Recent exercises in taking stock after one year of Trump 2.0 – for many an eternity of terrifying news and political traumas – tended to leave something out: the fact that, a mere 12 months ago, plenty of pundits (and politicians, for that matter) were instructing us to accept that a global “vibe shift” in favor of the right had taken place. And that, in the face of what supposedly “felt” like a landslide, resistance was pointless and “cringe”.
Well, it doesn’t feel like that today. But understanding why observers not generally in the pro-Trump propaganda business rushed to portray the spirit of the age as effectively far-right is important. A way of thinking occasionally dubbed “reactionary centrism” plays an important role; it could yet again become influential in hindering or at least holding up post-Trump radical reforms which US democracy desperately requires.
Consultant and political communications specialist Aaron Huertas coined the expression “reactionary centrism” in 2018. The basic idea is that self-declared moderates claim equally to oppose extremes on the right and on the left – but hard-hitting criticism is reserved almost exclusively for the left (partly, perhaps, because the presumed audience is expected to already know how bad things are on the right).
This perceptive observation was inadvertently vindicated in thousands of columns that contributed to a moral panic about “wokeness” and “identity politics”. It convinced readers that, sure, Trump was horrible, but what was happening “on campus” (translation: anecdotes from one or two elite places, endlessly recycled) was also putting US democracy in peril.
The point is not that what progressives do must never be criticized; the point is that the relentless drive to find fault with both sides equally results in a sense of (false) equivalence among those taking cues from supposedly trustworthy centrists.
This dynamic may well have not made a difference in the election outcome in 2024. But it certainly made it easier to see that election outcome as confirmation of the reactionary centrist diagnosis of everything supposedly wrong with Democrats. Trump’s victory had to be understood as a legitimate “backlash” against “overreach” by the left – a story about what caused what that observers outside the US keep repeating as it helps push their own anti-left agendas.
Nevermind that Kamala Harris did not take any baits from Trump to emphasize her own “identity”; nevermind that she ran on socioeconomic promises (however tepid) and warnings about what Trump would do to democracy and the rule of law (as we now know, the most dire warning turned out to underestimate the regime).
The other iron law of reactionary centrism – beyond the asymmetry that is hiding behind the seeming even-handedness – is that only the left and liberals really have agency. The right just reacts – everything is always backlash, never a self-generated political project. As a result, it takes a while to wake up to the reality that, for instance, Stephen Miller’s ethnic cleansing project is self-generated, and not only a response to “legitimate grievances” about border security.
Many liberals, after the double shock of Trump and Brexit in 2016, confessed their supposed mistakes and performed contrition, along the lines of: we failed to pay attention to the “left-behind”; we must book political safaris in Appalachia; we must closely study Hillbilly Elegy to demonstrate compassion for the heartland. Of course, self-criticism and checking one’s priors is a good thing. But behind the ostentatious displays of “we failed to listen” was also a profound narcissism: if only we acted (or at least talked) differently, all would be well. Only liberals, or so the assumption goes again, have agency; performing contrition reinforced that flattering image.
Even worse, this narcissism keeps shoring up the right’s claim that there is a “real America” and that only they speak for it. As any viewer of Sunday morning shows has noticed, Republicans can malign city dwellers without anyone batting an eyelid; Obama saying something about guns and religion in rural areas triggers a multiyear scandal. It would not even occur to anyone to demand an apology from GOP members for insulting all urban dwellers. The asymmetry is taken for granted; liberals just accept it. This is what victory in a culture war looks like: Democrats accept the cultural framings enforced by the other side, even though polls would suggest that the liberals’ positions are often more popular (or, dare one say, reflect more about “real America” than the far-right fantasies pushed by Fox and its far-right friends).
Centrism is not in and of itself illegitimate. But its defenders should ask themselves hard questions about what it can possibly mean in 2026. In the 20th century, it was important to position oneself against fascism and authoritarian state socialism simultaneously. But today, a reflexive position in the middle – for the middle must by definition be reasonable – makes little sense in a completely asymmetrical political landscape: you are under no moral obligations to become a fan of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, but to equate them with Trump (or say they are worse, as Wall Street leaders have done) means contributing to the destruction of democracy.
By the same token, a centrism that might be called procedural – the imperative being to always seek compromise – is not necessarily nefarious; in fact, it is the very ethos that the functioning of our political system, with its separated powers, requires. But today, only one side ever lauds “bipartisanship”, whereas the other uses legitimate power to the max and often goes beyond.
The Joe Biden years were accompanied by a chorus of “Don’t overdo it.” A post-Trump US may well see a revival of the greatest hits of the reactionary background singers. Think before listening.
Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University
