Unhappiness and fear linked to fascism? Unbelievable! But yeah, I think that’s something you more or less directly learn as German if you look back on our democracy, the Weimarer Republik, before rise of national socialism. Many people didn’t believed in democracy at the first place, but the bad economic situation made it even worse. If you are unhappy or even fear about your future that’s a great attack point for right wing propaganda.
I was thinking about this before scrolling comments. It seems many on the right support/vote for policies that actively make their quality of life seemingly better in the short term, and are surprised and disappointed when the long-term consequences of their decisions begin happening to become noticeable (usually more for me, less for thee?). When they discover the policies affect them, personally, they become angry and belligerent, looking to place blame on external factors. The left (I don’t mean neoliberal) seem to go within, asking things like, “how did my voting choices affect this? What have I learned? How can I calibrate my choices for better results, going forward?” then try to make better decisions, even if it hurts them more, personally, in the short term, hoping for better across-the-board results long term?
I’ve just begun milling this, so I’ve no idea if this is correct or not. I’d love to see some research on it.
All this learning what has it accomplished? The fascists are on the rise again.
The contemporary witnesses are dying. I wouldn’t say it’s because of them not being able to tell their stories anymore, but a human life is enough time for a society to forget. And if I say society, I really mean the majority of people forget, nowadays just many have forgotten, too many, but not the majority. There always have been a few people who couldn’t forget because they never knew, never wanted to know, we call them neo-nazis. They are on the rise again, all the crises of the last years have helped them and still do so, but I don’t think people who haven’t forgotten would follow them.
It works for both left and right wing populism. Unfortunately, the former tends to (almost always) manifest the latter. Just look at all left-wing populists who (understandably) hate Joe Biden rolling out the red carpet for Donald Trump.
As a left wing populist, I do hate Joe Biden rolling out the red carpet for Donald Trump
Additionally, the researchers found that life dissatisfaction indirectly influenced right-wing populist voting through two key attitudes: political distrust and anti-immigration sentiment. Dissatisfied individuals were more likely to distrust political institutions and view immigration negatively, which in turn increased their likelihood of voting for right-wing populist parties. Notably, anti-immigration sentiment emerged as the stronger of the two mediators.
And this is the key point of right-wing propaganda. Destroy trust into organizations, sow sentiments against immigrants, spread fear by overhyping individual crimes, produce anxiety. Basically “make people angry and fearful”.
And since the media - especially social media - is trapped in an attention economy where mainly bad news drive engagement it’s no wonder people have a skewed and negative view of reality.
anti-immigration sentiment.
I wonder why indiginous wage slaves would feel this way… Like there is no way to tell why they would feel like this.
CBO estimated that net immigration was 2.67 million immigrants in 2022, and 3.3 million immigrants in 2023, the highest in its data going back to 2000, and about triple the average rate between 2000 and 2021 (1.05 million immigrants per year).
I wonder what happened in 2022 that made daddy bringing all these additional slaves.
Immigrants don’t need to be “brought.” This is right-wing rhetoric, but most ironic of all is that these “wage slaves” are literally better off with more immigration, not less.
I trust u bro
The rise of right-wing in Europe can be directly attributed to the massive influx of right-wing conservative ideologues from the middle East pouring in.
I’m a huge proponent of immigration, but what we’re seeing here is the backlash of immigration done incredibly poorly.
There will be articles for years that tap dance around with us, but if you listen to the people who are voting for right-wing assholes, it’s pretty clear why they’re doing it and what they’re saying. The Press has been bullied into avoiding talking about it though under the guise of islamophobia.
While I don’t disagree, it is possible that populism is exacerbated both by misery and by potentially legitimate anti-immigration sentiments.
