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MAGA is popular for the same reason other nationalist, fascist movements have risen over the course of modern history: as a response to Capitalist decay. MAGA isn’t popular for genetic reasons, intellectual inferiority, or other reasons like that, but as a common class interest.
Fascism is most often represented as an alliance between the Petite Bourgeoisie and Bourgeoisie proper, driven by the Petite Bourgeoisie, as monopolization of Capital results in competition becoming more and more difficult, and the Petite Bourgeoisie faces Proletarianization. To prevent the Petite Bourgeoisie from joining the Proletariat in solidarity, the Bourgeoisie proper turns their hatred against the Proletariat and Lumpenproletariat.
What does this all mean, in practical, American terms? Small business owners, landlords, ie the “middle class,” is shrinking in power, so the Small Business Owners are aligning with billionaires like Musk and Bezos against immigrants, workers, unhoused peopled, gender/sexual minorities, women, ethnic minorities, and more.
How do we fix this? Grow the Petite Bourgeoisie and restore their position? Absolutely not! That’s when fascism is established. Trying to “turn the clock back to the good old days” results in dramatic reductions in worker rights and a solidification of power.
What we need to do is establish Socialism. A victory of the Proletariat, a folding of the large monopolist syndicates into the public sector so they can be centrally planned for the public good, rather than privately planned for profit, is the way forward. This is the way to escape fascism’s rise. This is the way to defeat MAGA. I recommend reading the book Blackshirts and Reds.
My daughter calls them trumpy grumpies and I thought it was a good name.
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Never really liked this argument, since it’s not really a contemporary political movement where you just read the policy and go “yup that sounds good”, it’s more akin to a cult with a large indoctrination campaign.
You have alternative news floating around on the same platforms as real ones, you’re told to not believe the “other side” as they’re all in league with one another and always lie, you can have coworkers or your community reinforce these things making it very hard to escape especially if you’ve been a part of it for years. The current ‘liberal politics’ and the living situation doesn’t help either too and does contribute to the general stress that makes people fall down these rabbitholes.
Granted, people who have a lot to benefit from MAGA and are acting as influencers for the movement should be rightfully hated, but not really regular people. I do believe that a lot of people who currently are going to (begrudgingly) vote for democrats could definitely be part of the MAGA cult given different environment (such as work, living area or community they’re part of).
Point is, hate the movement, not the people. While it’s very difficult, it’s possible to deradicalize someone and vilification is not really going to help with that.
i think what you are saying is the thing op in the screenshot also belives in originally. but after doorknocks after doorknocks talking to many people she changed her minds.
Great response. I’m an independent and the loudest voices on the left and the right are hateful but almost none of the people are. This post is just, “hare the right because they hated you first” and that shit gets old and gets us nowhere and widens divides. Oh but election season! The shrieking continues…
The moment you understand that MAGA is the party of hate is the moment you understand this election. It explains both Islamic and Latino support for Republicans. They were betrayed by Democrats, and are willing to let the rest of us hang for it. I hope selling out for the center Republicans was worth destroying the demographic coalition.
My wife is Indonesian Muslim, hates Kamala for what we’re doing in Palestine and told me not to vote for her. I’m still voting for Kamala but man that was a hard conversation I never would have expected. Seems like the military owns everything these days
It’s gonna get harder. Especially if you guys have kids.
It’s the dixiecrats after we took the one thing they loved: Jim Crow and their ability to be superior to anyone who isn’t white.
We even dared to elect a black person president over them, they will NEVER forgive us for that, it went against everything they believe in.
You don’t understand, to them this is justice for our unimaginable crimes against them, we took the only thing they had in life.
Would be kinda funny to double down and elect a black woman next. Bet they would just love that.
Wait, isn’t she Indian? Did she just BECOME black?
/s
God I hope we get there…
Yes that explains the South and the Aryan Nations in the NW. They were a given in this scenario. I have plenty of experience and a little too much understanding of both.
Party of Hate. For them it’s racial, religious, and cultural.
they are selfish.
That’s where all of those symptoms stem from.
selfish greed.
Lots of them are, but it’s stupid comments like this which make me shake my head. The left will lose 2024 with their fake moral superiority and fail to understand what happened.
Again.
get your maga out of here.
*The left will lose 2024 with their fake moral superiority…"
it is not a fake moral superiority, the left has a practical moral superiority demonstrated by material policy that positively affects the lives of people.
The left beat you in 2020 because of their tangible moral superiority by providing civil protections and material assets for the rights of the electorate.
conservatives are legally trying and succeeding in stealing the rights, liberties and property of Americans.
Americans don’t like that, and voted to the left.
they’re fighting back by prosecuting and removing the selfish conservatives who are harming people, and are creating laws and funds protecting everyone,
civil rights are not a “fake” moral superiority, they are a tangible moral superiority effected through practical, respectful policy.
