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>I’m getting pushed further and further to the right. Maybe not, it feels like to me that the Overton window[0] has been sliding left. My views on freedom of s

• jdsully 7y ago
  A one dimensional left/right view doesn't really explain our current politics very well. Factions in both parties have strong reasons to be against freedom of speech.
  • shiven 7y ago
    This. So much this. FoE is attacked from both sides. Each with their own self-serving justifications.
  • Gibbon1 7y ago
    There is a very strong tribal/identity politics thing going on with both the left and the right in the US. Scares the hell out of me.
    • aj7 7y ago
      Yeah. People with brains should be more united.
      • SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
        >Yeah. People with brains should be more united. While i don’t disagree on its face. That statement usually means “people should just be on my side”. As written above; the Overton window has been moving left, and things like not prosecuting female gential mutilation in the US, straight socialism, not settling for anything less than full gun bans, open borders - things that would have got you locked up 50 years ago are being pushed by presidential candidates and congress members. It’s moved left, and a little too far. So while I agree people with brains should be united, right now many of the balanced beliefs will get you called an alt-right Nazi.
        • wolco 7y ago
          You need a third party that takes up the middle. That allows the parties to move slowly towards the middle and shift left or right over certain issues only. Right now it is setup to move the parties apart as the choice is binary.
        • dashundchen 7y ago
          > not prosecuting female gential mutilation in the US, straight socialism, not settling for anything less than full gun bans, open borders Please don't lie. There is no mainstream Congress person or presidential candidate protecting FGM, advocating for full socialism or complete open borders. Just because you disagree with them doesn't make your projections true.
• bruceb 7y ago
  Unfortunately this is true. Some on the left have become 1980s republicans when it comes to free speech, Russia, and the goodness of big business.
  • sporkland 7y ago
    Tipper Gore and other Democrats lead the charge with the PMRC which created parental advisory stickers and age restriction on music. I felt like both sides were down to restrict expression in the 80's and 90's
• zimablue 7y ago
  Specifically on freedom of speech, the left and right oscillate tons based on who is feeling more authoritarian (the other axis). A small, very vocal portion of the identity-politics left is currently very authoritarian and anti freedom of speech but I think that's a specific current internet-influenced trend and not to do with a wider shift of the overton window on issues in general.
  • esyir 7y ago
    I agree with you on the internet-influenced part, but not on the latter portion of your argument. Even if the anti-free speech movement is small, the majority of "left-aligned media" do echo their beliefs. This to me does swing the overton window to the left.
• fullshark 7y ago
  Where? On a message board of leftists? People are self sorting into subgroups with their own distinct overton windows.
  • bitwize 7y ago
    A particular subgroup with its Overton window in a certain range is using the power of cancel culture, naming-and-shaming, etc. to see their standards applied universally. Do not underestimate this. The next frontier is identifying and punishing those who are "at risk" of transgressing identity-politics norms. I saw a few of them on Twitter crafting plans to pressure open source conferences to ban people who gave talks of the form "Making X Great Again" where X = JavaScript, unit testing, etc. on the grounds that such a title constituted "normalizing hate speech" and such people were at particularly high risk of violating relevant Codes of Conduct.
    • Apocryphon 7y ago
      The people creating them shouldn't be banned, but those titles should definitely be banned because that is a terrible and uncreative joke/reference that should have been retired by the end of the 2016 presidential elections.
      • gnaritas 7y ago
        No, they shouldn't be. Censorship is not the answer.
• Declanomous 7y ago
  Based on the views you have espoused here, I would not call you a leftist commie. It sounds like freedom of speech is your number 1 concern, which would be in character for someone with views that could be considered alt-right. Maybe you are a libertarian, which could otherwise be referred to as an anarch-capatalist, but libertarianism is in no way a leftist movement. While South Park and Eminem both 'triggered' a lot of people because of their use of obscenity, neither is leftist in any way, shape or form. South Park regularly attacks anyone who tries to change society, which is in no way a leftist mindset. As for Eminem, I can't think of a single example of left-leaning thought in any of them outside of freedom of speech. In general I think you'd have a very hard time making the claim that the overton window is sliding to the left. Maybe the overton window is moving to the left for gender identity and sexual expression, but that is about it. The right has succeeded in moving the overton window substantially in their favor in most social and economic programs.
  • darawk 7y ago
    His point is that it used to be that leftists defended freedom of speech from conservative oppression. Now it's the other way around.
    • MisterBastahrd 7y ago
      Leftists aren't actually oppressing anybody. We're still under the rule of the far-right in the US (a country which does not actually have a left wing by Western standards). Voting with your dollar and pointing out bigotry and inequality is not oppression.
