i’m not convinced this overton window stuff works for the left. overton himself was a liberal and while that doesn’t mean his theory is necessarily wrong, i don’t believe his window theory is effective for the communists. for one, the liberals already hold power. their concern is to manufacture consent/invent reality for things they’re already doing. they can say one thing and do another, and they can be dishonest about their policy or what it achieves, because they already have policy. that isn’t true for the left. media doesn’t create policy, the state creates policy. so when charlie kirk uses his epic powers of debate on kids fresh out of high school, he may increase support for policy, but his billionaire donors are the ones actually implementing it. who’s implementing hasan’s “left” policies?

concretely, hasan will say something like “i believe in an israel without apartheid.” his supporters, and mamdani’s supporters, will say something like “this is a very clever way to say you want to destroy israel, since there is no israel without apartheid.” that’s great if you actually control something beyond the imagination, but when you don’t, all you actually achieve is to imply that there actually is a possibility for an israel without apartheid. there is no mechanism by which you translate “israel without apartheid” in your head into an actual destruction of apartheid on the ground. even if you do control policy (mamdani), all this sort of spineless rhetoric actually achieves is allowing you to avoid taking any action at all on the issue. so hasan gets his tv appearances, mamdani has his nypd tel aviv branch, and nothing changes at all. besides maybe that some baby leftists who may otherwise have come to the conclusion that israel needs to not exist start to believe that maybe it’s more of a netanyahu problem. or, as another example, that they need to go back to voting for graham platner because lenin said.