Those people are just leftists trying to colonize the middle. The truth is there is no middle. You're either a globalist communist or a white supremacist.

They are either in denial or liars, yeah. "Centrist" at the very least means they support the status quo, which is currently our societies driving off a cliff to their suicide. They might be too afraid to say otherwise and keep their heads down, but that's never going to change anything.

I suspect it's because something big happening means they can't live comfortably. They have views, and even feel strongly about them, but don't want to deal with all the difficulties of making them happen.

The expectation is that some miracle will happen, and blows and protests won't be needed. They don't want to live in fear of friends or vice versa, so the idea of big stuff happening scares them.

Centrism is nothing. It's a position of those who don't want to understand anything beyond the surface level spoon-fed narrative. They are the ones who say "don't worry about what is happening outside! Just focus on yourself," pretending that it is still possible to ignore the ideologies infiltrating every facet of life and that not thinking about anything beyond the immediate present will somehow make you immune to the economic, social, and political decay. They are the ones who accept the decay because "it is what it is," because they are comfortable just enough to not want to rock the boat.

Today's centrist is tomorrow's "far-right" extremist.

If you say you are in the center you are ceding control of what you believe because the Overton Window keeps changing.

"Its both sides" has a valid point. Good people on both sides, as Trump would say.

Shitposting aside, I'm an inverted centrist. Political compass-wise, I'm quite close to center, but I am heavily opinionated on politics. Just I have what that very limited test would call conflicting opinions. Left, right, up, down. Add 'em all up, get "0". But I have certainly voiced my opinions.

The "apathetic center", however, is defined by their apathy. They aren't centrist because they believe in the power of taxation as a sword and shield in economic warfare while disagreeing with the usage of tax generally, or some other odd combination of strong opinions, If I'm adding 50 to -50 to get 0, they're adding 2 or 3 to -2, -3. The only reason they voice any opinion at all, is because the media tells them to. They voice their pre-recorded lines, beep boop beep, and in their effort to distance themselves from any meaningful political views, they have now became the unwitting pawns of it.

In short, to answer your rhetorical, the apathetic center is populated almost entirely by Useful Idiots.

The "centrists" are going to have fun in a one party state.

centrist

Since I've heard that word used to describe AOC, I just assume someone who identifies/is identified as being centrist is far left until proven otherwise.

Centrists™

almost as if... gasp... they are leftists that want to appear smarter than everyone

I consider myself centrist because that is where I tend fall politically when discussing policies. I hold some views one can consider left-wing, some that can be seen as right-wing. Politics isn't some zero-sum game where I have to 100% agree with ALL left-wing ideas and 100% disagree with ALL right-wing ideas, and visa versa.

Here's a post I made on this subject before, giving some quick examples: https://kotakuinaction2.win/p/11ROLUYMwX/x/c/4DtCYW3j63N

I'm not American. Maybe "centrist" means something different here, or maybe I am indeed right-wing simply because of how far the overton window has shifted towards the left. I don't vote exclusively for a single party. Every election, I look at all the policies from the different parties, and vote for whichever I agree with the most. More often, the parties I do vote for ends up right of center, but I have voted left of center before.

Now, with me considering myself centrist because of my political views, does this mean I am some fence-sitter, fingers-in-ears singing "laa-laa-laa-la", while saying shit like "just ignore them they have no power", or "its both sides" or "dont be as bad as them" (to quote OP)?

Fuck no. The left has ALL the power. They control everything from academia to big tech. They decide what we are allowed to see, hear and say. The censor those who disagree with them on literally anything. If you say something they don't like, they can deplatform you and literally take away your ability to feed your family. They can riot, burn and murder to their hearts content, and the media will cover for them, but if anyone on the right does even 1/100th of that, they get smeared as violent terrorists. Not to mention, they now have managed to pull off the biggest and most blatant election fraud in history.

We NEED backlash against leftists, and we need it yesterday. We now know that the left has so much power, not even the law can stop them from doing whatever they want. I fully support anyone who fights against the left, because if we don't, 1984 will become reality and we all stand to lose a lot of our freedoms.

I'm a centrist insofar as my political beliefs range across the compass and I don't tend to play loyal to any team. It doesn't mean I'm blind the to rabid horror of authoritarian left and their march to destroy all that was good in the West. I might think that healthcare needs to be minimally available to all, it doesn't mean I'm not a massive western chauvinist who knows for the fact that European culture is the greatest culture to have ever exist and we will all be poor for its loss.