4 ms·

People with, shall we say, radically progressive views, are more than comfortable to share them openly in the staff rooms, kitchens, before and after meetings,

People with, shall we say, radically progressive views, are more than comfortable to share them openly in the staff rooms, kitchens, before and after meetings, etc. without anybody contending with them. Anybody with more centrist, or God forbid conservative views, saves them for the pub afterwards or for their private gatherings. The Overton window seems to shift weekly.

isoskeles 6y ago
I remember working at a company that had a library room which was sometimes booked for meetings. Every single time I was in a meeting there, without fail, at least one progressive person in the room had to loudly make some negative remark about Ayn Rand and scoff, sigh loudly, or roll their eyes to express their disapproval. Maybe they'd do all three at once. It was a real meme. I think this was because the room had a poster with quotes from various authors and Ayn Rand may have been on the list, although I'm unclear in my memory. I always found it funny, the behavior was over-the-top childish coming from grown adults. I just bit my tongue, they were otherwise decent people as coworkers.
- bjourne 6y ago
  But you didn't reflect on the fact that the poster had quotes from Ayn Rand and not Karl Marx? :)
dx034 6y ago
That's the case if the majority of people hold progressive views. I've encountered enough conservative companies where people had no problem sharing openly conservative views (some to an extreme that led to open racism). In those companies, no one would've dared voicing progressive views. Doing that was the easiest way to become an outsider.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  I think racism is orthogonal to political affiliation. The (thankfully few) most virulently racist people I know, i.e. white people who drop the "N" word in casual conversation, are straight-ticket "D" voters. I also know people who are fiscally and socially conservative but not racist in the slightest.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- alexgmcm 6y ago
  I mean at work you have literally nothing to gain by being honest about your views (it's not a polling booth) and could curry favour by professing the same views as those around you. Therefore, it's not surprising that this tends towards groupthink that agrees with the Highest Paid Person's Opinion whether that should be on the left or on the right.
- datavirtue 6y ago
  Indeed. At work my political views shift to whatever way the wind is blowing for a particular group. I can usually find a way to speak sincerely from any view point. All of this is contingent on not being able to avoid such conversations in the first place. You can piss people off by simply taking a neutral stance so that is not always an option. I often end up as an unofficial go-between for different groups where I can influence both toward more moderate common ground.
iso1210 6y ago
Could you point to some research on this, specifically ones that account for the jobs where this happens (HN readers are likely in jobs that attract more middle class and higher education people, who are overwhelmingly left of the current UK median - go to a taxi driver mess room and compare conversations) and provide examples of the overton window shifting (yes, the rise of farage and ukip shifted it significantly in some aspects, but on the other hand civil unions and equal marriage has shifted it in others) I'm willing to believe you that the overton window has shifted to the right significantly over the last 10 years on many aspects, but I'd like to see the evidence
- concordDance 6y ago
  The overton window has shifted to the left on many issues. E.g. trans rights In my own workplace the overton window shifted notably left in gender issues in the last decade. You make a good point about hn people not being representative though.
  - M2Ys4U 6y ago
    >The overton window has shifted to the left on many issues. E.g. trans rights > >In my own workplace the overton window shifted notably left in gender issues in the last decade. These are not shifts to the left, they are a shifts towards liberalism. The left still has a big problem with gender identity. Take a look at Rosie Duffield and Jess Phillips in the Labour Party, Joanne Cherry in the SNP, and the issues surrounding the formation of the Alba Party.
    - concordDance 6y ago
      I'm not sure how requiring other people to use particular pronouns they might disagree are appropriate can be termed "liberalism".
  - makomk 6y ago
    The shift on trans rights isn't simply a shift to the left though - it's more like the mainstream/"liberal" view on trans rights has shifted and the left-wing progressive activists have been dragged along behind it, whilst insisting all the way that they were a vital spearhead of trans rights and that not agreeing uncritically with them about everything and censoring dissenting views is an attack on trans people's existence. For example, one of the last things the UK's more left-wing party did when they were in power was add a special exemption to anti-discrimination law to deny trans women access to rape and domestic violence services. (As in, this was literally the stated goal.) Pretty much the entire mainstream progressive activism community covered for them and the lobbying group who campaigned for this, demanding that everyone shut up about how the law got there, until 2019 when the same group started lobbying the Conservatives for similar purposes. Similarly, only half a decade or so ago the folks currently trying to cancel J K Rowling and insisting everyone support beating up random elderly lesbians for holding transphobic views were just as confident in their insistence trans women were misogynist bigots for just speaking out about what TERFs were actually doing because supposedly feminist women couldn't have any affect on the real world and so the only reason to blame them for anything was hatred of women. Even the term TERF itself was apparently only coined in 2008, though the ideas it describe go back decades before then. This becomes even more true the further you go back, to the point that maybe a couple of decades ago, probably three at the most, trans rights seems to have been outside the normal range of progressive activist viewpoints entirely in the sense that - at least in the UK - the people who rose to positions of dominance and influence did so by shunning anyone who actually treated trans women as people, and worse. I mean this very literally, not in the usual hyperbolic sense where any dissent from the activist canon of views is spun as dehumanising trans women - it seems people had a choice between being willing to talk to trans women or gaining connections and influence.
KaiserPro 6y ago
I' not sure where you have worked, but the people who freely give their political opinions are grouped accordingly. They are not grouped by left/right, but by how annoying they are. All are avoided if at all possible. I have worked with people who's politics I greatly and deeply oppose. I liked them personally and never delved to deep into their political lives. However, where we have strayed I have tried to learn from their view point. After all, if we cannot understand one another, how are we supposed to forge middle ground? I think we really should start to teach _how_ to talk about things we disagree on. It appears that people think that re-iterating the same points (the ones that the "other" side find so extreme) at volume will change people's minds.

