Trump Isn’t Just Cracking, He Is Exploding The Overton Window
A concept known as the Overton Window explains what drives public opinion and politicians and why today’s sacred cows may be tomorrow’s profane, in other words how to move fringe theory to the mainstream.
Ideas that were once only whispered in small circles have become accepted.
Consider legalized same sex marriage, campaigns to protect the rights of transgendered and other LGBTQ people, Social Security, Medicare for all, known as Obamacare, or the idea of a Black president. Equally radical at one time but now part of the legal landscape are a 70 percent tax rate and a tsunami of laws and funding to fight climate change.
How absurd it would have been in the past to refer to Caitlyn Jenner as Bruce Jenner, a man.
Or more recently, Rep. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., had a surprising showing in the 2016 Democratic primaries, making it clear that many of America’s liberals no longer thought “socialist” was an evil idea.
Sanders is a good example of how the Overton Window shifts over time. In 2015, Sanders put forth bills to make public colleges free and expand Social Security. Both had no co-sponsors in the Senate. Two years later, they had seven and 17, respectively, in addition to 50 and 133 co-sponsors in the House.
Sanders signature measure, the Medicare for All Act, had no Senate co-sponsors in 2013 but four years later it had 16, along with 125 in the House.
Historically, prohibition is one of the best examples of the Overton Window and how it changes. The sale and use of alcoholic beverages was made illegal and considered safe policy within the Overton Window. Today, prohibition would be laughed off the table and not even get a seat in the discussion. It would be a no-man’s (no-woman’s) land for politicians.
Women’s suffrage was another topic that was once a pariah in the Overton Window. In time, the public came to accept and promote a woman’s right to vote, shifting the window once again.
These were things that once were considered impossible dreams on the left but came to pass. The winds, however, can shift to the right on the Overton Window.
Now consider rapper Kanye West (now known as Ye) sells T-shirts emblazoned with the Nazi swastika and remains hugely popular in some quarters with 32 million followers on X.
Or trump pressing for the U.S. to take over the Gaza Strip, deport all of the Palestinians and build a Riviera on Gaza, likely including a new Trump Tower while he also calls for the seizure of the Panama Canal, the purchase of Greenland and making Canada the 51st state. Or trump’s inhuman plan to deport millions of migrants, whether they are in the U.S. legally or not.
Or the ability of trump and his followers to redefine the Jan. 6, 2021, riot by trump supporters at the Capitol as just another day of tourism.
Or consider Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a conspiracy quack who has spoken against vaccines, contradicting all legitimate scientists, has been named to lead the nation’s health programs.
Trump is a buffoon, a textbook demagogue and a fascist. He has been compared to Hitler, Voldemort, Mussolini, Huey Long, Father Charles Coughlin, Strom Thurmond, Joseph McCarthy, George Wallace and Pat Buchanan. But trump is much more than an evil cartoon character.
But labels are a gross mistake in trying to understand trump.
In another time, trump’s actions would have sent him to political purgatory having been completely ignored for being too ridiculous to consider but today they are mostly accepted and even applauded by millions of Americans who voted for him.
It doesn’t matter if Ye sells not one shirt, trump falls flat on his Gaza plans and Kennedy is roundly mocked for his anti-vaccination plans. They have succeeded in getting such formerly toxic issues under mainstream discussion.
Like all politicians, trump proposes policies that are politically acceptable and are within a concept known as the Overton Window. The window is a thermometer of public opinion, which lists categories from too radical, to moderate, to too left-wing. The window is a guide for politicians like trump who want to gather political backing to push the envelope with ideas once considered too outrageous.
Ultimately, the public determines the types of policies it will accept while the politicians, like trump, are much more followers than leaders. Politicians through the years have stretched the Overton Window to reflect their views but trump isn’t breaking through the Overton Window, he is obliterating it.
Trump lies with relative impunity, offers racist comments or suggests so-called solutions that are illegal on its face, like the U.S. relocating millions of Palestinians. He uses his allies along with bogus research and evidence to convince enough of the public to move the Overton Window so that soon, he is seen as working “outside the box” while being an “antiestablishment” rebel.
He has been able to move concepts like ethnic cleansing and colonization of Gaza into legitimate discussions even though they shatter international human rights laws.
Trump has fueled economic anxiety, racism and a public failure to trust government institutions. He has made it possible for discussion over ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip. In short, he has moved the Overton Window so wide as to let in what were once humanity’s worst propensities and to make them acceptable for public discourse.
The alt-right has shown its ability to manipulate the Overton Window by trying to move the premise of white superiority into the acceptable area of the window.
In a 2017 interview Nehlen told Breitbart radio host Curt Schilling that he is using his campaign to force discourse in the Republican Party further toward the white nationalist worldview.
“And if we’re all moving forward in the same direction, moving that Overton Window to the right, and saying, ‘Hey, this fake news media, that doesn’t work us, that doesn’t scare us’ — you know, I’m standing up for people’s free speech, lawful speech,” Nehlen said.
Even if trump does not get his way with all of his chaos, he will have changed the table and moved the Overton Window for future leaders.
The Overton Window was introduced in the 1990s by Joseph P. Overton, an executive at the Mackinac Center for Public Police, a conservative think tank in Michigan. The window expresses six degrees of acceptance of public ideas, that go from unthinkable and radical to acceptable, sensible, popular and finally, policy.
Trump is not a master builder, but he is a master at moving the window of acceptable American ideas. Trump and others have successfully use racial slurs and incitement to shift what is deemed normal and permissible in society further away from what was formerly deemed unacceptable and racist.
They include a group of far right individuals from the U.S. and around the world, including:
· Milo Yiannopoulos, a British far right political commentator who has slammed Islam, feminism, social justice, and political correctness.
· Nigel Farage, a trump supporter and British Member of Parliament (MP) who founded the Brexit party, leading the way for the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union.
· Then there is right wing conspiracist Alex Jones, Fox commentator Ann Coulter, former trump advisor Steve Bannon and far right British commentator Katie Hopkins.
Overton developed the window as a way to explain to potential the range of possible policies on a single issue, from least to most government intervention.