It's why I was slightly confused also.
I think that people just like to lump things together sometimes, but these would be symptoms of a rise in populism - which can be all across the spectrum.
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Why is fascism spreading across the world in the 2010s?
- Thread starter Bronx-Man
- Start date
It's why I was slightly confused also.
I think that people just like to lump things together sometimes, but these would be symptoms of a rise in populism - which can be all across the spectrum.
Social media on the internet has given greater rise to uninformed opinion. The way people consume information has fundamentally changed and newspapers no longer are the source of breaking information.
The overall quality of discourse has taken a nosedive. And it's the ideal set of circumstances for fake news and propoganda to be believed by uneducated masses.
Are you forgetting all the other things that they did to consolidate their power?
A complacent left with career politicians demoralising young voters with a "don't rock the boat" attitude, coupled with social media democratising communication channels uncovering and amplifying the fascistoid underbelly of society that was ignored for way too long.
Now we're left with spineless politicians that can't decide between their careers and the ideological phrases they spout and pretend to believe in.
Add in economic and societal turmoil and bam, anyone offering a convenient outlet for people's fears and anxieties becomes popular. Fascism is attractive in the same way religion is. It offers easy solution to complex problems and creates social bonds by blaming others.
Now we're left with spineless politicians that can't decide between their careers and the ideological phrases they spout and pretend to believe in.
Add in economic and societal turmoil and bam, anyone offering a convenient outlet for people's fears and anxieties becomes popular. Fascism is attractive in the same way religion is. It offers easy solution to complex problems and creates social bonds by blaming others.
They haven't been losing though, that's the thing. Republicans have been in power a lot. It's just that their ideology demands they be in absolute and total power. Republicans have long since descended into barbarism - they essentially think what is best in life is to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentations of women.
First world countries destroying the planet since decades ago = people leaving their home countries looking for better opportunities/save themselves from the economic and climatic crisis caused by the 1st world = The wave of immigrants are targeted by the fascist, populist right side of politics thirsty for power again, so they make xenophobia and racism bloom in the minds of the masses = people buy into that (helped with facebook and twitter's lack of moderation) + a huge part of the millenial crowd don't give a shit about anything other than they asses so they don't vote, and the fascisct scum gets elected.
Economics is one reason, but that has been a growing problem regardless.
The bigger cause is the present early information stage, it's the information Wild West. People can find & believe anything regardless of its value or truth. This is distinctly different than 30 years ago and will (hopefully) be distinctly different 30 years from now.
Without the current info tech and humanity's relationship with current infotech, Trump would have never had a remote chance.
It was not me who predicted an early information age where there is a glut of info and not good controls over it. First came search engines, next is big data, then has to be something to better still organize and categorize it, then finally something to control it all. An AI is one such possibility, one that directs people to knowledge and hopefully truth, much like a school teacher in the early 80's and prior (before every opinion became truth).
This could have been avoided by already being in some fascist state, although that 'solution' is terrible too. China being an imperfect example of this, yet they will be able to ride out the storm that is currently raging.
The bigger cause is the present early information stage, it's the information Wild West. People can find & believe anything regardless of its value or truth. This is distinctly different than 30 years ago and will (hopefully) be distinctly different 30 years from now.
Without the current info tech and humanity's relationship with current infotech, Trump would have never had a remote chance.
It was not me who predicted an early information age where there is a glut of info and not good controls over it. First came search engines, next is big data, then has to be something to better still organize and categorize it, then finally something to control it all. An AI is one such possibility, one that directs people to knowledge and hopefully truth, much like a school teacher in the early 80's and prior (before every opinion became truth).
This could have been avoided by already being in some fascist state, although that 'solution' is terrible too. China being an imperfect example of this, yet they will be able to ride out the storm that is currently raging.
Still doesn't change the fact he was democratically elected. Doesn't change the fact fascists have often used democracy to seize power.
Their perceived loss, real or otherwise, drives their behavior. It might not just be economic capital, but also cultural and ideological capital, as well.
Worsening of economic inequality, increases in mass immigration, stagnant wages, consolidation and normalisation of neo-liberal economic policies, decrease of low skill service sector jobs and high skill industrial sector jobs.
Throughout my political and economics studies, these seem to be the recurring themes to explain the recent movements.
Throughout my political and economics studies, these seem to be the recurring themes to explain the recent movements.
It's a cycle. Too many people forgot.
Plus we have globalization which politicians instrumentalize to point fingers at an easy scapegoat for their own failings. You couple that with the rise of social media and the information bubbles that form within it and you have a deadly cocktail.
It's sad because even as a cynical teen in the late 90s, early 00s, I definitely had the belief that the world would keep leaning towards the left as time went on. Sigh... It's not hopeless though, Trump was a wake-up call for me, even as a non-American. I'll never skip voting ever again.
Plus we have globalization which politicians instrumentalize to point fingers at an easy scapegoat for their own failings. You couple that with the rise of social media and the information bubbles that form within it and you have a deadly cocktail.
