THE CENTER IS NOT HOLDING

WHAT IS THE CENTER?

In The Center Is Not Holding, Manuel Hinds warns that the United States is entering a dangerous phase of political polarization, where opposing extremes—embodied by authoritarian figures like “The Prince” and rising left-wing populists like Zohran Mamdani—are eroding the democratic center. Hinds introduces Mamdani, a charismatic, radical Democratic Socialist who recently won New York’s Democratic mayoral primary, as a potential disruptor who may either challenge or unintentionally strengthen authoritarianism by driving moderate voters toward the lesser of two evils. He highlights the DSA’s ideology, which surpasses traditional social democracy, aiming to replace capitalism through collective ownership and radical reforms. Drawing a parallel with Germany in the 1930s, Hinds argues that when both political extremes gain traction, they legitimize each other and marginalize liberal democracy, accelerating the collapse of the political center. The true center, he concludes, should not be a midpoint between left and right ideologies, but a firm commitment to liberal democratic principles—upholding freedom, mutual respect, and the rule of law regardless of ideological goals.

THE ARRIVAL OF ZOHRAN MAMDANI

Hey Jack! We need to talk about the aftermath of the Bunkers Buster attack—something that already happened, but we still don’t know exactly what it was. Like, we’re not sure if the Damocles’ sword we saw falling a week ago killed Damocles or not. But no one’s talking about that. Now, everyone’s just focused on Zohran Mamdani!”

“Who’s him?”

Come on, Jack! He’s the 33-year-old who won the Democratic primaries for New York City mayor. He defeated once-powerful Andrew Cuomo. He is running for Mayor, but his ultimate goal is the Presidency of the United States, even though he cannot run for that position because he was born outside the country. His campaign showed a presidential candidate's flair and focused on The Prince as his main opponent. He walked through Manhattan, drawing supporters, and reached the Battery at the head of large crowds.

“Who is he? What is he for?”

He is the son of a professor at Columbia University and an Indian filmmaker. He was born in Kampala, Uganda, and moved to the United States when he was 7 years old. He is a Muslim and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

“Well, I am glad that a force that could become very strong will oppose The Prince... They will help to restore democracy,” said Jack.

“Don’t be so sure,” Nicco said, appearing in the doorway. “If he is an extremist, he might help The Prince stay in power by convincing many that The Prince is the lesser of two evils, or substitute him with a regime that could be as bad or worse than The Prince’s.”

“Is he an extremist?” asked Jack.

HIS PROPOSALS FOR NYC

Nicco ordered a cup of coffee and began to speak.

He is proposing eliminating fares on all city buses, providing free childcare, setting a minimum wage of $30 by 2030, implementing a rent freeze on “stabilized” apartments (about 960,000 apartments subject to rent controls, many of which are abandoned because owners lose money when renting them), establishing city-owned grocery stores that will sell at lower prices partly because they will not pay taxes, arresting Benjamin Netanyahu if he shows up in NYC, regulating delivery applications, creating a Mom-and-Pop Stores Czar to support small stores, and increasing taxes on the wealthiest and whiter neighborhoods.”^[1]

“He sounds like a run-of-the-mill populist…”

“No, look at his party’s ideology.”

THEIR IDEOLOGY

“What is the DSA ideology?”

“On their web page, they say the following:”

“Capitalism is a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit. We must replace it with democratic socialism, a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society.

We believe there are many avenues that feed into the democratic road to socialism. Our vision pushes further than historic social democracy and leaves behind authoritarian visions of socialism in the dustbin of history.

We want a democracy that creates space for us all to flourish not just survive and answers the fundamental questions of our lives with the input of all. We want to collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation. We want the multiracial working class united in solidarity instead of divided by fear. We want to win “radical” reforms like single-payer Medicare for All, defunding the police/refunding communities, the Green New Deal, and more as a transition to a freer, more just life.

We want a democracy powered by everyday people. The capitalist class tells us we are powerless, but together we can take back control.”^[2]

“This is quite radical for the United States, where “socialism” has usually meant social democracy, like in the Nordic countries. The DSA, as mentioned in its declaration above, goes further than this, although it doesn’t specify how far.

But they claim they want a democracy and say that they are leaving behind authoritarian visions of socialism in the dustbin of history…” Jack said.

Nicco answered.

“All communist countries said the same, and most of them included the word “democratic” in their names—like communist East Germany, which was officially called the Democratic Republic of Germany. I am not claiming they are truly communist, but they are at least somewhere between communists and the Nordic countries. They are to the left of Bernie Sanders, probably by a significant margin. They, for example, support the nationalization of energy production—and this is just one example of the key economic forces that shape our lives they think should be nationalized—they could nationalize the entire economy within this framework. Don’t you think this is radical?”

