Politics

Reactionary centrists rarely imagine solutions to political problems that do not involve a policy move to the right, especially on social issues. Won an election? You’ll need to give ground to govern. Lost an election? You’ll need to give ground to win next time. That this is obviously unfalsifiable doesn’t bother them in the slightest.

One of the main problems with reactionary centrism can be put in this way: Politics is about both policy and values. To use immigration as an example, the number of visas to be issued would be a question of policy, but whether a pluralist society is a good thing would be a question of values. Reactionary centrists tend to focus exclusively on policy, and sometimes they reframe issues of values as actually being about policy. Changing the policy offer is virtually the only way they can imagine a party appealing to a larger number of voters.

But values matter—not just morally but practically. Voters judge governments, and decide which politicians to trust, based on values. A party’s policies matter in part for what they tell us about their values. Politicians supporting punitive restrictions on immigration are communicating that they believe immigration is bad for the country. If those measures include making language requirements and “good character” tests more stringent, they are also communicating that they believe diversity is a threat to social cohesion, and a homogeneous society is a better one. They might deny these implications. They might not even directly intend them. But the implications are clear nonetheless, and people vote on the basis of them.

Skeptics may claim, You’ll never win voters by telling them they’re racist. But some voters are, abjectly, racist—those who tried to burn refugees alive in the U.K., for instance, or who marched in Charlottesville in the United States chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” They are a minority, but a larger share of the electorate than is often imagined quietly supports them.

Our disagreement with fascism is, ultimately, one of values, and it is on that level that the rhetorical fight against fascism must be taken. Those to the left of the populist, nativist right must articulate a competing, values-based vision to give everyone else—and especially the complacent middle—a true alternative to reaction; they must offer a clear, compelling, and coherent story about what the sorts of lives we want people to be free to pursue, and what type of society we want to have to support those dreams. And part of this story will be about just how dangerous, how utterly society-destroying, the far right’s story is. What policy views people can be persuaded to support will follow this conversation, not the other way around.