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What's up with young men and fascism? I feel like fascism (as found outside the ruling class) is less a political philosophy or movement than it is a simple expression of human nature. It's all so bare and obvious, the othering, scapegoating, rallying around an invented enemy. Hell, it's so primitive, I bet it predates human divergence. I've seen ducks suddenly decide one of their own flock has to die, and a bunch of the males mob them. I doubt it's THAT far removed.
Social media. It's unregulated, and allowing people to fall into echo chambers of hate. When all you see is unchallenged radical nonsense you become a radical. The social media companies don't care what people see, just that they stay on the apps as long as possible. Young men are a particularly vulnerable group - when you feel disenfranchised and worried for the future you're the perfect target for easy answers from hate groups. And if you get fed more and more of that crap because you watched a bit, it soon becomes all you see unchallenged.
We urgently need social media regulation across Europe - not bans for children (pointless) but complete reform of social media to benefit all ages. Control of the algorithms need to be taken out of the hands of the big US & Chinese tech companies who use to to create addiction and maximise "engagement" to maximise profit, and instead it needs to be run for the benefit of the citizens / user. Public Service Social Media is what we need - much like Public Service Television ensured balanced and healthy TV across Europe in the 20th and early 21st century, we need the same for social media.
Social media is the common factor between the rise in far right hate groups across the UK, US, France, Germany, Italy and more. The changes in the Netherlands are a symptom of the disease, not the disease itself.
Social media is unregulated but also in the hands of billionaires. Most of which absolutely hate democracy and think we, the general population are an obstacle to overcome as they work to replace us with machines.
Social media is practically universal; that does not explain why young men are the most right-swinging group. I don't think it's just an emergent situation like you suggest. I think that they are swinging hardest because they are most vulnerable to the intentional manipulation we are all experiencing.
While I think the current corporate structure of social media is fucked, I absolutely 100% do not want the government controlling feeds, content, or communication. That’s a path that will lead to an even worse outcome than the path we’re currently on.
How is the government controlling social media worse than Zuckerberg or Musk doing so?
Think about the current US government.
Well, we are in c/Europe community so that's not really a government I'm thinking of.
But besides: There's hardly any difference between US government controlled and US billionaire controlled social media. And frankly, both are orders of magnitudes worse than EU government controlled social media.
See the danger is that you can’t rely on the European government being the same forever, and by the time you realize it’s too late…I mean look at the slow frog boil second rising of v the right in Europe right now
Sure, but even if EU governments turn fully to fascism that would be at worst as terrible as the current status quo with social media in fascist billionaire's control.
Control as in decide whats allowed and whats not? No thank you.
Control as in enforcing people placing illegal content on the internet, from child pron to hate speech to sexual harrasment to doxxing? Yes please. The regular internet and social media should be as safe as the physical world.
Defining what is illegal content is exactly the issue. A photo of two women kissing might be fine where you live for now, but in Saudi Arabia that would be quite problematic.
Totally, a government choices should be held accountable. Which is why giving the government power is only a good thing in fully functional democracies. I agree. But a Saudi based company is not likely to give you a better treatment as the Saudi government. But either way, on someone else's platform you'll have to adhere to someone else's rules. I like how the Fediverse gives us our own houses with our own rules.
Young girls, too. Their decrease is even bigger:
probably because it's pushed on them, and teenagers resent what is pushed on them.
when i was a teenager being gay was horrible and bad, and if you didn't think that you were rebellious and cool.
now being gay is celebrated and lauded, and teens probably feel rebellious and cool by being against it.
it's the same with drug use. drug use has dropped a lot among teens because it's been normalized by adults and it's not cool.
further there is a huge uptick in gender extremism for both men and women, fueled by social media influencers and the kids love that shit. you have teenage boys thinking they need to be body builders and teenage girls thinking they need butt lifts.
Brain-rot rots brains. It is that simple.
We're all subject to the same brain-rot. What's up with young men and fascism?
No, we aren't. Some are much more targeted.
Propagandists are just like any other groomer, they pick their targets carefully. Why would you choose someone like me, a 40 year old woman with decades of established politics and ideology you’d have to fight against when you could pick a young malleable person who’s still actively forming their opinions. I’m a lot more difficult to influence to believe in things that are against my best interests, not to say I’m immune to propaganda just that the bang for your buck is a lot bigger with younger less informed people.
And why would you specifically target a population? Doesn't that also suggest that young men are especially vulnerable to fascist ideas? Doesn't answer the question, just moves it slightly.
https://feddit.org/comment/15064610
Girls have had a larger slump.
That's interesting! I think there is a larger trend beyond the metric used in this article, which isn't specifically talking about fascism.
Society has been silencing young men, driving them away and fascism accepts them. Pretty much the same happened in 1920s. Important difference though: most current young men haven't suffered through a horrible world war, or really suffered at all.