I I would like to start a petition calling on journalists – and everyone else – to stop using the C-word immediately. centristIt is an insidious word that denigrates our thinking about politics and distorts our view of the world.
Perhaps this statement sounds a little exaggerated. After all, being a “centrist” sounds very reasonable, doesn’t it? A centrist is a moderate, right? Someone who is rational and practical and who Middle way. Someone who does not extreme like these crazy ideologists on the far right or the far left. Being a centrist, the logic goes, is actually what everyone should strive for.
But stop for a moment and ask yourself how you would more accurately define a centrist. When you begin to explain the true meaning of the word, it becomes clear that it obscures more than it illuminates. The word does not describe a set of ideas so much as it reinforces a system of power.
This is, of course, a feature, not a defect, of political language. As George Orwell wrote in his famous essay “Politics and the English Language”: “In our time, political speech and writing consists largely of the defence of the indefensible. Such things as the continuation of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people, and which are inconsistent with the declared aims of the political parties. Therefore political language must consist largely of euphemisms, circular reasoning, and utterly nebulous ambiguities.”
Orwell wrote this essay in 1946. Today, 78 years later, it seems just as relevant. Consider the carnage in Gaza and the West Bank. Consider the statements by Israeli politicians that clearly point to genocide. Consider the tragedies that barely register in the public consciousness. This week, for example, an Israeli airstrike killed four-day-old twins, along with their mother and grandmother, as their father went to collect birth certificates in central Gaza. Consider the scale of the brutality that hardly registers anymore: There is video evidence of the sexual abuse of Palestinians in a notorious Israeli military prison (though a more accurate term would be “torture camp”), and even with that evidence, we know there will be no real accountability.
Look at the dead. Nearly 40,000 people are now dead in Gaza, including nearly 15,000 children. Given the scale of the destruction, it is likely that these numbers are still an underestimate. Moreover, it is unbearably difficult to count the number of dead: children are being blown into pieces so small that their surviving relatives have to collect them in plastic bags. Then there are tens of thousands who are now starving or facing a looming polio epidemic.
Meanwhile, let’s look at the West Bank, where Israel has published plans for new settlements that violate international law. Since October 7, the Israeli army and settlers have displaced 1,285 Palestinians and destroyed 641 buildings in the West Bank, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Ethnic cleansing is taking place before our eyes.
Now look at how all this is justified. This war is not only fought with bombs, but also with “euphemisms, circular reasoning and sheer vagueness.” If you state in plain terms what is happening, it cannot be justified. That is why political language sugarcoats all those dead and starving children. It obscures ethnic cleansing with inconsistencies. “Don’t believe your eyes,” political writings say. What you see is far more complex than your eyes can ever comprehend.
This narrative is so deeply rooted that people not When it comes to Palestinians, you can’t believe your eyes. Last October, actress Jamie Lee Curtis posted a photo on Instagram of frightened-looking children looking up at the sky. She captioned the post, “Terror from the sky,” and used an Israeli flag emoji. When it was pointed out to her that the children were Palestinians, she deleted the post. Her eyes may have told her that these innocent children were frightened; however, the story was more complicated.
Around the same time, Justin Bieber posted a photo of bombed-out houses with the caption “Pray for Israel.” When it was pointed out to him that the photo was of Gaza, he deleted it and apparently stopped praying.
In 2022, an image of a little blonde confronting a soldier was widely shared online, with claims that it was a Ukrainian girl confronting a Russian soldier. How brave, people. How inspiring! When it turned out that it was actually old footage of then-10-year-old Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian activist, interest in the image fizzled out.
Again, if you state in clear terms what is happening, it is indefensible. If people see with their own eyes what is happening, it is indefensible. I say this as someone who has seen with my own eyes what life is like for Palestinians. As someone who had to flee from soldiers firing tear gas when I was just six years old and visiting my father’s village in the West Bank. Who was interrogated by an IDF soldier when I was 15 and visiting my father’s village because I had a school chemistry textbook in my bag. Who knows what it is like to be harassed and humiliated by heavily armed soldiers at checkpoints just trying to get from one village to another. When you experience life under occupation for even a day, it becomes abundantly clear that there is no way to defend it.
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In order to defend the indefensible, politicians and political writers move away from concreteness and clear language and hide behind the seriousness of terms such as “centrism”. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators are portrayed as far left or extremists. However, continuing unconditional arms deliveries to Israel and shielding the country’s far-right government from accountability is considered a centrist – and therefore reasonable – position.
For example, consider this New York Times paragraph from earlier this month, when Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro was still being discussed as a possible candidate for Kamala Harris’s vice presidential nomination.
“Mr. Shapiro has emerged as a favorite of the party’s pro-Israel donors, those with ties to the school choice movement and pro-business donors in Silicon Valley. But his centrist positions that appeal to those groups are the same ones that make him the least popular of the party’s most liberal donors.”
This paragraph is one of the rare cases of explaining what centrism actually means. Centrism, we are told, means being pro-Israel and pro-business no matter what. This article appeared as Shapiro was being criticized from the left for an old essay in which he called the Palestinians too “militant to build a peaceful homeland of their own.” He has never properly apologized for this, and never will have to, because racism against Palestinians is a centrist position.
As Orwell wrote, atrocities can be defended, but only on arguments too brutal for most people and inconsistent with the stated aims of political parties. If the Democratic Party were honest about why it is doing so little to stop the carnage in Gaza and the West Bank settlements, the most blunt argument would be something like this: “Israel is an important instrument for maintaining U.S. imperialism and Western interests. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is beneficial to those interests. Human rights do not apply to the West.” Of course, advocating ethnic cleansing does not quite fit the Democratic Party’s do-gooder image. Instead, we are bombarded with the idea that the massacre of children is somehow a centrist And moderate Position.
“If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy,” wrote Orwell. Most of us can do very little to change what is happening in Gaza, but the one thing we can all do is simplify our English. So let’s start with “centrism.” If we are honest about what we mean, if we want to express it in the simplest terms, we should use the word “status quoism” instead. The point of words like “centrism” is to prevent reflection and to compel agreement. It is up to you whether you want to agree.
