years been poor, and most important of all in terms of human welfare, helped reduce poverty too”.

The interplay of globalization and technological change fundamentally shifted the balance between labour and capital. A globalized economy benefits people in developing countries (the global south as they are more commonly called today), and elites in advanced countries, but as Thomas Piketty argued in his book ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’ it does not do much for the middle class in developed economies. Middle class incomes stagnated, working class jobs moved to countries with cheaper labour supplies, and local businesses had to contend with a major influx of cheap imported goods. All of this was great for the corporations and the consumers but devastating to the interest of labour and the unions that represented them.

Conservative retrenchment, led by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 80s raised doubts about government's competence, and in many ways set the stage for the current rebranding of conservatism. For a long time conservatives were seen as the party of business and the elites; working class people often aligned with liberal or center-left parties, which championed unions and labour interests. However as manufacturing gave way to the knowledge economy, left leaning parties increasingly shifted towards supporting globalization and their core constituency morphed from the blue collar workers to the professional and the highly educated class who benefited from the knowledge economy.

This shift opened the door for center-right and far right parties to capitalize on the growing resentment among nativists and the economically disaffected. It allowed them to grow their base by finding common cause with those who feel like their children would be worse off than previous generations. They could finally move away from the god, guns and sex narratives they had been saddled with, opening the door to address kitchen table issues exacerbated by inflation, by precarious housing and employment, and by mass immigration.

A strong argument can be made that there exists a consistent latent cultural effect in Canada, whereby we exhibit social tendencies that mirror our southern neighbours. This almost predictably puts us on the same trajectory as the United States. Many in Canada would argue that the Conservative Party in Canada is poised to win the next election. Polling currently indicates that the Conservative Party holds a 19-point lead over the Liberal Party and is in a strong position to win a big majority government with the potential for a net gain of nearly 100 seats.

The current Conservative leader also has timing on his side. Electorates predictably yearn for change around the ten year mark making it increasingly challenging for incumbent leaders to hold on to power at that tipping point.

Term trends for Canadian Prime Ministers over the last forty years supports the assertion. Brian Mulroney’s Conservatives governed Canada for nine years from 1984 to 1993, before Jean Chretien’s Liberals ousted them and governed for ten years from 1993 to 2003. The pendulum swung back to the Tories with the election of Stephen Harper who held office for nine years from 2006 to 2015, only to get swept in the 2015 Liberal tidal wave that brought Justin Trudeau to power. - if you’re keeping score, that would put him in office for ten years at the time of the next election, and as I have often said, human behaviour is extremely predictable.

Despite positive polling data and trend analysis on his side Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s campaign has relied on a “populist lite” messaging strategy, relying heavily on three word catch phrases such as ‘Axe the Tax’, ‘Spike the Hike’, ‘Build the Homes’, ‘Stop the Crime’ and ‘Defund the CBC’.

The unfortunate part of what is being presented to the public is the fact that Poilievre actually has defendable policy positions that could address current Canadian economic woes. He has argued effectively for the contraction of bureaucratic expenditure in housing production. His policy approach favours lower immigration targets tied to housing capacity, as well as faster recognition of foreign qualifications for economic immigrants.

Poilievre’s energy policy focuses on maximizing Canada’s energy sector; including natural gas exports, which he claims will be a net gain for climate science on a global scale based on providing a better alternative to coal used in Asia. Economically, he envisions business growth including future energy supported opportunities for data centres. A return of Canadian investments for pension plans and the like, most of which is lost to the US presently. He argues for a more fiscally conservative monetary policy to manage runaway inflation and address the cost of living challenges that appear to be a top priority for many Canadians.

In an age of information overload, sound bites and social media, the catchy phrases appeal to many who don’t want to dig into the policy weeds, but diminishes the quality of our discourse. It borrows a page from the populist playbook located right of traditional conservative politics.

On The Left

As the knowledge economy came to dominate social and economic discourse, the left found new constituents and donors within the top quintile of society. This demographic shift had profound influence on policy agenda and party rhetoric. Amplified by major events like the Great Recession, the rise of the Tea Party in the United States, the Occupy Wall Street movement, the killing of George Floyd and the COVID 19 pandemic, as well as the growth of right oriented parties across Europe, like the Alternatives for Germany, the left leaned into social justice activism and identity based politics. The shift solidified the allegiance of the knowledge professionals but also began to fracture the relationship with blue collar voters whose concerns seemed to play second fiddle to abstract symbolic priorities of the top quintile.

