Militant Centrism Weaponizes Legal Exclusion

A political posture where centrist elites prioritize protecting a technocratic status quo by using legal, administrative and technical tools—candidate exclusions, security classifications, financial penalties, managerial rule changes—to preempt or disable mass electoral challenges rather than persuading voters. It reframes some 'liberal' governance as coercive maintenance of elite equilibrium rather than open contestation. — If this pattern spreads, it changes how democracies fail and how opposition forces are neutralized: the core threat becomes institutional capture via rule‑setting and lawfare, not only partisan mobilization or popular authoritarianism.