Extreme Centrism (Part Two)

What is the overall direction-of-travel when your country is under the management of extreme centrists?

In Part One, it was established that the extreme centrists either do not hold strong ideological principles and/or they are obscuring their true ideology with “waffle”, “ambiguity”, “disguise”, and deception. The words the extreme centrist politician speaks are often quite different to the material and policy changes which occur while they are in government. The politicians may not have much effective influence over the system in their country if the local bureaucracy, powerful international institutions, and multinational corporations are already committed to the agendas of extreme centrism. Similar to Part One, this article will focus primarily on the countries of the United Kingdom, United Sates of America, New Zealand Australia, and Canada (the Common Law countries which are now part of the “The Five Eyes” intelligence alliance and are known as the the Anglosphere). Due to culture and language, I am better placed to explain what has been occurring in those countries. The extreme centrists have global agendas so their behaviours will impact people around the world.

Rather than trying to define the the true ideology of the extreme centrists, I will instead focus on attitudes, agendas, trends, traits, tactics, and behaviours I observe as typical of the extreme centrists.

This article will attempt to answer the following question.

Where are the extreme centrists taking society?

If an extreme centrist politician made honest election campaign promises, they would read something like this…

‘If elected, our party will enthusiastically support:

1. Portraying the artificial and optional as natural and inevitable.

2. A lack of sincerity, authenticity, responsibility, and convictions in leadership and institutions.

3. Contempt for reality, truth, and those that value both.

4. Corporate and oligarchic entitlement to a larger share of global revenue and assets.

5. Centralisation of power within the state and the empowerment of international entities to rule over states.

6. Growth in corporate-style bureaucracy both within the state and across most institutions.

7. Increased regulatory complexity and lack of effective accountability.

8. Increased public debt and/or reduced public services in the name of reducing debt or servicing interest on the debts.

9. Increased dependency and reduced autonomy for the majority of the population. More “learned helplessness”.

10. Increased surveillance, monitoring, and management of people and their ideas.

11. Physiological manipulation of populations via “nudge” techniques, overt propaganda, digital suppression of dissent, “encouragement”, and other restrictions.

12. Transformational change... though probably not the healthy changes people want or need.

13. The fungibility of people and peoples. You will be regarded as another interchangeable and replaceable economic unit.

14. The use of intersectional identity politics, to undermine solidarity between people and divide potential opponents.

15. War without end, along with the militarisation of both the police and public health.

16. The ‘ends justify the means’ in terms of trampling civil rights, law, debate, and democracy.

17. Growing intolerance to criticism, dissent, differing views, and values.

The various forms of extreme centrism combine aspects of both left-wing and right-wing politics. Arguably they combine some the worst aspects of left-wing and right-wing politics, especially if considering the interests of the majority of people within a country under extreme centrist management. On a superficial level, it could be understood that centrists want to acquire and maintain political power so will try to appeal to both workers and business owners with a selection of middle-of-the-road policies that they think will have popularity with both groups of voters. However, the extreme centrists will publicly express disdain for “populism”, especially when public votes do not go in favour of their agenda¹. Extreme centrists will implement policies that benefit multinational corporations and harm local business owners. Local workers and voters are often disadvantaged in favour of imported workers and multinational corporations. It is therefore unlikely that benefiting local people, maintaining popularity with local people, or serving the interests of local people is the primary aim of the typical extreme centrists.

I have put ‘Portraying the artificial and optional as natural and inevitable’ as 1^st on my (somewhat satirical) list of extreme centrist traits and tactics. On many issues, extreme centrist do not want people to realise that many of the hardships that they face are the result of choices made by individuals, governments, bureaucracies, and corporations. “The Market”, “The Science”, and progress (social and/or technological), are used as excuses in attempts to absolve the extreme centrists and their institutions of responsibility for the consequences of their decisions. Portraying developments as inevitable may be an attempt to demoralise resistance. If you will eventually need to take the new RNA injection, give up eating red meat, stop using cash, accept the driver-less cars, or get the brainchip, why would you bother resisting? Markets shaped by government policies and corporate lobbying are portrayed as a force of natural. Injections of synthetic RNA inside engineered lipid nanoparticle delivery vectors are described by government propaganda leaflets as containing “….very small amounts of fats, salts, and sugars”. This type of systemic deceit relates to my 2^nd and 3^rd points about ‘Lack of sincerity, authenticity, responsibility, and convictions in leadership and institutions’ and the “Contempt for reality, truth, and those that value both”. At one level this could just be further attempts by the extreme centrists to control the narratives, manipulate the public, and avoid responsibility. On a deeper and more disturbing level, the extreme centrists could have become detached from reality, started to believe their own propaganda, and are now committed to some kind of ideological war against reality itself.