It is tempting to see recent social justice activism, sometimes pejoratively referred to as ‘Being Woke’, as a contemporary call to action and a long overdue response to social injustices; many would like to believe that the Great awokening of the last decade is proof positive that the enlightened among us are blazing a new trail that will lead the oppressed out of the proverbial desert, while allies and advocates usher away the oppressors with chants of “Shame! Shame! Shame!” - Except we’ve seen this movie before and it may not end as predictably as one might expect.

"Great Awokenings”, sudden onsets of intense concern about prejudice and discrimination have happened at numerous points throughout Western history. One of the earliest references date back to the 1860s during Abraham Lincoln’s presidential election when a movement with half-million members called the ‘Wide Awakes’, campaigned for worker’s rights and the abolition of slavery. The word woke itself was employed in similar parlance as contemporary usage in a 1938 blues song by Huddie Ledbetter, his song about “the Scottsboro Boys, nine black teenagers wrongly accused of rape and sentenced to death, warns of the dangers of a racially prejudiced justice system” and concludes with the lyrics ‘best stay woke’. By 1965 the New York Times recognized woke as one of the “hip idioms in black vernacular” and Martin Luther King evoked the metaphor of wokeness, when he called upon his audience to “remain awake through a great revolution”. Yet for many contemporaries, the word is more commonly credited to the Black Lives Matter movement founded in 2012, with some citing the 2007 Erykah Badu song ‘Master Teacher’ as its originating source.

Sociologist Musa al-Gharbi in his book ‘We Have Never Been Woke’ posits that there have been at least three periods of ‘Great Awokenings’ in America beginning in the early twentieth century. By his account, prior to the current ‘Great Awokening’, in all three previous cases strikingly similar social conditions brought about intensified activism. The first was around the time of the Great Depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s. The second in the mid 1960s at the height of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war, and last a smaller awokening in the late 1980s and early 1990s around politically correct speech, proxy wars and emerging globalization.

In all three cases economic downturns and wars created the pretext for a sudden hyper focus on social issues. In all three cases relatively young adults grew increasingly hostile towards the older generation, the perceived elites, who they considered to be out of touch. In all three cases the disenfranchised middle class aligned their interests with those most marginalized in society and began demanding that the system needed to be overturned.

However, Musa al-Gharbi also argues that people who work in fields like education, entertainment, media, law, human resources etc, who he refers to as ‘Symbolic Capitalists’, routinely co-opt the issues of the truly marginalized and extract opportunities that satisfies their own interests often with little tangible benefit to the actual poor and marginalized.

Symbolic Capitalists - “those who possesses a high level of symbolic capital, and exerts control over, and extracts profits from, the means of symbolic (re)production… [and] whose social position is tied to the production, distribution and transformation of symbolic capital”

In essence many on the left have leaned strongly towards identity based politics emphasizing difference over common cause. Unfortunately these characteristically cerebral and symbolic interests increasingly appeal to, and resonate with a small, albeit well educated and relatively affluent segment of the electorate. The ubiquity of social media has driven these issues from academia to popular culture often completely by-passing the very real kitchen table issues that concern the broader public.

“In an American post-election YouGov survey of working-class (non-college) voters for the Progressive Policy Institute, 68 percent of these voters said Democrats have moved too far left, compared to just 47 percent who thought Republicans have moved too far right. It’s a fair surmise that working-class sentiment about the Democrats’ leftism is heavily driven by the party’s embrace of cultural leftist positions across a wide range of issues (immigration, crime, race, gender, etc.) given how unpopular these positions are among those voters.” - Ruy Teixeira - Economic Populism: Opiate of the Democrats

The Liberal Party in Canada has had several policy wins they could campaign on that could address real issues, such as its dental health program, their $4-billion housing accelerator program, and the universal pharmacare program, which ‘The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada’ hailed as a “historic achievement” stating “Women across the country will be able to make choices about contraception based on what’s best for their lives, not their wallets”. Yet more people remember the announcement that all federally regulated employers must provide free menstrual products in all employee washrooms including bathrooms assigned for biological men. Messaging matters and the Liberals are missing opportunities to make their case.

