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"Centrist" has now become one of the damned terms, like Nazi and fascist and racist and transphobe. Being a centrist apparently means not that you have a moderate view, or can see good points in the arguments by both sides, but rather you are - at best - mushy, spineless, and indulging in the 'both sides are as bad as each other' fallacy (which is a fallacy because as any fule kno there is one and only one Good Right True side and one and only one Bad Evil Monster side), or at worst you are a Nazi fascist white supremacist transphobe etc. who is lying about your Bad Evil Monster views and are only pretending to be someone reasonable.
"Filthy centrist" isn't a joke anymore, it's an opinion a lot of the online left hold.
It's meant that for a long time, at least in the US. The sentiment behind "there's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos" goes back to at least 1890.
There's several different types of people who call themselves moderates or centrists, and a lot of it isn't good.
Most common is the "centrist" who considers themselves the center of the universe; they may hold any position including very radical ones but they'll still insist they are moderates.
Closely related is the "centrist" who goes along with their local consensus and thinks anyone who doesn't is bad. This local consensus, again, could be anything.
Then you've got the ones who swear they are centrists who carefully consider each of their positions, but somehow come out exactly where whatever political commentators they listen to are, and parrot those arguments without understanding. In the US this is nearly always NPR.
And you've got the ones you refer to, who take the fallacy of grey as gospel. Yes, sometimes the truth lies between the two most commonly articulated positions. But sometimes, in fact, the truth lies AT or very much more near one of those positions. Sometimes it lies BEYOND one of those positions on the same axis. Sometimes it lies off the axis. These people deserve the contempt they are given; in addition to being unthinking, they can be manipulated through one side making it's position more radical to move the middle, at least if that side can prevent the other side from responding. These are the people who just went along with woke, because the center between Ibrahim Kendi and the weaksauce opposition that was all that was allowed to be voiced was STILL woke.
...there were yellow stripes in the middle of the roads in the 1890s?
The 1890 version was 'Now if there are any who don’t want to join the procession, they had better keep out from the middle of the road or they will get run over by the band wagon.'
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