Excerpt from a New Zealand Government “Unite Against COVID-19” propaganda flier.

Making the Pfizer jab sound natural and wholesome. It’s just like grandma’s vegan baking, right?

Regarding economic direction summarised in the 4^th and 5^th points, extreme centrism leads to the large corporations and oligarchs gaining greater shares of assets and revenue streams. This is not the small-state favoured by more traditional right-wing politics. Under the extreme centrist, the state typically grows larger and takes more taxes, only to transfer valuable assets and/or a greater proportion of the tax revenue streams over to large corporations. The so-called “free trade” deals with their investor-state dispute rules² amount to extreme centrist governments validating corporate entitlement to revenue at the public's expense. Centralisation of power in larger government or quasi-government entities leads to larger and more lucrative opportunities for corporations to obtain wealth through loans, grants, asset sales, contracts, and public-private partnerships. International entities, often entities influenced by considerable funding from megacorporation and oligarchic sources, are given more control over national governments. A contemporary example would be the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s sponsorship of the World Health Organisation (WHO)³ and national governments giving the WHO more power to direct pandemic response. The 6^th and 7^th points focus on the corporation-government relationship with increased organisational similarities, more partnerships, and more personnel exchange between corporations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and the state bureaucracy. Increased regulatory complexity favours larger corporations and large NGOs which can support a large internal bureaucracy to help them comply with, or capture, the policies of the state bureaucracy. Regulatory complexity and a growing corporate-style bureaucracy helps protect both the state and large corporations from effective accountability for wrongdoing or adverse outcomes. It is difficult to find the responsible individual within a large bureaucracy with complex regulations. Even when caught, an individual can claim that they were just following the policies or ‘best practice’ guidelines of an international entity such as the WHO. Mismanagement, corruption, and waste by government entities typically leads to the increased public debt mentioned in my 8^th point. This debt burden leads to an increasing share of the government revenue (from taxes and other tax-like charges, permits, and penalties) being used to pay interest on debt. The quality and quantity of services provided by the state will also tend to decline as paying for past debt becomes one of the main functions of the state. This is an area where centre-left and centre-right parties sometimes play different roles. The centre-left parties might greatly increase state debt in the name of improving services, where as the centre-right party might reduce services or impose austerity measures in the name of reducing or limiting debt . With a series of switches between centre-left and centre-right governments, the overall trend will often be that the people will have both lower-quality state services (worse pensions, worse roads, worse healthcare, worse protection from crime) and increased state debt. Future generations will suffer the burden of being taxed to pay for those debts while suffering worse state services than past generations.

My 9^th, 10^th, and 11^th points all relate to the management and manipulation of people. Rather than the state’s primary roles being in serving the people, the state increasingly sees its primary role as managing people. People are being encouraged into “learned helplessness” with people become dependent on the state and corporations. Psychological manipulation and the proliferation of “nudge” units⁴ are also a feature of the contemporary extreme centrist regimes.

The 12^th point stresses the importance of “transformational change” to the extreme centrist. This might be a key distinction between a moderate centrist and an extreme centrist. A moderate centrist would be inclined to avoid extreme and unpopular changes that would lead to election losses. However, the extreme centrist will push through “transformational change” and cause massive, often negative, impacts on society. The extreme centrist will suffer election losses, though can be reasonably confident that the party that replaces them in government will also follow most of the extreme centrist agendas and will not undo all of the changes implemented by the previous government. Major international organisations such as the United Nations promote transformational change, with one of the primary slogans for the 2030 Agenda and the UN Sustainable Development Goals being “Transforming our world”.⁵

My 13^th and 14^th points highlight some contentious areas around how people are used, manipulated, and discarded. Both as individuals and as members of identity groups. As the extreme centrists are a minority, a large section of the population is a threat to their agendas and their political power. Dividing the potential opposition into a range of feuding identity groups would benefit the extreme centrists.

