It’s been reported that in the German elections, a far right party has made ‘significant gains’.
In the UK (at least before the scandals) Reform UK seems to have had a significant boost and has even surpassed the right-wing Conservative Party in some polls/predictions.
Even France, one or two years ago, was threatened with a far-right government due to the French far right party gaining a lot of support.
It feels like in the last few years, the far-right has exceeded itself and had a surge in popularity. Is this the case? And if so, wtf is fuelling it?
With the creation of the Internet, we celebrated the opportunity for every voice to be heard!
This is the result of listening.
I cant speak to european causes, but as Americas’ culture tends to set the pace of world events since the end of the second world war, it’s entirely possible that there is a connection.
in the united states you need to know about two individuals that are primarily responsible for the rise of right wing populism and corporatocracy. The first is a Proto-Christian Nationalist and white supremacist by the name of Barry Goldwater, and the other was a Neo-Calvinist and Objectivist “thinker”* Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (*and I use the term loosely)
Barry Goldwater was a driving force in opposition to the civil rights movement, and primary architect of the modern Conservative platform. He played a rather large part in the Great Lane Swap where Southern Democrats switched to the Republican Party and Northern Republicans became the core of centrist Neoliberalism.
Where Lewis Powell comes into the mix is his treatment (now known simply as the “Powell Memorandum”) called “Attack On the American Free Enterprise system” where he bemoans Corporate regulation as “holding back” the potential of not just American but Western Capitalism to enrich those who he deems worthy of greatness. (If you are familiar with the writings of Ayn Rand, this kind of “why do I need to share?!” Objectivist whining should sound similar.)
In both cases, they set up the groundwork and built the nascent foundations of the conservative political strategy we see to day that has resulted in much of the worlds’ oligarchic tendencies. Goldwater’s contribution was to recognize that conservative messaging had an image problem and rather than accept that the message was the problem, it was the recipients of that message who needed to be controlled and reeducated. To that end he further recognised that what kept the populace averse to conservative messaging was the Institutions of Liberal Democracy, namely free access to education, the social safety net, and strong labor movements. By eradicating these pillars where able, and eroding their influence continually, this would allow a formation of a systemic return to fundamentalist christianity as the fall back for what he deemed a corrupt and wonten society. (To wit; This guy would have thought “The Handmaid’s Tale” was a fine book if only the main narrator was one of the men leading Galead, and not the woman who’s rights had been stripped away.)
Powell, on the other hand, was a corporate lawyer by trade, and the person most responsible for corporate deregulation and “trickle-down economics.” He promoted the idea that “a rising tide lifts all boats” as a justification for these actions, and used outmoded Calvinist ideas (just given a fresh coat of paint for the times) to justify the rule that the economically unsuccessful should move out of the way for those who could maintain economic success, and that such a system would be a driver of economic mobility by “encouraging” people to take agency in their own social status (Read: He thought the welfare state made people lazy and that forcing them to face a choice between destitution or participation would be a motivating factor for them to work harder, and thus increase profits at the top, which would then percolate down as the wealthy invested in new opportunities and ideas.) He saw labor unions as not just Socialist Infections but as the driving force preventing these phantom profits from bubbling up to those who he believed would be most suited to “properly” distributing them. If this sounds alot like “the peasantry don’t know how to spend their money, better to let the nobility have it” congrats, you win a gold star.
In both cases, the philosophies meshed very well as each supported the goals and methods of the other. By deregulating business, it allowed corporations to attack traditional power bases of the left wing, entrenching a kind of Capitalist Nobility as the only people who could actually make it in the new system, and blinding the working class to the fact that social mobility was little more than a myth used as a ideological carrot on a stick that kept productivity KPIs artificially high.
Other factors that lead to this situation are supreme court rulings in the 1920’s, specifically Henry Ford Vs. The Dodge Brothers, that inadvertently set the precedent that the point of any business was not to enrich its workers evenly or even commensurately with its owners, but to maximize profits to the shareholders. Another stumbling block for Leftist thought is Article One of N.A.T.O. which states that every member state must engage in a capitalist free market economy - a damn shame because otherwise N.A.T.O. is one of, if not the, most important defensive alliance in the promotion of omnipax world politics in human history. (Not to say it has always been successful toward that goal, mind.) Even more than the United Nations, in many regards.
