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A POLITICAL DIMENSION This is How a Democracy Collapses ... How the Far Right Shattered the Overton Window Original article: https://eand.co/this-is-how-a-democracy-collapses-9ee62dcbaa1a Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess | ||
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This is How a Democracy Collapses ... How the Far Right Shattered the Overton Window
Written by Umair Haque April 28th 2022 
How does the right keep shifting the Overton Window…even further right? To the point that by now, “right” basically means far right? Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter is a little case study. One which it’s important for us all to understand — because, my friends, we are losing our democracies at light speed to the far right. I want to make this really, really clear — though I’m sure many of you have an intuition about how this happens. It happens under the false guise of “neutrality.” Musk’s goal for Twitter is “political neutrality.” And apparently, this means that, “A social media platform’s policies are good if the most extreme 10% on left and right are equally unhappy.” But does this logic actually hold? Let’s examine it together. The “left” and “right” aren’t distributed equally in society. The right makes up less of society. At the moment, something like maybe 35 to 40%. So when we say that the 10% of the far right and far left are equal, we are already making a mistake. We are giving more weight to the right to begin with. Now. How does the Overton Window shift — as a consequence of this mistake? Well, the game goes like this. The right says “hey, those guys are the far right! We’re not like them! Us? We’re just kidding around! They’re the real bad guys!” Meanwhile, it slowly puts forth trial balloons and gaslights societies, and before you know it, what used to be extreme views are now mainstream — while the 10% of the right gets even more extreme. Maybe you think I exaggerate, so let’s think about this process in America over the last few years. About a decade ago, the right existed in a kind of centrist, quiescent state. It didn’t believe in authoritarianism yet. But now? A majority of Republicans believe things like the election was stolen, or violence is justified, or Jan 6th was perfectly acceptable. Are you beginning to see the problem here? The Overton Window has shifted badly in America — so much so that it shattered. Views that would have been extremist a decade ago are now mainstream on the right. Hence, the right doesn’t exist as it once did — there’s now basically a far right, and that’s about it. Anyone less extreme than that — from Liz Cheney to Mitt Romney — has been marginalized. So now that we get the Overton Window, let’s come back to Musk’s vision for Twitter. The 10% versus the 10% also means the 90% versus the 90%. Now you should immediately see the problem. 90% of the rest of us — the centre and left — don’t believe in things like political violence, big lies, authoritarianism. 90% of the GOP does — or at least something a growing majority does. 90% of those on the left — more than that, in fact — still believe in democracy. But a supermajority of those on the right don’t. Yet Musk is asking us to believe that these two sides are equal — in the name of democracy. Do you see how absurd this is? Obviously, what’s likely to happen here is that the side which doesn’t believe in democracy gets equal or greater weight compared to that which does. None of that is remotely democratic. It is profoundly anti-democratic. Let me give you a few examples. I say, “Hey, saying gay is normal, because, you know, gay people exist.” In the name of neutrality, we’re supposed to believe that slurs against gay people designed to cheat them of their existence are now democratic, because “free speech.” Smearing someone as a pedophile or groomer? Perfectly OK, because, hey, it’s “neutral,” since the other side says they’re not. Musk’s vision for Twitter is either childish, naive, infantile — or it’s cynical. Either he doesn’t understand this — or worse, he does. He’s not an idiot — none of us are. He knows exactly what he’s doing is my guess. What’s the fundamental problem here? Let’s go even deeper. Democracy is not a game. Musk wants to portray himself as something like an umpire between two sides, in a baseball game called democracy. But that isn’t what democracy is at all. What do I mean? What would have been “neutral” throughout history? In the Dark Ages, the idea that witches should be burned would have been “neutral.” In the Middle Ages, the idea that a lord had right over your property, wife, and kids would have been. In Nazi Germany, the idea that Jews were subhumans was neutral. In America, when it was founded, “neutral” was Black people being 3/5th human beings. In ancient Greece, having Socrates drink hemlock was “neutral.” None of this was democratic. It was backwards, regressive, and thoroughly anti-democratic. It was foolish and wrong and grotesque. Neutrality doesn’t exist. I’m sorry to say that, but many Americans badly understand what democracy is. It’s not just about voting, and it’s certainly not a baseball game of two sides that needs an umpire. What is it? It’s a set of values — freedom, peace, equality, justice, truth. When we enact those values, that is democracy. Voting is just what follows from those moral, social, and political commitments. Neutrality doesn’t exist politically. The centre is constantly moving and shifting. To believe in neutrality only really privileges those who wants to keep it where it is, or move it backwards. Democracy is about equality, not neutrality. If half a society believes that the rest are subhumans, simply calling it fair and acceptable and normal isn’t democratic. It’s obviously fascist and authoritarian. Neutrality doesn’t exist — and Americans think it does because for too long, their culture and media have operated under this foolish idea, which was even put into law. Two sides! There are not “two” sides to every issue in democracy. Are women human beings? Black people? Are we allowed to limit freedom of movement, expression, association — whether