It's sad because even as a cynical teen in the late 90s, early 00s, I definitely had the belief that the world would keep leaning towards the left as time went on. Sigh... It's not hopeless though, Trump was a wake-up call for me, even as a non-American. I'll never skip voting ever again.
Anything reliant solely on A.I. as the arbiter of truth is destined to fail, as A.I.s are really just derivative inheritors of their creators' biases.
A societal change is necessary. One driven by technology that has massive human buy in.
The only real medicine will be another tech boom providing abundant opportunity, which will ultimately be an infrastructure-based industrial revolution focused on mitigating the impacts of climate change through sustainable technologies.
I essentially see 2 factions through this lens:
-Those who are willing to address the massive problems with our current system.
versus
-Those who are ignorant of these massive problems and those who are cognizant of them but are bad actors looking to exploit and manipulate for short-term selfish gain.
When the leaders of the second group realized they were wrong and the facts didn't support their sentiments, they only had violence and intimidation to assert their position to fall back on. Fascism and the like is the systematic approach to maintain their factually-unsupported policy positions.
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Idk I think social media amplified these issues but they always been there. It got rid of gatekeeping (any doofus with a camera can put a video on social media) but I mean the problems with the way we engage in discourse is true for traditional media. For example CNN Still puts talking heads on from opposing sides of any political issue and present it to the viewer like they're equal. The NYT publishes opeds endorsing apartheid states
Globalization.
Wild west phase of internet.
Failure of neoliberal economics.
Growing wealth inequality.
Wild west phase of internet.
Failure of neoliberal economics.
Growing wealth inequality.
Pankaj Mishra makes a pretty solid case made in "Age of Anger" that the rise of Fascism and Authoritarianism seen these days is due to globalization and, more importantly, income inequality that has led to massive ressentiment. The same kind of feelings of abandonment and listlessness that swept through the world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that Rousseau tried to articulate. He draws a direct line tying together Trump and Brexit and Isis and Narendra Modi, and he does so in an extremely compelling way.
I hesitate to go so far as to say that all of these things stem from the same root of contemporary nihilism, but there is a lot to be said for the connections made and I do think that in order to understand our present and the seemingly chaotic anger and xenophobia and racism we need to dig back into the past and especially the authors and philosophers of the 18th and 19th century. I also agree with his conclusion, that something terrible is inevitably going to happen if the course we've laid is continually followed.
If you have the time and the patience, read Age of Anger and then follow up on some of the bibliography.
Also, read "The Proud Tower" by Barbara Tuchman. It's a autobiography of the late 19th and early 20th century that has haunting echoes in today's world.
I hesitate to go so far as to say that all of these things stem from the same root of contemporary nihilism, but there is a lot to be said for the connections made and I do think that in order to understand our present and the seemingly chaotic anger and xenophobia and racism we need to dig back into the past and especially the authors and philosophers of the 18th and 19th century. I also agree with his conclusion, that something terrible is inevitably going to happen if the course we've laid is continually followed.
If you have the time and the patience, read Age of Anger and then follow up on some of the bibliography.
Also, read "The Proud Tower" by Barbara Tuchman. It's a autobiography of the late 19th and early 20th century that has haunting echoes in today's world.
Fake news feeds into the justifications of many right wing ideals. People really underestimate the power of fake news.
Case in point:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/fake-news-destroying-freedom-france-sets.83289
Case in point:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/fake-news-destroying-freedom-france-sets.83289
I can't speak to Europe or Brazil, but in the US the center left abandoning populism and even becoming hostile to it was certainly a factor in Trump's rise. Thomas Frank wrote a short but great piece about it recently.
It feels like very few people actually know what Fascism is, and throw the word around too freely. Please do some research. I swear theres a huge chunk that simply use the word as a synonym to racism.
Here is a quick wikipedia definition. Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian ultranationalism, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy.
If what you're describing has nothing to do with authoritarianism (characterized by strong central power and limited political freedoms, think dictatorship), or ultranationalism (extreme nationalism that promotes the interest of one state or people above all others"), then you're not talking about Fascism.
Here is a quick wikipedia definition. Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian ultranationalism, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy.
If what you're describing has nothing to do with authoritarianism (characterized by strong central power and limited political freedoms, think dictatorship), or ultranationalism (extreme nationalism that promotes the interest of one state or people above all others"), then you're not talking about Fascism.
This is an excellent post. It is essentially the root cause.
Neoliberalism is a bad system in that it takes too much power away from the masses via global laissez-faire economics, allowing oligarch-like capitalists to essentially pull the world's strings, circumventing national political systems in the process.
Instead of opting for a system that progresses us forward, people who are fearful are likely to fall back on old ways, where they can assert their will in the most dominant way possible: violence and intimidation.
These people are thinking in terms of spite and revenge for feeling as if they've been left behind. They ignorantly believe the deflections of the people who are the perpetrators against them in the first place.
