I'm not sure why the idea of the Overton window came to be mocked on the subreddit (don't know if it's any different now, I've only recently migrated over and the culture here feels similar yet not the same), but it's totally real, and leads to shit like this happening: a fascist interviewing a conservative in denial, both agreeing about something ridiculously stupid, and passing it off as bipartisan consensus.
It's mocked because the OW is shifting rightward, and has been for decades. The slight leftward bumps aren't as exciting as liberal Twitters thinks they are.
That makes sense. The idea of "shifting the Overton Window" by getting overly excited over a platform that's, frankly, not even very great, is like the whole "political harm reduction" bs. The window still shifts rightward, yet somehow it's counted as a win.
What seemed to happen on the sub, intentionally or otherwise, is after the phrase itself got a mocking automod response, likely for the reason you mentioned, people started mocking the concept itself, as if believing in its existence was laughable.
Also heard some people talk about how the left shouldn't embrace it because it's a right wing idea. Which never made any fucking sense to me, and just felt like sports team mentality.
Like, yeah, the reactionaries figured out how to game public opinion by going hard right with their talking points and putting out insane ideas so often that they began to be seen as reasonable, moving the political reference frame to the right.
But we can't learn from them and counter it with hard left talking points just because the baddies figured it out first?!
after the phrase itself got a mocking automod response, likely for the reason you mentioned, people started mocking the concept itself,
I'll admit I've done this like an unthinking dumbass, but I think in general I still uphold the AutoModerator party line. The Overton Window as a concept is okay I suppose, but only when used to analyze historical trends. The second you start biting your tongue because, "oh gosh, my position might fall outside the Overton Window and alienate some folks," you are being a lib. When you start arguing in favor of immigration because "immigrant labor makes line go up" instead of because "immigrants are just as human as you and me" you are being a lib. Immigration status is an artificial caste system which should be abolished, and there's no point of beating around the bush. When you say "the police need to be reformed" instead of "the police need to be abolished," you're being a lib. The police are our class enemies, are irredeemably racist on a systemic level, and there is no place for them in a civilized world.
We should always be in the habit of making maximalist demands, and a fixation on the Overton Window confuses what should be crystal clear to us from a rhetorical standpoint. That said, there's nothing wrong with analyzing how the boundaries of "reasonable discourse" have shifted over time, and this is exactly what the Overton Window describes. There are material reasons behind this, and it is important to understand them if we want to do anything about it.
Marxists traditionally lean more on the "Base and Superstructure" metaphor than the Overton Window, but both are capable of making the point. Personally, I find the Base and Superstructure metaphor more complete because it makes the relationship between material conditions and cultural interpretations explicit, while the Overton Window focuses solely on the realm of culture. In other words, the Overton Window accurately identifies a phenomenon, but it doesn't offer us as much in terms of understanding the mechanisms behind this phenomenon. Meanwhile...
In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely [the] relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political, and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead, sooner or later, to the transformation of the whole, immense, superstructure. In studying such transformations, it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic, or philosophic—in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production.
In other words, the ideological struggle that we engage in (which the Overton Window is derived from) is a component of the cultural superstructure, which is determined at a foundational level by the material conditions and economic relationships of its participants (the economic base), and as the material conditions shift, so too does the Overton Window (and superstructure as a whole). This shouldn't be boiled down to economic determinism though. While the base primarily influences the superstructure, the base isn't immune to being influenced by the superstructure in turn. They act in a sort of feedback loop.
The slight leftward bumps aren’t as exciting as liberal Twitters thinks they are.
I disagree. Street protests on the scale of what we saw a few months ago, with cross-race and cross-class participation, means far more than the chronically online give it credit for. There's a spectre haunting the United States...
Thanks.
I skipped the discord because I don't like using discord, so when news about the Lemmy instance reached me, registration was closed, then I kinda forgot for a bit.
I'm not sure why the idea of the Overton window came to be mocked on the subreddit (don't know if it's any different now, I've only recently migrated over and the culture here feels similar yet not the same), but it's totally real, and leads to shit like this happening: a fascist interviewing a conservative in denial, both agreeing about something ridiculously stupid, and passing it off as bipartisan consensus.
It's mocked because the OW is shifting rightward, and has been for decades. The slight leftward bumps aren't as exciting as liberal Twitters thinks they are.
That makes sense. The idea of "shifting the Overton Window" by getting overly excited over a platform that's, frankly, not even very great, is like the whole "political harm reduction" bs. The window still shifts rightward, yet somehow it's counted as a win.
What seemed to happen on the sub, intentionally or otherwise, is after the phrase itself got a mocking automod response, likely for the reason you mentioned, people started mocking the concept itself, as if believing in its existence was laughable.
Also heard some people talk about how the left shouldn't embrace it because it's a right wing idea. Which never made any fucking sense to me, and just felt like sports team mentality.
Like, yeah, the reactionaries figured out how to game public opinion by going hard right with their talking points and putting out insane ideas so often that they began to be seen as reasonable, moving the political reference frame to the right.
But we can't learn from them and counter it with hard left talking points just because the baddies figured it out first?!
I'll admit I've done this like an unthinking dumbass, but I think in general I still uphold the AutoModerator party line. The Overton Window as a concept is okay I suppose, but only when used to analyze historical trends. The second you start biting your tongue because, "oh gosh, my position might fall outside the Overton Window and alienate some folks," you are being a lib. When you start arguing in favor of immigration because "immigrant labor makes line go up" instead of because "immigrants are just as human as you and me" you are being a lib. Immigration status is an artificial caste system which should be abolished, and there's no point of beating around the bush. When you say "the police need to be reformed" instead of "the police need to be abolished," you're being a lib. The police are our class enemies, are irredeemably racist on a systemic level, and there is no place for them in a civilized world.
We should always be in the habit of making maximalist demands, and a fixation on the Overton Window confuses what should be crystal clear to us from a rhetorical standpoint. That said, there's nothing wrong with analyzing how the boundaries of "reasonable discourse" have shifted over time, and this is exactly what the Overton Window describes. There are material reasons behind this, and it is important to understand them if we want to do anything about it.
Marxists traditionally lean more on the "Base and Superstructure" metaphor than the Overton Window, but both are capable of making the point. Personally, I find the Base and Superstructure metaphor more complete because it makes the relationship between material conditions and cultural interpretations explicit, while the Overton Window focuses solely on the realm of culture. In other words, the Overton Window accurately identifies a phenomenon, but it doesn't offer us as much in terms of understanding the mechanisms behind this phenomenon. Meanwhile...
In other words, the ideological struggle that we engage in (which the Overton Window is derived from) is a component of the cultural superstructure, which is determined at a foundational level by the material conditions and economic relationships of its participants (the economic base), and as the material conditions shift, so too does the Overton Window (and superstructure as a whole). This shouldn't be boiled down to economic determinism though. While the base primarily influences the superstructure, the base isn't immune to being influenced by the superstructure in turn. They act in a sort of feedback loop.
I disagree. Street protests on the scale of what we saw a few months ago, with cross-race and cross-class participation, means far more than the chronically online give it credit for. There's a spectre haunting the United States...
I hope to god you're right
Welcome aboard!
Thanks.
I skipped the discord because I don't like using discord, so when news about the Lemmy instance reached me, registration was closed, then I kinda forgot for a bit.