That last bit may be more salient to the European perspective, as there is STILL a mindset of eurocentrism even as the world becomes more globalist and western influence wanes now that the age of colonialism is largely over. Mass migrations due to the policies of unchecked corporate power causing the lands these migrants hail from despoiled and unlivable, makes the supporters of these same mentalities quite ironic. Instead of bemoaning the influx of such individuals, and chafe at their presence, one would think that expending resources and investing to improve the living conditions of these places such that immigration from them be unnecessary, would be a more adroit course of action, and yet here we are. It’s easier to complain that the world is ugly than face the fact that your ideology is partly to blame, I suppose.
Disindustrialisation, reduction of purchasing power imo
Billionaires -> full control of MSM, social media, algorithms, politicians -> fueling right wing everything to increase the wealth gap / avoid taxes / avoid control by the masses
It’s like mind control the way they use things (e.g. advertising, social media) to influence people to vote, not just right, but far-right
Billionaires.
What I don’t get though, is we’ve had millionaires and billionaires all throughout history, so what’s triggered this specific boost?
Millionaires didn’t have enough clout to control the media or didn’t need to, billionaires do and do need to.
It’s finally gotten to a point where wealth and power are concentrated into a sufficiently small enough group of people they can:
- Collectively agree to all do the same thing
- All benefit from their cooperative action
- Afford to bribe as many officials as it takes to have complete control of any political system of their choosing
- Wield enough of the world’s resources that everyone else has no choice but to follow suit
Wealth and power.
Unscrupulous rich people benefit from the far right, so it is to their advantage to amplify it in media and technology.
There is real and legitimate discontent and disillusionment with the political mainstream, and they’re steering those people towards the far right by feeding the public lies that are plausible on the surface and provide an easy target for blame.
They’re supported by opportunic charlatans who can get rich by being the mouthpiece.Do you think that the boost has more to do with the fact that the general political mainstream is collapsing (i.e. perceived as useless) across multiple nations all at once? I mean, we’ve had wealthy businessmen pretty much all throughout history, so is this like a ‘trigger event’, so to speak?
I think the change is that today’s ultra-rich don’t act the same way the rich of the past did.
The “robber-barons” of the early 20th century were phenomenally rich and powerful, and they built schools, libraries, parks, and other public goods with a small fraction of their wealth because they understood that they had at least some tiny obligation to give back to the society that provided the conditions under which they could get so wealthy.
Today’s rich are actively preaching against the concept of empathy, and resisting any notion that they owe anyone anything. They are convinced that even a single dollar of their fortunes going to anything other than their own personal aggrandizement is a deeply offensive idea. And they are so willing to resist doing anything positive for the world that they spend enormous amounts of money to create propaganda networks to convince others that they don’t owe anyone a single cent of their fortunes. They buy ad campaigns to convince people that taxing them is bad, spending in some cases more money than the taxes would cost them… all because they firmly believe no one but themselves should see even the tiniest benefit from their money.
they understood that they had at least some tiny obligation to give back to the society that provided the conditions under which they could get so wealthy.
I feel like this is revisionism to some extent which inadvertently whitewashes their legacies; the real reason is they actually feared worker uprisings and did what they could to placate the population. Something not necessary now
In the early 2000s in Europe, many governments significantly worsened social services, including “centre-left” governments like Blair in the UK and Schröder in Germany. This eroded trust in the established parties, and the large influx of migrants from 2015 on in many European coutries on was easily exploited by rightwing parties. Add the significant rightwing bias of US social media that dominates the social media landscape in most western countries and voila, people voting for neonazi parties en masse.
The legitimate reasons for discontentment have existed for a long time, but I suspect that powerful people have found a way to capitalize on it en masse. They’re taking the kernel of truth (that the mainstream political options aren’t being effective) and directing people to solutions that benefit themselves.
Idk if it happening internationally is just collateral damage, if they’re trying to operate internationally, or other powerful people have just learned from the previous successes.So no, I don’t think there is a trigger event, so much as reaching a critical mass. They’ve come into the means of control (digital media making distribution of ideas so cheap, making manipulation of media exposure so easy), and a public who is so used to being lied to and mislead that they can’t identify trustworthy sources (FUD), and they’re striking while the iron is hot.
