The reactionary right is actively stripping rights away from people in the US and attempting to turn the country into a theocracy by re-entrenching patriarchal hierarchies and forcing us to live under their weird religious rules.
this meme is misrepresenting a centrist misunderstanding modern liberals and conservatives with a literal slave owner and a slave.
those parties are not analagous.
centrists don't believe that slave owners and slaves are the same, and it is lazy and detrimental to misunderstand and then misrepresent any group so that others misunderstand political concepts as poorly as this poster repeatedly does.
OP is simply trying to stoke contempt, which is unhelpful.
they are memers operating on bad information, not activists.
there are plenty of valid jokes you can make about centrists, this poster repeatedly misunderstands and misrepresents political concepts as something to be reviled and disdained for no other reason than to breed polarization.
centrists don't believe that slave owners and slaves are the same, and it is lazy and detrimental to misunderstand and then misrepresent any group so that others misunderstand political concepts as poorly as this poster repeatedly does.
Let me dissect the joke for you:
The overwhelmingly vast majority of people proclaiming to be (enlightened)centrists are in fact hugely regressive rightwing conservatives.
And they will happily vote the political party full of people who publicly judge black people for having slaveholders among their ancestors, without a clue as to how that may have happened.
"The overwhelmingly vast majority of people proclaiming to be (enlightened)centrists are in fact hugely regressive rightwing conservatives."
incorrect.
The point of the meme is that centrists claiming to see both sides of an issue would see something as extreme as slavery similarly, which is inaccurate trolling.
If your "joke" is simply to make things up to sow discord, you're no better than MAGA.
making people angry at entire groups for zero reason based on inaccurate information is not a "joke".
also, bear in mind that the post history of this OP troll is fraught with misinformation.
The point of the meme is that centrists claiming to see both sides of an issue would see something as extreme as slavery similarly, which is inaccurate trolling.
I mean, are the modern republican party's positions actually that much better? Voter disenfranchisement; removing human rights for women, lgbt people, and other minorities; economic policies that will harm nearly everyone but themselves; colluding with enemy countries; working with Nazis; I mean look at this collection of quotes from the republican candidate for governor of North Carolina. What the fuck is this?
Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it [slavery] back. I would certainly buy a few
- Mark Robinson, North Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial candidate
You're telling me this guy wouldn't bring back slavery the nanosecond he thought he could? If not, you're deluding yourself; he literally says as much verbatim. The republican party is JUST AS BAD, IF NOT WORSE than the people who fought to keep slavery. Anyone who claims to see "both sidez" is quite literally saying that those quotes and the democrats' policies are equivalently acceptable. That's basically the OP's meme.
"are the modern republican party's positions actually that much better?"
No, but this is conflating centrists with Republicans, which is lazy, inaccurate pot-stirring well, they could have just made the subject of mockery a conservative, witchwood make the comic extrapolation sensible instead of blandly incorrect.
"The republican party is JUST AS BAD, IF NOT WORSE"
thank you for agreeing with me very loudly.
this meme should target conservatives, rather than centrists, you may have missed the point of the meme.
"That's basically the OP's meme."
no, it isn't.
name is about centrists, not about conservatives or Republicans. If it was, the meme would make sense.
as the meme is, it serves no purpose except to blur political nuances and get you angry.
Does "centrist" not mean "holding views between those of the popular political positions"? Someone who is even half as bad as a republican is still wildly unacceptable. Note that choosing your views based on your own evaluation, whichever corner of the political spectrum that lands you on, doesn't make you a centrist; it is your final views being between the common reference points that makes you a centrist, regardless of your method for getting there.
The meme is using a metaphor to expose the reality that you seemingly agreed with.
It's using slavery as the analogue for the modern reactionary fascism that the right has been deploying to strip people's rights away.
Furthermore there were "centrists" in both cases who dismissed the liberation efforts as extremist.
Edit: I saw the title again, and realized that may be what you're referring to so my reply didn't really address what you were talking about.
I suggest you look at the child-separation camps and research the phrases "white genocide" and "replacement theory" if you want to know what modern white supremacy looks like. Also, look to the black lives matter protests if you want to see what happens when people protest the white supremacy that touches their lives most frequently.
it's an extremist's imagining of politics, because they don't understand what politics is enough to make a relevant meme.
"I suggest you look at the child-separation camps and research the phrases "white genocide" and "replacement theory" if..."
it's great that some of you guys are finally looking these things up, but don't assume that everybody is as ignorant of history and how it relates to modern life as the cloud who howl in support of bigotry and trolling.
they want to fight others as long as their group is bigger, there's no more to this meme than that.
it's great that some of you guys are finally looking these things up, but don't assume that everybody is as ignorant of history and how it relates to modern life as the cloud who howl in support of bigotry and trolling.
Who was the one who needed examples of white supremacy again?
"this respectful attitude really does win hearts and minds!"
love to break it to you: your notion that respect counters bigotry is not rooted in fact.
it's consistently amazing the sense of holmesian entitlement one can sow and reap by making entirely groundless assumptions about others based on your own lack of information and then straining your shoulder patting yourself on the back over ypur capability to imagine.
none of what you think happened, happened.
you fantasized a hearty, researched conversation between your narrative and your own assumptions, while ignoring the available contradicting information.
centrists don't believe that slave owners and slaves are the same
Centrists don’t believe that now… because leftists and progressives won that battle...
You seem to not understand the Middle ground fallacy. Which is what this meme is making fun of.
If you’ve built your personal political philosophy on the middle ground fallacy (it seems like you may have given how upset you are) then you got a lot of rethinking to do.
"Centrists don’t believe that now… because leftists and progressives won that battle..."
your contention is that further back in the day, people were confusing slaves and slave owners?
you sure about that one?
"You seem to not understand the Middle ground fallacy"
in what way is somebody knowing the difference between centrist and conservative policies a fallacy?
"Which is what this meme is making fun of."
it really isn't, you should check the other comments around this post and see how many other people, like you, are incorrectly identifying the point of this meme differently.
everybody has a different idea of what this flawed meme shows because it's a Rorschach test for how little you understand centrism, horseshoe theory, or your middle ground fallacy.
"If you’ve built your personal political philosophy on the middle ground fallacy..."
I understand your confusion given you don't understand the difference between political ideologies to the point where they are identical to you.
If you've built your political ideology on proximal repetition rather than critical analysis, you have a lot more than rethinking to do.
in what way is somebody knowing the difference between centrist and conservative policies a fallacy?
The meme is not about knowing the difference, it’s a criticism of the position itself. Truth is truth. The truth doesn’t care what the center of any political debate is.
To be a centrist is to say well this side is saying one thing that side is saying this other thing we should try to average them out to get to the best conclusion. That is a logical fallacy.
The truth may or may not be in the center of the political debate, but that is not because it’s the center of the political debate.
To quote the Wikipedia article you’ve already been linked:
An example of an argument to moderation would be considering two statements about the colour of the Sky on Earth during the day – one claiming, correctly, that the sky is Blue, and another claiming that it is Yellow – and incorrectly concluding that the sky is the intermediate colour, Green.
If you've built your political ideology on proximal repetition rather than critical analysis
If you mean proximally repeating a point on the political compass then you’re agreeing with the point of the meme.
"It’s making fun of the fence sitters in the discussion of whether or not slavery is bad."
nope, it's conflating slaves and slave owners, implying that centrists can't tell the difference, which 1. is a problem a fraction of a percent of extreme conservatives can be theorized to indulge in, and in no rational, accurate way related to centrists.
it is a lazy meme to get you all blindly riled at any buzzword target without considering the validity or content.