Dehumanizing people by just thinking of everyone as categories and not as individuals is what lays the groundwork for fascism. Isn’t that what you’re doing right now?
I’m not saying it is always intentional. But the very ideals they believe in will do that eventually it has nothing to do with intent and everything to do with the mechanics of neoliberalism.
Conservative describes a set of beliefs and beliefs can be faulty.
Only the “radicalized” think of politics in religious terms. The radicalized are capable of doing horrible things to people because they have a cult-like zealotry that makes them think any action against the supposed enemy is justified.
The radicalized left and radicalized right are the same kind of people. The enemy is arbitrary. The point of a radicalized movement is to make people stupid enough they will give the demagogue leader all power to defeat the enemy. But in the end it’s all the same, people being oppressed by an authoritarian.
I have less concern about the most boring man in BC politics oppressing people than I have about people like you who think of politics as being similar a holy crusade against the evil other.
This is just not correct. I understand that you shouldn’t stereotype people based on their beliefs. However, this is not that. This is their belief in an economic system and the machinery it puts forth. This is well studied. Look at Reagan and everything he set forth, he seemed downright reasonable at the time, but has unleashed suffering the likes of which the world hadn’t yet seen.
The reality is a boring centrist as you call it, creates the material conditions for inequality and public mistrust of institutions, which fascists eventually exploit.
You have a strange mix of the “great man” theory and the dialectic theory of how things work. The great man does a thing and people will automatically go down that course of action for decades because of dialectical reasons or whatever.
It’s really the opposite. The great man can nudge things, but a lot of other people need to continue to make decisions to continue to push things in that direction. At any time people can decide “nah, I don’t think things should continue to go in this direction.” You should consider the reasons why a continuous push to fascism wasn’t rejected instead of latching on to individual actions as being the one and only thing that made fascism inevitable.
The US has particular cultural issues that make them vulnerable to fascist manipulation. Racism is a big one. The mythology around the past greatness is another big one. There’s also a general paranoia of government, and conspiracy theory culture. Reagan’s little nudges here and there wouldn’t have gone anywhere if there wasn’t an environment for other’s to continue to successfully push towards fascism.
You need to be careful in doing the thing where “Hitler was nice to his dog, so therefore being nice to dogs causes fascism.”
Marxism teaches a religious prophecy where it’s inevitable there will be a great cataclysm overthrowing capitalism which will inevitably become corrupt. It’s not too dissimilar to the Christian revelations prophecies, probably why it’s attractive for atheists that were previously in the Christian church. But the truth is, nothing is pre-determined, there is no such thing as “late stage capitalism”, nobody really knows where things are heading, there are not mystical signs you can read to determine if a person is the anti-christ or fascist or whatever you want to label your ideology’s demons.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes guy that says they want to lower taxes is a guy that just wants to lower taxes. That doesn’t inevitably lead to an oppressive authoritarian state unless people go along with all of the other steps involved in implementing an authoritarian state.
And need I point out the fact that socialism has led to authoritarian states in the past? Does that mean we should reject all socialist policies out of hand?
I’ll concede that I may have been scapegoating centrist politicians when they are a symptom, not an origin. Concentrated wealth shapes candidate pipelines, party apparatus, and the media environment. Donor networks decide who can mount a viable campaign, party machinery is responsive to the same funders, and media ownership concentrates alongside both. Conservative policies are the observable surface of that capture, not its source.
The actors doing the capturing intend the outcomes they directly want (deregulation, tax cuts, weakened labor bargaining power, weakened regulators). They are indifferent to, or welcoming of, the downstream authoritarian coalition, because that coalition serves those same ends by weakening the same mediating institutions. Both want the administrative state, the regulators, and the credibility of mainstream institutions diminished. They don’t need to share goals to keep ending up on the same side. They need only share enemies.
Eroded public services, stagnating wages, visible regional decline: these are the concrete grievances that outrage media has to work with. The media environment matters enormously here, and it isn’t a static backdrop. It’s part of the same captured structure. Voting-age citizens, especially older and less-educated demographics, increasingly get their news through social media, and the medium is the message and that message is outrage, anger, and fear. Identity politics, scapegoating, and demonization are what the feed rewards. But outrage needs something to be outraged about, and the material conditions supply it. That’s the interaction: cultivated grievance plus an amplifier optimized for grievance.
So I’m not saying BC conservatives are the anti-Christ, and I’m not saying they’ll be personally engineering fascism. I’m saying the levers they pull are connected to actors with a project, the project benefits from the ground being fertile, and the ground is being made fertile in a structure where the beneficiaries are identifiable. The vulnerability isn’t an accident of boring policy. It’s the predictable output of a structure where the people pulling the levers profit from the conditions fascist movements exploit.
You were right that structural factors set the odds and agency determines the outcome. I’m saying the odds are being shifted by actors who profit from the conditions, and those actors don’t need to intend fascism to keep producing its preconditions. That’s a vulnerability, not a fate, which is exactly why the collective agency you named is the thing that has to reverse it. Equilibria can be broken, which is why this is a claim about odds rather than destiny.
Dehumanizing people by just thinking of everyone as categories and not as individuals is what lays the groundwork for fascism. Isn’t that what you’re doing right now?
I’m not saying it is always intentional. But the very ideals they believe in will do that eventually it has nothing to do with intent and everything to do with the mechanics of neoliberalism.
Conservative describes a set of beliefs and beliefs can be faulty.
Only the “radicalized” think of politics in religious terms. The radicalized are capable of doing horrible things to people because they have a cult-like zealotry that makes them think any action against the supposed enemy is justified.
The radicalized left and radicalized right are the same kind of people. The enemy is arbitrary. The point of a radicalized movement is to make people stupid enough they will give the demagogue leader all power to defeat the enemy. But in the end it’s all the same, people being oppressed by an authoritarian.
I have less concern about the most boring man in BC politics oppressing people than I have about people like you who think of politics as being similar a holy crusade against the evil other.
This is just not correct. I understand that you shouldn’t stereotype people based on their beliefs. However, this is not that. This is their belief in an economic system and the machinery it puts forth. This is well studied. Look at Reagan and everything he set forth, he seemed downright reasonable at the time, but has unleashed suffering the likes of which the world hadn’t yet seen.
The reality is a boring centrist as you call it, creates the material conditions for inequality and public mistrust of institutions, which fascists eventually exploit.
People have agency.
You have a strange mix of the “great man” theory and the dialectic theory of how things work. The great man does a thing and people will automatically go down that course of action for decades because of dialectical reasons or whatever.
It’s really the opposite. The great man can nudge things, but a lot of other people need to continue to make decisions to continue to push things in that direction. At any time people can decide “nah, I don’t think things should continue to go in this direction.” You should consider the reasons why a continuous push to fascism wasn’t rejected instead of latching on to individual actions as being the one and only thing that made fascism inevitable.
The US has particular cultural issues that make them vulnerable to fascist manipulation. Racism is a big one. The mythology around the past greatness is another big one. There’s also a general paranoia of government, and conspiracy theory culture. Reagan’s little nudges here and there wouldn’t have gone anywhere if there wasn’t an environment for other’s to continue to successfully push towards fascism.
You need to be careful in doing the thing where “Hitler was nice to his dog, so therefore being nice to dogs causes fascism.”
Marxism teaches a religious prophecy where it’s inevitable there will be a great cataclysm overthrowing capitalism which will inevitably become corrupt. It’s not too dissimilar to the Christian revelations prophecies, probably why it’s attractive for atheists that were previously in the Christian church. But the truth is, nothing is pre-determined, there is no such thing as “late stage capitalism”, nobody really knows where things are heading, there are not mystical signs you can read to determine if a person is the anti-christ or fascist or whatever you want to label your ideology’s demons.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes guy that says they want to lower taxes is a guy that just wants to lower taxes. That doesn’t inevitably lead to an oppressive authoritarian state unless people go along with all of the other steps involved in implementing an authoritarian state.
And need I point out the fact that socialism has led to authoritarian states in the past? Does that mean we should reject all socialist policies out of hand?
I’ll concede that I may have been scapegoating centrist politicians when they are a symptom, not an origin. Concentrated wealth shapes candidate pipelines, party apparatus, and the media environment. Donor networks decide who can mount a viable campaign, party machinery is responsive to the same funders, and media ownership concentrates alongside both. Conservative policies are the observable surface of that capture, not its source.
The actors doing the capturing intend the outcomes they directly want (deregulation, tax cuts, weakened labor bargaining power, weakened regulators). They are indifferent to, or welcoming of, the downstream authoritarian coalition, because that coalition serves those same ends by weakening the same mediating institutions. Both want the administrative state, the regulators, and the credibility of mainstream institutions diminished. They don’t need to share goals to keep ending up on the same side. They need only share enemies.
Eroded public services, stagnating wages, visible regional decline: these are the concrete grievances that outrage media has to work with. The media environment matters enormously here, and it isn’t a static backdrop. It’s part of the same captured structure. Voting-age citizens, especially older and less-educated demographics, increasingly get their news through social media, and the medium is the message and that message is outrage, anger, and fear. Identity politics, scapegoating, and demonization are what the feed rewards. But outrage needs something to be outraged about, and the material conditions supply it. That’s the interaction: cultivated grievance plus an amplifier optimized for grievance.
So I’m not saying BC conservatives are the anti-Christ, and I’m not saying they’ll be personally engineering fascism. I’m saying the levers they pull are connected to actors with a project, the project benefits from the ground being fertile, and the ground is being made fertile in a structure where the beneficiaries are identifiable. The vulnerability isn’t an accident of boring policy. It’s the predictable output of a structure where the people pulling the levers profit from the conditions fascist movements exploit.
You were right that structural factors set the odds and agency determines the outcome. I’m saying the odds are being shifted by actors who profit from the conditions, and those actors don’t need to intend fascism to keep producing its preconditions. That’s a vulnerability, not a fate, which is exactly why the collective agency you named is the thing that has to reverse it. Equilibria can be broken, which is why this is a claim about odds rather than destiny.