Ah, I see. So it’s more like a ‘tipping point’ that’s built up over a long time?
I think so. And they’ve certainly helped us toward a that tipping point, but there is no single event that got us there.
Imo that is. I’m not exactly a political scientist.
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.
The dynamic is quite different around the world.
For one, most other Western democracies have multi-party systems where the choice is not restricted to just moderate conservatives and fascists.
Secondly, many of these democracies where the popularity of fascists has surged are doing much better than the US economically.
By which metric is the economy better than the US’s?
Overall the US economy has been fairly strong since the mid 2010’s, with the exception of inflation and a Covid related unemployment blip. And a chronic shortage of housing that has been brewing for decades.
Of course, the products of that economy haven’t been distributed equitably so perhaps that’s what you mean?
By which metric is the economy better than the US’s?
By compound broad economic metrics (IHDI, etc.), as well as certain specific metrics like life expectancy, poverty and violent crime rates, income inequality, corruption, and so on.
True but I don’t really see those as merely economic metrics, with the exception of income inequality. They’re affected by many things, not all of which are part of the economy directly.
Changes in the media landscape. Up to the 1990s, mainstream media in Western democracies were dominated by intellectuals, who are typically against racism and fascism. This gradually changed as media became more commercialized and sensationalist, a change that rapidly accelerated with the advent of social media, which is completely flooded by hate speech.
Economic reasons are often proposed, but this explanation falls flat considering the lack of a significant economic downturn since the 1990s, and the fact that we have seen fascists massively gaining popularity even in societies that are among the most prosperous in human history. This is especially obvious in Germany, where in East Germany (where the fascist strongholds are) the economic situation has in fact dramatically improved since the 90s.
There was one particular morning in 2014 when Google dropped articles from The Daily Stormer directly into the personalized news feed widget on my phone. I grew up in the South, so I know the ins and outs of racism there. This was completely different. It was wildly genocidal anti-Semitism; straight up Nazi shit. Right there on my phone and presented as news.
That’s when I knew that something was seriously wrong.
but this explanation falls flat considering the lack of a significant economic downturn since the 1990s
…
How are people upvoting this? Wtf?
Economic reasons are often proposed, but this explanation falls flat considering the lack of a significant economic downturn since the 1990s,
wut
The groups with strongest support for right wingers are not the poorest, it’s the middle manager class
Sure, maybe, but the question is how do you win an election? Middle management is by definition a minority.
A lot of the rest are just voting due to fear, and because they keep hearing these messages repeated by media and by this type of self interested people. You need to give people hope. You have a few good examples to copy like Mamdami, he figured out how to counter the propaganda.
Mamdami gives hope, but he also accurately identifies structural problems and ultimately, enemies, ie, he offers a cohesive worldview.
Democrats expressly don’t do that. They just offer bandaid solutions and ontological bewilderment…
Compared to any European country, the Democrats act like a coalition of 4-5 medium sized parties, not as a coherent single party.
I don’t mean there haven’t been recessions, just that on the whole the economic situation is not significantly worse (and in fact probably somewhat better) than in the 1990s.
The “on the whole” economic situation is not what you want to be looking at.
If you look at the real wage growth compared to expenses, life has been being getting grimmer and grimmer for the vast majority of individuals since the 1970s, even if GDP continues to climb.
Did you, in fact, look at real wage growth?
Here is data for the US specifically, which shows modest growth of median real wages over the past decades.
Edit: I’d also see the shift in the media landscape as a very conscious effort made by oligarchs to control the media landscape, including Reagan removing the Fairness Doctrine, and Fox News being explicitly created to allow Republican presidents to engage in criminal activity.
Not sure what you’re seeing. Everything I see things pointing to life getting worse and harder economically.
Rise in consumer debt: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CCLACBW027SBOG
Decline in housing affordability: https://worththen.com/tools/housing-affordability
Increase in student loand debt: https://thecollegeinvestor.com/32031/average-student-loan-debt-by-year/Medical bankruptcy is another thing to look into.
