Top comment: The Overton Window and the Labour Party
Posted by Edward:
We should all read up on the Overton Window and how it can be used to manipulate and ruin a population.
Joseph P. Overton spoke of how there are levels of acceptability for certain policies and the “window” is like a window of opportunity, the time when they are in line with what people think.
The levels are as follows:
Unthinkable
Radical
Acceptable
Sensible
Popular
Policy
However, this knowledge is used by some to manipulate public perception by getting something unthinkable and then fabricating the stages to guide others to become more accepting.
In this case, voting Labour was unthinkable for many, and for good reason. Their families had been ruined by Mintoff’s actions, Mintoff’s government had violated human rights, and Malta was a shit-hole under Labour. Labour had voted against EU membership and remained antagonistic towards the EU, the dinosaurs were back, and the party leader was a reconstituted Super One reporter with a secretive relationship with China.
However, by making bold statements, Muscat made voting Labour sound radical. It was often compared with coming out of the closet, as in that infamous ‘Dad, ha nivvota Labour’ campaign video, with a bunch of closeted Labour supporters afraid of the woman of the house. Another radical image was that WW2 video which appealed to a sense of jingoistic patriotism and, when we look at it with hindsight, was the first indication that Labour planned to confront ‘foreigners’, except Chinese ones.
Then came the whole “movement” nonsense, along with the “I’m in” lunacy and all those iPhone-like contraptions in streets and squares. They were everywhere, and the hysteria ended up fuelling itself.
“We need a change” was one of the most common phrases and the one that led people to deem it acceptable to vote for a bunch of people who their logical mind would have rejected outright.
Suddenly we had “intellectual” discussions about why refusing to vote Labour because of its track record and dubious people was something only brainwashed people would do.
Then came the “think positive” Koolaid. Sure, that was all about selling happiness. ‘Vote Labour and be happy’ should have been their slogan. That was what made them popular.
By then the hysteria and fear of being on the losing team led people to question whether or not it was sensible to keep on punishing Labour for Mintoff’s mistakes, even though many of Mintoff’s mistakes were still alive and kicking in the party and some of them were gearing up for seats in the cabinet of government, which they have since got.
Yes, people actually questioned whether or not it made sense to trust people who cheered, voted for and even worked with Mintoff and Lorry Sant even when they had never actually apologized for it, and when they are PROUD of having supported and voted for the governments of those awful years 1971 to 1987.
Their vote and support for Mintoff and KMB in those years does not only indicate terrible judgement, but worse than that, a frightening amorality or immorality.
By the time election campaign came round it was too late for the Nationalist Party. Nothing they could do at that stage could reverse the effects of what Labour had been doing for three to four years already. Labour began recruiting its first-followers that far ahead, and they were sent out into the field to recruit and groom others, mostly young, unsuspecting and uninformed people, but also the middle-aged at a vulnerable time in their lives when they were bored and needed to regain the kick of rebellion.
The trouble is now Labour are in power – and now they can, and I think will, do whatever they like.
Incidentally, the types of societies that are aware of this are those which have used it themselves to gain absolute power.
Part of their attitude towards it is that it only works in permissible and liberal/tolerant societies, and therefore rule their countries by demonstrating the total opposite and any window shift, no matter how natural, is clamped down on like nobody’s business. These countries are Russia, North Korea and, yes, China.
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A well thought-out post. However, the phenomenal screw ups and world wide disdain of the last ten months of this phenomenally incompetent bunch, at least, to me, indicates that a self-implosion is not far away.
Definitely a very good post, I agree. But what makes you believe that “a self-implosion is not far away”? I doubt it.
During Mintoff’s heyday (1971-1987) it was only Dr Joe Micallef Stafrace who put up a lame dissent when he resigned as Minister (during the first years of Labour’s first term in power) but still remained a Labour MP.
Later on he was a regular contributor to the first version of “ILLUM” in the late 70s (edited by Daniel Massa, I believe). That periodical was a breath of fresh air and was generally critical of Mintoff’s policies. Micallef-Stafrace’s iconic catch phrase at the time was: ‘the sun didn’t rise in 1971’.
As to Marlene Farrugia’s latest comment (‘he should reconsider his position’), it is too vague and loaded:
(a) she’s the Minister of Health’s girlfriend — he who has been ‘ordered’ to remove the tent outside Mater Dei;
(b) she has already declared her decision not to contest the next election;
(c) she started out against divorce but had a change of mind/heart before the referendum.
Malta needs an Upper House in Parliament.
What for? What good is second legislative body if it’s still made up of pimps, crooks and scoundrels?
No. We need the British sovereign as our head of state again. Unlike that jacked-up Labour scrounger whom I will forever hold in contempt, she wouldn’t have signed into law a shameful piece of legislation like the passport scheme.
Hear, hear.