ToastedPlanet

They are definitely the first two billionaires that come to mind.

It is, but it's coming from an otherwise socialist perspective.

In this most recent discussion, this is what it boiled down to.

https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/25671921

Oh I know it’ll take a lot more than just circumstances, but the circumstances have to be right for most of them to even be interested in getting educated on the subject.

https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/25671921

They are arguing that the reason we aren't experiencing a socialist revolution now is that people's material conditions are insufficiently bad and that things need to get worse. It's troubling because I think it leads otherwise leftist people to sit on their hands and wait when there is a need for anti-neoliberal propaganda.

Which I would like to try to take a crack at next. I was hoping to motivate others to do the same with this post. Looks like I could use some work though, this meme seems to be have been so-so at best. It inspired some discussion at least.

People will start having to make that mental decision.

While that's true that doesn't necessarily mean a person is a fascist if they keep their head down. What I mean is that neoliberals are more susceptible to becoming fascists who terrorize other people.

Although, I think there are a lot of people who have consumed a decent chunk of anti-fascist propaganda. These people are effectively awkwardly stuck as neoliberals. They've rejected fascism, but they still can't bring themselves to really be socialists or even progressives.

Getting these people to reject neoliberalism is crucial to building grassroots movements to build a political revolution. We need people to rise up against the systems that have enabled this fascist takeover. As long as a majority of people have neoliberal ideas in their heads, they're unlikely to do that. People need to learn that systemic change and wealth redistribution are essential. Otherwise we are going to be victims to a larger fascist movement later and/or climate change even if we somehow defeat this fascist dictatorship.

So not only is neoliberalism how we got here, as neoliberalism leads to fascism, but rejecting neoliberalism is going to be crucial to getting rid of the current fascist regime. It's not enough to only be against fascism, we also need to be for something too. And neoliberalism is getting in the way of being for something for a lot of people.

Knowing that there are alternatives should, in theory, be enough for the purpose of getting their foot in the door to learn more. People do need to learn more, but the issue is that most people seem to have little interest in doing so despite knowing there is an alternative they could learn more about.

And for many socialism simply means either “European style capitalism with free healthcare” or “USSR under Stalin”.

This is the roadblock that stops people from going further and it's not an accident. People have been subjected to neoliberal propaganda that pushes an owner class first economic model. There are underlying assumptions people have that the extractive economic institution of capitalism is the only model that can work. When, in the US, we have known since monopolies starting forming at the start of the 20th century that capitalism is a zero-sum winner take all system that isn't sustainable. That's why we regulate anti-competitive practices to try to prolong the inevitable. edit: typo

I was recently discussing this with a user who does not strike me as a tanky. I can link the comment chain to you if you want, but it's in my comment history. It's not so much a case of full blown accelerationism, but it's largely the same principle. Like the material conditions do need to be bad for people to want change in the form of new ideas, but we reached that point awhile ago. edit: typo

Also, I should add, the loop I'm referring to is that no matter how bad it gets this acceleration principle always states things need to get worse. This is not the neoliberal to fascist pipeline. edit: although things getting worse is what's pushing people to choose between fascism and socialism

And when a neoliberal becomes a fascist, they are adopting fascist ideas. However, those neoliberal ideas aren't rejected. The neoliberal ideas are what lead the person to reject socialist and progressive ideas in favor of fascist ideas. It's not that we failed to channel the dissatisfaction, but failed to challenge the underlying framework for internalizing their dissatisfaction. Instead of blaming the system people are blaming the people living in that system, like immigrants and trans people.

If a fascist rejects those fascist ideas the neoliberal ideas will be what they fall back on. For example, if a person believes systemic change is unnecessary, then rejecting the fascist alternative, removing people, doesn't mean they will question the underlying assumption that systemic change is unnecessary. The fact we need systemic change still needs to be learned.

It's not a path. People do not need to go through neoliberism. People are, usually anyway, not purely a fascist or purely a neoliberal. It's that people have a collection of ideas in their heads. In the case of our modern society, there are a lot of neoliberal ideas and increasingly fascist ideas in people's heads. All of these neoliberal and fascist ideas need to be addressed one at a time before a person can start accepting the progressive and socialist alternatives to those ideas. edit: typo

Job done.

I wouldn't argue it's a case of least resistance materially, in terms of physical hardship, when choosing between socialism and fascism. I think neoliberalism does set people up to fail in the sense that fascism is ideologically the path of least resistance. Neoliberalism says we don't need to change systems only the people in charge of those systems. Fascism says we should, in addition, change the people living in the system, mainly by removing them.

This is an easier change in thinking than fundamentally restructuring economic and political institutions to be inclusive instead of extractive. Thus socialists and progressives have to work harder than the fascists do because neoliberalism does most of the work for the fascists. Neoliberalism leads to fascism.

It's mostly a critique of the accelerationist streak I see in other socialists. So it's supposed to anti-accelerationist. When people talk about median-voter syndrome I think the ideas that most of those people have in common are neoliberal ideas. Of course that's not to say it's exclusively neoliberal ideas, just that it's probably the most common. So neoliberals are probably the largest pool of people to recruit from.

As socialists we should be working to figure out the propaganda that will help to get people to reject neoliberalism en masse. That's what I wanted to start working on with future memes, but it felt like it was important to explain why. I was hoping this would be a useful starting place to point people to if they ask me why I'm trying to make anti-neoliberal memes in the future.

But yeah, this my main critique of the arguments I encounter from socialists on lemmy. I think it benefits us to really examine this assumption, because the material conditions are really bad, but people are still saying they need to get worse.

I'm always arguing about this topic with people. It definitely isn't going to make sense without that context.