Culture is another window, maybe less valid. The idea behind the Simpsons was a family of 3 was barely scraping by, yet they owned two cars, a house, and Homer had a union job and no college degree, and usually Marge didn´t need to work. In the 1980’s Anthony’s Song complained about, “Who needs a house out in Hackensack? Is that all you get for your money?” would be a flop today because a house out in Hackensack isn’t conformity, it’s just unattainable.
Edit: I’d also see the shift in the media landscape as a very conscious effort made by oligarchs to control the media landscape, including Reagan removing the Fairness Doctrine, and Fox News being explicitly created to allow Republican presidents to engage in criminal activity.
Well, even if we accept (which I don’t) that things like increasing student debt would be a major factor, how do you explain fascism being on the rise in many other (pretty much all of them) Western democracies? You can’t really use US-specific things like medical bankruptcy and student debt as explanations for a trend in societies where these aspects just are not relevant at all. Most Western democracies have universal access to health care and education.
The Fairness Doctrine, however, has clear parallels in other societies. Not because they have legislation similar to it (though some did or still do, like France) - but because even in those places where no such formal legislation exists, social media have almost completely negated the role journalists used to play in moderating public debate from a (relatively) neutral and, more importantly, non-fascist viewpoint.
You’re too smart to convince of anything.
Have a great rest of your day.
You’re literally linking to a graph that ONLY measures the wages of fully employed people in the US. It doesn’t measure the under employed, part time employees, or contract/gig workers - at a time when all those categories all became more prevalent…
…and it certainly doesn’t measure changes in wealth share globally. So way to cherry pick.
In fact, the rate of underemployment (gig workers who’d like to work more hours, etc.) is at historically low levels in the US.
You’re getting all these replies from me because of how many times you’ve used income inequality ir employment stats to cover for billionaires…
…who as you know, have the most concentrated wealth, and avoid income taxes by not taking a wage.
Income equality is so even because the ultra rich don’t take an income.
They buy up assets at inflated prices, they buy up the media companies you’re complaining are fascist AND MAKE THEM FASCIST.
Then they borrow against those assets and luve off loans. Buying more assets to get more loans, or getting paid in stocks to borrow more money against.
So they inflate prices on luxury homes, land, goods, vehicles, assets, and companies. Increasing their wealth further and further away from everyone else, whilst everyone else pays the taxes billionaires avoid… Suffers the more expensive land values, houses, goods.
… they’re totally corrupting society. Musk just recently silenced a Twitter account that tracks Donald Trump’s stock investments BECAUSE Musk bought Twitter then took out massive loans against it.
It’s the biggest corruption scam in your lifetime. Probably the biggest in history.
This only holds true when you use the metrics that wealthy people use to know how well the economy is doing for them. For the vast majority of people the economic situation has been worsening for decades.
By what metric more appropriate for ordinary people has the situation significantly worsened since the 1990s, on average across Western democracies?
Stagnant real wage growth, sure. Stagnant, so not significantly worse.
Health care? US-specific - how do you explain the massive growth of fascism in countries with reasonably well-functioning health care systems and universal health care?
Union membership? US-specific - how do you explain the massive growth of fascism in countries with 50%+ union membership rates, massively more politically influential unions and widespread collective wage bargaining?
Minimum wage? US-specific - how do you explain the massive growth of fascism in countries where even the minimum income (i.e., for the unemployed) is far above the US federal minimum wage?
Inequality? A global problem, to be sure. But how do you explain the massive growth of fascism even in countries with dramatically lower inequality, poverty and crime, and with universal access to health care and top-tier education? In fact, some of these countries are among the most egalitarian in human history since the advent of agriculture thousands of years ago.
Why did fascism emerge now as suddenly so much more popular? Could it be, perhaps, not something economic at all, but something else? Like maybe people being bombarded with fascist propaganda 24/7?
Why are you out here lying and pretending like billionaires take a wage?
They don’t. They drive up prices buying over inflated assets then borrow against them and live off the loans (all to avoid income taxes, pushing their tax burden onto the rest of society in the process). So they inflate prices, don’t give back, buy up companies, give everyone else a burden and don’t appear in the wage equality stats you’re spraying everywhere in their defense.
