Now seems like a good time to talk about how far-right extremists are using the Overton Window theory to force their ideas into the mainstream. The premise here is that today’s fringe ideas/beliefs can become tomorrow’s normal by shifting the boundaries of acceptable discourse. You do that by introducing people to more & more extreme ideas, so everything else seems reasonable in comparison.
eg, when “praising Hitler” becomes the comparison point, low-key bigotry suddenly doesn’t seem so bad. 1/
@rvawonk Beyond Twitter or a given platform's responsibility and role in combating extremist ideas, what can rank-and-file people like us do to effectively counter it other than rage tweeting against it?
I'm assuming rage tweeting is not the answer?
@Sameagle @trentbaur @rvawonk I locked my bird account, won't tweet again but I do read.
I've seen 3 different occasions in the last 10 days where #ElonKompromat implored for more debate, begging for interactions between those you disagree with.
My gut says he's desperate for content and data to show growth in an attempt to bring back advertising. Example...tonight's live #hunterbiden event.
There's a very obvious decline in those long rage posts you saw a month ago. That's a problem for him
@eyetek @Sameagle @trentbaur @rvawonk @zebpalmer I myself, still hanging around there for a short bit more, have noticed a HUGE drop in engagement.
To fix Twitter at this point he’s gonna have to sell it back to Jack! 🤣😱
@davetroy @eyetek @Sameagle @trentbaur @rvawonk @zebpalmer @ChopinsHeart
twas a joke jabbing at Elon.
Just sayin'. ;)
@eyetek @Sameagle @trentbaur @rvawonk
It's either 1) he's a malignant narcissist like Trump or 2) being on the spectrum and a lack of understanding social cues means he thinks we actually enjoyed the constant sensationalism and instability around Trump's presidency.
He's drumming up drama for the "can't look away from the car crash" effect without understanding that being predictably unpredictable gets boring rather quickly or that his inability to be POTUS means we don't have to listen.
Hear, hear.
Call your local, state and federal representatives and ask (again and again) what their plan is with regard to #domesticterrorism .
Help those in your social circles identify the signs of extremism (the memes, coded language, etc.)
Report instances you see of extremism (to places like the ADL are good but also to the FBI tipline).
@trentbaur @rvawonk You can also help with in-person situations by staying aware and pushing back right away on bigoted comments and "jokes."
I like the low-confrontation friendly wince-and-laugh "ooo, I think that came out wrong; did you want to rephrase that?" and the Socratic "I don't get it; why is that funny?"
Both help shift the Overton window in the right direction in public (workspaces, friend groups, etc), and you can make them more confrontational as needed
@OrganizedTRex @rvawonk I love this so much because it's still rooted in engaging with the individual.
We've got to keep working to shift the Overton window back.
@OrganizedTRex @trentbaur @rvawonk
When I was a young child, my uncle made a racist joke that I, being a child, truly DID NOT GET. So I asked the adults WHY the "joke" was funny. There was some real uncomfortable silence, then some real uncomfortable "explaining"
I don't remember my uncle telling racist jokes after that, but maybe he just avoided telling them in front of me.
Several of my uncles were KKK, one overt, several covert.
@ZhiZhu @OrganizedTRex @rvawonk I don't want to chase these people back into the shadows, I want them to understand that their views are bankrupt and fundamentally flawed.
But shame is never going to accomplish that.
@OrganizedTRex @ZhiZhu @rvawonk Whoa! I wrote this a few hours ago for another thread but I never sent it:
In 2019, I read an article (in the Atlantic?) about a group of college Jewish kids befriended an avowed alt-right figure on campus. Long story short, after months and months of playing board games together, he turned away from all the alt-right bullshit.
At the rank and file level, shunning doesn't work.
---
That's the guy - Shabbat dinner week after week did the trick
@Anaximander @trentbaur @ZhiZhu Within limits, yes. Dragging the Overton Window back is more important than "being nice." Think of all those 2016 articles about needing to talk to and "understand" people with "economic anxiety."
Think especially of JD Vance's book about "economic anxiety" in Appalachia, and how much that book moved the Overton Window to allow Vance to be so openly bigoted now *and* win a Senate seat!
nazis only show up in public when they feel safe to do so. They only stop showing up in public when they feel unsafe. Your job is to achieve the latter.
@OrganizedTRex @ZhiZhu @rvawonk That can work when shunning leads to isolation. But nowadays, people who are shunned can very quickly tap into a network of people who will embrace them with open arms.
I keep pounding the table over this reality because I think too many people don't get it.
I don't want to engage with racist right wingers anymore than anyone else. But IMO, we have no choice. We're not going to shun our way out of this. We'll shun straight to a successful Jan 6th.
@trentbaur @OrganizedTRex @ZhiZhu @rvawonk imo I think it depends on the person. Different personalities, social contexts, relationships, etc could all lead people to respond differently to shunning or friendliness.
