Ask Lemmy

I cant speak to european causes, but as Americas' culture tends to set the pace of world events since the end of the second world war, it's entirely possible that there is a connection.

in the united states you need to know about two individuals that are primarily responsible for the rise of right wing populism and corporatocracy. The first is a Proto-Christian Nationalist and white supremacist by the name of Barry Goldwater, and the other was a Neo-Calvinist and Objectivist "thinker"* Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (*and I use the term loosely)

Barry Goldwater was a driving force in opposition to the civil rights movement, and primary architect of the modern Conservative platform. He played a rather large part in the Great Lane Swap where Southern Democrats switched to the Republican Party and Northern Republicans became the core of centrist Neoliberalism.

Where Lewis Powell comes into the mix is his treatment (now known simply as the "Powell Memorandum") called "Attack On the American Free Enterprise system" where he bemoans Corporate regulation as "holding back" the potential of not just American but Western Capitalism to enrich those who he deems worthy of greatness. (If you are familiar with the writings of Ayn Rand, this kind of "why do I need to share?!" Objectivist whining should sound similar.)

In both cases, they set up the groundwork and built the nascent foundations of the conservative political strategy we see to day that has resulted in much of the worlds' oligarchic tendencies. Goldwater's contribution was to recognize that conservative messaging had an image problem and rather than accept that the message was the problem, it was the recipients of that message who needed to be controlled and reeducated. To that end he further recognised that what kept the populace averse to conservative messaging was the Institutions of Liberal Democracy, namely free access to education, the social safety net, and strong labor movements. By eradicating these pillars where able, and eroding their influence continually, this would allow a formation of a systemic return to fundamentalist christianity as the fall back for what he deemed a corrupt and wonten society. (To wit; This guy would have thought "The Handmaid's Tale" was a fine book if only the main narrator was one of the men leading Galead, and not the woman who's rights had been stripped away.)

Powell, on the other hand, was a corporate lawyer by trade, and the person most responsible for corporate deregulation and "trickle-down economics." He promoted the idea that "a rising tide lifts all boats" as a justification for these actions, and used outmoded Calvinist ideas (just given a fresh coat of paint for the times) to justify the rule that the economically unsuccessful should move out of the way for those who could maintain economic success, and that such a system would be a driver of economic mobility by "encouraging" people to take agency in their own social status (Read: He thought the welfare state made people lazy and that forcing them to face a choice between destitution or participation would be a motivating factor for them to work harder, and thus increase profits at the top, which would then percolate down as the wealthy invested in new opportunities and ideas.) He saw labor unions as not just Socialist Infections but as the driving force preventing these phantom profits from bubbling up to those who he believed would be most suited to "properly" distributing them. If this sounds alot like "the peasantry don't know how to spend their money, better to let the nobility have it" congrats, you win a gold star.

In both cases, the philosophies meshed very well as each supported the goals and methods of the other. By deregulating business, it allowed corporations to attack traditional power bases of the left wing, entrenching a kind of Capitalist Nobility as the only people who could actually make it in the new system, and blinding the working class to the fact that social mobility was little more than a myth used as a ideological carrot on a stick that kept productivity KPIs artificially high.

Other factors that lead to this situation are supreme court rulings in the 1920's, specifically Henry Ford Vs. The Dodge Brothers, that inadvertently set the precedent that the point of any business was not to enrich its workers evenly or even commensurately with its owners, but to maximize profits to the shareholders. Another stumbling block for Leftist thought is Article One of N.A.T.O. which states that every member state must engage in a capitalist free market economy - a damn shame because otherwise N.A.T.O. is one of, if not the, most important defensive alliance in the promotion of omnipax world politics in human history. (Not to say it has always been successful toward that goal, mind.) Even more than the United Nations, in many regards.

That last bit may be more salient to the European perspective, as there is STILL a mindset of eurocentrism even as the world becomes more globalist and western influence wanes now that the age of colonialism is largely over. Mass migrations due to the policies of unchecked corporate power causing the lands these migrants hail from despoiled and unlivable, makes the supporters of these same mentalities quite ironic. Instead of bemoaning the influx of such individuals, and chafe at their presence, one would think that expending resources and investing to improve the living conditions of these places such that immigration from them be unnecessary, would be a more adroit course of action, and yet here we are. It's easier to complain that the world is ugly than face the fact that your ideology is partly to blame, I suppose.