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While Americans have long clashed over our country’s cruel and bigoted past, Germans have undertaken one of the most thoroughgoing efforts of any nation on the planet to reckon with their history. Germany, perhaps more than any other country, has attempted to pull out by the roots its homegrown variant of the reactionary spirit — the tendency of opponents of social change to choose hierarchy over democracy, trying to constrain or even topple democracy to protect hierarchies of wealth and status.
The Nazis were born out of disgust with post-World War I Weimar democracy, led by men furious about both the new government’s weakness and acceptance of the Jewish minority into German society. After Nazism brought Germany to ruin, preventing a reactionary resurgence became one of the central goals of the country’s subsequent leaders.
So it’s all the more extraordinary that in the past few years, Germany’s far right has been on the rise.
In 2015, at the peak of the global refugee crisis, German chancellor Angela Merkel announced an open-door policy for those fleeing violence in Syria and elsewhere. In response, the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party, a Euroskeptic faction without a single seat in Parliament, morphed into a virulently xenophobic force calling for Germany to slam Merkel’s open door shut.
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But its rise illustrates something vitally important: That Germany, of all countries, could fail to prevent a surge in reactionary antidemocratic politics suggests there’s something eternal and enduring about the reactionary spirit. And there is something about our current time period that makes it especially likely to flourish — not just in Germany, but around the world.
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In other words, tolerance isn’t a paradox, it’s a social contract. If you’re not willing to abide by it by tolerating others, then you’re not protected by it and we have no obligation to tolerate you!
They make some salient pints but completely skip over the part where the oligarchy use their control of the media to promote these views. A lot of current dissatisfaction is rooted in growing inequality. Then the very people who cause this inequality turn arnd and use it to deflect the blame on minorities that are very much the victims and not in any way to blame for the mess.
points away from own hoard of cookies Look! The immigrant is going to take away your cookie!!!
The mass of fascism is the working class traitors. The petite bourgeoisie and those who pretend and desire to become that. Of course, they’re going to get shafted later, by the rich fascists.
Egocentric victimhood is linked to support for Trump, study finds
Ugh. Just ugh.
Why the far right is surging all over the world
Capitalism is decaying, and fascism is its inevitable conclusion. This isn’t news, either: The Question of Fascism and Capitalist Decay
That 1935 piece surely seems prophetic. For example this part:
Development of the anti-scientific and anti-cultural campaign, cutting down of education
For the last five or so years, I’ve been noticing a surge of anti-intellectualism. People are not any longer ashamed to publicly dismiss “smart alecks” and “know-it-alls”.
It really is an incredible read, but to be fair, it was already the case back in the day, and even earlier, off the top of my head:
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/ye-olde-anti-vaxxers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Francisco
Difference is we now have instant global mass media, so it all spreads much further, much faster.
But anti-intellectualism has always been a core feature of fascism
Those types of people used to be exceptions and now they feel like the norm.
Is it decaying or is it in full bloom? I assumed that rampant inequality was an acceptable feature of capitalism.
Inequality is a feature. Decay is when it’s running out of runway and starts to turn catabolic. They eat each other, starting with the smaller ones.
A fascist regime helps to guarantee inequality. As capitalism decays, it gets worse for everyone who’s not rich, leading to more inequality. But there are feedback loops, people rise up, workers form unions and go on strike, and so on. Fascism is there to make sure that the “right people” are getting the benefits from the economy, they police this social hierarchy. The racism and other bullshit is there to draw those contrasting lines between classes. It’s always about exclusion. Economically, fascism embraces selective austerity. A middle class life for me, a miserable slave life for thee. So they align great with capitalism and liberalism in this economic sense. GDP 📈.
Them eating each other is a feature of capitalism. Can’t maximize growth if you have competition driving down prices.
I don’t mean just business “war”, I mean violent takeover, assassinations, corrupt officials doing big favors, mafia shit. Fewer lawyers, more goons.
Being an acceptable feature to those removed from the harm they’re causing doesn’t give their perspective any validity - nothing about the current state of affairs is sustainable, that’s the point.
Oh, I completely agree. Just curious whether people see this a capitalism ‘decaying’ vs ‘working as intended’.
I’m not sure I understand, since the two don’t contradict - the system working as intended for capitalists, doesn’t stop it from also being decaying, it is a literal inevitability of an unsustainable system that only ever works for a tiny fragment of a percent of the population.
I don’t think I understand either :) If capitalism is decaying, how will it continue to work as intended for capitalists?
At some point it won’t anymore, but for many different reasons, they can’t see/don’t care.
First of all, as we mentioned, capitalism decays in to fascism, at which point (and why they actively working towards it) they will have even more power and less human rights to get in the way of the exploitation oppression and resource accumulation.
Then there’s also the fact that, being so far removed from the rest of society and being the ones who make the rules, they don’t feel like those should apply to them, not even rules of nature like “infinite growth is impossible in a finite world”.
This also means that their view of reality is so warped they think they’ll always be on top/secure. For example - they’re all spending millions even billions on bunkers, but never stop to consider who will serve and protect them in that bunker and why anyone would still be willing to (when things get bad enough, their money will be useless), as well as what world they might come out to if they do survive. Never mind stop what they’re doing to prevent the need for a bunker in the first place (to them, being equal to everyone else seems like a worse fate than global destruction).
The problem is that capitalism is a global cancer, and one fascist coming to their end doesn’t mean the system that got them there has been destroyed, or even “fixed” (you can see this in the failures to de-nazify Germany after the war, or to de-racist America after it’s founding, or de-monarchize? the UK for example), and that is why we say “workers of the world unite”, because it will take a global effort, not only in revolution, but in creating an equitable, just, and inclusive foundation for something better to be built on out of the void (this will require mass deprogramming and unlearning of the social structures imposed by the kyriarchy, and re-learning solidarity, compassion, community, cooperation, and so on - all things that actually come naturally to us, but are beaten out of us by life under capitalism).