      • darawk 7y ago
        > Leftists aren't actually oppressing anybody. Well, that's certainly not true. They are absolutely oppressing people. They may be oppressing people that you or even I think ought be oppressed, but that doesn't mean they're not doing it. > We're still under the rule of the far-right in the US (a country which does not actually have a left wing by Western standards). That's true around economic issues. It's not so true around identity politics. The political climate around those issues in the US is very much left of center. > Voting with your dollar and pointing out bigotry and inequality is not oppression. That kind of depends on what exactly you mean by that. Naming and shaming individuals for social transgressions based on hearsay seems pretty oppressive to me.
• rosser 7y ago
  > Maybe not, it feels like to me that the Overton window[0] has been sliding left. The Left-Right Overton Window has definitely moved Right, in that reductive to the point of uselessness, single-axis characterization of American politics. Some of Reagan's and Nixon's policies would be dismissed as "libtarded" now, as would some of W.'s. Another Overton Window (or, more accurately, related group of Windows), describing discourse about and among the races, sexualities, gender identities, &c, have at the same time moved in a direction that is less welcoming to speech that is premised in a notion of superiority or morality about those things, especially when uttered by a person who believes that premise, and which is about the speaker's (and by implication their tribe's) own superiority, or someone else's inferiority or immorality. The vector product of those Windows' movements is a culturally dominant polity who feels marginalized. > My views on freedom of speech made me a 'leftist commie' when I used them to defend South Park and Eminem now most often I'm accused being 'alt-right' by those who disagree with those same views. I think there's a meaningful difference between speech that is offensive, whatever that means, to cultural norms — especially those that are othering, or regressive, or shame-based, or whatever — and speech that is offensive, whatever that means, to individuals and populations — particularly when those individuals or populations are minorities, and have been historically subject to oppression, and which speech attempts to normalize their oppression. Don't mistake me: Freedom of speech is for the speech one likes least, or it's for no speech at all; I want the bigots every bit as free to make their noise as I do the artists or the critics (who are often the same people), but for entirely different reasons. Perhaps the comedian's notion of "punching up" versus "punching down" is relevant here. Perhaps also that people — on both sides — are generally just bad at disagreeing.
• p1necone 7y ago
  Anecdotal, but I notice a lot more people clamoring about freedom of speech when it's white supremacists being affected and a lot less when it's ISIS or Al-Qaeda. I find it very hard to take them seriously because of this, despite agreeing with a lot of the sentiment.
  • fiblye 7y ago
    I’m pretty tired of people linking any sort of complaint, worry, and defense of their rights to white supremacy or whatever hate group. Plenty of people stand up for their rights because they legitimately care about freedom. It’s not all some conspiracy by hate groups to defend themselves.
    • Apocryphon 7y ago
      Perhaps, but there is also a cultural trend of alt-right/far right groups clamoring about free speech in response to de-platforming and being uninvited to speak at college campuses. Most contemporary American free speech protests aren't apolitical affairs where nonsectarian activists are just "standing up for their rights because they legitimately care about freedom" for the sake of free speech as an ideal- they view freedom as a means to promote their ideology.
      • fiblye 7y ago
        If people try to crush speech they don’t like, and fringe groups are the only ones saying they support freedom, otherwise neutral people who are concerned about their rights are going to side with one of those groups. The number of people siding with those groups will be more than zero. Support will grow and they’ll push their message farther and farther into extremism. It’s not the first time this has happened. But each generation thinks they’re enlightened and extremism won’t take over again. Political extremists work with a grain of truth (“Look! They really ARE oppressing us”). If they were absolutely false nobody would support them.
      • manfredo 7y ago
        > Perhaps, but there is also a cultural trend of alt-right/far right groups clamoring about free speech in response to de-platforming and being disinvited to speak at college campuses. For public universities, this is a breach of the first amendment no matter how heinous the speakers' viewpoints are. And for private universities it's a big blow to the institution's reputations for all but the most objectionable speakers. > Most contemporary American free speech protests aren't apolitical affairs where nonsectarian activists are just "standing up for their rights because they legitimately care about freedom" for the sake of free speech as an ideal- they view freedom as a means to promote their ideology. I don't disagree with you. But you're drawing the wrong conclusions from this observation. If the concerns over free speech is more prevalent on one end of the political spectrum, it could easily be due to the fact that said end of the political spectrum is being censored more frequently and more aggressively. And I can't argue with that, I've seen very stark disparities in enforcement over the past several years.
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• colordrops 7y ago
  The window is shifting to opinions held by those who call themselves the left, which isn't necessarily the same thing as what has been traditionally considered to be leftist.
• flukus 7y ago
  Not just freedom of speech, supporting trumps new tariffs would have made you a pinko commie as little as 20 years ago, protests against global trade (like the battle of Seattle) had a sizable trade union contingent. So many that consider themselves left today seem to define it in opposition to what the right is doing, not from valuing egalitarianism.
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• ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  I'd describe the situation as being that the core beliefs of the political left in the United States have diverged sufficiently far from the core beliefs of liberalism (including freedom of speech) to the point that being a liberal no longer automatically implies membership in or sympathy for the left.