I've had a friend before push back on some opinions of mine and it did make me reevaluate and think more carefully about the issues.
@fivetonsflax @rvawonk @OrganizedTRex @ZhiZhu It's not the mental state of bigoted people. It's trying to head off the overthrow of democracy by the increasing numbers of bigoted people. We're not going to shun our way out of this.
Do you not understand what is going on? Hand waving it as "sympathizing with racists" is myopic and short sighted.
@trentbaur @ZhiZhu @rvawonk @OrganizedTRex I didn’t say anything about sympathizing.
You’re 180° wrong about the dynamics of this stuff. Pushing the hard core bigots back into the shadows is exactly how we win. And for people in the mushy middle, what’s important isn’t what they believe, but which of their multiple identities is most salient at any given time.
We must make it safer to stand up and say, I am a proud worker! and less safe to stand up and say, I am a proud white man!
@trentbaur @fivetonsflax That's why I brought up Derek Black. He said that the shunning and resulting isolation are what made him open to learning from his Jewish classmates.
It's not "shun and done" (LOL). We make sure bigoted behavior is widely recognized as abhorrent (this is the "moving the Overton Window back toward sanity" part) because our first priority is making society safe and welcoming for the targets of bigotry.
*Then* we educate friends/family,
1/2
@trentbaur @fivetonsflax
which is necessarily a less-visible and more easily overlooked -- but still crucial -- part of the process.
2/2
@fivetonsflax @OrganizedTRex With all due respect, I believe things have changed over the years. In the 90s, I think shame could be very effective. 5 years ago? Less so. Today? Much less so.
Not saying shame has no effect. But it was shifted (As the Overton Window has shifted over time) and we need to be cognizant of this fact and adjust accordingly.
I think we've got a big overlapping Venn diagram between us. I think I'm just saying, "Both, And..."
@trentbaur @ZhiZhu @OrganizedTRex @rvawonk If someone I disagree with calls me names, I block them. If someone in my community tells me my words are hurtful, I feel terrible and remember it forever and seek to ensure it never happens again.
Shame is an important tool for individual and societal change.
@trentbaur @rvawonk
The more attention it gets, the more it's elevated by the algorithm, and the more it helps keep funding Twitter (more "engagement" = more ad revenue)
So I think the only thing that will work to is for everyone to stop using the site altogether thus 1) reducing any engagement on the site as much as possible + 2) leaving only the most vile posters tweeting there = maximum reduction of users, advertisers and ad revenue, in order to bankrupt it as soon as possible.
@leadore @rvawonk Ooo, good point. The very nature of Twitter and its algorithm ensured that *any* engagement with extremist views gets pushed up to the surface for other people to be exposed to, even if it's confronting / countering those views.
This mass migration to Mastodon and ideally the collapse of Twitter could help short-circuit that shifting of the Overton window.
@leadore @trentbaur @rvawonk I don't know if we can bankrupt it [for-profit social media] but, agreed, we don't have to engage and feed the algorithms further. Unfortunately, the problem goes far beyond Twitter. Mainstream cable news among the biggest offenders in uncritically repeating disinformation, imo.
Eager for more discussion on how to 'smartly' push back.
Get out there and kick that overton window back to the left.
@trentbaur say outrageous thing in the opposite direction so that the Overton window doesn't move unidirectionally? :)
Just kidding: it wouldn't work because the Overton window is dominated by large broadcast media like Fox News, see #NetworkPropaganda.
https://www.techdirt.com/2019/01/18/splinters-our-discontent-review-network-propaganda/
@trentbaur Within Twitter, blocking the account doing the posting drives down metrics slightly. Just as good is to not interact with the tweet any more. Don't expand on it to read the responses. Don't respond to it. Don't respond to the responders.
We have no "downvote" to speak of, so the best you can do is to ignore it and hope that it withers.
Debating is the only real option. E.g. I am on Minds and there are also lots of extremists. The only way to change someone’s actions is to understand their Umwelt and with their own logic find counter arguments that feel more correct.
This is a slow and tedious process and most people don’t have the nerve or patience to put up with so much propaganda without being pulled in themselves.
So what people do instead is attack the idea with their logic without realizing that the other side is using different vocabulary. Hardly anything will be solved if one side is talking about apples and the other side is talking about oranges.
Blocking such accounts from a social media platform is also not the solution, since they will find their own haven and echo chamber effect will take place.
Another thing is the effect of tribalism where individuals act personally irrational though rational to the tribe. So taking on a whole tribe only works by taking upon one person at a time until a critical mass exists that dissolves the tribe within.
@barefootstache @rvawonk Well said, all of it.
I think another important part of our strategy must be to make "our tribe" an inviting and appealing alternative. Once people get the glimmer of how BS the authoritarian future could be, they need somewhere to land.
And I know a lot of people on the left will bristle at this, but I personally think we've become less and less inviting and accepting over the years.
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