And now I’ve lost my train of thought, and I’ve probably rambled on enough, so I’m going to leave it there lol
If capitalism is decaying, how will it continue to work as intended for capitalists?
I don’t think it necessarily will in their eyes, but as I see it, they view it in two ways that aren’t mutually exclusive. Firstly, as capitalism decays, it could give rise to a system that allows them to exploit others even more mercilessly than they already do, and they’re eager to reap the benefit of this development. Secondly, they think that their riches will allow them to escape the negative impacts of capitalism, regardless of what happens. Look at the billionaires buying up islands or building remote doomsday bunkers to escape to in the event things really go south. They fully expect that in the worst case scenario of extensive warfare, environmental crises and societal collapse, they’ll be able to retreat into their castles, pull up the draw bridge over the moats, and live out the rest of their days in comfort while the rest of us suffer and perish.
Rampant inequality is deemed acceptable in return for rising living standards of the general population. The top is getting greedy and refused to give a penny to living standards, and standards are going down, so of course the population is getting agitated.
Lets be clear, this is totally about the rich class and their propagandize base versus the working class.
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It’s because in many cases we’ve been told to be respectful and civil to those whose actions and views of us are not respectful or civil. In the United States specifically our fascists have festered and grown slowly and consistently over the last 100 years. We never had a reckoning with our faction of fascists here in the US. So why wouldn’t they have grown.
Capitalism degrades into fascism.
Or more specifically:
- Market grows
- Market saturates (no growth)
- Competitors merge into monopolies (appearance of growth)
- Regulatory capture of government
- Governments legislate growth focused policies
- Population resists
- Government goes fascist
I mean Germany also never really overcame Nazism. We just purged the highest Nazi leadership and some scapegoats and everyone else got off the hook and pretended like they were the victims. Military, police, secret services, government staff, courts were then filled with the same people who were doing that same thing for the Nazis. AFD leadership includes descendants of Nazis and even a Nazi minister. The whole country is and has always been blind on the right eye.
I don’t see this as a requirement to “tolerate intolerance”. I see this as an explanation of why we’re seeing the results we do. I’ve always had a kind of feeling that the extreme resurgence of the right is a hard reaction to the specific reforms of the left. The more reform, the more angst and reaction. It’s just nice to know this “feeling” has a name, and a proper theory.
Basically, the more social woes we fix, the more conservatives get pissed. Like they need time to adjust to their new reality or something.
So our options are: Pick and choose priorities, and slow it down, or face the right’s backlash, populism, and calls to arms, risking political turnover. This is not arguing appeasement. Just explaining their behavior, and the choices the left needs to make in how they govern. I.e., Slow and steady, or risky business.
Finally, I don’t think the right will ever stop trying to pull us towards The Handmaidens Tale, but given time to adjust to significant societal changes, their base becomes less charged and the backlash is less severe. See: Abortion rights.
I think I need to bring up that the demographics of the German far-right are just completely different than the American one. To the point they must just be different phenomena.
That Germany, of all countries, could fail to prevent a surge in reactionary antidemocratic politics suggests **there’s something eternal and enduring about the reactionary spirit. **
LMAO. Reactionary antidemocratic politics in Germany?!🧐 I’m shocked
Simple: elites have been so self-serving that promising to break the establishment is very popular.
Because the Western Left is pushing too hard in the media. All the shrieking is counter productive and only pushes the centralists to the right. The Left wants to win hollywood and internet arguments. The Right wins elections. Rethink the heavy handed Leftist propaganda.
I kinda get what you’re saying but the whole “we’ll pick a shitty totalitarian government over having to hear about lesbians getting married” really seems bitchy and weak
The left is making inroads on some areas, and not on others. In particular, it’s making progress on the social justice front without having much to show for on the economic front. I don’t think it’s particularly fruitful to get into a discussion of “is it because one is harder or because people have slanted priorities”, the important part is to recognise that that disparity in progress exists, it’s real, people feel left behind and betrayed, the right is brilliant at exploiting emotions, and you’re not going to convince someone working three jobs to barely make rent that the actual issue is pronouns.
Quoth Berthold Brecht, in the Threepenny Opera:
You gentlemen who think you have a mission
to purge us of the seven deadly sins,
should first sort out the basic food position,
then start your preaching! Thats where it begins.
You lot who preach restraint and watch your waist as well,
should learn, for once, the way the world is run:
However much you twist, whatever lies you tell,
food is the first thing, morals follow on.
So first make sure that those who now are starving
get proper helpings when we all start carving.
We need to know who we are voting into office. Extremists and all their connections need to be exposed. People being confronted by big business need to come forth for the sake of transparency.
It’s been clear for some time that centrists are sick of being screamed at and called nazis by an increasingly noisy far-left contingent.
If you genuinely think the Republican Party are fascist nazis… I mean there is simply no discussion that will be productive.
As opposed to non fascist nazis?
I just don’t get how you could vote for someone as old as trump.
Their dude literally said vermin.
We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.
The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.
It’s poisoning the blood of our country, it’s so bad and people are coming in with disease, people are coming in with every possible thing that you can have.
We are one people, one family and one glorious nation under God.
All great cultures of the past perished only because the original creative race died out from blood poisoning.
The struggle between the two worlds can permit no compromises. It’s either Us or Them!
Which was said by Donnie and which was said by an actual real historical Nazi? Try not to Goog first.
spoiler
The last two are Hizzle and Bennie.
Kind of wild to me that all the other quotes are Donnie T. I think it’s pretty clear why repubs get the reputation they have.
