I am being absolutely serious here with the Weimar Republic comparison. Because people are fucking miserable and it's fucking terrifying.
A hundred years ago, broke people in big cities would go to fascist rallies because they were free, and because sometimes the organizers gave out free food and beer, and because people had nothing better to do.
And they stayed because hate feels good when you're hurting and simple violent solutions appeal to the angry monkey parts of our brains.
And the fewer community connections you have - the more the economy strips your life down to work and sleep, or to job hunting and sleep, or to scrounging in the gutter to survive and sleep, and the less you go out and socialize with actual human beings - the more appealing the fascist illusion of unity, of being part of a powerful group, becomes.
And the only difference today is that the fascist rallies are beamed directly into your home.
Don't forget, the fascist rallies also had one incredibly important thing that drew in more people than the free food and free beer - a simple, targeted reason WHY they're in the shitty situation.
You can throw as many economists and scientists and such at the problem and they'll (properly) show the reasons, but there won't be a simple solution. There won't be a singular "here do this and it will magically fix all your issues" point. Even the simplest fixes to the situation will be overwhelming for most people.
And most people just want that: a leader who promises to solve the crappy situation, without making them feel stupid, without convoluted long drawn out plans. A simple solution, a simple fix.
For Hitler that was "get rid of the Jews". For mango mussolini that's "get rid of the illegals".
And people liked the simple solutions so they signed up for the ideology.
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
-LBJ
And it doesn't matter if you're talking about different races, different sexualities, attached vs detached earlobes, whatever. Point to a group and tell everyone "They're the problem" and you're going to have an automatic following.
And that includes cishetero white men. Lots of cishetero white men out there struggling like everyone else, and to be told that they're the oppressors because they look the same as most of the oppressors, kinda leaves no room for class solidarity.
I'm not saying that's the only problem or even the biggest problem, but it is a problem, and it seems to be the only one we're not allowed to talk about.
Everyone loves to hate on cishetero white men. Why don't we all just hate on billionaire oligarchs and corrupt politicians instead? That seems to transcend race, gender, and sexuality. If you don't believe me, look at Clarence Thomas, Kristi Noem, Peter Thiel, and Caitlyn Jenner.
Being a minority does not automatically make one a good person or immune from accountability. And being a majority doesn't automatically make someone a bad person, or prejudiced, hateful, bigoted, or intolerant. There's nuance to everything.
Racism is bad, period. But not every white person is a racist, and not every racist is white. The same applies to all the other intersections.
We really need to stop oversimplifying the problems and solutions, because it's the same tactic and the same trap that the fascists use. We need to be better than the fascists, not fight fascism with fascism. Hate begets hate.
Gender war, race war, sexuality war: it's all a distraction from the class war. Let's not fall for it.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
We should use mass AI propaganda to direct all our hate to an imaginary group of people that don't actually exist, and are distinct enough that no living human could ever be mistaken for one of them. Like, let's just invent an entirely new racial phenotype from whole cloth, with unique physical features no one has. And then just create a storm of AI stories, images, and videos of these evil bastards doing all sorts of heinous things. All of humanity can unite behind hating a group of people that don't actually exist.
If we're going to live in a post-truth dystopia, let's try using it for good for once.
Pretty much, yeah.
Fascism, at its core, is Us versus Them. Under all the complexities and layers is one simple idea: Our problems are because They have Our resources, and we need a strong leader to go to war (figuratively or literally) against Them and take Our stuff.
And I think this is incredibly seductive because it triggers our old hominid instincts, from back when we lived in small tribes on the African savannah, and when our territory was hit by drought, or fire, or natural disaster, and we didn't have enough resources, the solution really was to go into another tribe's territory, drive them out, and take their stuff.
Lebensraum is as old as stone knives and bearskins.
And the more desperate people are, the more frightened and hungry and angry they are, the stronger those old animal instincts become.
But, you know, a good leader can simplify complicated issues. A good leader can identify problems, articulate actual solutions, and direct people's angry monkey brains towards fighting for those solutions instead of persecuting scapegoats. Not Us versus Them, but All of Us, together, fighting poverty and climate change and economic hardship and building a better future.
Unfortunately, in the United States and the "free world" as a whole, we have a handful of extraordinarily wealthy people who benefit from all the economic and social failures that are causing the problems we suffer from. And they want people to believe in a simple violent solution that blames the wrong people and doesn't actually fix anything, because they don't want the problems fixed.
And you don't get elected unless these extraordinarily wealthy people give you enough money to win an election.
So we don't get any good leaders. We get a choice between fascism and the status quo, which is also fascism.
Yay, democracy.
Oh yeah, we left the EU and that fixed all our problems. Wait no that didn't work it actually made things worse, ok but trust me lets blame all the immigrants now.
I mean, the solution is easy: remove billionaires or dismantle capitalism.
or? AND.
This is also a simple solution meant to magically solve all problems, at least the "end capitalism" part is. Not that there aren't other systems out there that societies could switch to. But capitalism is what's currently keeping everyone alive. If you want to end it, you have to present a viable solution and a plan to get there.
"End Capitalism" works as a slogan, but it's a fix all just the same.
What's keeping people alive is logistics and other peoples hard work. Not money.
Ultimately ecomic systems are a way to organizing production and distributing the products. So in other words logistics. Capitalism is a way of doing that. It has quite a few downsides, but for example fewer people have died due to starvation globally in the last 50years combined, as due to the Great Leap Forward alone. Capitalism is just not the worsed system we have tried.
It is, by far, as it will kill billions in the coming decades.
I can't imagine people spouting this shit seriously.
Exactly. I believe capitalism must end, but if you aren't working to build something better, trying to figure out what went wrong and how to prevent such issues in the future… then you're setting yourself up for a lateral revolution at best.
Learn about how other societies have tried to resolve the issues you're trying to deal with.