alt-center

English

Etymology

Modelled on alt-right and alt-left.

Noun

alt-center (uncountable)

1. (slang, politics, derogatory) Abbreviated form of alternative center, modeled on alt-right, alt-left; a set of centrist ideologies, especially ones which delegitimise political dissent and/or depend on (e.g. racial) conspiracy theories, whose presence is mainly confined to the Internet.

   Coordinate terms: alt-left, alt-right, alt-light, radical centrism

   • 2016 December 16, Sam Kriss, “The Rise of the Alt-Center”, in Slate:

     If Trump’s devoted hype squad of pustulent, oleaginous neo-Nazis can now be euphemized as the “alt-right,” the Eichenwalds and Jefferys of the world might have turned themselves into something similar: an alt-center, pushing its own failed political doctrine with all the same vehemence, idiocy, and spleen.

   • 2017 March 22, Baynard Woods, “The Kids Are Alt-Right”, in Salt Lake City Weekly:

     Now there's been a spate of stories talking about the "alt-left" and even the "alt-center."

   • 2017 May 18, Adam H. Johnson, “Stop using the term 'populist' for right-wing demagogues”, in Los Angeles Times:

     Instead, pundits dismiss the idea of elites as such by trafficking in this silly, alt-center notion that the left and right are chasing equally fictitious boogeymen.

Alternative forms

• alt-centre

Synonyms

• alt-middle