I don’t mean only the US but in much of the world: in many European countries the populist far right is unseating Christian-Democratic parties (conservative parties), like in Hungary, Slovakia or Czechia. In others like Germany or France the far right is at the gates of power, in the UK, Reform UK is running high in the polls. In Turkey autocratic Erdogan is copying the Putin playbook to systematically dismantle the social-democratic opposition. In Japan, a neo Thatcherite that doesn’t hide she honors Japanese war criminals is about to become the new PM.
Something common I see in all these parties is strong disaffection with the current state of their countries and a longing to an idealized past they promise to bring back, to make countries great again…
Except that societies have changed beyond recognition in the last 40 years, emerging China, India, Mexico and a myriad of south east Asian countries can produce cheaper than us in the developed countries, so called first world democracies are now much older and indebted than 40 years ago (no wonder societies have shifted so hard to the right), buying a house is now waaaay more expensive than 40 years ago, you cannot earn a livable wage just assembling toasters like 40 years ago, you just cannot roll automation and digitization back, no matter how much you complain…
The past cannot come back, neither will it come back just because some people want it to. It’s completely futile, but people are not rational about this, they’re completely emotional and tribal.
It’s like a huge, collective effort in denial: denying that we in the developed world are older, not the first ones in the world anymore, that other countries we always considered inferior to us are even surpassing us technologically while we complain and hope for a savior that brings us 40 years back when we, the white guys, ruled all over.
I don’t see it happening: being angry and voting the far right may make some people feel good, it may make them feel they’re somehow taking their country back, but it’s not going to stop China, India and other countries from developing, investing in new technologies and even creating trade alliances that bypass the US or the EU.
My question: was there a moment in history where societies were so shifted to the right like today? How long did it last?
Indeed. It happened in Germany in the 30s. It lasted until the country was utterly destroyed and tens of millions of people were killed.
It wasn’t only in Germany. It first started in Italy as Fascism, and became popular all over the place. As with many Italian inventions, Germans “improved” it and made Nazizm. But they also inspired a lot of similar racist movements, especially around Europe. Captain America was published in 1938 specifically because some comic artists worried Hitler was becoming too popular in USA.
I think last time this happened a bunch of anti media consolidation laws were passed to prevent rich people from owning everything (unfortunately they were repealed in the 90s in the US) Also taxes, wars. Basically rich people will fund wars to ensure people don’t take their money but in doing so they destroy their money because wars kill workers, destroy products and produce nothing of value.
Its easier just to tax rich people and break up the large conglomorates they’re using to rig everything. Tech companies would need to be included here. Idk why there isn’t a massive tax on all kinds of bad corporate behaviors that lead here: buying companies, mergers, stock buybacks and corporate real estate shenanigans should all have serious taxes associated with them.
We don’t tax those things because we don’t have true representation. Our “representatives” do not work for the people, they work for the rich. Senators, Congressman, SC, and the president should all be put in jail if they are convicted of taking bribes. Unfortunately, we have two separate sets of laws in this country, one for the rich, and one for the poor.
You gotta stop thinking of it as a left/right thing. It doesn’t exist. It’s clouding your perspective. Populists vs establishment might be a better way to categorize if you needed just two groups, but that’s still too simplistic.
The world is a messy place with lots of different groups trying to get power, enrich themselves, and push their ideology. Whatever ideology a group is pushing has little to do with having the moral high ground and will typically result in their own benefit.
Whatever ideology a group is pushing has little to do with having the moral high ground and will typically result in their own benefit.
what little you can do to improve the quality of politics is to educate the people so they can analyze and decide whether the policies are meaningful for common good or not.
There is a good video that explains this kind of phenomenon. First it starts with a political 1D left-right line then ends with a political tesseract.
Important thing is, it is better off to treat it as a spectrum rather than a graph. Because, as implied - complexity.
treat it as a spectrum
a spectrum is typically 1-dimensional as well, though; at least the spectrums i think of
I’ve been alive for almost 41 years and this is the first time I’ve seen anything like this with my own eyes. All other examples happened decades before I was born. The biggest and, HOPEFULLY, most well know example would be Germany in the late 1930s.
In ww2 Europe 65-75 people had to die before the pendulum swung back. The far right always is responsible for millions of deaths when in control. I think the best prevention would be identifying people with narcissistic and psychopathic personalities and not let them become leaders. We currently reward them in our system
In ww2 Europe 65-75 people had to die before the pendulum swung back.
🧐
They probably meant “65-75 million,” but hey, even the typo is correct as long as you’re talking about a very specific 65-75 people.
Oh, I was thinking they meant 65-75 people before the pendulum (the second counter on the grandfather clock?) swung back, so 65-75 people per second. I didn’t think so deeply about the maths behind it, just accepted it as a possible meaning. But I’ll do it now.
UPDATE: Checks out for 2-3 years, but something is telling me there was enough time for even more years to fit between 1939 and 1945.
UPDATE: Unless you consider “swung back” as 2 seconds, because then it’s even possible.
Colloquially, “the pendulum” here is probably public political sentiment. It’s commonly understood, whether true or not, that a population swings back and forth between progressive and conservative values; illustrated by a pendulum swinging from left (progressive) to right (conservative). In the US, this is further inflamed by the two-party system, which unintentionally encourages such polarization and swings in political will.
So, in the US for instance, the Gilded Age (far right) gave way to the Progressive Era (far left), which led to the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression (right), which led to the New Deal (left), which eventually led to Reaganomics (right), which led to Obama (slight left), which led to Trump (super far right).
The original question was asking, how long until this pendulum swings back to the left again. The “65-75” answer, it seems, was talking about WW2 in Europe, when the pendulum swung to the right as Hitler took power, and didn’t swing back to the left until after 65-75 (million) people died.
Oh, yes you’re right - I’m not a native speaker and I think we phrase it slightly differently, and I took that literally. Thanks for the explanation!
Happy to help!
Until a war, famine or plague was terrible enough to make people realize that most of their social differences weren’t as important as they thought and they had to rally round an ideal to survive.
There’s nothing quite like today. There’s things that are similar, but social media has really made things worse.
Populism is rising because things haven’t been great for a lot of people for a long time, and it’s too hard to ignore anymore. Globalism and free trade were massively oversold to the masses, it hurt wide swaths of people that have been ignored for decades. People that feel disenfranchised will vote for change regardless of the change proposed.
Social media has escalated everything as well. The echo chambers are enormous and essentially impossible to avoid. Many traditional institutions are also extremely weak now that would have forced more interaction between people with differing views and limited extremism. Social media also does a great job in conflating the size of various groups and beliefs, a few dozen people can make a community seem as large and impactful as a few thousand .
People that feel disenfranchised will vote for change regardless of the change proposed.
hahah yeah unfortunately that’s accurate :D
Not exactly. I am old enough to remember wondering why gay couples couldn’t get legal marriage, and when interracial couples were stared at, and the ozone layer had a hole, and the Satanic Panic, but it felt like we were in a shitty spot but moving in the right direction just painfully slowly. Lots more violence than now.
Yeah, my working theory is violent narcissists have a much harder time beeing casually violent, so they go ever more totalitarian, because then they can be violent without repercussions again…
So at most we are talking a bit over 200 years that might be relevant to this. Just fyi if this is unique its not been a possibility for very long history wise.
It’s all… perspective and relative ?
The UK oversaw the slaughter of Kenyans in the Mau Mau rebellion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_1965–66?wprov=sfla1
The CIA helping Suharto slaughter Indonesians in a genocide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_1965–66?wprov=sfla1
Israel’s existence is becase the US and UK taking native lands
The Kurds were supposed to be free but too much Oil and that was stopped.
Around 80 years ago, Eric Blair (aka George Orwell) wrote this:
All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have internationalist aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible. We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are ‘enlightened’ all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free; but our standard of living, and hence our ‘enlightenment,’ demands that the robbery shall continue.
Somewhat more recently, Wendell Berry, in an essay entitled “Word and Flesh”, wrote this:
This statement of Orwell’s is clearly applicable to our situation now; all we need to do is change a few nouns. The religion and the environmentalism of the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something they do not really wish to destroy. We all live by robbing nature, but our standard of living demands that the robbery shall continue. We must achieve the character and acquire the skills to live much poorer than we do. We must waste less. We must do more for ourselves and each other. It is either that or continue merely to think and talk about changes that we are inviting catastrophe to make. The great obstacle is simply this: the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependent on what is wrong. But that is the addict’s excuse, and we know that it will not do.
The destruction of the natural world is not the result of global capitalism, industrialisation, ‘Western civilisation’ or any flaw in human institutions. It is a consequence of the evolutionary success of an exceptionally rapacious primate. Throughout all of history and prehistory, human advance has coincided with ecological devastation.” ― John Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts On Humans And Other Animals
We pretend we’ve been anything other then fascist since …? Most (many) German’s in Nazi Germany lived good lives, like most in the developed world have been living.
I assume OP meant fascism that’s directed internally towards the home population. Like Orwell wrote, the way of life of the population at home is predicated on the continued fascist exploitation of non white people abroad.
Something common I see in all these parties is strong disaffection with the current state of their countries and a longing to an idealized past they promise to bring back, to make countries great again…
The past cannot come back, neither will it come back just because some people want it to. It’s completely futile, but people are not rational about this, they’re completely emotional and tribal.
Yes, societies are going through the five stages of grief:
- denial (there are no problems, and if there are, they’re the <insert minority group>'s fault)
- anger (vote for a strongman) <-- you are here
- bargaining (maybe we can partially go back to the better past)
- depression (this sucks, nothing can be done about it)
- acceptance (well, let’s look forward and make the best out of it)
Berlin 1939
It ended with guillotines.
No, there is more recent time in 1930s germany
Ends with invading foreign army liberating USians from fascist dictator.
It’s not their responsibility.
I think the best thing to do is just find our own alternative communities. Make our own hangouts. Our own clubs. We can still live life and be happy even if the rest of society is shit. Depending on how this upcoming elections goes. I might go underground. Just disconnect from society. Stop talking to normies outside of business. I will have put in my 35 years of fighting. I don’t want to be miserable my entire life. I don’t want to argue with people my entire life. Maybe it’s just impossible to connect with people who arent like us. That doesn’t mean we have to be sad. It doesn’t mean we have to be alone. We can make our own spaces. Stay off the grid and under the radar. Have fun and have our own culture with people who like us.
This is how I feel about todays politics.
Oh fuck off already
It’s the exact opposite of what you’re showing here, and at this point you can’t be that naive to believe what you just posted. Stop trolling
No, that picture is pretty accurate. Im 48 years old. I live in Scotland, Im a left wing socialist. But to Americans, which is a fucking laugh considering they have no left wing party, Im pretty much a nazi. Even though, I havent moved my opinion on any issue in over 30 years.
Social media has made you all insane. You dont have opinions of your own, you the endless chase for up arrows. At best you get your opinions for talking heads on youtube, telling what you think, what to feel about whatever fucking nonsense is making the rounds to get your engaged and clicking. Make no mistake, if being an actual nazi was the popular thing, youd all be doing it. Thats how fucking sad you are.
Heres an example of how fucking exhausting you people are: https://www.gamereactor.eu/amazon-is-removing-all-the-guns-from-classic-james-bond-posters-1612643/
I believe you’ve got the political spectrum confused. I’m not sure, as you’re going on about the woes of unregulated social media while actively posting memes as a form of discussion on a social media and then going on to complain about guns being removed from posters, so I’m not too entirely sure what you’re on about. I think I can understand that you’ve got things mixed up, however. The NSDAP, despite their name, was extremely far-right.
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No, Im not talking about the woes of unregulated social media. Im talking about all the spoon eating cunts who cant think for themselves anymore, and repeat popular thing for up arrows. Regulation isnt going to stop dumb people from being dumb.
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The connection between the two, is that you’ve all gone so far off the reservation, you associate the image of a gun on poster for a light hearted action adventure movie as condoning violence. Or worse, removed it because it might be triggering to some people.
I really didnt think it was that hard to follow, but here we are.
Why do you think people on lemmy have anything to do with a corporate decision at amazon?
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Go on, explain how you’re connecting these dots.
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I think, from what you’re saying, that you’re saying the exact same thing as all of us, just accidentally the other way around.
It’s the right that is moving the goal posts completely
I don’t remember deciding (as a member of the global progressive committee) that Amazon needed to censor James Bond posters. And the page you linked doesn’t indicate the censorship pressure came from any government agency.
It sounds like something a company did for their own reasons. Surely you know this, so why would you blame it on the left, especially in the context of the American left?
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I do believe you’re the one playing dumb cunt, but maybe it’s not an act.
You’re a lovely specimen aren’t you
Prominent internet leftist: Amazon.
My dude if you’re upset with what Amazon is doing, nobody here is going to be able to help you and pretty much everybody here is in agreement that Amazon sucks.
How does this have anything to do with what you’re talking about?
I had to look at this three times to figure out whether it was a troll or not, and I’m still not sure. But ok, I’ll bite.
I’m an American citizen, and while I was a pretty angry neocon as a college student in the early 2000s, I settled down into a much more open, responsive, empathetic conservatism by 2008-2010 or so. And for about ten years, my politics didn’t change a bit. I still voted for smaller government, I still voted against wars (super funny in retrospect), I still voted in favor of my values (which also didn’t change).
But in that timespan, the far right worked themselves into a lather about Obama, a fury that I didn’t (and still don’t) quite understand apart from cable news stoking the fire; yeah, I disagreed with a lot of his policies, but I certainly never wished him dead. To everyone else, though, he was the antichrist. And so I watched as friends of mine went down the rabbit hole, getting more and more worked up and rabid. When Trump came down the escalator in 2015, I thought it was a blip, and we (conservatives) would collectively realize how far off the rails we had gone.
Instead, I got death threats. My kids got death threats. From people who used to be my friends, all because I dared say that I didn’t think Trump was a good choice. And, remember, my opinions and values hadn’t changed over the previous decade or so.
Since then, it’s gotten much, much worse. And, in fairness, I’ve seen how much I had been lied to, even before Trump, and moved over to the left as a result; but the right wing has gone so far over the edge that some of the posts I made on Facebook in 2005-2006—at the peak of my conservative rage, the stuff that was basically just Sean Hannity talking points—I’m seeing MAGAs pillorying Democrats making those same points for being “radical woke communists.” I’m not talking about similar viewpoints. I’m talking about nearly identical wording, in some cases.
So, no. This meme is absolutely bonkers, in a way that’s so obviously backwards as to bewilder, and the best way to prove it is to point out that George W(MDs in Iraq) Bush opposed Trump. MAGA has moved the window of acceptable political thought so far to the right that today’s Democrats sound like 2008’s Republicans, yet they’re being called socialists. Some of MAGA’s “centrists” are actively looking to rehabilitate the words “nationalist” and “Nazi.” “Small government,” “personal liberty,” and “values voters” are considered left-of-center ideals. At this point even Ronald Reagan would’ve been considered a “lefty” to this new-look GOP.
To be accurate you need like 5 figures. far right, far left, moderate right, moderate left, and me. Then you have moderate right in the second panel move to far right and have far right go further right on the third one. Then the bubble for the moderate right in the third would be looking to the far right and going. wait for me. EDITED - should add the moderate left guy should go woops and move to where the moderate right was in like the middle panel or something.
What’s it like being afraid of everything except the police state?
Where did you get that I was afraid of anything?
Must be so weird looking at that meme, and not getting it. Be brave, little toaster, Be brave.
There’s a well understood psychological effect that conservatives are more afraid of things. They’re more driven by fear and disgust. The media uses this psychology to great effect to control conservative leaning people’s thoughts and opinions.
Is there… Well, Im not conservative. So, what else you got? Oh, thats right, fuck all. Because all this is American nonsense.
And not for nothing, but ALL of America is right wing/conservative. You can call yourself what you want, but at the end of the day and to the rest of the world, its just two right wing lunatics going after each other. Im a left wing socialist. You are no different to me than a MAGA fuckwit. You just say slightly different things.
Bro, you think corporations doing shit is leftism. And yeah you’ve displayed the disgust as a major motivator already. You’re really upset with what you view as online leftists. This is what’s motivating you to go on your current posting binge.
Just take 5 minutes and think about how upset you are about stupid bullshit you are linking people on the internet and how there’s literally no link between what’s upsetting you and the people you’re talking to.
You don’t need to be a conservative for the media psychological tricks to work on you, you just need disgust/fear to be a major motivator and you’ve become a tool to their media apparatus.
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That can’t even be stupidity, no one is that stupid. I’m a 90’s conservative and give me a middle of the road democrat every day.
Edit: click on his name! I don’t feel bad for this guy, but I would like to offer pity to the local ubereats drivers.
thanks. reminded me to check.
