Don’t forget the material basis for these shifts! While The Discourse of “practical” truangulating centrists tends to show this rightward path, it is because (1) they were already fundamentally reactionary, they tend to just use this logic as an excuse for why they tolerate far-right positions, and (2) the right is supported by the ruling class to address some of the “problems” it creates, like a marginalized underclass that wants enough income to feed their children, housing, and safety from violence.
The shift right is not driven simply by debate or ideology, but by the arenas where degradation in material conditions due to capitalism meet the ruling class’ need to deflect blame to the marginalized (who they can reap larger profits from) to placate the less marginalized. Racism, nationalism, and extermination campaigns are created and maintained for the interests of capital, with the common people being pushed and prodded to fall in line with repeating the (usually ad hoc) new or recycled scapegoats and underclassrs. Wouldn’t want you to point blame in the right direction!
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Yep, this is a huge fucking problem.
Top bad the often proposed suggestion of “let’s just skip right to the end” isn’t actually a solution.
I hate the term “normalization” because it doesn’t mean anything to most people. The closest approximation of it’s meaning to most people is “stuff (usually negative) is happening”.
Please point me to the time in American history where it was normal to:
- pay taxes for everyone’s health care
- follow international law
- not do extrajudicial killings/imprisonment
- not be personally or institutionally racist
Spoiler you cannot. These times literally do not exist in any meaningful way, they only exist as ephemeral pockets of modernity that you personally have experienced. Many of the arguments that you can make in favor of these points of time, suffer greatly from the just world fallacy. When you look a little too hard at those pockets of time, you’ll find that your feeling was just a feeling and it wasn’t even true.
This meme may be good at convincing libs their world view is fucked, but it’s not an accurate depiction.
I kind of look at normalization in terms of the Overton window, as in what topics are up for debate politically. I completely agree that there is always a gap between how a society sees itself and how it actually behaves, but I would argue that the stage where a society starts to openly embrace its crimes is the one to be really worried about.
This still doesn’t make any sense:
pay taxes for everyone’s health care
This was never up for debate until let’s say 2003 when Conyers introduced medicare for all. Then it was up for debate in pockets of years, and it really matters specifically what you mean by who’s debating in that window. Politicians or news media.
So roughly these are the open Overton windows for universal healthcare
follow international law
This was never really up for debate until 2001. The US simply just broke international law when it saw fit prior, and after.
not do extrajudicial killings/imprisonment
This is essentially the same as above. See our various policing actions in the modern era. MOVE, Japanese Internment, Mexican “Repatriation”. Lynchings. Pinkertons. No real debate to be had here, America just does it and then does paperwork to justify it.
not be personally or institutionally racist
This has essentially been debated since the start of the US. So it’s been “in the window”. But in practice the position has always been right wing even to this day.
I would argue that the stage where a society starts to openly embrace its crimes is the one to be really worried about.
Open embrace of crimes is worrying sure, but in practice it’s not practically better than doing crimes, denying you do them, and pretending you’re good. Because in reality, what you can see on the left as “open embrace of criminality” on the right is seen as “being the good guys”. So the open embrace may qualify as an increase in magnitude but not a change in direction. I’d love to see this actually proved out, rather than just said.
This also pretends that the causes of these shifts are not a change in material realities, but rather a change in attitudes ex nihilio. When every empire thinks its fading it does this kinda shit, because this is the kind of shit that builds and maintains empires. It’s not because the “bad guys” are in charge.
A large portion of the reason that these things never came into debate until the 21st century is because the US was cruising off of the compromises made as part of reconstructing the rest of the modern world post WW2. Those compromises started being untenable in the 70’s and have created these debates in the 2000’s, 2010’s, and 2020’s solely because they are crumbling.
The most important of these debates happened behind closed doors before most of us were even born. The Overton Window shifts rightward not because it’s a nerdy window function, but because it’s a marble on a table long enough so that it takes the marble a century to traverse, and that table was set up a century ago to be tilted to the right. The ratchet effect is because Democrats defend the core compromises made in 1945.
I think what matters is what public finds acceptable. At the end of the day, society is a social contract with people at the top deriving their legitimacy from having the consent of the public. The less debate there is on these issues the easier it becomes for a tyrannical regime to act with impunity. This lecture from Parenti is relevant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlFuxIzD240
The less debate there is on these issues the easier it becomes for a tyrannical regime to act with impunity.
This is a position you can no longer seriously hold in America in 2024. Public debate on these issues does nothing. You can look at the public attitudes towards plenty of policy positions that when polled have an overwhelming majority of support across the country but have been politically nonviable at the federal level:
- legalized marijuana
- medicare for all
- access to abortion
- over policing
- a fair economy
We can have open debate till we’re blue in the face. We can march until we wear out our shoes. The liberal tools have failed us completely in actually moving the political dial. These tools have been defeated in the modern era by experiments at the imperial periphery. I suggest you read If We Burn by Vincent Bevins.
