Overton Window Concepts

Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference

by Bregman, Rutger · 9 Mar 2025 · 181pp · 72,663 words

reframing.20 The idea is to find new arguments for the same standpoint – arguments that resonate with people outside your cult and fall within the Overton window. An example: a left-wing politician who wants to raise taxes on the rich isn’t likely to convince a right-wing voter by talking

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-conformity isn’t in itself a virtue. It’s not about what you think or say; it’s about what you do to move that Overton window and win the fight against injustice. Non-conformity may inspire, but it can also get mired in exhibitionism. Reverend King preached of the need for

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, Toby here–here, here organisation-building here–here Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons here Orwell, George here–here overpopulation here Overton, Joseph here Overton window here–here, here, here Oxford University here, here, here–here, here pandemics here, here, here, here–here, here–here see also Covid-19 pandemic Pankhurst

Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World's Economy

by Adam Tooze · 15 Nov 2021 · 561pp · 138,158 words

because the world has changed completely.” 41 The accumulation of science, a generation of youth protest, the changing economics, and the coronavirus had shifted the Overton window. As Spain’s chief climate negotiator Teresa Ribera reflected, “Coming at this pivot point, the coronavirus forced the world to face the ‘contradictions’ in its

Free Speech And Why It Matters

by Andrew Doyle · 24 Feb 2021 · 137pp · 35,041 words

history’, they have nothing to fear from patience. The range of opinions that are deemed societally acceptable at any given moment is known as the ‘Overton Window’, and its tendency to shift according to time and location should tell us something about the cultural specificity of ethical norms. There are those who

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would like to see the Overton Window narrowed to the dimensions of a porthole, with the remaining space conveniently accommodating their own prejudices. When we encounter views that we find intolerable, our

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view would have been the prevailing one, and those who might have endorsed the now mainstream opinion would have been left stranded outside of the Overton Window. Progress is only ever made when the dissenters are heard. ‘If liberty means anything at all’, wrote Orwell, ‘it means the right to tell people

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in 2003. Gay marriage was legalised in the UK in 2014 and in Northern Ireland in 2020. p.42the cultural specificity of ethical norms: The ‘Overton Window’ is named after Joseph P Overton, who first conceived the idea in relation to the opinions expressed by politicians and how they would be received

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defence’ 80 O offence 35–9, 50 On Liberty (Mill) 60 O’Neill, Brendan 46 oppression 33 Orwell, George 3, 11, 47, 59, 90, 97 Overton Window 42, 47 P Paine, Thomas 18, 95 parrhesia 9, 10 Paty, Samuel 50 ‘PC’ versus ‘non-PC’ 63–4 persuasion 65 Peterson, Jordan 89 Philip

The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent

by Ben Shapiro · 26 Jul 2021 · 309pp · 81,243 words

be undertaken: dissociation from newly identified code terms like “meritocracy” and “Western civilization” and “color-blindness.” Dissenters would be lumped in with Trump supporters. The Overton Window—the window of acceptable discourse—would be smashed shut, then boarded over. And, our cultural leftist authoritarians thought, it had worked. In 2018, Democrats won

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“less arrogant, less certain, less defensive, less ignorant, and more humble”—and claiming that this discriminatory content was designed to enhance “inclusion.”11 SHUTTING THE OVERTON WINDOW Within institutions, the authoritarian Left’s incremental demands have been taken up, one by one: from diversity training to affirmative action hiring, from charitable donations

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the liberal agenda. Renormalization takes place by inches. Instead of simply calling for outright bans on broad swaths of speech, leftists have insisted that the Overton Window—the window of acceptable discourse, in which rational discussion can take place—ought to be gradually closed to anyone to the right of Hillary Clinton

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open one: did these liberals mainly seek to avoid the radical Left’s censorious purges themselves, or did they truly hope to open up the Overton Window beyond themselves? Whether liberals side with conservatives in defense of free speech and individualism or they side with leftists in pursuit of utopia remains an

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of moral judgment, 32–34 demand for silence and compliance in speech, 34–36 January 6, 2021, storming of U.S. Capitol and, 11–14 Overton Window and censorship, 40–42 reactions to Trump’s election and, 23–30 renormalization and, 37–39 ways to challenge, 211–18, 223–24 Lemon, Don

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of the mob), 5 Office, The (television program), 148 Ohanion, Lee, 51 Omar, Ilhan, 71 One America News, 182 Opam, Kwame, 174 Operation Vote, 64 Overton Window, of acceptable discourse, 27, 40–42 Page, Ellen, 149–50 Palin, Sarah, 61 Parasite (film), 140 Parler, deplatforming of, 12–13, 136, 209–10 Pascal

