Why is fascism spreading across the world in the 2010s?

[Deleted member 2317]

It will be almost 100 years since fascism first arose all over the world. The people that had first had experience it back then are likely dead, dying or have no more agency to tell thier stories. Whole populations are literally forgetting the horrors of fascism. Up next in the next few decades, communism! The next fifty years are gonna be fun!

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As others have said, we're far enough away from the 1930s and 40s that people have started to forget. People who never experienced anything else are taking democracy for granted.

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The generations that saw the world fight over nationalism are dying down. The survivors of those genocides are as well.
Now we have generations of people that are trained to not believe what they read, reading about the holocaust.\
Here's an example: https://www.thejc.com/news/world/in...eard-of-the-holocaust-survey-reveals-1.473131
In France, a fifth of young people 'have never heard of the Holocaust', survey reveals
A third of Europeans say they know either 'just a little' or nothing at all about the events of 75 years ago

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Agreed, it's the exact same way wars start and end- everyone forgets the horror and gets testy again, then fucks up royally, then makes a bunch of rules to follow to make sure it never happens again, complacency sets in, problems emerge, the cycle repeats ad infinitum up until this point.

War is in our blood, as is the urge to use and abuse fellow people.

 

[Geode]

I personally believe it's a conspiracy for the 1% to get the masses off their backs. "It's not our fault you don't have a job or don't make a lot of money. It's foreigners or globalists' fault!"
I remember a lot of protests against the 1% years ago, but since DT got elected, not so much a peep. It's all about racism now.

 

[SugarNoodles]

The lack on control over information in the age of social media allows news sources to garner readership via fearmongering, which makes populations more fearful, and easier to control via the tenets of fascism ie consolidation of problems into a singular enemy that leads to comfort generated via projection of strength.


IDK I'm just reading the cards.

 

[jay]

Because class consciousness is a thousand feet from the general liberals mind most of the time. The right decided to pick up the ball and run with it and now we have the working class buying racist bullshit as the reason their wages and lives suck.

 

[Trickster]

It's 95% social media.

Social media made it extremely easy for people with extreme views to spread their views to far more people than they could ever hope to pre social media.

Social media has also undermined traditional news sources in a major way, as it allows people to easily get into echo chambers or find "news" that say what they want to hear, rather than what is actually the truth.

 

[MattEnth]

I think it's a combination digital tribalism and the decline of community centers (ex: church).

While many politicians and politically active people focus on income inequality and globalization, I think these two are the real underlying problems.

I know Charles Murray is definitely a controversial figure, but I found this article particularly insightful (dated January 2012 by the way):

The New American Divide

His book, "Coming Apart," is also pretty good.

Another great exercise that my public policy class at Stanford's MBA program did was have everyone write down how many countries and US states they'd visited in the past 18 months. US states only counted if you went to cities with an international or major US airport.

Obviously, a class of Stanford MBAs had traveled a lot. But it's easy to forget that most people in the world don't travel. If I remember correctly, the overwhelming majority of people don't ever live beyond the 50 mile radius they were born in.

Perhaps, then, it's not globalization or income inequality, but more a globalist mindset that is the underlying cause of the cultural disconnects we're seeing today.

Video that somewhat goes over this:
David Goodhart: Are you an 'Anywhere' or a 'Somewhere'? - YouTube

 

[Sunster]

A combination of many things. I know people prefer simple problems with simple solutions which is why people elect leaders like those in the op. But the reasons for this are complex.

 

[Deleted member 8583]

A lot of the other answers in this thread strike me as dumb (no offense) but this seems much closer. Once economic disparity hits hard, people tend to blame the other. What kind of surprises me is there hasn't been a communist/anarchist resurgence around the world alongside it. Today's conditions do somewhat remind me of pre Spanish civil war .

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There have been some type of anarchist "practices" in some of the newest political movements like Indignados or Occupies. And then you have some anarchist movements like the ZAD in France (and many more anarchist movements that try to create a commune). You also have many indigenous groups like Zapatistas that use some of the practices of Marxism and anarchism along with their own Cosmovisions. Another example is the Kurds in Rojava and Democratic Confederalism (even if the practice was limited by the war). So there is some, just not big enough to challenge the status quo.

 

[Jordan117]

It's a convergence of a lot of trends. Increasing economic inequality, especially after the late-00s recession, left people mistrustful of institutions and increasingly stressed. This made it easier for right-wing populists to scapegoat migrants and discredit establishment politicians. Their tactics were amplified by the mass adoption of smartphone-based social media and aided by Russian interference in key political moments like Brexit and Trump.

Basically late-stage capitalism + racism + Facebook + Russian infowarfare. IMHO.

 

[Pooh]

These are after-effects of the great recession and the expanding wealth gap, coupled with racism inflamed by increased immigration around the world, increased visibility of crime and international terrorism.