Legitimacy is not a real discussion point in this country, it is assumed. If it were we’d constantly ask why is our democracy legitimate when the government is not actually picked by a majority of our population. Democrats in their racism are blaming Latino men. The percentage of Latino men that voted for Trump is a minuscule percentage of Latinos that can vote in this country. The overwhelming majority of Latinos didn’t vote in the previous election. The president is picked by 1/5th to 1/3rd of the population eligible to vote. If you were to boil that down to a friend group you’d have a social intrigue movie in the style of Bodies Bodies Bodies.
If we liken this to the problem of consent with sexual relations, the US rules on tacit consent at best, and generally coerced sexual assault and when those don’t work outright violent sexual assault. If legitimacy was a real issue the US would rule on enthusiastic consent. But it doesn’t.
Parenti’s lecture is meant to disabuse tankies of advocating for censorious democratic centralism of the USSR. It does not work in the context of the US because the system of control is completely different. If a country is a boiler that you need to keep from exploding, the USSR worked by creating the most armored boiler possible. The US works by having a minority or impoverished person or some other type of scapegoat put their face in front of a pressure relief valve and open it. The end result in the context of ruling a country is the same, the architects of the boiler are well insulated from its negative effects.
I think you misunderstand me here. I’m not saying the system can be changed by liberal means like voting every four years. The change comes from people organizing and building a worker movement that can take tangible action like doing general strikes, mass protests, and so on. However, political education is a prerequisite for such a movement. People need to agree on what the problems are and what the necessary action to solve these problems is. That’s where ability to discuss things is important.
Also, if you bothered to watch the lecture then you’ll see that it’s discussing how workers in US struggled for rights. It doesn’t talk about USSR at all.
This
I’m not saying the system can be changed by liberal means like voting every four years. The change comes from people organizing and building a worker movement that can take tangible action like doing general strikes, mass protests, and so on.
Is a completely different argument than this:
At the end of the day, society is a social contract with people at the top deriving their legitimacy from having the consent of the public. The less debate there is on these issues the easier it becomes for a tyrannical regime to act with impunity
Especially to a liberal.
This
I’m not saying the system can be changed by liberal means like voting every four years. The change comes from people organizing and building a worker movement that can take tangible action like doing general strikes, mass protests, and so on.
Says that political power comes from material leverage and its logical ends are the Mao quote “Political power comes from the barrel of a gun”.
This
At the end of the day, society is a social contract with people at the top deriving their legitimacy from having the consent of the public. The less debate there is on these issues the easier it becomes for a tyrannical regime to act with impunity.
Says that political power comes from the public simply voicing their agreement / disagreement and the ruling class enacting that opinion.
At the end of the day if your way to fight back against the ruling class is through material leverage, public debate simply doesn’t matter, worker organization sublimates that.
It’s not a completely different statement though. A society is fundamentally a social construct based around common ideology. That’s what the government derives its legitimacy from. An organized labor movement is a path towards revising the social contract.
At the end of the day if your way to fight back against the ruling class is through material leverage, public debate simply doesn’t matter, worker organization sublimates that.
As I pointed out above, worker organization doesn’t come out of thin air. It requires education of the masses, which involves public debate. If you study any effective social movement throughout history then you’ll see that it always starts with public debate.
The less debate there is on these issues the easier it becomes for a tyrannical regime to act with impunity. This lecture from Parenti is relevant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlFuxIzD240
Also just some off topic dunking, Parenti literally contradicts this in the speech
12:10 Speech fights percolated and shook the nation for a while and that’s what percolated up to the Supreme Court and it was then that Oliver Wendell Holmes and those guys sitting up there in the black robes started saying that uh time uh overthrows many a fighting faith and there must be change and we must tolerate these uh these kinds of things and the right to dissent blah blah blah it was when they got and felt the impact the power of people mobilized and organized and directed against their establishment that they knew they had to give a little it’s when people develop that power that they gain some modicum of freedom
It’s not debate it’s organized material opposition.
Also, if you bothered to watch the lecture then you’ll see that it’s discussing how workers in US struggled for rights. It doesn’t talk about USSR at all.
It’s not debate it’s organized material opposition.
Nice cherry picking there. What Parenti says in the speech is that it’s actually both. He gives examples, such as how Wagner Act was leveraged by the workers to start doing mass organizing, showing how the system can indeed be leveraged along side organization outside the system. His whole point is to use all the tools available and to dismiss simplistic analysis that you’re advocating for here.