I hope you get this now, because it’s one of the main problems corrupting society.
Don’t cover up for billionaires, you’ve done so much for them in these threads and need to stop.
social media, which is completely flooded by hate speech.
Well, you’re not wrong there.
Thats interesting, good explanation.
It’s really not, each new age/epoch of media has had its share of rightwing grifters.
You don’t have to be right wing to spout hate speech. Modern Social media does have a lot of hate speech in any case (right wing grifters too, and yes there is some overlap, but there also isn’t too).
Hate speach relates to hate crimes, which are a category of crime punching down on minorities specifically.
So do you want to show me the examples of left wing people spouting hate speech?
Show me what makes them not rightwing, in the same era as they were spouting the hate speech against minorities. Give some examples if you want me to see your point as true and correct.
I’m not disagreeing with your point from a legal definition, I’m just saying the far left can also spout venomous speech which, though it might not be considered ‘hate speech’ from a legal standpoint, can be as bad as in terms of its content.
I agree with the horseshoe theory — or, as Parker put it, people on the far left and far right are pretty much the same.
Then again, I guess it is, to some extent, a moot point, since anyone can spout venom if they are pushed hard enough regardless of left, right, above or beyond.
I don’t think that’s the case, I think over the past several years a series of media figures have promoted right wing explanations of the world, almost all of which have relied on finding the most extreme examples of the worst people on the left, taking them out of context, and distributing them en mass in an organized fashion.
This process started with the “Russian troll farm” influence story in 2014, and was a huge part of the popularising of the alt-right. People like Steve Bannon, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk also started running influence campaigns.
So we have these vestigial bad ideas and examples the vitriol of the left, like “big red”, or this artist, or the screeching leftist, or this person.
These are then (as with that last example) combined with rightwing messages, or explanations about the left, citing the worst of them, to make memes and political propaganda.
Along with this comes things like horse shoe theory, the fourth turning theory (weak men create bad times ect), and things like “Post-modern Cultural Marxism caused all the problems”.
This sort of popularization of bad ideas and misdirected grievances doesn’t have to go on very long before society is left with a bunch of bad ideas, like feminism is hate speech against men (not saying this is your particular claim), or that poverty is caused by recent immigration rather than long term regulatory choices.
Long story short, due to the left having more reasonable explanations and models, in context and statistically there’s far worse going on in the extreme “horse shoe” ends of the right, than in the left.
I guarantee you can find kidnap plans and migrant bashings by right wingers far more quickly and abundantly than you could anything like that on the left. It’s drastically one sided.
Left wing rage is probably stronger, but it also tends to be better placed and more accurate.
True, very true, it’s a trade-off, I guess.
I do think the far left can be just as unreasonable though (or could be, if given the means/opportunity). Possibly they don’t express/execute it as the far right does, which explains your point of view, which is completely valid also.
But I get your point: the far right has misconstrued the far left to some extent regardless. with media manipulation, etc.
Wut? Have you missed the associations between some wings of the left and anti-semitism?
Do you count being anti-israel as being antisemitic?
Outside of that conflation, I just haven’t seen that much of it from the left, not in an age where we litterally have Nazi parties marching and trying to reform globally.
So I think PERSPECTIVE and SCALE are required for judging “right vs left” or “both sides” style arguments. There’s way more right wing nazi stuff than “leftwing antisemitism”.
No I don’t. And sure, I’ve seen more hate speech from right wingers, but I don’t think this comment chain originated with someone saying “left and right wingers emit comparable amounts of hate speech against minorities”.
No it’s not, it’s a terrible explanation
This is stupid. Media had plenty of rightwing trash before “the 1990s”… And economics isn’t a matter of “significant downturns” - which in a cyclical economy happen REGULARLY the problem is ACTUAL WEALTH DISPARITY has been on an increasing trajectory since the 1970s. We’re talking about a long term trend of racheting up, not just a brief stint of “social media is bad now”.
Wages vs productivity:
https://www.economicshelp.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/800px-US_productivity_and_real_wages.jpg
You can do something similar for median wages vs GDP:
https://www.economicshelp.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/us-wage-gdp-compared-800x604.jpg
And income inequality globally:
https://assets.weforum.org/editor/MB7z1WodhP7LDJeH0YX67-1OtxdaT6BH8Qbb4wPHYjU.png
Same trend, relating to changes to the banking system in the 1970s and beyond:
-
Alterations to monetary standards (petro dollar accounting).
