the "centrist-extremist" model

[amborin]

""Taking Tea Partiers Seriously"

By Chip Berlet, February 2010

We need to be wary of the way centrists in both the Republican and Democratic Parties distort and confine the political dialogue. In their model, they are a noble and heroic center defending society from the “extremists” of the Left and Right.

By using terms like “extremism” and trivializing dissident ideas as dangerous or crackpot, centrists are defending the status quo. They create the impression that dissident organizers are simply the advance guard for political insurgency, violence in the streets, and terrorism. The term “Radical Religious Right,” for example, is designed by Democrats to get liberals to lump together the Christian Right with armed neo-Nazi terrorists.

Flip this model over, and the term “extremism” is used by centrists to dismiss progressives as scary utopian radical troublemakers secretly building bombs in our basements. The “centrist-extremist” model is also used by law enforcement to justify spying on dissident groups on the left and right.

The application of “centrist-extremist” theory reinforces an elitist view of democracy and suggests that only certain people are capable of participation in “serious” policy debates. It also implies that policy debates confined only to ideas validated by the political “center” should be taken seriously in civil society.

Progressives, therefore, should be careful about using the term “extremism” or “extremist” as a label for political ideas or action they oppose. The model favored by centrists marginalizes “extremists of the right and left” and thus undercuts progressive ideas for the fundamental reordering of priorities in the United States. The centrist vs. extremist model also encourages the idea that those who oppose “extremism” are in no way complicit with maintaining systems, institutions, or structures of unfair power and privilege......"

from this month's The Progressive


http://progressive.org/node/139302

[Enthusiast]

1. Nope, I'll call

'em like I see 'em. I will call Teabaggers extremists because they are. Progressive ideas are being undercut because they are not seen favorably by corporate interests. It wouldn't matter one iota if we refrained from calling out the radical nut cases of the "right" we would still be demonized as radical for wanting a "public option" in HCR. I call bullshit on the entire article.

And nothing could be more radical than the "Christian Right". They want the country to be governed according to their "end times" theology. THEY ARE RADICAL. There is no "radical left" equivalent!

Just look what passes for "centrist" in this fucking country. A SCOTUS decision that allows unlimited corporate money in campaigns.

I don't think anyone should be lecturing us on what constitutes extreme even as they call themselves "The Progressive". And where is this "civil society" you speak of? Have you turned on a TV set recently and listened to these "centrist" Republicans?

The entire gist of this article is "Sit down and shut up or someone might say you are a radical extremist".