A strong argument can be made that there exists a consistent latent cultural effect in Canada, whereby we exhibit social tendencies that mirror our southern neighbours. This almost predictably puts us on the same trajectory as the United States. Many in Canada would argue that the governing Liberal Party has veered further left compared to its historical roots and in some cases is indistinguishable from the NDP - who campaign significantly further left of traditional Liberals politics.

If the Liberals are borrowing from the Democratic Party’s playbook in the US, they may a little late to make the case that there is more to them than virtue signalling.

The Center

Instead of expanding the Overton Window, we have merely created twin windows set diametrically opposed from each other. Both the left and the right have shifted further towards the edges of the ideological spectrum appealing to fewer and fewer people in the main. It makes for great theatre but is unquestionably light on substance.

The rise of the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movement are useful analytical example that may highlight how the centrists lost standing in our modern political discourse in North America.

The Tea Party has been described as a 2009 right-wing populist movement that rose in the aftermath of the election of American President Barrack Obama, it took its name from the 1773 Boston Tea Party movement of the American Revolution. They boasted that their decentralized approach allowed for greater autonomy and avoided their grassroots movement front being co-opted by traditional political interests.

They did not have a uniform agenda but broadly opposed government oversight, amnesty for illegal immigrants, sought reduction in government spending and opposed tax increases and healthcare reform. Tea Party supporters tended to be more “financially stable than the general population, with 31% reporting family incomes in excess of $75,000 a year; and Tea Party supporters are more highly educated, with 37% reporting college degrees as compared to 25% in the general [American] population”.

The movement did not achieve most of their stated goals but they did significantly disrupt the political landscape. In many ways they brought back the politics of anger and outrage establishing the foundation of American right wing populism. The politicians who aligned themselves with the movement did enjoy significant electoral success, especially in 2010, but once elected rarely lived up to the rhetoric of their campaigns. They were naturally absorbed into mainstream politics and their ideas just became a part of the establishment.

The Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 was a left-wing populist movement that rose in the aftermath of the Great Recession, it purportedly was against economic inequality, corporate greed, big finance, and the influence of money in politics. They boasted that their decentralized approach allowed for greater autonomy and avoided their grassroots movement from being co-opted by traditional political interests.

It’s most famous and enduring slogan was “we the 99%” - a pithy statement meant to clearly demarcate the haves from the have-nots. The original movement ended inside two months and has been the subject of a great deal of criticism. Among the primary critiques are the conspicuous absence of an agenda that could pragmatically be converted into a policy consideration, a fact underscored by the lack of legislative outputs inspired by the movement. In many ways however, that was probably never the point.

‘We the 99%’ for starters is so broad a category it renders its generalizable characteristics meaningless. No serious minded person actually believes that the plight and experiences of the bottom quintile of the socioeconomic spectrum are comparable to the top quintile. Placing them in the same group without distinction as the 99% disproportionately focuses on the 1% and spares the great majority of the upper middle class any meaningful level of scrutiny. The demographic composition of the Occupy movement’s protests clearly establish the point that their interests had little to do with improving the conditions of the truly marginalized.

The protesters were “relatively affluent: roughly three quarters (72 percent) of participants came from households above the 2011 New York City median. A plurality came from households that brought in over $100k per year. 76 percent of participants had a BA degree or higher”. Missing among the protesters were those with blue collar, retail or service jobs, the ones commonly referred to as the working poor. For a movement so ostentatious focused on inequality, the absence of the poor was seemingly overlooked.

The movement did not achieve most of their stated goals but they did significantly disrupt the political and cultural landscape. In many ways they too brought back the politics of anger and outrage establishing the foundation of American left wing identity politics. For the organizers and politicians who supported the movement, many enjoyed some measure of success in endeavours stemming from the movement but rarely lived up to the rhetoric. They were naturally absorbed into mainstream politics and cultural discourse and their ideas just became a part of the establishment.

