what purpose do you think fascism serves? it’s about power, yes?
money is one form of power, so forcing economic change which benefits one group of people ( ie. cis white het christian men ) gives them power. which they then use to bend things more, rinse repeat. ( ex. the 80s )
america has become a much more liberal country over time and most of the gop’s policies - unfettered gun access, attacks on gay and trans people, child labor, abortion bans, etc - are widely unpopular.
the people who support them aren’t doing so because times are bad, people are supporting them because of who the gop promises to hurt ( see again the j6 article, or any ron desantis or ■■■■■ speech )
could a recession help further fascism here? probably. i personally worry more about the effects of climate change ( migration, water scarcity, un/natural disasters. ) however, neither are necessary for fascism to take hold.
There has always been an undercurrent of dismantling the progress since the CR era. Look at the Southern Strategy, movement conservativism, and the shifts in the underground white supremacist movement, who have slowly but surely been injecting their ideology into the GOP for years now.
Since the end of the liberal consensus (since Reagan), they have been both destroying progress made for working people, and pushing back against the rights revolution.
Right… and all this is getting pushed through despite their unpopularity. This is thanks in part to gerrymandering, and the ingrained racism of many white Americans that was never really gone.
Yes. Fascists will take advantage of any crisis to further their aims – often manufacturing one themselves – but the crisis itself isn’t what ultimately propels them to power. These arsonists always arise when the timbers of the government they want to take over are shaky and weak in the first place. They need a volatile mix of ignorance and conspiracism and long-standing bigotry and entitlement already in place amongst their potential followers before they toss in the match.
To blame the rise of fascists on the economic situation is to cast it in their preferred term, as a revolution, instead of what it always is in reality: a coup.
All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
You and @gatto are talking about evil. I’m talking about what makes a good man do nothing.
I don’t necessarily disagree with anything you’re saying. Fascists gonna fash. Fascism bad. We’re all in agreement there.
What I’m saying is that in a healthy and functional society, fascists are laughed out of the public square before they can do much more than pass out a couple pamphlets. We don’t have a healthy or functional society though- we have a society where someone “stealing your jobs” or “living off government handouts while you starve” are real fears that can be very easily exploited by bad people for their own ends- and that’s like 92% economics.
No. We’re all responding to your reductive statement that fascism arises because:
If you want to move the goalposts, that’s the start of another discussion.
If by “healthy and functional society”, you mean one where liberal-democratic institutions are strong and public trust in civil society is high, we agree. Economic prosperity plays a part in creating such a society, but not 92% of it (even in a Marxist analysis). Economic cycles ebb and flow, but fascists are not laughed out of the public square only when enablers like the GOP and Faux News and greedy billionaires like Elon Musk allow them a platform and mainstream them. That is what allows right-wing populist demagogues to reach people who are more concerned about their skin and gender and religious privilege losing influence than they are about their economic status (which, being temporarily embarrassed millionaires, they never really had).
In personal experience, the main thing getting people to do nothing is comfortable centrists in positions of authority (politics, media, corporate, and lackeys) discouraging people from fighting back because they want to keep what they have and the fascists aren’t targeting them (yet).
It is not the poor and marginalized that are in a position to stop growing fascism, but they are often still the ones fighting, trying to get those in positions of authority to get off their asses and do something before its too late
These have literally always been 100% real fears that people have in the US. They aren’t any less or more true today than they were fifty or a hundred years ago in their relative world contexts either, far as I know.
I think the causality is different and that a society that wants to be healthy has to choose to cut off routes to power for fascists so people can laugh at them safely. We only know we have WON when we can laugh at them safely.
The Christofascists don’t believe in real virtue. They’ve been convinced that the only virtue is wealth. So it makes perfect sense (in their twisted worldview) that money is a placeholder scoreboard for “heaven.” They would sell their own mother for an extra $50 in the moment before the apocalypse.
This is what horrifies me about the Texas GOP. These are the richest and most powerful people in this state and they have been for a long time.
This world, full of black people and gay people and women with jobs and no-fault divorces and abortions and liberals… it has made them rich and powerful but they STILL AREN’T GRATEFUL. It’s not enough for them.
No… they believe their god hasn’t blessed them yet.
Pretty much. I think the logic is that they have the money and power because God wills them to use it to put all the other humans in their place up to and including death.
If you’ve been privy to their negotiations, then by all means, share. While I doubt Biden’s team has been as hardcore as I might have liked, the fact that he forced McCarthy to the table and to an agreement in principal, despite the imminent threat to his (McCarthy’s) own power from the reactionary elements of his own party shows that the Dems have not been toothless. Whether by invoking the 14th Amendment or by minting a $1T coin, the administration holds all the cards. Letting McCarthy pretend to gain concessions might not be as forceful as some progressives might like, it might be better politics.
Bullshit. This assertion is completely ahistorical. There are so many things wrong with this statement, it’s difficult to know where to start. Firstly, because Weimar had many things going on that were much better (in terms of cultural, social, and personal freedom) than the USA’s current predicament and because the US has a vastly better economy than Weimar did at the time. The only parallel is the rise of fascism.