This is entirely true, and when you're deciding who to vote for you have to weigh up what you want Vs what else is going to be done in your name due to that party. This isn't really comparable to a binary referendum. If you have come to the conclusion that the UK should leave the EU, should you vote against your own beliefs just because of who else would be voting with you? You're not taking the rough with the smooth here; getting the outcome you voted for and nothing else.
I think you could probably write a tome on this(and people have tried), but one thing is that if you think about the post-war movement and culture there was a strong 'Never again' current, because people had experienced the horrors of fascism personally. This is what the EU rose out of. And so they told their children "no matter what, this can never happen again." And those children told their children, and then they told their children and that's where we are. Now our nations are mostly populated with people that have no visceral experience with the tone and strategies of fascism, much less the brutality, genocide, repression, torture, and tyranny of fascism. It's kind of like with anti-vaxxers - if we could see and feel and hear and smell small pox, there wouldn't be very many anti-vaxxers.
Multiply that with actual reasons for people to be disillusioned with modern liberal capitalism, opportunists willing to exploit it, changing demographics, migrant crises, soulless social media companies, complacent/hubristic people in power, the most effective propaganda machines the world has probably ever seen, and good ol-fashioned hate and you have a volatile mixture.
And we are democratically electing leaders who will take that opportunity when it arises. Look at Bolsonaro, he's pretty much saying it out loud, and you know Trump would do absolutely anything that he thinks he could get away with that would empower him.
Multiply that with actual reasons for people to be disillusioned with modern liberal capitalism, opportunists willing to exploit it, changing demographics, migrant crises, soulless social media companies, complacent/hubristic people in power, the most effective propaganda machines the world has probably ever seen, and good ol-fashioned hate and you have a volatile mixture.
And we are democratically electing leaders who will take that opportunity when it arises. Look at Bolsonaro, he's pretty much saying it out loud, and you know Trump would do absolutely anything that he thinks he could get away with that would empower him.
The economic recession made far too many people open to the soothing words of Mad Men and Mad Women
Yep, in a very broad sense this is the root.
And, tangentially, may I say that petty semantic arguments about the definition of fascism do not lessen the impact of these violent lashings out or their cause. It does not much matter what you think the outcome of this ressentiment turns out to be, the effects will remain the same. Rising feelings of nationalism and want for authoritarians to embody an anger that many don't even fully understand themselves. You see this with liberals in America latching on to seeming strongmen who represent what they think is the only way to return the blow they'd been dealt in Trump's election.
OP
OP
Hatred of all the social progress made since WW2, massive income inequality, corrupt politicians, anti-intellectualism, declining unions, globalization, immigration, social media rewarding inflammatory rhetoric, fake news, the global failure to address white supremacy and toxic masculinity, and a whole lot more we probably don't know about.
It seems more than a few people think the Nazis were on to something and the fact that they lost a World War and committed mass genocide 70ish years ago doesn't matter to them
Fascism as an ideology never truly died and I feel like a lot of people got very complacent about this fact until it started to become more appealing in recent times to disadvantaged ones.
Fascism as an ideology never truly died and I feel like a lot of people got very complacent about this fact until it started to become more appealing in recent times to disadvantaged ones.
Most of it turns down to economics. This trend started after the great recession. Combine that with social media and the fact that the majority of the population never learned critical thinking and/or handling information we end up with this mess.
And this is just the beginning. Wait until automation really takes off.
And this is just the beginning. Wait until automation really takes off.
probably the recession from '08 and decades of neoliberal policies affecting both families at the micro level and countries at the macro level.
I really think this is the number one reason. Especially for Europe.
Deleted member 45957
Guest
Fall of the western capitalistic model that has set a standard since post WW2. No more economic growth, too much inequality, ecosystem destroyed.
Will transition to something different and hopefully better in the next decades, in the meantime, pissed off people are to be expected.
Will transition to something different and hopefully better in the next decades, in the meantime, pissed off people are to be expected.
Internet, climate change, automation, corporate greed, clicks and ratings based mainstream media dealing with the death of print and changing news market place in the worst possible way
Ya know when you read the history books and see all the factors that lead to a world war?
These past five years has felt like that.
These past five years has felt like that.
NeoLiberalis has crashed under its own weight. The "Left's" response wasn't to deviate enough from failed NeoLiberal policies and had few new ideas of its own while the Right's response was insular populism and reaction.
Germany's economy and quality of life was basically a gigantic dumpster fire.
I think I see what you're trying to get across, OP, but Brexit has nothing to do with fascism. I don't think the political system in the USA (or Trump, as you say) should be labeled fascist either. It really muddies the debate when we resort to this kind of name-calling.
Lots of African and middle east refugees showing up in majority "white" countries. Easy target to convince people that they're the reason for all the problems. They are different, have different religions, speak different languages and most importantly are not white.
It's a way for capitalism to stay afloat, whenever there are economic crises there is a risk of fascism's rise.
Because more and more people want things done right away and the only way that happens is dictatorship
They fucked social democracy in the late 70s, gambled everything on privatisation and deregulation in the 80s, had a false dawn in the 90s, came crashing down to reality in the 00s and we're seeing the results of that in the 10s.