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, 82, 151 culture and, 26, 31 gender dysphoria and, 113 intersectional coalitions and, 64, 69 left-wing authoritarianism and, 8, 14, 15 media and, 175 Overton Window, of acceptable discourse, 27, 40–42 renormalization of American institutions and, 39, 40 Utopian Impulse and, 47, 48 Travis, Clay, 156 Trump, Donald, 28–29

The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

by Robert D. Putnam · 12 Oct 2020 · 678pp · 160,676 words

leaders, but often by grassroots activists. As it swings, it alters what pundits have recently called the “Overton window,” making some policies more promising and acceptable or at least conceivable and others less so. “The Overton window is the range of ideas tolerated in public discourse, also known as the window of discourse. The

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of the final tranche of national progressive legislation on child labor, the eight-hour workday, the estate tax, and a more progressive income tax. The Overton window had begun to shift to encompass more progressive policies, the culmination of a quarter century of cultural change and grassroots organizing. FANFARE FOR THE COMMON

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the 1920s. The Great Depression and revival of concern for the community, not merely the isolated individual, had the effect once again of shifting the Overton window, making massive government intervention more plausible and laissez-faire policies less credible. It was not merely in New Deal domestic policy that the communitarian spirit

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Swidler, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). 7 “Overton Window,” in Wikipedia, November 18, 2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Overton_window&oldid=926722212. 8 James T. Kloppenberg, Toward Democracy: The Struggle for Self-Rule in European and American Thought (New

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Right/New Left and, 62, 83, 186–90 Ngram analysis, 169–70, 172–73, 175–76, 190–95, 197–98, 311, 402–3nn18–23, 439n27 Overton window and, 165, 173, 175 in the Progressive Era, 167–73, 176, 197, 325–27 pronoun usage and, 196–99 rights and responsibilities, 191–93 in

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Species (Darwin), 166 On the Road (Kerouac), 182 Organization Man, The (Whyte), 182–83 Other America, The (Harrington), 59–60, 303 Overton, Joseph P., 165 Overton, window (window of discourse), 165, 173, 175 Panic of 1873, 61 Panic of 1893, 61, 72 parenthood, 154–58 baby name trends, 194–96 childlessness vs

Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History

by Kurt Andersen · 14 Sep 2020 · 486pp · 150,849 words

toward the center and change the world. Not long afterward, he died a very American-individualist death (his one-man ultralight aircraft crashed), but the Overton Window is now shorthand for that process of normalizing the ideologically wild-and-crazy. A century before Overton or Friedman, however, Anthony Trollope nailed it in

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and for all even though, just a decade before, emancipation and abolition were ideas on the American fringe, political pipe dreams. But the Trollope-Friedman-Overton Window opened. What has been happening with the economic left in America lately could be a historical rhyme with what happened with the right in the

Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work

by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams · 1 Oct 2015 · 357pp · 95,986 words

. The combination of social alliances, strategic thinking, ideological work and institutions builds a capacity to alter public discourse. Crucial here is the idea of the ‘Overton window’ – this is the bandwidth of ideas and options that can be ‘realistically’ discussed by politicians, public intellectuals and news media, and thus accepted by the

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balance of power between organised labour and capitalists, who holds executive political power, and so on. Though emerging from the intersection of different elements, the Overton window has a power of its own to shape which future paths are taken by societies and governments. If something is not deemed ‘realistic’, then it

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the flawed but significant global alternative posed by the USSR disappears from living memory, such images of a different world become increasingly important, widening the Overton window and experimenting with ideas about what might be achieved under different conditions. In elaborating an image of the future, utopian thought also generates a viewpoint

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was originally devised by Joseph Overton, in relation to the proper operational purpose of a think tank. See Nathan J. Russell, ‘An Introduction to the Overton Window of Political Possibilities’, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, 4 January 2006, at mackinac.org. 16.This can be conceived in cultural terms as the creation

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Wall Street, 3, 6, 7, 11, 18, 22, 26, 29–38, 126, 133, 158, 159, 160, 162, 189n1 ordoliberals, 54, 57 organic intellectual, 165–6 Overton Window, 134, 139 Partido dos Trabalhadores, 169 parties, political, 2, 10, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 30, 34, 39, 46, 59, 105, 116, 118, 124, 129

Radicals Chasing Utopia: Inside the Rogue Movements Trying to Change the World

by Jamie Bartlett · 12 Jun 2017 · 390pp · 109,870 words

practice whatever religious belief they wish as long as those beliefs and practices do not harm others. This set of ideas is sometimes called the ‘Overton window’, or the broad ideas that the majority of the public accept as respectable and normal. It was named after the American political scientist Joseph Overton

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elected. Superficial deviations are fine, but anything outside of that window is too unusual, unworkable, unrealistic to be accepted by the public. Too radical. The Overton window has barely moved for years. But when I started this book in late 2014 there were signs it was beginning to widen. Fewer people were

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the nervous mainstream, but from the heady perspective of those trying to change it. A combination of technological, economic and social changes are putting the Overton window under unprecedented strain, and Western democracies are entering an age of radicalism. The election of Donald Trump or the United Kingdom leaving the European Union

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itself to be living in unprecedented times and facing unique challenges. But by any measure, 2016 was a peculiar year. It was the year the Overton window—that consensus that defines acceptable, ‘normal’ political ideas—noticeably moved. Although no one could say precisely where it moved to. Or if a brick had

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significantly, future generations will look back at the environmental activists and conclude they were not the dangerous ones: the rest of us were. The current Overton window of the centre-left has been reduced to a threadbare assortment of piecemeal policy change, reheated ideas and knee-jerk posturing, which, even combined, lacks

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, 160–161 oil, 263–264 Dakota Access Pipeline, 265–266 open-cast coal mines, 247–248, 249 Our Posthuman Future (Fukuyama), 38 Overton, Joseph, 3 Overton window, 3, 7, 305, 309 Owen, Robert, 205, 307 Paffard, Danni, 109, 240–241, 246, 251 Pahnke, Walter, 102 Paris Climate Talk, demonstrations during, 241–242

Pity the Billionaire: The Unexpected Resurgence of the American Right

by Thomas Frank · 16 Aug 2011 · 261pp · 64,977 words

’t spending enough on the military. The best expression of this fear of trumped-up crisis comes in the 2010 “thriller” by Glenn Beck, The Overton Window. At one point in the novel, the son of an evil progressive PR genius is explaining his dad’s methods to his rebel-conservative girlfriend

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the wimps on the other side of the issue—the ones like Barack Obama, who called the impending invasion “a dumb war.” To read The Overton Window eight years later, however, the whole episode was just another malevolent deed of the big-government conspiracy, to which only right-wing rebels are wise

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administration was preparing internment camps for conservatives. On TV, Glenn Beck managed to feed this peculiar fear even as he debunked it, and in The Overton Window he plays it the same way: the existence of the camps is first suggested by an unreliable person, yet the main character seems to end

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revival very suddenly in the summer of 2010, the way a vogue for Marxism overtook American literati in the early thirties. For example, Beck’s Overton Window warned readers of “the inevitable rise of tyranny from the greed and gluttony of a ruling class,” while a Tea Party leader in Saint Louis

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the U.S. flag, since government and corporations had been so thoroughly merged. Then, in the novel Beck published in the summer of 2010, The Overton Window (New York: Threshold Editions, 2010), the blame for the financial crisis and the bailout was fixed firmly on Wall Street itself, with government and bankers

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-Lefts-Blueprint-for-perpetual-power-94527604.html. 8. See Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine (New York: Metropolitan, 2007), pp. 6–7. 9. Glenn Beck, The Overton Window, p. 147. 10. Ibid., pp. 74, 276, 286, 296–97, and again on 303–4. 11. FEMA’s plans also would have outlawed strikes. See

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/12 Project. 6. These quotations are from the 9/12 page on Beck’s website, http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/21018/. 7. Overton Window, p. 62. These words are spoken by one of the book’s protagonists in an address to a rally modeled after the Tea Party movement

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” Objectivism Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Official Tea Party Handbook (Gullett) O’Hara, John oil industry oligopolies “Out with the Ruling Class” (watch party) Overton Window, The (Beck) Paine, Tom Palin, Sarah Parker, Kathleen Part of Our Time (Kempton) Patman, Wright Patriot Act Patriot’s Club (website) “Patriots Qualification Cards” Paul

The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider

by Michiko Kakutani · 20 Feb 2024 · 262pp · 69,328 words

Consequences Chapter 3 Culture in the New Millennium: When the Edges Replaced the Center Chapter 4 Broken Windows and Sliding Doors: How Radicals Smashed the Overton Window Chapter 5 The Resistance Strikes Back: The New Grassroots Activism and the Power of Disruption Chapter 6 Outlaw Nation: America’s Love-Hate Affair with

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E. Lee from his pedestal, as state officials and a cheering crowd looked on. Chapter 4 BROKEN WINDOWS AND SLIDING DOORS: How Radicals Smashed the Overton Window … Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos. —the Joker in The Dark Knight It