In both instances the movements extolled ideologies that were out of step with the majority of the electorate, but their outsized influence had a pernicious impact on social discourse. In both instances their messaging was amplified by social media and adopted uncritically as representative by traditional media. America is the third most populous country in the world and the ubiquity of American culture is often ignored given their proficiency and capacity for cultural transmission through popular culture. What might have been fringe ideologies soon came to dominate the social, political, and cultural reproduction of ideas. Obscured in the cultural shift was the slow strangulation of centrist politics.

For the vast majority of people living in liberal democracies, there is acceptance for a balance between state welfare and individual rights. It is premised on the concept of pluralism, toleration, and political participation, supported by the rule of law and an independent judiciary and media. Liberal democracy is a by-product of Enlightenment thinking and was intended as an alternative to autocratic or monarchial governance. Yet increasingly on either end of the political spectrum we appear to have become more prescriptive and ideologically rigid, worse still on both ends the tendency to bemoan heterodoxy in favour of ideological homogeneity appears to have become the default operating system.

The Bio-Psycho-Social

“Human experience suggests and behavioural economist confirm that the pain of loss exceeds the pleasure of gain. While failing to improve one's well-being is despairing, losing ground is bitter.” - William A. Galston

Biologically humans are 99.9% identical at the DNA level, with only 0.1% of variation and most genetic variation is within populations, not between them. Yet we have created arbitrary categories mostly based on phenotypical traits that obscure that reality. While biological race is a fiction, race as a social construct is widely accepted as real. That being said there are very few, if any, ideological characteristics that are uniformly distributed by racial categorization. Much like our genes, there is often more ideological variance within races than between them.

Our psychology leads us to erroneously believe in that which just isn’t so. Cognitive biases are a feature not a bug of our cultural dispositions. Negativity bias causes amplified emotional responses to negative events compared to positive events of equal magnitude. Much of today’s political discourse occurs online but our predisposition to focus on and scrutinize the negative, more effectively draws our attention and ultimately informs our perceptions. Confirmation bias is particularly present in the consumption of news and media. Personally curated content reinforces echo chambers and makes people cling to sources that support their political orientation.

Socially we appear to have lost our capacity to appreciate nuance. Tribalism is hard wired into the human condition and our evolutionary disposition towards in-group solidarity negatively influences our willingness to compromise, collaborate, and cooperate.

Polarization has steadily worsened over time but in many ways this is actually an illusory problem created by distortions in our cultural discourse. Both the right and the left wings of our political system have increasingly focused on appealing to a narrow band of the electorate on the edges of the ideological spectrum. It makes for great theatre and certainly helps news ratings but does little to inform the public on actual policy priorities that impact the majority of people, most of whom probably sit closer to the center on political issues. The focus on the edges contributes to deepening social divisions between more and less educated citizens, between those who benefit from technological change and those who are threatened by it.

In short, we didn’t just wake up one day and become more earnest in our adherence to rigid ideological fealty. Our bio-psycho-social characteristics provided fertile grounds to plant the seed of division allowing us to sow a bountiful harvest of polarization. On social media 80% of the viral content is created by 10% of users; I fear it is possible that 80% of our political priorities are being co-opted by 10% of the electorate.

Democracy was never intended to be a zero sum game. The governing party and the opposition both play a vital role. They are meant to advocate and dissent, to debate and compromise, to establish and reform. They are meant to work together for the greater good of all citizens. We the electorate have an important role too, and it is not to pillory each other in the public square. We need to demand more of our politicians, we have to demand more of ourselves. To be informed we need to take the spectacle and theatre out of politics. We need to hold our representatives accountable and demand that they make their case for our vote not merely tell us the other side sucks. Our gradual but consistent shift towards the edges have strangled the centrist and in so doing eroded the essential role of moderation in our politics.

An Ode to Nietzsche

The Centrist is dead. The Centrist remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, now? Moderation, once the holiest and mightiest in the world of political affairs has bled to death under our divisive knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves of this polarization? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Must we ourselves not become The Centrist if for no other reason than to rectify this self inflicted tragedy?

About the author: Neil Gonsalves is an Indian-born Canadian immigrant who grew up in Dubai, U.A.E. and moved to Canada in 1995. He is an Ontario college educator, a TEDx speaker, an author, columnist, and an advocate for new immigrant integration and viewpoint diversity.

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