-
Increase to two working parents as a mortgage requirement.
-
Deregulation of the banking system (Glass-stegal in America).
-
Combined with repeatedly reducing income taxes on the wealthy (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NbAzw1SjuCk/TpO1gyZIJ9I/AAAAAAAAACU/q9Qhy04L1H8/s1600/Federal+Tax+Rates.jpg).
These are continuing and long term shifts that have made it easier for the wealthy to accelerate wealth, and be less morally culpable, whilst poorer people have consistently hit greater barriers, requirements, and burdens.
The idea it’s “just the media is particularly bad right now” is stupid. Right wing media has always been prevalent and dogshit. Could not downvote your over simplification of the world more.
WE ARE TALKING ABOUT A CONSISTENT INCREASE IN SPECIFIC DISPARITIES… Which then become economic pressures and grievances, which are then misdirected by the media. But the media IS NOT the cause. That’s like pretending the symptom is the cause. It’s just not the case.
yep, wealth inequality is a big problem. more people should read piketty
…and people who believe income inequality is the key issue don’t understand that billionaires avoid income, and borrow against assets instead.
Wealth inequality is the big problem.
Billionaires avoid taxes because they don’t want to give back to society. They buy inflated assets instead, the borrow against them, driving up prices on purchase of land, houses, luxury goods, ect… Driving up prices, avoiding taxes. They’re all assholes, and they don’t take income.
I think what you’re missing is that if inequality were a major driver of the popularity of fascism, then how can it be the case that in many Western democracies other than the U.S. the popularity of fascist parties has also boomed? Some of these societies, while far from utopian, are among the most egalitarian in human history. Some have wealth taxes, almost all have far higher top income tax rates than the U.S., all all have dramatically lower levels of inequality.
Media had plenty of rightwing trash before “the 1990s”
Yeah, but unlike today, it wasn’t the dominant way public political debate was held.
Do you know how a coefficient works?
If you have the majority as middle class then one uber wealthy rich guy controlling everything… The gini score would pretend as if everything is fine in that society when it’s not.
Statistics aren’t the be all and end all, and can be used to obscure drastic levels of corruption and systemic issues…
You know, like all the billionaire fascists buying up media companies, houses, being in bed with the president and bribing supreme court justices.
Errr duh “that’s equality”. Noooo no it’s not.
Err dug… That has nothing to do with disenfranchisement.
Yes… Yes it does.
The Gini coefficient measures the distribution of incomes in a given economy. If a single individual has all income, then the coefficient is 1, if everyone’s income is equal, then the coefficient is 0.
In fact, in the scenario you’ve sketched, i.e., an individual or small number of individuals hoarding a large share of income, the Gini coefficient would be relatively high.
Not only do many of the aforementioned societies have dramatically lower income inequality (as measured by Gini coefficient) than the US, many furthermore have dramatically lower rates of corruption and judges and government officials are generally not bribed to the same degree. (Case in point: the Toblerone affair.)
However, what these countries very much have in common with the US is that the same social media companies owned by the same assholes are active there, flooding the zone with fascist propaganda.
Like what did you think inequality is? It’s the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few powerful people who make life horrible for everyone else. That’s why everyone knows their names.
In fact, the only reason income inequality is fairly even is BECAUSE OF progressive taxation and regulation. That’s only really allowed BECAUSE it doesn’t touch billionaires or the real problem makers in society.
What is this day 1 looking at this problem for you?
BILLIONAIRES DON’T HAVE AN INCOME!!!
Because having an income would mean paying income tax. So they don’t draw an income, as that provides a tax loophole.
What do they do instead?
They live off debts, they get paid by their companies in millions or billion dollar stock deals then borrow against that. They live off that loan then pay ot back when they have to, usually via getting more loans and/or other financial tricks.
This is why everyone goes on about the importance of having a wealth tax rather than an income tax on billionaires. Go look it up.