through intimidation or hate or those becoming law? This is the reason rights are inalienable — there aren’t “two sides” to whether or not people should have them. There’s just one. Democracy isn’t neutral in that sense. It has values. And those values becomes the rights and responsibilities of citizens. Authoritarians and fascists have several ways to skirt this distinction, though. It usually goes like. Hey, some people aren’t really people at all. They’re not humans. Therefore, they don’t deserve all those inalienable rights. How do we know? Well, because most of us say so! And that has to be correct, because of “neutrality.” If enough of us say a thing, it must be true. Neutrality justifies that — our institutions are just arbiters, interpreters of the “will of the people.” Wrong. You know who used to talk a lot about “the will of the people”? The Nazis. Because of course they pioneered this form of social collapse. But if the will of the people says things that are hateful, bigoted, violent — that isn’t democratic. If the people say that some groups aren’t human, and don’t deserve rights, that’s not democratic. And that’s what’s happening in America, right now — to women, gays, kids. Institutions are not mere arbiters of the “will of the people.” They are, first, defenders of democracy’s core principles. If a mob invades your local mall, wanting to rape all the women, is it OK? Of course not. If, say, Nestle — I’m picking a company at random — or Google suddenly wanted to stop employing Black people or women, is that OK? Just because it was the “will of the people”? Of course not. Institutions are not mere arbiters of some imagined popular will. They must first uphold democratic principles. All of them. That is how we keep, stay, a democracy. Musk wants Twitter to avoid all of this. All of this hard and difficult work. He wants to just be an “umpire” between two sides in a baseball game called democracy. But an umpire doesn’t just say, “hey, the crowd says it’s OK to beat you up, one side, so too bad!” That’s what his position amounts, to though. And you can already see all the above beginning to happen. Who’s Musk replying to on Twitter, as its new owner? The far right. Implying, of course, that he’s sensitive to their concerns. They’re the wronged ones. They’re the real victims here. It’s their “speech” that’s being taken away. Meanwhile, in state after state, you can’t even say the word gay to kids anymore. If gaslighting needed a textbook definition, it’s exactly this. The far right is the victim here. The rest of us just aren’t listening to them. That’s what democracy really is. They get to take everyone’s rights away — from expression to association to existence itself — and we had better listen, because that’s “neutral.” How ridiculous. How absurd. No, Elon isn’t this dumb. This is what he wants. I used to warn Americans that capitalism implodes into fascism. They resisted me something fierce. Do you believe me yet? It happens like this. Capital takes over public spaces — even quasi-public ones, like Twitter. The enclosure of the commons, it’s called. And then it privileges the nastiest, most abusive, and most hurtful. In order to keep everyone else demoralized, broken, and dispirited. So that they don’t have rights — and don’t stick up for them, either. Profit walks all the way to the bank. This is the story of history, from colonialism to how America imploded. But do you get it now? This is how the far right takes over a society. Exactly like this. We’re the real victims, they say. We don’t have any rights! Rights to do…what? Don’t you have the same rights as…the rest of us? No, they cry. We don’t! We need to be heard, too! OK, people say. And then the far right lashes out in an orgy of hate, violence, intimdiation, and rage. The right they really want is the one to take everyone else’s rights away. It’s the usurpation of democracy itself. You can’t say that! You can’t think that! Hey, I’ll smear you, attack you, rape you, kill you!! Is that “free speech”? Is that freedom? Any of democracy’s core values, from equality to truth to peace? Of course it isn’t. Rights are bounded by their opposites. The opposite of free speech is being intimidated and hated out of speaking at all. The opposite of freedom of association is having nowhere left to associate, because a society’s spaces are patrolled by vigilante-informants. The opposite of freedom of thought is having Big Lies beaten into you a hundred times a day. Democracy isn’t just “well, that’s the will of the people!! And it’s neutral to do all those things, if that’s what people want!!” Democracy is a set of rights that can never be taken away. Existence, truth, equality, the right to live in peace. Being hounded and attacked by those who hate you, want to end your existence, harass you, bully you, deny that you should have rights at all — that’s not democracy. It’s authoritarianism — go ahead and take a look at Putin’s Russia. It has elections, but it doesn’t have rights. Musk wants Twitter to be like that. The right wants the country to be like that. The election was stolen! Violence is justified! Don’t be a gay person in front of kids! Don’t think that! You can’t exist here!! We’ll get you!!! That’s not neutral. It privileges something. Hate. Stupidity, Ignorance. Deceit. Violence. To say that “violence versus peace” or “smears and hate versus decency” or “bigotry versus equality” or “lies versus facts” is neutrality, which is the only job of an institution, that these things are equal, and the will of the people decides between them, and it’s OK to enact those against others, is itself a corrosion of democracy. A terrible and fatal one. Do you want to live in a world like that? One where billionaires take over spaces, hand them to the far right, and say, hey, guess what, it’s time for today’s episode of Fascists Gone Wild? I don’t. But this, my friends, is where we are. Because too many of us have swallowed their false, corroded, corrupted, idiot’s definition of “democracy” — which is the same one Putin has, too. Umair April 2022
| The text being discussed is available at | https://eand.co/this-is-how-a-democracy-collapses-9ee62dcbaa1a and |