How the World’s Richest Man Shattered History’s Most Important Window

For years, conservatives with all their might tried to move one of history’s most infamous windows back to where it was over 30 years ago — until a Silicon Valley billionaire shattered it. Little did people know that this was a $44 billion dollar window.

Let me elaborate with a quick story. In the 1990’s at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, former senior vice president Joseph Overton advanced a political model that was later termed the Overton Window. This model theorized that there is a range (or a window) of societally accepted policies and causes that are permissible for politicians to champion and get behind. Dare any politician cross the borders of this window and venture into policies and ideas that society would soundly reject, he would see his political campaign (and potentially his career) start to crumble. 

For those who are more visually-minded, picture this: a vertical line with a rectangle in the middle. The part of the line that the rectangle encompasses is what is deemed acceptable by society in the time that the Overton Window is relevant. The parts of the line that are outside this rectangle are “no-go zones” for lawmakers. Exceeding the barriers of the rectangle would mean supporting societally-shunned ideologies and policy plans that would surely lead to defeat at the ballot box. 

But now visualize this: the window can move. The line stays stationary, but the rectangle can be repositioned anywhere on the line. The window moving on the line indicates a cultural shift. This shift now redetermines what society finds normative and permissible. In reality, this window has been moving rapidly for the last many decades. And it’s been consistently in the left’s favour.

Definitions and explanations of how the Overton Window works have varied and evolved since its origins, but the context its currently used in is to describe the battle among both sides of the political spectrum for its repositioning. The left and right have been in the middle of a culture war for decades and have made desperate attempts to push the Overton Window in the direction of their respective side’s ideology. Mainly, the left has been wining. They’ve mostly succeeded in wrenching free the Window from the grasp of the right, pulling it in their direction as the right tries to keep a weak grip on it, dragging their feet in the sand as they go along with the left’s force.

Lest you think that this can be summarized as a tug-of-war between the Conservative and Liberal Party, or the Republican and Democrat Party, it’s worth noting that many Conservatives and Republicans have set the right back many years in this battle. Weak-minded members of the two parties have broken rank to join their political opponents in attempts to undermine their own party. Today’s Canadian Conservative Party is virtually indistinguishable from their Liberal counterparts. The singular difference is that one party wants a carbon tax and the other does not. And in the US, look at how many Republicans betrayed their party and spoke out in support of Kamala Harris, all because their obsessive hatred of Trump has driven them to abandon principle. 

So now that we understand what the Overton Window is, how it works, and who have been the victors of repositioning it to their side over the last 30+ years, let’s narrow in on a more specific moment in history: the point when Elon Musk, a Silicon Valley billionaire, genius, philanthropist, inventor, and entrepreneur, took a sledgehammer to the Overton Window, shattering it into a million pieces.

In October 22, after a lot of back-and-forth about whether rumours would become reality, Elon Musk finalized his acquisition of Twitter (now called 𝕏). I would guess that very few people understand how consequential this was. No longer was the conservative right being censored or silenced on one of the biggest social media platforms in the world just because the ruling elites deemed their views to be “deplorable,” “fringe,” and “unacceptable.” The right finally had a voice that they could use without fear of being throttled. Furthermore, the average person no longer had to rely on the Fake News media corporations for their news intake. Citizen journalism emerged stronger than ever, giving people a more direct line to world events. 

The amusing thing about this is that Elon Musk was a independent-leaning-left up until this point in history. By his own admission, he supported Barrack Obama, Hilary Clinton, and Joe Biden in their respective elections. He’s arguably the world leader in electric vehicle (“green vehicle”) manufacturing and has voiced support for a carbon tax. He wasn’t exactly a beacon of conservatism; as pro-free speech as he claimed to be, he showed some bias and hypocrisy when he refused to unban Alex Jones because of his personal emotions. (It’s of course worth noting that he did unban Jones a short while later.) While Elon has become much more conservative since then (particularly since the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump), he wouldn’t have been viewed at the time as the person who would shatter the Overton Window.

Yet Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter was exactly what the right wanted but didn’t know they needed — desperately. Because of the newfound ability for the conservative population — not just in the US, but world-wide — to share their opinions, engage with like-minded individuals, and theorize together on how to advance in the culture war, the Overton Window seemed to not have just shifted back for the right but had shattered completely. A new type of Window emerged. This new window allowed for conservatives to have not quite equal power as their opponents but close enough to make it a fairer struggle. 

Practically speaking, Elon Musk’s $44 billion dollar business deal has had and will continue to have a major impact on the 2024 election. Just look at how it impacted the 2020 election months later and all the information we found out regarding the government’s collusion with Twitter to a) censor ground-breaking news and information that would have hurt Biden’s campaign in a huge way and b) silence the voices of consequential Trump-supporters. None of this would have been revealed if Elon hadn’t cleaned house when he bought what he calls “a crime scene.”

𝕏 is now a powerhouse for conservatives working collectively to help Trump win this November. It serves as a forum of accountability for the election, an outreach to register voters (as Elon and others have been promoting), and a community for similarly-thinking red-pillars. If Trump wins this November, it will be in large part due to what Elon has done with 𝕏.

With a new Window in place, both sides of the political aisle continue to work to redefine the cultural norms and acceptable positions to hold in today’s society. But the right is not as handicapped as they were just a few years ago. The Fake News media no longer holds a monopoly on current events; this is evident in the viewership drops across the board of legacy news corporations. The battle for the Overton Window continues on, but thanks to the richest man in the world (and one of the smartest), conservatives have gained a stronger grip.

Cover photo by BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash