cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/66479569
Nationalism, the rightwing, racism - they are all returning full force in Europe. Trumpism and Russia are using all their powers to destroy European democracies; through open and covert propaganda. You, the voter, can never claim you weren’t warned.
This started long before Trump, fascism has been growing in popular support ever since the 2008 financial crisis. Its better funded now than it was but its been a long term project for the far right and they have found their trigger issues they need to lie about to convince the populace to vote them in. There will be no deprogramming fascism, it proved impossible after World War 2 and it will prove impossible now as well.
the issue is the western leaders systematically won’t address the problems. they just ignore them and they get worse and worse. because the leaders are all part of the top 1% and they see nothing but good times and better times coming and think the the 99% are all idiots for not being born into wealth and power.
don’t forget about Bush Jr.
And, you know, the incident that’s remembered 2 days from now in the US.
There will be no deprogramming fascism, it proved impossible after World War 2
There can be. Fascism is a sad state of mind. I believe that people who aren’t trapped won’t choose fascism. Problem was that the west is a form of fascism. Deprogramming was just forbidding the signs, not changing the minds.
The answer is of course, improving life standards in rural areas, coupled with a clear source of where that comes from: free socialism and communism.
Affordable housing can only be constructed through socialism; affordable energy can only be gained through greening up; safety only through strong pro-labour protections.
“rural” has no future in a modern industrial society. Build the housing in cities, end the car age. The rural people either are hyper exploited workers from a minority, or they’re LARP-ing fools who exist on in a relationship of being dependent on subsidies and aid skillfully controlled by conservatives (usually something about religion) to keep them stupid and dependent.
Not necessarily. Rural people are typically farmers or large landowners.
The problem is that a lot of rural people are more dependent on (fossil) fuels due to having to drive by car to a station, stop, or destination.
While they do tend more conservative, the other issue is also that farming isn’t yet fully automatised. Sure, there are tractors and the like, but a human still needs to drive them. If we want less land usage for farms, we’d need to shift to producing veggie and lab meat, as then we don’t need to use a lot of land for feeding cattle. So we need to help financing farmers to switch over, and be less dependent on fossil fuels.
With the freed up land, we then can build more housing, and reforest. On top of that, since more people might move toward the city, or congregate into small hamlets, that will make expanding public transit easier.
The problem is that the agriculture economy only needs a few people, so everyone else is standing around trying to find a way to live, and there is no way, so they work as entertainment for the rich and powerful.
Your observations are correct, but they won’t change the bigger economic point of rural society being economically non-viable.
It’s really similar to mining towns, mining also got heavily mechanized and automated, it’s just that there’s no cultural traditionalist fantasy to reproduce for entertainment, for performance, within the mining economy.
There is a different strategy of repopulating rural lands, but that is not going to happen within the current economy and goals. That would require much more organized sacrifice, plus exceptional logistics and transportation (not cars.) Otherwise, rural life always will mean a lack of access to education, healthcare, civic life and democracy, and even good plant-based food.
Right now we’re suffering from the failure to modernize fully, the process is uneven and exploited by the privileged. We either need to finish building modernity or we do something totally different. Fascists and conservatives use these stranded masses to gain power, and that leads to collapse. It’s all very unsustainable, this middle-ground, this incomplete transformation, like a bird that didn’t fully get out of its egg.
and just farm your food on your balcony i guess
It’s not like that. Actual modern agriculture requires very few people, fewer and fewer. There’s some seasonal work on the horticulture side, but large agriculture is heavily mechanized and now getting automated.
What this really means is that, in the rural space, a tiny percentage of people actually WORK in rural activity. Various government-policy-types have tried to promote diversification, but it’s not working out well in the West.
If you do the math, it means that a huge majority of the population is there – not being rural. They are stranded. The poor ones are dependent on various aid and shit jobs. The rich ones own farms. The middle ones are LARP-ing as “true rural” something something, so there’s a stupid competition to show who’s the best at acting as some traditional character (whatever the local flavor is.)
Actual modern agriculture will end up as outposts only; a couple of permanent workers, some seasonal workers, and nobody sticks around to “start a family.”
The more this rural spectacle is allowed to go on, the more fascism there will be.
As someone who was born into life in the sticks, there is nothing that can separate a farmer from his oppressors. May as well let them rage out there. No one is saying to hurt the farmers, only to let them be backwards.
Which is unfortunate because ofc I know without a doubt that I’d rather have a neighbor I know, who I share fence with, who can birth a horse or punch a bull in the face, on my side, than the entire floor of an apartment building in the city.
Sadly that same neighbor, who will except me and any other “weirdo” or non white that he knows, all day and with his whole heart, will also vote to kill us all and push an economic policy that keeps him under the boot of a bank, all day too.
No amount of closeness to him or logic will fix this. He follows overt displays of power, herd thinking, and whatever mindset calcified in him before the age of 16. That’s just the truth.
Harshly worded but nonetheless true. Three downvotes and no upvote as if people want a better world without keeping the resources in mind.
Just do communism and everything will be fine!
Uh huh
And what is communism? How does it work?
They don’t know, and they don’t know, or at least don’t agree, on what capitalism is, either. But they’re very sure it’s the opposite of capitalism. And that it will fix every problem they blame on capitalism, which is close to all of them.
Far-right parties, Maga ideology and Kremlin money …
We must not forget the money from the Chinese Communist Party …
Marriage of Convenience: How European Far-Right and Far-Left Discovered China
European far-right and far-left political parties, though ideologically opposed, are finding common ground in their alignments with China, echoing Beijing’s narratives and raising concerns about foreign influence and manipulation.
“echoing Beijing’s narratives and raising concerns about foreign influence and manipulation.”
and the irony was completely lost on them…I’ve never heard of any “far left” parties aligning with China, we all hate the chinese government. Communists aren’t “far left” they are authoritarians.
I mean, Lemmy is full of China stans who identify as far-left.
How many that adds up to IRL is another matter.
Oh yeah, lemmy is communist central, they were the first purged from reddit so were on the ground floor of developing lemmy.
To be clear many of their users are great, they have bad leadership and a sizable contingent of cheerleaders for their favoured regimes like china and russia, not to mention legions of trolls with alternate accounts all over lemmy instances, and moderators embedded in instances where the instance is not necessarily aware of their other affiliations.
It’s real top down from what I’ve seen. You can be talking amiably and one of their enforcer minded types sees something and calls it out, the people you are talking to disappear, to scared to defend anything, and the trolls show up.
Frankly, I consider a couple of their instances to be the long palsied arm of russian intelligence, as they push a worldview that if they tried to push in russia or china would quickly be sent to gulags/the front in the war, or re-education slave labour camps.
Yeap. The whole idea about China & The USSR being “communist” was pretty much a fraud since early in the game, and yet that misconception is like the gift that keeps on giving for right-wingers in the 20th century and beyond.
The Right has truly mastered cherry-picking their fruit over the years, ensuring that “1984” will be an inevitability, not a warning.
More Handmaids Tale or Fahrenheit 451, wouldn’t you think?
Pick your poison, but whichever it is, it won’t be around long, either.
China is capitalist, there has been no socialism, not there, not in the USSR. Most definitely not communism.
State Capitalism is Capitalism, and China is going away even from that. There is no surprise. The intersection you’re describing is the combination of capitalism and authoritarianism, which is also corporatism, which is also fascism.
You have it backwards. The elite introduces fascism to fight China. “No dominating power in Asia” still has to be at the top of their mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Chessboard
China is in a catch-22: they have to finance the opposition to avert their forceful destruction by the parties of the western elite but that opposition also wants to see them diminished and the US are about to also take over those parties as can be seen with Musk and the AfD.
What can I, the voter, do if 90% of my fellow citizens (perhaps me too) are philosophical zombies who will do exactly what the propaganda machine tells us?
nothing. you live your life as you will.
it’s not your job to change the world. only yourself.
you will just make yourself the enemy the more you try to ‘fight’ your fellow citizens. they will not welcome you or view you positively, they will simply hate you.
We’re in this situation because propaganda doesn’t work, and people are going to repeat history regardless of what they’ve been taught.
Think about what turns them into zombies.
paywall 🤮
Did you miss the part that says, “This is not a paywall”?
Sadly i didn’t miss the part that presented me with a paywall when i clicked the link before i posted the reply.
Wait? We are supposed to turn around instead of happily marching on towards fascism ever faster? Why did nobody tell us? /s
As much as I would enjoy being able to say “I told you so” to all the Europeans who’ve berated us powerless Bernie voters as though we’re somehow responsible for this debacle, I genuinely hope that they are unable to read it because there is no internet in the camps.
This article is a tour de force in liberal idealism. It asks no questions, it answers none, it offers no reflection. Instead it appeals to liberal ideals, points to threats to those ideas and admonishes those who have turned away from them.
This sort of thinking and analysis is in large part why we find ourselves where we are in western democracies.
Well, “liberal idealism” should include being able to openly say Israel is commiting genocide, it’s amazing how this is not widely seen as backlash to decades of thought policing.
I’m not so sure that Palestinians will get a better deal once more governments in Europe are rightwing…
I agree.
Removed by mod
Everything ends one day.
That’s so true. What are the implications though, for you personally?
These are organizations on a quick rise to power. If they truly intend to drastically reshape state institutions as they propose, they will need new and loyal people to fill specific roles. These parties offer excellent career opportunities, even for those who do not identify with their message and simply seek a comfortable place in the world in a higher social class, especially if you aren’t qualified for the job and rely solely on the party’s goodwill to keep your position. That’s the cynical view.
The more it grows, the more unqualified, loyal careerists will appear. Then, just wait for the whole thing to collapse under its own ill-placed weight. It might hurt and take some time, but you keep surviving until then.
It might hurt and take some time, but you keep surviving until then.
The problem with this approach is: Many do not survive.
Yes, of course.
But both of my grandfathers managed to avoid being sent to fight in Africa during Portugal’s Colonial Wars, so it is not impossible. One had connections. The other put a bee in his underwear the day before the inspection. Each did what was within their means to survive. 13 years of war, 41 of fascistic dictatorship.
But Estado Novo was a bit different. Salazar wasn’t a populist, for example (quite the opposite, in fact). I doubt these new movements will manage to hold onto power for that long. The man did not create a cult of personality, he was an economics professor before being called upon by the army to serve as Minister of Finance and, subsequently, as Dictator. He was chosen for his academic qualifications, and he is an example of how fascistic technocracy isn’t good, but still more stable than fascism, ultranationalist populism.
“just following orders”
That’s not the point they were making. They weren’t suggesting that they personally were looking forward to becoming a party apparatchik. What they are saying is that the structure of these parties incentivizes both the party to empower loyal but unqualified people, and for unqualified people to seek upwards mobility through the party. Then, as the party grows and more of those types of people are put in positions of authority, eventually the whole thing collapses from incompetence.
I dont think the reasons for obeying matter for the victims
Once they are in power, you can also follow orders to survive, but be as incompetent as you can to contribute to their downfal.
That’s what happened in the Netherlands, the right wing was incapable of finding professional ministers for the cabinet. But one cannot claim that the Netherlands is now a perfect liberal democracy again…
These parties offer excellent career opportunities
no, they dont.