The 15^th point covers the trend of extreme centrist supporting an apparently endless series of wars abroad and the militarisation of public services at home. During the COVID-19 crisis the, United Kingdom government closed the Public Health England agency and launched its replacement, branded as the UK Health Security Agency⁶. Wars, domestic counter-terrorism policies, and pandemic responses all provide opportunities to: increase state powers to override people’s rights, increase state debt, and transfer vast amounts of wealth to corporations. A war (or war narrative) also gives the state, and their collaborators in the media, plenty of opportunities to smear critics and policy opponents as unpatriotic or unwilling to ‘do their part’ for the war effort. Such ‘wartime’ policies are effective in removing people’s choices as to what they fund. A man in the UK or US has little choice as to whether his taxes go to buy an expensive missile to be dropped on a poor village in a distant land. A woman in New Zealand or Canada has little choice as to whether her taxes go to buy injections from a corporation with a well-documented criminal history. She also has little choice as to whether her taxes fund providing financial incentives for young people to take those injections, even if those injections are known to cause more-harm-than-good in young people. If both major parties in a country support extreme centrist policies, then the opportunities for effectively voting to stop the wealth transfers and the carnage being inflicted on other people is greatly limited. In a market with choice, and people rather than governments making most of the significant choices, boycotts and belt-tightening can negatively impact the revenue streams of entitled corporations.

My 16^th and 17^th points focus mainly on the suppression of debate and dissent. The ‘ends’ matter a great deal to the extreme centrist. To progress their agendas, the transformational changes need to happen, the wealth needs to transferred, the power needs to be centralised, and local populations need to be more intensely monitored and managed. Suppression of debate and dissent is one means of achieving those ends. A well-informed and well-motivated population might effectively challenge the extreme centrists and hinder progress towards achieving their agendas. The attempts to suppress debate and dissent are likely to be an important factor causing the downfall of extreme centrist regimes. Firstly, the attempted suppression helps alert people to the suspicious activities of the extreme centrist. Secondly, by creating a culture which is intolerant to debate, dissent, disagreement, and criticism, the extreme centrists institutions will become insular, detached from reality, and riddled with mistakes. This will make those regimes increasingly flawed, vulnerable, and thus likely to be doomed to failure. These extreme centrists regimes, in an increasingly deranged state, can still do a considerable damage before they collapse.

In the near-term, where are the extreme centrists taking society?

In summary, a large state which imposes a large tax burden. People will pay a considerable amount of tax to the state. People will also be spending a considerable amount on other charges, rents, and levies for services which only a few generations ago were largely covered by their taxes.

A large proportion of the revenue from taxes, and other tax-like charges, will go to large corporations in the form of interest payments as well as payments for the goods and services delivered through public-private partnerships and similar schemes. The goods and services may not be “safe and effective” and much funding will be wasted on unnecessary expenses and criminal activity. However, vast corporate-style bureaucracies will exist to protect most wrongdoers from any effective accountability. Wrongdoers will likely be financially and politically rewarded as they move between state, corporate, and NGO roles. Censorship, media-government collaboration, and a culture of suppressing dissent will also work to protect wrongdoers and prevent alternative options for society gaining traction.

Populations will be subjected to increased surveillance, militarised police, and/or militarised public health measures. The state will see its primary role as managing populations and facilitating the collection of revenue from those populations. This management will sometimes use psychological manipulation, sometimes use financial incentives, sometimes use economic sanctions, sometimes use coercion, and sometimes use violence. A section of the population will receive income from the state. However, most of that income will be efficiently transferred to the state’s rent-seeking, corporate partners who will be providing goods, services, and loans. Learned helplessness and a lack of real choices will be the situation for growing proportion of the population.

Future articles will expand and add detail to the points raised in this article. Other articles will focus important examples and tactics to counter the implementation of specific agendas.

Footnotes

1 Haroon Siddique, 2019, Tony Blair says Tories and Labour engaged in 'populism running riot', The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/25/tony-blair-tories-labour-populism-election

2 Paul Barker, 2017, Investor-State Dispute Settlement under Investment Treaties and Free Trade Agreements: ad hoc Arbitration or Investment Court System?, International Law Bulletin, https://doughty-street-chambers.newsweaver.com/International/19q5vjt0076?a=1&p=1456996&t=174031

3 How is the World Health Organization funded?, 2020, World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/who-funds-world-health-organization-un-coronavirus-pandemic-covid-trump/

4 Laura Dodsworth, 2022, Nudge Nudge Wink Wink, Are policy makers finally waking up to the harms of behavioural science?, The Critic, https://thecritic.co.uk/nudge-nudge-wink-wink/

5 Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda

6 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/transforming-the-public-health-system