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mainstream, and why today’s status quo is increasingly threatened by the forces of disruption. In the political world, this theory is known as “the Overton window”—named after Joseph P. Overton, an official at a conservative think tank in the 1990s who described the process whereby new ideas become acceptable to

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, “For anyone out there who is involved in activism, politics or social justice advocacy, sometimes the world can feel disheartening. But the concept of the Overton window serves as a reminder that society is flexible, that there is hope, and that even the most impossible utopian ideas can one day become reality

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make the climate crisis a priority in mainstream politics and increasing the vote share of Green Party candidates in European elections. The downside of the Overton window resembles old slippery slope arguments; that is, a series of incremental steps can lead to disaster, as people gradually become used to something thoroughly treacherous

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of normal weather on what has happened in the last handful of years.” The Democratic Party’s gradual moves to the left followed the classic Overton window formula: The centrist “third way” policies of Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council in the 1990s gave way to Barack Obama’s more progressive

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wealth tax on assets exceeding $50 million. In contrast to the Democratic Party’s gradual moves to the left, the Republican Party completely shattered the Overton window with the election of Donald Trump. Though the party had been moving to the right for decades, Trump took it off the road entirely, and

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.com/2020/10/15/t-magazine/most-influential-protest-art.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Chapter 4: Broken Windows and Sliding Doors “the Overton window”: Maggie Astor, “How the Politically Unthinkable Can Become Mainstream,” The New York Times, Feb. 26, 2019, nytimes.com/2019/02/26/us/politics

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/overton-window-democrats.html; “The Overton Window,” Mackinac Center for Public Policy, mackinac.org/OvertonWindow; Jason Deparle, “Right-of-Center Guru Goes Wide with the Gospel of Small Government,” The New York

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-wide-with-the-gospel-of-small.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “For anyone out there who is involved”: Francesca Willow, “What Is the Overton Window & Why It Matters for Climate Justice Activism,” Ethical Unicorn, June 11, 2022, ethicalunicorn.com/2022/06/11/what-is-the

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-overton-window-why-it-matters-for-climate-justice-activism. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT The parable, it turns out, isn’t true: Whit Gibbons, “The Legend

Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities

by Eric Kaufmann · 24 Oct 2018 · 691pp · 203,236 words

Tenants: The People on the Frontline of Britain's Housing Emergency

by Vicky Spratt · 18 May 2022 · 371pp · 122,273 words

The Establishment: And How They Get Away With It

by Owen Jones · 3 Sep 2014 · 388pp · 125,472 words

Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right

by Angela Nagle · 6 Jun 2017 · 122pp · 38,022 words

Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy

by Talia Lavin · 14 Jul 2020 · 231pp · 71,299 words

The Science of Hate: How Prejudice Becomes Hate and What We Can Do to Stop It

by Matthew Williams · 23 Mar 2021 · 592pp · 125,186 words

WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us

by Tim O'Reilly · 9 Oct 2017 · 561pp · 157,589 words

Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists

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Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists, the Truth About Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All

by Laura Bates · 2 Sep 2020 · 364pp · 119,398 words

Give People Money

by Annie Lowrey · 10 Jul 2018 · 242pp · 73,728 words

We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent

by Nesrine Malik · 4 Sep 2019

The Glass Half-Empty: Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century

by Rodrigo Aguilera · 10 Mar 2020 · 356pp · 106,161 words

Mending the Net: Toward Universal Basic Incomes

by Chris Oestereich · 20 Oct 2016 · 95pp · 6,448 words

March of the Lemmings: Brexit in Print and Performance 2016–2019

by Stewart Lee · 2 Sep 2019 · 382pp · 117,536 words

Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change

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IRL: Finding Realness, Meaning, and Belonging in Our Digital Lives

by Chris Stedman · 19 Oct 2020 · 307pp · 101,998 words

Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley

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The Currency Cold War: Cash and Cryptography, Hash Rates and Hegemony

by David G. W. Birch · 14 Apr 2020 · 247pp · 60,543 words

Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It

by M. Nolan Gray · 20 Jun 2022 · 252pp · 66,183 words

The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy

by Nick Romeo · 15 Jan 2024 · 343pp · 103,376 words

Hacking Politics: How Geeks, Progressives, the Tea Party, Gamers, Anarchists and Suits Teamed Up to Defeat SOPA and Save the Internet

by David Moon, Patrick Ruffini, David Segal, Aaron Swartz, Lawrence Lessig, Cory Doctorow, Zoe Lofgren, Jamie Laurie, Ron Paul, Mike Masnick, Kim Dotcom, Tiffiniy Cheng, Alexis Ohanian, Nicole Powers and Josh Levy · 30 Apr 2013 · 452pp · 134,502 words