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Notes -
“Centrist” is naturally resistant to getting labeled as crypto-not-centrist. This is separate from any drift of the Overton window.
Even though it would be rhetorically useful, the process of making that association is non-trivial. Whether this is people noticing the contradiction, or acquired cultural immunity from previous attempts at consensus-building, it doesn’t usually fly under the radar.
If that was true, "I'm not a racist, but..." would be resistant to being labeled racist.
I think you and me must have very different intuitions on what the overton window is, and what "normies" believe. Many of these things are heavily regional, and even more importantly, I'm probably a mentally ill hermit (I won't speak for you).
That one raises Suspiciously Specific Denial flags. See also: apophasis.
A better example would be the Kendi-esque definition of antiracism, which I don’t think is widely accepted in normie circles.
Centrist sounds an awfully lot like a "Not-Rightist" to me. While it's true that "Centrist" doesn't use "not" or any derived root, it's well-trod ground that centrism is one of the few "ideologies" thats defined by what it isn't. S.S.D. doesn't feel like a good rebuttal to me.
What is Kendi's antiracism a better example of?
The reasoning on “not racist, but...” is that whatever is after the “but” must be racist, or they wouldn’t have bothered with the disclaimer. Saying “centrist, but...” would have a similar if lesser effect. It’s the “but” that raises red flags.
Without a “but,” there’s not an obvious point of attack. Previous movements have tried to make one via with-me-or-against-me arguments. “The personal is political” attempted to frame inaction as patriarchal. Nixon’s appeal to a Silent Majority was an assertion that no reasonable centrist would be into the counterculture. Kendi’s definition of antiracism, as argued in a previous thread, is this sort of excluded middle tactic. You’re either fighting the good fight, or you are actively the enemy.
I don’t think these attempts have had lasting success in tarring perceptions of centrists. If I had to guess, it’s because most people aren’t concerned with the idea centrists as a class. Those who are have already signed up for the culture wars. But it could also be inoculation by cultural awareness—maybe by the time movie villains are making an argument, it’s broadly recognized as bad. Regardless, there’s bunch of normies out there who aren’t going to jump on the “hating centrists” train easily.
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