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Comment by Eisenstein | Hacker News Reader

Isn't that just what happens when you keep pushing the Overton Window to the right? What would have been 'centrists' have to become more authoritarian to stand ground or else they let their position get absorbed by the stronger leaning side. When one side refuses to compromise even slightly, you have two options: give in or dig in.

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If the left-most edge of the Overton Window had been pushed right of the centrist position of, say, the 90s that would be correct. But it's obvious that isn't at all true -- many moderate left positions today would have been considered outlandishly radical in the 90s.

It's rather more likely that the increase of left-authoritarianism is due to increasing resistance to moving the Overton Window, both the left-most edge and the right-most edge, leftwards. As resistance increases more forceful techniques are necessary.

> many moderate left positions today would have been considered outlandishly radical in the 90s.

Such as?

Gay marriage, for instance. In the 90s (and even the 2000s) it was pretty common even for people on the left to come down on the side of "I don't think we should allow gay marriage". Whereas now, it's so firmly within the Overton window that even most of the right thinks gay marriage is fine.

The fact is that society changes over time and what was unacceptable during one time becomes acceptable in another. This does not indicate a shift to the left, it indicates humanity becoming less intolerant. Are you going to argue that allow black people and white people to marry and repealing miscegenation laws mean that the country shifted to the left?

Uh yeah.

More tolerance is pretty much the definition of the social-left.

Are you saying that the Overton window can never move right as long as we maintain more human rights and tolerance than we had decades before whatever the current time period is?

No. I'm saying once you smooth over five or ten year periods, that it is empirically false that the Overton window in North America is moving rightwards.

It may very well feel that way to people who live in strong bubbles, but it just isn't true across the general population -- which of course is how the Overton Window is defined.

How does 'moderate positions now would be extreme in the 90s' act to bolster that contention, without the unsaid requirement that 'any included tolerance or added human rights that didn't exist more than a decade ago means de-facto left-wing Overton movement', which precludes any democratic society from having the Overton move right?

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