Overton Compression
Who needs debates when you own the "media"?
The so-called “Overton window” is described as “… the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time.” Of course, such descriptions never delve into the question of whom in particular is determining this supposed acceptable range of discourse. In earlier times, for example during the Great Depression, the range of political discourse in the U.S. ranged from “no-government” capitalists on the right to worker-centered socialists and communists on the left. Capitalism has waged a long-term, expensive and comprehensive assault on socialist and communist movements in the U.S. and abroad. This often includes coordinated corporate boycotts of advertising on socialist or communist aligned companies, union busting and especially corporate media assaults on socialism and communism and exclusion of socialist and communist commentators in the corporate media.
Since then, the humanitarian left has been slowly but inexorably excluded entirely from the conversation. Indeed, the history of the US over the last century has been total war, waged by the elites and their government allies, against workers, especially any form of socialism or communism. This anti-humanitarian effort got a big boost with Alan Dulles’ “Operation Gladio” in Europe after WWII, where right-wing groups were given all the support they needed to go after communists and anyone on the left end of the political spectrum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
Anti-leftist activities by the US government and CIA moved into the Americas in the form of coups, assassinations and regime change operations. They used the same old tactic of employing far-right death squads to carry out anti-leftist US policies in other people’s countries.
https://jacobin.com/2020/11/operation-condor-cia-latin-america-repression-torture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHAOS
Even now, right here in the US, right-wing Israel supporters are being used to assault left-leaning pro-Palestine students and faculty on college campuses in order to shut down humanitarian leftist speech. This is all part of what I have termed “Overton Compression”, whereby the speech of humanitarian leftists is demonized and excluded. It has to be excluded, because most people would opt for peace and cooperation between nations, rather than war and competition. But when no other option is offered but war and international competition, then no argument can follow. There is no counter-argument if humanitarianism and peace are excluded entirely from the discussion.
So what we are left with now in our impoverished political discourse is that all flavors of political thought are on the far-right side of the political spectrum, including the so-called neoliberal left. The Blue Team and the Red Team are on the same exact page as shown in the diagram below. There isn’t a sliver of space between their policies when it comes to war, unregulated capitalism, union busting, no penalties for corrupt bankers that crash the economy, and most of all, no free press. What we have instead is a war-mongering “press” which has acted as DoD and corporate spokespersons for several decades now. This is essential if the narrative is to be kept far to the right in the political spectrum.
The only good news here, if any, is that the exclusion of the humanitarian left from the discussion means that the elites are afraid of having those discussions in public. Hence panic over things like Tik-Tok for offering glimpses of the results of US policies. It’s tough to talk about freedom and democracy when the images of genocide and mass slaughter pop up on people’s devices.