The smug feeling of moral superiority and the continuous willingness to correct the other’s behaviour is THE reason why people can’t stand “left/wokism/whatever”. Continously pointing out on fake “offensive words” just to show off how morally superior they are.
That how it looks from outside.
(For context i am not American and don’t guve a fuck about orange man neither for so called “christian values” so don’t try to paint me as a conservative MAGA supporter.)
So you think that being an asshole and holding the country hostage is a reasonable response to being scolded? Like a literal fucking toddler?
“moral superiority and the continuous willingness to correct the other’s behaviour”
it is tangible practical moral superiority coming from the protection and support of civil rights and liberty.
rather than taking away employee rights, the left is giving employees rights.
rather than taking away minority rights, the left is legally protecting minority rights.
those are not imaginary feelings, those are practical and effective policies.
"The smug feeling of moral superiority and the continuous willingness to correct the other’s behaviour is THE reason why people can’t stand “left/wokism/whatever”. Continously pointing out on fake “offensive words” just to show off how morally superior they are. "
this is largely your imagination and pointed conservative media and a poor excuse for selfish people to continue abusing vulnerable people for their own gain.
offensive words are not fake, and there’s nothing wrong with being considerate toward everyone.
the fact that you don’t understand haven’t considered the difference between protected civil liberties and imaginary fake word hunts from the left (that are actually perpetrated by conservatives banning books from libraries) demonstrates exactly how successful the conservative media you consume is.
consider what you’re saying, consider the information around you.
anybody accusing the left of instigating moral panics while the right is literally banning books in libraries over words that they don’t like or understand clearly doesn’t have even the most tenuous comprehension of what is really happening.
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Logged into the wrong account? Hard to keep track, eh?
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I thought this was always obvious. His whole appeal was ‘he says it like it is’ and ‘he’s brave enough to say what we’re all thinking’.
That’s why scandals didn’t affect him, he never pretended to be virtuous like most of the other Republicans do.
A third of people in any society have authoritarian tendencies and will vote for the strong man ‘that will set everything straight’, and it’s always a failure of mainstream politicians that allows these people to get into power (either by not motivating the other 70% to vote for their project, being too divided, or by going into a coalition with that party).
He really is an accurate representative for his base: the worst scum sucking garbage alive.
The aversion to reading is always a red flag for me. Reading is a pillar of human intelligence.
For me it depends, reading books is hard for me because it feels like a chore that never ends. Even if it is a thrilling story, it’s just hard for me to focus for long enough to make any progress. Might be ADHD idk. But at least I keep reading news articles and other things that are relevant, because obviously I want to stay informed about what’s happening in the world, especially when elections are around the corner.
I don’t find reading books appealing. But I do look up things I am curious about and read few news articles I come across. Reading a book isn’t the only way to gain knowledge but if they aren’t reading/learning about anything then that’s a problem.
They’d be mad if they could understand anything that wasn’t Facebook memes and bad email chains.
I’ve gotten a disturbing number of messages on grindr from men that are hard core right wing, yet are on a gay dating app. The level of hate, ignorance, and cognitive dissonance is unprecedented. And it’s all fueled by highly addictive apps, and pumped at unimaginable scales thanks to AI.
I hate to say it, but I think this really is the end.
nah. at any given time, we (the good guys) can easily defeat the bad guys. it’s pretty fucking simple. you just have to organize, understand the problem, and be willing to think outside the box.
i think we’ve just been using the wrong tools. i think all we really need is encrypted messaging and [redacted].
The oldest human need politicians learned to exploit since before villages became a thing, I think.
‘Apes together strong’ was a message from nerds, not politicians, imo.
dumb people shouldn’t participate in society. no one is ever going to legislate that. it’s up to us to make sure they don’t.
Define dumb, otherwise I’ll start by saying it’s the people who don’t capitalize words
There isn’t really agreement on who is too shitty to “participate in society”, whatever that means. And if you build a mechanism to exclude people, assholes will use it for evil.
But like if I had a magic wand I would remove all republicans from power. They make it easy by self identifying as shitheads.
They don’t like to read more than a couple of sentences.
tl;dr?
wordn’t
I know we don’t do gold here, but you have done something worthy of praise. So, I pledge to give a few dollars to your instance (lemmy.world).
Exactly
Yes.
Honestly I wonder how much reading comprehension they struggle with. Like the average reading level is 8th grade, if that iirc. I swear they drop out as soon as there are big words cuz they get pissed they can’t understand. People that lean left are clinically shown to be more* (not not) open minded, and I imagine are the ones going and googling when they don’t know or have someone right there they trust to explain.