It’s literally 101 of talking about this stuff. So when you come here talking about how “income equality” proves society has no problems with inequality, you’re just showing that you don’t know what your on about.
Go look up how Billionaires avoid income taxes.
-
The media was always racist, they just hid it better… Sometimes.
It’s mainly that they graduated from reactive backlashes. They are seriously organized now, and are capitalizing on the pathetic failures of the status quo.
Jordan Peterson wrote a rather interesting essay earlier this year about the situation in the UK:
Reactionary brain rot from a man who rotted his own brain with drugs and a medically induced coma because he was too dumb to take his doctor’s advice.
Peterson is an idiot’s idea of a smart man. He’s even more of a dipshit than he was a decade ago, and that’s really saying something.
Take your racist drivel somewhere else.
Yeah, fuck that guy though. He’s a grifting charlatan who played a direct role in this topic of discussion here by helping upend civil discourse with disingenuous sophistry. Also he’s a degenerate drug addict who doesn’t follow his own rules, since he just stole really common advice and pawned it off as revolutionary ideas. You mom told you to clean your fucking room for years and you ignored her, but some failed philosphy prof gets to be daddy for you because he work a funny suit and larped as and edgy joker boi? Pathetic. If that stings cause it’s close to home as well as an accurate read on lobster king, fuck you too.
I’ll be sure to read
He writes like he has just discovered a thesaurus and would like you to know he is verbose. His writing is convoluted and grandiloquent, and often wilfully ambiguous. Its difficult to tell if he has a point, much like George Galloway. I think he thinks a grandiose tone is what is most important.
So do I. But I’m uneducated pleb and need the edge. He’s a legitimate PhD and could dispense with the verbosity and still be taken seriously. If it weren’t for the distinct lack of anything of substance to say that isn’t just more garbled attempts at clinging to the coattails of a fascist movement.
I wouldn’t consider anything Peterson has to say about anything.
Billionaire money. Oligarch money.
What’s the old the saying? The love of money is the root of all evil. Nice people aren’t billionaires nor do they want power.
There was an Australian man on ITV or BBC’s morning show about a year or so ago. He was a very good speaker, but I’ve no idea who he was. He reckoned (I’m going by memory) it started when the left pushed for more left leaning politics - beginning after the US started a domino effect in the middle East, and caused a surge of immigration.
That coupled with people having their own platforms with the likes of facebook, instagram, twitter etc.
Initially many countries had sat in the middle and were complacent, then there was that surge, with other things that angered the far right and voices started appearing in printed media and online.
I’ve probably made a balls of what exactly he claimed was the start of it, but he reckoned it was a sleeping giant anyway.
He had been researching it since the 80’s iirc.
I watched it as I was getting ready for work and having breakfast. I wouldn’t normally watch TV, so wasn’t paying great attention to it, it was only a few days later, maybe a week that I was retrospectively going over what he was saying and thought he made good points. if anyone knows the guy I’m talking about, would be great if you could put me out of my misery and name him. I’ve searched a few times without success. I don’t even know if I could say what he looked like, older with thinning grey hair I think…
Right wing popularity is fueled by anxiety and wealth inequality.
The idea that the right gains popularity after the left institutes left wing policies is a right wing talking point, not fact. Left leaning policies enjoy popular support across almost all policy domains because they benefit many, whereas right leaning policies benefit few.
Blaming left leaning policies in the US is especially laughable because there are none. Not since the end of the civil rights era. Gay marriage, that’s it. And that really affects nothing compared to the impact of right wing policies like obamacare’s empowering of insurance corps, forgiving corporate crimes as “too big to fail”, forgiving US war criminals by not punishing them, etc. And that’s just obama.
When people are scared, a slightly greater percentage will agree that taking resources from the disadvantaged is the easiest solution.
And when the rich command far far greater resources they can use them to overcome the popular resistance to policies that benefit them and disadvantage people in general.
Fear and rising wealth concentration.
Not that Peter tachiel fellah (idk his politics but that description matches him)
Dunno. I’ll look him up…I don’t think this guy leaned left or right. Or at least didn’t seem to during that. He just spoke of his research. I left out tons obviously. But think that was the jist of it.
Predominantly a media which is on the right, and politicians who blame migrants for everything.
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.
