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It's really a reaction to 40 years of failed neoliberal policies.
The solution is leftist economic populism.
The lefts populism is best for 99% of the people, but worse for the wealthiest 1%, and that's why it'll never happen.
The plutocracy would prefer the lies and mental illness of right wing populism. A fascist dictatorship and boogeymen to keep the people in line, is better than the risk of being marginally less wealthy.
Enough people show up, it happens.
What about a kakistocracy?
The solution is something super simple!
Yeaaahhh, no. It is not that simple, it is never they simple.
Why do you think another populism is the solution?
Ring wing "populism" isn't really populist, it's masking politics beneficial to the wealthy elite in a way that is palatable to enough people just long enough to gain power and put into effect laws that are highly unfavourable to your average person. The antidote to that is making changes that are actually favourable to your average person. Placing those two different concepts under the singular label "populism" is, frankly, disingenuous.
The far right populism is a pseudo populism. Real populists are (as name suggests) for the people.
Social media is to blame, at least in huge parts.
It offers a platform for unproven claims, and especially the short content formats are an issue:
You can not cover important topics fairly in those formats. Only populism can profit from it. And the far right does this.
We reached a point where people don't believe the published agendas of candidates and parties anymore. They only trust what the hear and see on social media.
Of course there are other factors, but this is an important one.
Social media is just the medium, the problem is the right have a united and highly organised propaganda machine across the globe. From tv news to in print newspapers to social media influencers to the algorithms and owners of the platforms themselves.
Mea while the left has none of that and doesn't have the unity or organisation to do it.
Do you mean “the left” as in “US democrats” or “the left” as in actual leftists? Because actual leftists have been attacked by every government in power of the US and western industrialized nations since before WWII. That “left” has a damn good reason for lacking a cohesive message.
I am talking about the global phenomenon. Something like rox news does not exist here in Germany for example.
We always had right wing propaganda. But now we have social media too. And that produced a confirmation cycle. The propaganda channels spew lies, people spread does lies on social media, and the media cam say "look, there, normal people on X say the same thing, it must be true".
And of course, also the other way around
They only trust what the hear and see on social media.
Is there any data yet that backs this thinking?
There are some studies. Mostly behind pay Walls. A good source I found a while back was this meta study.
Thanks! I'll have to give it a look.
We have the data. Trust me. I'm from social media.
Social media indeed.
And that lying has no consequences. (Which also tied in No.1)
The right has been capturing the media and manipulating the masses for years. They gained control of the racist south and the churches.
They will blame everyone and everything. When that tactic runs out, they will begin to eat each other.
I saw something interesting.,,
I know the details are hard to read, but the only world commonality I can think of is COVID.
Looks like opposition parties were successfully able to blame everything on the parties in charge, regardless of whether they deserved it or not.
The effect seems to be even bigger than the one following the economic crisis of 2007/8 which surprises me. Did the opposition suddenly get better at blaming?
Yes and people are much dumber
Less oxygen circulating around these days
Covid was a much bigger deal, thus easier to make hay with.
Actually here in hungary, trump's comrade orban is shitting in his pants, as Peter Magyar became more popular than orban in 6 months. (Before that he was unknown) This happenes because orban and his comrades created skyhigh inflation in hungary along with the devaluatiom of the hungarian currency. Actally orban and his comrades fked up everything, and even though they have the most powerful propaganda machine, they seem to be losing ground.
It's a lot more difficult to blame things on others once you've been in charge for that long and shit still fails and breaks down. That's my hope for other countries as well, that the continued downward spiral under a right wing government eventually makes the pendulum swing back towards the left. I just hope that there'll be politicians to jump in once the opportunity arises.
But they, and their brainwashed (old commie) fans do. They blame everything on gyurcsany (goofy prime minister who resigned 16 years ago), saying he ruined the country so much, that they still cleaning the ruins 🤣 And they also blame EU that sent billions and billions of money, and USA agents (not anymore since trump is the winner), same like they or their parents did when hungary was officially in the soviet bloc (unofficially still is, orban is controlled by putin, and xi).
People like to focus on economic factors because they're easily quantifiable. More vague factors disassociated from economic lifestyle are difficult to quantify, so harder to study and talk about. By way of example, though, when someone really hates black people, that's not economic, it's personal. It's something else entirely. Men wanting power over women isn't economic. Even immigration complaints aren't really economic, that's just an excuse to cover up much less defensible reasoning.
If you claim to be a society, the "left-behinds" are a monument to your society's complete abject failure.
The problem is that a economy is, by its nature, a lowly tool to maximize the equitable distribution of goods and services for the benefit of a society, and a society is it's people.
Most modern developed nations reach a point, and the US is the flag bearer for this, where the society subsists in service to the economy, and the economy becomes a tiny sliver of the population swallowing everything out of proud greed and gluttony. Which is fucking perverse, inhuman, and sociopathic.
We've just been propagandized by for profit media and oligarch captured education to literally hate and blame our own victims, calling them welfare queens and filthy beggars lowering our property values instead of the struggling neighbors we have all failed spectacularly.
Those that defend this vampire economy, while not being subject to those conditions, have become the disease. It's not OK that we have enough resources to house and feed everyone, but willfully don't while still allowing some to live lives of excess that are the equivalent of hundreds of modest lives with full bellies.
Carry on though, we've been too far gone to recover before complete societal collapse since the Reagan Revolution, and climate change will finally force equality, the final, actual zero sum game because all the temporarily embarrassed millionaires chose die alone over live together.
They're blaming minority groups for problems with the economy and people getting left behind. If that shit was resolved and things were good they'd have nothing to blame on the minority groups.
Far-right leaders are winning across the globe.
How does it map to income inequality? Only authoritarianism can support higher levels of income inequality. Arab Spring. Western Fall.
Exactly this. A small organized group of ultra rich, making everyone's life miserable. Buying up social media, newspapers, TV and spreading their dumb propaganda. Fox 'news' started it, Musk kept going with Twitter.
I’m just starting to think humans crave conflict. The larger the population and the more interconnected it gets the more we need larger scale chaos. I’m worried the only solution is to satiate that desire through global war. It’s so depressing to think about.
I think it has to do with our ability to manage large societies. People evolved in small groups and now we are trying to manage hundreds of millions of people under the same systems. Humans are not inherently good at abstract thinking and critical thinking skills are taught not hard wired.
So we have hundreds of millions of people all living in the same capitalist neo-liberal economic system, but that might not work for all of them. Well we just let those people wander around forming tent cities. All because our culture says if you are poor or homeless then you failed, not that the system failed the individual.
I'm not an expert on small human societies, but from my understanding homeless starving people wouldn't be tolerated in a community of like 150 or so.