Something like half of US adults cannot read at a 6th grade level. That’s like reading for plot. That’s reading a couple paragraphs about like “Sally moved to New Jersey from Maine when she was 17. She went to college at NYU, where she met her future husband Jake. They got married and now have two children.” -> “Where did Sally meet her husband?”. A lot of people struggle with that. And we kind of expect them to keep up with politics.
Some of that is their fault. They don’t try. They don’t want to be literate. But a lot of it is a failure of our public education system. But that is largely the fault of conservatives who don’t want to fund it.
You’re also not going to find a lot of those people on a platform like this that’s mostly written, and where the norms generally a somewhat high level of diction that adheres to standard english.
It’s an emotional thing. They base their beliefs about how the world works based on what makes them feel better about themselves. Everything else is just backtracking from the conclusion to find a justification for it. And anything that doesn’t fit that narrative gets thrown away or ignored.
The odd part is how often that works. Like, I went to work Monday through Friday, therefore I should go to work on Saturday, right? That’s… that’s… that’s… not how that works, or at least not how it is supposed to. And by extension, humanity has survived on earth for my entire lifetime and for many others besides, so s-s-surely this is not the end for our species? (based on what evidence though?)
Though at some point we see that the level of cognitive dissonance is far too high to be explainable purely by lack of intelligence - (almost) nobody is that dumb. And also there are literally people with PhDs and even MDs who were prescribing Ivermectin rather than the COVID vaccine, so it’s not something that correlates perfectly with “intelligence” as in logical acuity, rather than emotional whatever (agility I think is the current term?).
The era of information is over, where people are considered “smart” if they know more things or can do more. Now we are entering a new era, seemingly characterized by not merely misinformation but active sources of disinformation. Now, survival of the fittest depends not only on individual emotional agility but also extensible to one’s “tribe”, as in when presented with two mutually exclusive set of facts, which one will someone choose to believe? (On the one hand we have 1+1=2, while on the other, we can hear words literally from someone’s actual mouth, but the talking heads can manage to convince people that they did not see what they saw or hear what they heard and definitely what was meant was not meant - I’m saying that some people might legit be too dumb to live, sorry if that seems unkind, it distresses me too but if it is what it is, therefore…, =2 it is then).
If I had to categorize myself I would say that I am a pragmatic idealist.
I have a concept of a world where people tend to work together and generally operate in methods and manners that are mutually beneficial for the betterment of all.
That idealism is tempered by my pragmatic understanding that stupidity is praised and given friendships and social connections because no matter how many smart people there are the stupid people will always outnumber them.
And the stupid people don’t know that they are stupid.
So you cannot pretend that things will work out the way you think they will because no matter how stupid you think the people are around you they are far more stupid than that.
They will destroy you and themselves just to prove to you that being smart and capable is not enough to succeed in the world.
They will do horrendous things to you in order to prove to you that people do horrendous things to people.
And they truly in their heart of hearts and soul of souls before the Lord God Almighty believe they are doing the right thing when they do it.
My politics are left but my optimism is non-existent.
If I may? I think there is room for hope, but it depends on where you place that hope. For instance, I don’t believe that democracy will prevail in the USA for much longer - setting aside the Russian Roulette that we play every single time (more often than 4 years bc Congress), there is still that SCOTUS ruling that has already given the sitting President the power to legally assassinate their political rivals. The wheel keeps turning, and the ratchet keeps it always moving forwards towards the grand design of those who have power to implement such things.
But while there may be no more hope for that, what will come afterwards? People will still need things - so farmers will still farm, service members will still serve, scientists will still learn about the world, etc. Granted, much of that will be replaceable with automation, but e.g. the internet did not completely replace books, and this next transition too will be harsh but something will carry forward.
And since we do not know what or how etc., I adopt an attitude of “we don’t know”, rather than either pessimism or optimism. But since hope is mandatory for human existence, I also choose to have it (plus if I’m wrong, humanity will cease to exist, so who would be left to care anyway? it is definitely a win-win bet for me there:-P).
I do want to add to that very quickly that I do not believe that this stupidity is tied to IQ.
My sister has an IQ in the 160 to 180 range and she’s the dumbest motherfucker I’ve ever met in my entire life. She is sadistic and enjoys destroying happiness and joy and anything that she can get her hands on while she herself has accomplished nothing and done nothing with her life. She’s willfully and intelligently stupid, so don’t assume that just because somebody is smart that they are not stupid.
Some want to listen - others merely to speak.
I mean outside of the racism, I can see this being applied to liberals too
Care to elaborate?
gang i think some percentage of the FREE CITIZENS OF THE COLONIAL SLAVERY EMPIRE might be violently bigoted
when they were knocking doors did they check with anybody who the slave empire has imprisoned or any of the folks that don’t have doors
