How Antiradical Centrism is Banalizing Nazism
When political radicalism is marked as the public enemy number one by moderate nazis
Centrists share the political belief that all extremes are the same, and that true wisdom can only be found in the perfect center between all types of radicality. All around the world, that kind of centrism is the widespread antipolitical sensibility of those who believe that ideologies are all inherently equally evil as soon as they are fully embraced, and all inherently harmless as long as they remain moderate. This political narrative creates two really big problems, with an ignominious consequence.
First problem : the antiradical centrist narrative creates an illusion of ideological neutrality and encourages denial of unconscious ideological influences. By refusing politics and perpetually aiming for the center of a political scene at a certain time in a given country, one is not being superiorly overhanging flawed ideologies. On the contrary, one is being constantly pulled by all radical ideologies at the same time, with no other choice than being drifted by forces whose power over us we refuse to recognize.
Second problem : the antiradical paradigm places all ideologies at the same level, which benefits inherently harmful ideologies and criminalizes inherently harmless ideologies. Antiradical centrism is always about setting all ideologies on equal terms, regardless of their content, nature, and objectives. Antiradical centrists are always complaining about some radical ideologies being less popular and less persecuted than others. They won’t formulate it explicitly, but they mean it : they profoundly believe that all radical doctrines must be treated like nazism, and that nazism has to be treated like some kind of radicality, not better or worse than another. The moderate antiradical centrist places communism on equal footing with nazism, by dismissing important facts (such as the obvious and revendicated objective of enslavement before total extermination of 95% of humankind in the nazi doctrine), and by relativizing the horrors of nazism using the horrors of applied communism. As for the radically antiradical centrist, he heavily insists on explaining how he is so pure and so centristic and so magnificently political-blind, that he does not make any difference between nazis and antifascism.
An ignominious consequence
The antipolitical puritan quest of antiradical centrists is a profound curse to politics, because it is truly everywhere. The only doctrines that are penalized by this generalized relativist antiradical inquisition, are the positive and liberal ideologies, whilst inherently violent doctrines like communism or even nazism always benefit from being compared to harmless radical doctrines. The antiradical narrative obstinately ignores the fact that radicality is only a problem of ideology nature, not a problem of radicality. A harmful ideology remains harmful even in its moderate form. A harmless ideology remains harmful even in its extreme form. Moderate nazism will always be infinitely more harmful than extremist feminism. Terms like “feminazis” have literally been created by modern nazis to relativize the atrocities of nazism, and are widely spread by centrists. This word instigates the idea that nazism is just about being angry after something, no matter what. It conveys the idea that a calm supporter of Adolf Hitler is less dangerous than a woman angry against the impunity of rapists.
Contrarily to centristic belief, one society is not in danger because there are radical wokes, radical tolerance, radical feminists, and radical upright liberals, but when moderate nazis are considered as far more acceptable than radical democratic ideologies.
And this is the situation we are in. Sluggish moderate nazis will always be more reassuring to centrists than any firm feminist. This is the more outrageous fault committed by centrists, and I will never forgive that.
You probably all have heard of this Aesop fable of the boy who cried wolf. The tale is about a shepherd boy who repeatedly tricks nearby villagers into thinking a wolf is attacking his town’s flock. One day, a real wolf does appear, and when the boy calls for help, this time, the villagers do not believe him anymore. Believing it was just another false alarm, they let the powerless boy yell in vain, as the sheep was being eaten by the wolf. This is why we should always consider fake warnings as no laughing matter and fake alert launchers like objective accomplices of the real threats they confuse us about.
The disturbing reality of centrism
The inconvenient truth is that nazism or nazi collaboration was never about an evil system rising from radical politically engaged people, but from the mediocrity of the ones who, having the habit to gaslight and designate false dangers, or promoting disproportionate paranoia against an actual communist threat, accustomed people to obey to the fear of radicality and to extreme-center believes. National-socialism is a centrist-rooted ultraconservative ideology, not a far-left or a far-right one, no matter what centrists say. When nazis deported the radicals of several political currents in labor concentration camps, the antiradical centrists were over the moon. Everything was fine for them. And they would have had nothing to deplore if the nazi regime had been smart enough to stick to its neochristian conservative policy and avoid starting a suicidal war against the entire world and an unprecedented giganormous genocide simultaneously against at least three different races in Europe. Sticking to a christianly acceptable scaled mass-murder policy is what fascist dictators like Franco, Salazar and Pinochet did, and no serious measures were ever demanded against them by the plethoric centrist troops in every western country.
Hitler with a toned-down rhetoric would seduce all nowadays centrists. They just can’t see the problem until they can label something as “radical”. If they are antiradical, it is because they know they have to repress their own inclinations in order to remain socially acceptable. They don’t want others to have the right to follow their political thoughts, because they know what they would do if themselves were allowed to be radical.
No one shall forget that the Zentrum, literally the Centre Party was the third-largest party in the Reichstag, was among the parties who voted in early 1933 for the Enabling Act, which granted full unlimited powers to Adolf Hitler democratic elected government. No one shall forget that the obsession for political conglomeration and consensual thinking is always an appeal to tyranny rolling out the red carpet for the providential figure of the man of the situation, the way Hitler was perceived at first by all kinds of centrist bourgeoisies around the world.
Fanatism doesn’t originate from political passions, it is rather a result of a torn apart and terrorized people crushed by a political system installed by means of a general atmosphere of cowardness, moderation, and post-war apathy. The fanatic crowd is made of self-denial individuals converting their death fear of being treated as opponents into consensual apolitically following admiration of their tyrannic torturer, not of radical militants of some liberal doctrine aiming for more liberty, more tolerance, and more progress. Beware of preachy antiradical centrists. In every single antiradical centrist, there is a sleeping nazi.
