There are very different interpretations of the term. Left and right in general is supposedly just economics. Right wing is free market. The basic tenets of left wing politics posits that eventually, we will move past the need for markets in a post scarcity society and once society has matured to a certain point. The only way to avoid an oligarchy is for the common people to own the means of production.

Most countries in the world currently do not agree with far leftists that we are at that point that communism should take over, or that there ever will be that magical moment. Opinions are shifting with Ai and such, but still. However, purely free markets has historically gone very badly. Regulationis needed, as well as a strong social safety net. Also, in many countries, unions are common or mandatory, with strong worker protections. These are all left wing policies, despite not really even approaching the ideal of communism. We could go further without going full communism, such as eliminating the gambling system that is the stock market, or forcing companies to pay shares to the common workers to encourage unified growth.

So in many ways, most developed countries in the world are "centrist". Even most "communist" countries like China are mixed economy in actuality.

if you ask some right wing Americans, the above policies are godless communism and insane to even suggest. So thr Overton Window is something to consider when deciding what "center" is.

Personally, I don't really believe in labels so much in politics, but if you wanted to label me as a radical centrist, that wouldn't be totally inaccurate. I believe political issues have a very clear answer as being right or wrong a lot more than people want to admit, and even when they don't have a clear answer, it is imperative to fully commit, otherwise it will end in a worse result. I don't think radicality comes necessarily from going too far left or right. I feel very strongly about my positions on many topics.

In my country, centrist parties just mean "rightwing but will support a bill from a leftwing ruling party if that party gives us a ministry or gov department to run"

A two party system doesn't allow for nuance or dissenting opinions. I consider myself very liberal in most things. But I don't strictly fit in the American liberal box. I think a gay couple should be able to get married, buy a machine gun, buy any drug they want at a corner store, see a doctor at no cost outside of tax, do whatever they want to their bodies, a robust support system should exist for their children, own land, do whatever they want on their land, open a cash business and do a whole bunch of other conflicting things. The world isn't black and white.

https://youtu.be/zJr4rZazQy4?is=ZknHP7XE9LJumYgD

A pure centrist is someone who is able to evaluate the philosophies of both of the political parties and see multiple ways than they are projected by either party. The most important role of a centrist, is to decide for themselves what they personally think is right. I think Centrists have gotten bastardized and demonized thanks to bad actors who treat it as just a way to sit in the middle until they decide to pick which party they align with.

That's not the purpose of being a centrist.

The fact that so many people do not know or care of the roles of independent and centrist beliefs is embarrassingly sad.

Context and culture dependent.

In the US today, I take it to mean a Republican who is too embarrassed to associate with Trump any longer but still too brainwashed to express any criticism about the political party their parent(s) raised them in.

The problem with thinking about politics as having very few positions you can take, is that you lose all nuances.

You can take any topic, and broadly list them on a spectrum of; wants more of it | wants the current amount of it | wants less of it.

In that world, there's only three takes. Then we can list a few issues, like; Immigration, income tax, capital tax, property tax, military spending, healthcare spending, school spending.

That's 7 very high level topics, causing 2187 unique positions in a tripolar world. If you expand that to 12 topics you care about, you're having 533 thousand different positions.

If you then expand the choices a bit from 3 options, to 5 options. For the 7 topics you'll now have 78 thousand positions and for the 12 topics 244 million positions.

All of this to say, political stand points is a fairly complicated multi dimensional vector. Forcing us to some degree to focus at singular issues at a time and dumbing down how we communicate it to find people we have some things in common with - But the world has dumbed it down too much, especially in the US, 30 years ago it was common politicians around the world could have their own opinions within topics that wasn't a part of the core ideology of their political party - That's pretty much dead today.

If you think "none of my beliefs are radical," then you're a conservative. You don't want change.

Labels are an over-simplification of the real world. This post sounds like you are trying to shoehorn a complex reality into a simple label, like the label really means anything.

You got it backwards. You are a complex being with complex beliefs.

In a two-party system, having a collection of positions that does not align well with either makes you an independent, not necessarily a centrist.

Centrist is often used to describe someone who is aligned with a party, but holds mild or compromised versions of that party's positions. It can also describe someone who wants things to stay mostly as they are with any changes being incremental, but one might reasonably describe that position as conservative.

depends on which countries political centrism. in the us, its mostly Center right as the "middle.

I don’t feel like left and right wing are actually meaningful abstractions of human behaviour. Like, are those political wings reflective of people’s tendency to favour in-groups over outgroups or favour universality? Sort of, but not really! The wings are more like buckets of policy concepts that are more rooted in history of how governments and parties developed than anything fundamental. It’s an imperfect tool where people will, for instance, vote Tory because they think they’re better at economy, but not agree on their social policies.

I'd describe myself as a centerist because I'm sick to death of all this manufactured right vs left divisive bullshit.

The real problem is the ultra-rich hoarding all the wealth and imposing their psychotic beliefs on everyone else. I don't see that as a leftist POV, I see it as a realistic take on a real social problem.

centrist is sort of a meaningless category, but it often seems to refer to what was once called a Progressive Conservative or Neo-Liberal.

and remember, if you go far enough left, you get your guns back!

Sounds like you could be. Why is it important to know?

I think it's all relative tbh. E.g in Nazi Germany the only centrist position would be slightly less fascist than the existing society, whereas our "centrist" position would seem like far-leftism in their society.

(If you think religion is politics): At different points in hapistory, some things are off the table, like atheism, paganism. I heard Soviet Russia outlawed religion, too - so even Christianity, in some places at some points, is off the table

New technology also makes some positions more palatable, or even possible, than others.

• If we only knew how to produce consumer scale electricity from coal combustion, any talks of reducing climate change would be seen as regressive; in modern reality, we hope to fix the climate by adopting newer and more elegant technologies to phase out old ones, so it is a progressive position.
• some historians argue that slavery was literally more palatable to historical people than modern ones, who were living in a world without industrialisation, hence more manpower was needed to do all manner of "basic" things like large scale agriculture.

Hope nothing I've said offends, this is supposed to be a neutral comment and not further an agenda.

So centrism accepts a particular framework for discussing politics. One historically grounded in traditional liberalism and the hedgemony all politics since really the 1700's has sat under. Within that context left and right are two approaches, two forms of liberalism.

You can take other approaches to understanding politics. For example, you can to a more vertical, issue based approach, where individuals, institutions, etc.. are represented by "baskets" of interests.

depends on whose saying it. some like me calls myself left of center because im going by historical divide but someone who derogatorially says centerist is talking right of center that because of rightward movement could be considered center in the us. granted this center is messed up because the right here is largely extreme right and they are balanced vs a right that goes from extreme to somewhat. Now the rehetoric from our extreme right paints someone like me who is left of center as some extreme leftist because I want progressive taxes, regulation, and universal social safety nets. whats funny is some parts of those are conservative. like collecting taxes instead of debt and having regulation rather than the government running the things. conservatives have been in favor of regulation and taxes in the past believe it or not. in the us.

Centrist means you’re right leaning

A centrist is someone that's too afraid to admit they're a conservative.

Centrist means you have no strong feelings one way or another.