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Notes -
I'm saying that the uniparty is keeping them down. Combine that with the fact that radical wings are growing rapidly in America and Europe for the structural reasons I give and it's no surprise that the amount of paranoia is also growing.
If someone is agitating for fringe views, and the country is even roughly representational, then keeping them down is the expected behavior.
You're right that they are growing though, but even a growing fringe can still be anathema to ~2/3 of the population -- that was more or less what the French election just showed.
If the country is roughly representational, and someone is requesting unpopular actions, then not necessarily giving them what they want is natural and appropriate. The charge - increasingly true, I think - is that active methods are being taken to discredit and weaken those broadcasting non-majority views along the lines I described in reply to OP.
Which I can understand but it's somewhat distasteful at best and causing the very problem it's meant to prevent at worst.
I'm not sure I get the distinction between you're drawing here about "active methods".
Sticking with left wing examples for now, let's say there's a movement advocating for a wealth tax.
Saying, "no, only 10% of people want that," is appropriate.
Saying, "no, only 10% of people want that," and then going through that movement to find the one member who said something stupid ten years ago and bringing it up incessantly whenever people talk about wealth taxes is what I would call "active methods". An active attempt to damage and (further) discredit movements that are not popular in order to prevent that movement from ever becoming more popular.
That kind of seems like regular politics. Possibly unpleasant, but not some kind of illegitimate thing. Parties do it to each other all the times -- the left wing broadcasts MTG in their fundraisers all the time. Right wing blasts the squad.
What's more relevant to me is the question: if a movement never becomes popular, how do we distinguish between "we were discredited" from "our ideas were never palatable to more than 10% of voters"? Because I feel that many losing movements declare that, and it can't be universally the case.
I think you're right, it is regular politics. The overton window has become narrower and more harshly enforced since 2010, as the political and media class grows more uniform, and simultaneously the size of groups outside that window has been steadily enlarging. I think this is explains the feelings of persecution on both sides.
I'm not sure, sorry. In theory, you could be maximally encouraging of fringe groups (e.g. fawning newspaper coverage) and see whether they turn out to have legs, but I'd be very surprised if that ever happened.
Perhaps you could use volatility of support as a metric? If support for your ideology has strong peaks and troughs in response to events and scandals, that suggests that more people might be willing to support it depending on the circumstances. And, therefore, that the media can manipulate support with bad coverage or that politicians can manipulate support by crushing the insurgent new politician everyone is interested in. If support for your ideology chugs along at 5% for decades that suggests it's just unpopular. But this is very tenuous.
I agree, the groups outside the window feel like they are growing and should be more influential even if they are still minorities in absolute terms.
You're right the latter problem is probably untenable. But it does mean that we have to take "everyone would be a Bernie bro if the media didn't trash him" with a grain of salt.
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There is something I uniquely hate about using “radical wing” as a term. It’s just feels like you are implying they are crazy people.
In Europe the right is rising. But I don’t like calling them “radical”, they would be normies for most of history. Today’s neoliberal establishment of “open borders” were the radicals until about 1980. I feel like labeling something radical is just means to lazily call a side as not worth considering their ideas.
At some point all the political groups have been the establishment and in power. Even the Pride and a lesser extent the pedophiles found themselves in the establishment since 2020 but were far outside of it in 2000.
Especially when the "radical fringe" are actually the majority: https://www.themotte.org/post/900/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/192912?context=8#context
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For me, it's "extreme/ist/ism." It's the dumbest and most obvious boo-light ever ("anti-abortion extremists! open borders extremists! Tea Party extremism! Extreme political views!"). Extreme relative to what, exactly? I think its use could have been slightly (but only slightly) more excusable a century or so ago when there was a broader social and political consensus, but now those words are just used to exploit the lingering but fast fading memory of Normal and Decent Times in the minds of inattentive readers.
I also hate the term centrists which some people like to claim. It comes off as people who want to claim they are moderate, but I guess I think it can only be has no opinion. The Overton window moves so if you are a centrists I guess you are a npc. Wherever the window is at the moment you’re in the middle. I don’t think it would be a popular political philosophy if you explained it like that.
De Boer might be the only one who actually fits the radical label. But only in the American context. That is the establishment in a few places. I’d probably label him a failed ideology over radical (might even be a maximizing ideology in an AI world since the price system might be replaceable).
If America didn’t have black people Bernie Sanders would probably be the dead center of American politics. And that might actual be the short term utility maximizing position (I think bad for growth, but homogenous tribes like sharing much more with each other).
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