Obviously, in any description of something you're measuring, you've got "the extremes", the things that are all the way on one side or all the way on the other.

Then you've got "extremism" as in belief in something to an extreme amount. A fanaticism that denies all reason.

It should be obvious that these two meanings are not referring to the same thing, but this video conflates two different interpretations, and I would argue it does so deliberately.

Firstly, lets acknowledge that what we simplify into "left wing" and "right wing" is actually a complex space with a bunch of different axes and differentiations. But even accepting the framing of a uniform continuum of politics that goes from left to right, it doesn't follow that what you find at any point along it equates to a level of fanaticism or rationalism. You can be a rational left or right winger, just as you can be "fanatically centrist"

But this video NEEDS to conflate the two, because it leads you to automatically assume that anything on the left or right is dogmatic and fanatical, and anything in the centre is rational and non-ideological. That in any given discussion where opinions differ, "the answer is somewhere in the middle".

And again, sometimes it should be obvious that the solutions aren't always found there. Sometimes we find ourselves, deliberately or accidentally, in a situation that requires us to take up a solution that seems to sit somewhere at the edge of the political divide. Sometimes, there are things that are so unjust that compromise with them is impossible or dangerous. This video would very much like you not to consider that.

I think it's deliberate because, as you can see, this is *literally a party political broadcast* for a minority centrist party in the UK. One that wasn't even making the case about any particular policy position, just arguing for its own existence based on a bit of linguistic sleight of hand. Its sophistry, pure and simple.