Why Centrism is the Best Antidote to the Populist Right

Centrism brings balance, and balance is required for sustainable progress

Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash

Note: The 'organicist conservative philosophy' described in this article refers to genuine Burkean conservative philosophy, not the kind of politics right-wing parties represent nowadays. This philosophy favors caution, is skeptical of radical change especially those rooted in abstract philosophy, and respects long-standing traditions while recognizing the need for gradualist reform in the liberal direction. It is very different from all the major varieties of so-called 'conservative' politics out there today, and is actually more fitting with a centrist politics.

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Since the victory of Donald Trump in the 2024 US Presidential election, numerous left-wing commentators have blamed 'centrism' for the defeat of Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party. Given that Harris ran a relatively moderate campaign, and still lost, they reasoned that centrism must be to blame. This is despite the fact that Biden and Obama also ran relatively moderate campaigns, and won. Moreover, in Britain, Labour leader Keir Starmer also won in a landslide on a moderate platform earlier this year, recovering much lost ground from the massive defeat of Jeremy Corbyn's far-left campaign five years earlier. The fact is, centrism still has a very good track record of winning overall.

The biggest problem with popular misconceptions regarding centrism is that there seems to be quite a bit of confusion as to what 'centrism' is actually. My long-standing view is that centrism is a balance of what I call the rational progressive impulse, and organicist conservative philosophy. While these modes of thinking are generally represented by the center-left and the center-right respectively, it is not always the case that left equals progressive, or right equals conservative. Take 'neoliberal' economic policy, arguably the strongest pillar in the three-legged stool of Reaganite neoconservatism. It really is quite radical, in that it does not care about the harms it brings to working families. All it cares about is benefits in economic and productivity terms. This means that its proponents are motivated by the prospect of achieving better things, while not caring too much about the harms their proposed changes could bring. Hence, 'neoliberal' economic policy, although championed mainly by the right before 2016, is actually a form of unfettered progressivism, and like all forms of unfettered progressivism, it has led to chaos, destruction and suffering. A truly centrist perspective would have provided a check on the unrestrained and unbalanced optimism of neoliberalism, and effectively prevented the economic frustrations that ultimately fed into the rise of the populist right.

Besides economic frustrations, cultural concerns, particularly the rise of wokeness, are also providing fuel for the populist right. This represents yet another case of unfettered progressivism that would merit some checks and balances, that organicist conservative philosophy can provide. Woke ideology, rooted in postmodern critical theory, insists that the whole status quo is oppressive and must be dismantled wholesale. This is a good example of insisting on radical change, justified on abstract philosophy alone, the very thing that Burkean conservative philosophy has been warning us about for centuries. If progressives are willing to heed that philosophy, they will opt for a more practical program for reform instead, which would remove one important factor fueling the growth of the populist right. This would actually also be good from a social justice point of view, because we would actually be making progress rather than arguing endlessly, polarizing the public, and ceding more and more ground to the reactionaries in the process.

There are still other areas where the impulse for progress and change needs to be kept in check by organicist conservatism. I even admit that this would apply to libertarianism sometimes. For example, during the summer of 2020, many libertarians became sympathetic to 'defund the police' and other soft on crime policies. As we all know, these policies are now subject to a massive backlash, because of concerns about crime, in basically every major city across the Western world. This result should have been seen from a mile away. The fact is, while in an ideal society, where the people are more enlightened and crime is much less common, we probably should not spend so much on policing, we don't actually live in that society. In our current reality, defunding the police and going soft on crime will definitely mean more crime. The lesson here is that, when making or endorsing policy, we can't just look at what our ideal society, in the abstract, would look like. We also need to consider how the policy will practically play out in the society we actually have. Failing to do this will give fuel to the argument for authoritarianism.

A final important point is that being a centrist does not mean being unprincipled, as people on the far-left often accuse us of being. For example, as a centrist libertarian, my primary principle is freedom. While I'm not going to take it as far as demanding the abolition of driver's licenses like some libertarian immediatists do, I'm certainly going to fight tooth and nail against attempts to take away existing freedoms, and turn society towards a more authoritarian direction, whatever the justification. This is why I'm so opposed to the culture warriors in both the woke left and the populist New Right. I'm not going to compromise with people who want to shove their ideological beliefs down other people's throats at the expense of individual freedom, period.

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TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.

She is also the author of The Trans Case Against Queer Theory and The TaraElla Story (her autobiography).