American-Style Centrism and French Politics

In writing about centrism my emphasis has generally been on American political discourse, and the American political spectrum, over the course of American history. However, reflecting the fact that centrism is an updated classic conservatism extending far beyond the American tradition (indeed, originated in Western Europe), and that American politics has unavoidably influenced politics elsewhere (especially within other Western nations), it is easy enough to find similar thinking elsewhere--and indeed I had occasion to write about such centrism in the British Labour Party, and especially the evidences of it under Keir Starmer's leadership.

Some time ago Jacob Collins had occasion in a profile of Bernard-Henri Lévy to point out the presence of the essentially tendency in French politics, with Lévy a key exponent via his particular brand of anti-leftism equating all social change with totalitarianism horseshoe theory-style, and exalting a "pragmatic" capitalist model as the only viable path for modern societies. Indeed, Collins explicitly points out the specifically American precedent, mentioning Daniel Bell's The End of Ideology, Hannah Arendt's theorizing, and others that made Lévy a latecomer to the game back in the 1970s, but nevertheless joining it in a moment in which, in France at least, doing so could be the basis of a long run as an intellectual "rock star" due to the epochal turn then just getting underway in the political life of France and the rest of the world.