isoskeles 6y ago

I remember working at a company that had a library room which was sometimes booked for meetings. Every single time I was in a meeting there, without fail, at least one progressive person in the room had to loudly make some negative remark about Ayn Rand and scoff, sigh loudly, or roll their eyes to express their disapproval. Maybe they'd do all three at once. It was a real meme. I think this was because the room had a poster with quotes from various authors and Ayn Rand may have been on the list, although I'm unclear in my memory. I always found it funny, the behavior was over-the-top childish coming from grown adults. I just bit my tongue, they were otherwise decent people as coworkers.

bjourne 6y ago
But you didn't reflect on the fact that the poster had quotes from Ayn Rand and not Karl Marx? :)

dx034 6y ago

That's the case if the majority of people hold progressive views. I've encountered enough conservative companies where people had no problem sharing openly conservative views (some to an extreme that led to open racism). In those companies, no one would've dared voicing progressive views. Doing that was the easiest way to become an outsider.

throwawayboise 6y ago
I think racism is orthogonal to political affiliation. The (thankfully few) most virulently racist people I know, i.e. white people who drop the "N" word in casual conversation, are straight-ticket "D" voters. I also know people who are fiscally and socially conservative but not racist in the slightest.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
alexgmcm 6y ago
I mean at work you have literally nothing to gain by being honest about your views (it's not a polling booth) and could curry favour by professing the same views as those around you. Therefore, it's not surprising that this tends towards groupthink that agrees with the Highest Paid Person's Opinion whether that should be on the left or on the right.
datavirtue 6y ago
Indeed. At work my political views shift to whatever way the wind is blowing for a particular group. I can usually find a way to speak sincerely from any view point. All of this is contingent on not being able to avoid such conversations in the first place. You can piss people off by simply taking a neutral stance so that is not always an option. I often end up as an unofficial go-between for different groups where I can influence both toward more moderate common ground.

iso1210 6y ago

Could you point to some research on this, specifically ones that account for the jobs where this happens (HN readers are likely in jobs that attract more middle class and higher education people, who are overwhelmingly left of the current UK median - go to a taxi driver mess room and compare conversations) and provide examples of the overton window shifting (yes, the rise of farage and ukip shifted it significantly in some aspects, but on the other hand civil unions and equal marriage has shifted it in others) I'm willing to believe you that the overton window has shifted to the right significantly over the last 10 years on many aspects, but I'd like to see the evidence

concordDance 6y ago
The overton window has shifted to the left on many issues. E.g. trans rights In my own workplace the overton window shifted notably left in gender issues in the last decade. You make a good point about hn people not being representative though.
- M2Ys4U 6y ago
  >The overton window has shifted to the left on many issues. E.g. trans rights > >In my own workplace the overton window shifted notably left in gender issues in the last decade. These are not shifts to the left, they are a shifts towards liberalism. The left still has a big problem with gender identity. Take a look at Rosie Duffield and Jess Phillips in the Labour Party, Joanne Cherry in the SNP, and the issues surrounding the formation of the Alba Party.
  - concordDance 6y ago
    I'm not sure how requiring other people to use particular pronouns they might disagree are appropriate can be termed "liberalism".
- makomk 6y ago
  The shift on trans rights isn't simply a shift to the left though - it's more like the mainstream/"liberal" view on trans rights has shifted and the left-wing progressive activists have been dragged along behind it, whilst insisting all the way that they were a vital spearhead of trans rights and that not agreeing uncritically with them about everything and censoring dissenting views is an attack on trans people's existence. For example, one of the last things the UK's more left-wing party did when they were in power was add a special exemption to anti-discrimination law to deny trans women access to rape and domestic violence services. (As in, this was literally the stated goal.) Pretty much the entire mainstream progressive activism community covered for them and the lobbying group who campaigned for this, demanding that everyone shut up about how the law got there, until 2019 when the same group started lobbying the Conservatives for similar purposes. Similarly, only half a decade or so ago the folks currently trying to cancel J K Rowling and insisting everyone support beating up random elderly lesbians for holding transphobic views were just as confident in their insistence trans women were misogynist bigots for just speaking out about what TERFs were actually doing because supposedly feminist women couldn't have any affect on the real world and so the only reason to blame them for anything was hatred of women. Even the term TERF itself was apparently only coined in 2008, though the ideas it describe go back decades before then. This becomes even more true the further you go back, to the point that maybe a couple of decades ago, probably three at the most, trans rights seems to have been outside the normal range of progressive activist viewpoints entirely in the sense that - at least in the UK - the people who rose to positions of dominance and influence did so by shunning anyone who actually treated trans women as people, and worse. I mean this very literally, not in the usual hyperbolic sense where any dissent from the activist canon of views is spun as dehumanising trans women - it seems people had a choice between being willing to talk to trans women or gaining connections and influence.

KaiserPro 6y ago

I' not sure where you have worked, but the people who freely give their political opinions are grouped accordingly. They are not grouped by left/right, but by how annoying they are. All are avoided if at all possible. I have worked with people who's politics I greatly and deeply oppose. I liked them personally and never delved to deep into their political lives. However, where we have strayed I have tried to learn from their view point. After all, if we cannot understand one another, how are we supposed to forge middle ground? I think we really should start to teach _how_ to talk about things we disagree on. It appears that people think that re-iterating the same points (the ones that the "other" side find so extreme) at volume will change people's minds.