“You are right... I suspect they are much more radical than they appear. For starters, they are appealing to a mix of racial and social resentments.”

“This could mark the start of a push to empty the center, a process that represents the final step in the march toward tyranny. When politics move to the extremes, people are forced to choose between increasingly undesirable candidates, eventually leading to someone who can impose tyranny.”

“Yes, you are right. Who said, “The center cannot hold?””

“The centre, the centre…it was in British English.”

THE TWO BLADES OF THE SCISSORS

“In January 1919, while sitting in his study at Thoor Ballylee, a medieval Norman tower in County Galway, Ireland, William Butler Yeats, amid a storm of terrible premonitions fueled by the devastation of World War I, the successful Russian 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, and the failing revolution in Germany in 1919, wrote his immortal poem The Second Coming, which we have quoted several times. Its first stanza describes not just what he observed around him in his times but also what we see in ours.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world;

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity^[3].

Today, the United States and the world are in a similar position. The center cannot hold. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

BETWEEN THE SCISSORS’ BLADES

The following graph shows how the center was collapsing in Germany during the late 1920s and early 1930s. From May 1928 to November 1932, as the Great Depression started and worsened, the two parties promoting tyranny instead of democracy—the Communists and Nazis—increased their votes from 4.0 million to 17.7 million. In just four years, Germany shifted from a country where extremists were pushed aside to one where half of the voters supported destroying democracy through either Nazism or communism. Note that the Communists initially dominated the political scene. The conditions for tragedy were already set. Then, the Nazis gained ground so quickly that by the last election in November 1932, the combined support of Communists plus Nazis was around 50%. Therefore, the center was vanishing by late 1932. Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933.

SOURCE: Samuel W. Mitcham Jr., Why Hitler?: The Genesis of the Nazi Reich, (Westport CT: Praeger, 1996)

This graph shows that you should not feel happy when an extreme fights another extreme for power because the extremes help each other destroy democracy. When they succeed in removing democracy, they turn on each other, and one emerges victorious. In Germany, the Nazis defeated the communists; in Russia, the absolutist communists defeated the absolutist White Russians. Initially, however, they helped each other against democracy.

“This situation is entirely different from dealing with a single extremist, whom you can isolate and manage through moderate consensus. In a society facing two extremists, their shared extremism helps them collaborate to dominate the social dialogue, both promoting the idea that social problems can only be solved through authoritarianism and violence. They can surround society with these ideas and succeed, forcing society toward one extreme or the other. Even people who prefer democracy and detest violence might support one of the extremes out of fear that the violence of the other will cause greater harm. As a result, the presence of two extremes speeds up the decline of democratic institutions.

Additionally, the presence of Left extremists can be attributed to The Prince. By demonstrating his success in gaining power through authoritarian means, he shows his opponents that this is a viable path to authority.

WHAT IS THE CENTER THAT IS NEEDED?

“I am more worried now because we seem to be entering this path of extremism of one side leading to extremism of the other,” Jack said.

Nicco agreed.

What is needed is not a center that is equally distant on the left and right, but one defined by protecting people's freedom to be either left or right and helping them find policies that serve as a peaceful compromise between these positions. The center should not dictate what the end goal of society must be but should uphold that the ends do not justify the means and that we should treat others as we want to be treated by them. What we need are people on both the left and the right who believe these fundamental principles of liberal democracy must be respected.

“The problem is that people only care about the end in terms of left and right, and don’t care about the means used to impose the one they prefer,” said Laurie, caressing her cat. “The center must be defined in terms of another axis, not that of ideological leanings but that of liberal democratic principles. We must relearn to respect each other.”

“Exactly,” Nicco said, relieved to see that Raven, the cat, approved.

…..

Manuel Hinds is a Fellow at The Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise at Johns Hopkins University. He shared the Manhattan Institute's 2010 Hayek Prize. He has worked in 35 countries as a division chief and then as a consultant to the World Bank. He was the Whitney H. Shepardson Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. His website is manuelhinds.com

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^[1] Zachary Folk, Zohran Mamdani’s Most Surprising Proposals—From City-Owned Grocery Stores to Arresting Netanhayu,Forbes, June 25, 2025, https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharyfolk/2025/06/25/zohran-mamdanis-most-surprising-proposals-from-city-owned-grocery-stores-to-arresting-netanyahu/

^[2] What is Democratic Socialism? https://www.dsausa.org/about-us/what-is-democratic-socialism/

[3] William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming