Ask Lemmy

The mechanisms by which civilizations grow, stagnate, collapse and recover have fascinated people since at least the ancient Greek philosophers.

Civilizations initially grow because they make life better for the average citizen. Cooperation leads to more reliable food and more babies survive to make more babies.

After some time some stressors on the civilization lead to widespread conflict. Historically this have been linked mostly to famine and plagues. Economic instability can also lead to a civilizations segmentation and conflict. The "fall of civilizations" is historically the segmentation of large civilizations into smaller entities as people rally around a local leader who promises them the "right" things.

So what's happening right now - a shit ton of stressors.

Birth rates are negative in most industrialized nations. This indicates that on a widespread basis, globally people do not feel that they have the resources to raise kids.

Climate change is triggering serious fears of famine. This is why denying the obvious heat increases is so popular. "Oh no, it's not the hottest and dryest summer on record. Our crops are hunky doey."

Plagues - Well COVID happened and triggered a lot of widespread fear. That disease is still seen as a curse from the supernatural for most humans instead of a biological inevitability was made crystal clear.

Wars - stealing someone else's resources looks pretty good when you fear there is not enough resources to go around. "It's too hot in the U.S. to grow crops, let's invade Canada and steal Greenland!"

So humans are doing what they have always done when stressed. Look for someone who looks like a "strong leader" who can make things right in their world again.

Cowardice.

Can't discount the capture of institutions, consolidation of media, and trans-border collaboration. There's also overt and covert acts of war against liberal democracies by far right governments. We're due for another oopsies in Europe real soon.

Now I’m not political

In large part, this is fueling it. Think. In what way are you not political? Are you uninformed about political topics-- important topics, that are life or death for others? Or are you informed but choose not to do anything about them? Neither option sounds too good when put more clearly than the very vague "not political". You can claim to be apolitical because you can afford not to care about politics; whoever gets elected, your life doesn't appear to change much. But rest assured, it does, and sooner or later politics will care about you, whether you care about it or not.

not political

you should be. you need to be. because otherwise the assholes win.

Most of these answers lack a broader understanding of the history and systems which produce this phenomenon. There's a good video that talks through multiple examples of a similar rise in right wing populist dictators and the theoretical through-line that connects them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0GQP-IRVqM

To summarize: Privileged classes in a hierarchical society fear popular will turning against them and taking away their privilege, whether by election or force. When times are good the threat of this is relatively low. But when things start to fall apart, people start organizing against the elites. Fearing this, even liberal members of the upper class choose to side with those to their right, because even if they disagree with their more extreme positions, to them it's better than losing their privileged positions in society.

From there, the right wing uses all sorts of tactics to suppress opposition and cloak themselves in faux populism. Everything from propaganda to direct acts of violence.

Why is the right on the rise in a lot of these social democracies? Because they're still capitalist, so that structural need to suppress popular will still exists despite their nicer social programs. It was going to happen eventually, it's just a matter of when. Capitalism and imperialism around the world is reaching another moment of crisis, so this is exactly the time when they'd be doing this.

TL;DR: Surprise! It's capitalism again!

Billionaires.

Occupy Wallstreet.

People like to joke that it did nothing, but it terrified the corporate masters of the world. They have been trying to teach us uppity poors a lesson ever since.

The capitalist system always needs a scapegoat to unify a divided society. That marginalized role has traditionally been filled by immigrants, psychiatric patients, drug users, queer people, and the like... Furthermore, these days, social subsumption by capital has been intensified, which implies that hate toward these people is fueled by some systemic actors, such as the far-right. Some people, in this context, adhere to this discourse out of the need for social cohesion and fear.

Billionaire money. Oligarch money.

Chuds noticing things getting worse, and their leader offering solutions and someone to blame. It's always been like that. Happened in Germany in the 1920s, happened in the US in the 2010s.

Now that it's accelerating, it's gonna be interesting to see which conclusions are drawn after their chosen ones have been in charge almost the entire time.

Economic despair.

We all know something is deeply wrong with the world, but it's easier to see and blame brown people than to see all the ways that we are being squeezed by the Epstein class.

In a US context, but perhaps the dynamic is the same around the world, is that Republicans blame immigrants and the Democrats, defenders of the status quo, blame nobody.

This is a serious electoral handicap, when your side is prevented from effective world building, when you are not allowed to identify enemies.

Far right says "We found the issue with society: brown people"

(American) Far left says "We found the issue with society: the far right"

Far right followers are people who are susceptible to indoctrination.

(American) far left followers are people who think they arent susceptible to indoctrination.

No ones doing anything productive, but the far right IS doing SOMETHING, its just incredibly distructive and dick-waving.

Meanwhile something like 80% of people agree about 80% on 100% of topics. They just are too dumb or cowardly or poor to do anything about it (mainly poor).

The parties keep them poor and promise good things, the right is just louder and angrier and usually wins out the monkey brain

The rich steal money, so the poor cannot afford to live.

The poor revolt, but since the rich control the media, the rich tell the poor that other poor people are at fault (foreigners, trans, leftists).