MAGA, Neo-Nazism and Friends
Extremism thrives now, but why?
With the repeated election of a man with extremist opinions as the president of the USA, most Americans have become aware of one way in which their society has changed.
Around the world, especially in Europe, we see similar developments. The right-wing parties gain bigger influence or even dominance in several parliaments and in the public opinions.
Right-wing shouldn’t automatically mean extremism, but it has become that way. An original definition of left- and right-wing would speak about the way economy should be managed in society — either a strong state administration with focus on planning as well as workers rights and protection, or a slim state administration with focus on letting the free initiative in the society decide the direction, allowing for the stronger people to make use of the workforce on terms that would be set to “just enough” to make things happen.
Hence, we always had a definition of protecting vs using people.
But repeatedly through history, the right-wing has managed to gain support in the working population, even though that wouldn’t make much sense. Why would workers support politicians who want them to be used rather than protected?
That boils down to the simple demagogic trick of playing out societal groups against each other: If you can convince a group of workers that their main enemy is another group of workers, for instance belonging to a specific genetic or national group, and that it takes power to let this first group win over the others, then the workers will tend to vote for those who seem to have that power.
Especially if the opposite political group insists on protecting the rights and conditions for all workers in both groups.
Nobody will fall for such a trick if they cannot see any problems in their own lives, so the mechanism works at its best in times when workers feel that they have tough life conditions that they want to improve.
The right-wing parties offer a quick-fix to the current needs, only demanding people to be loyal to the party and take part in hating their presumed opponents in life.
When first such a hatred and sense of having an enemy has been established among people, it can easily be built-out with more groups, as long as a sufficient large group of people are in the preferred on to ensure enough votes for the right-wing politicians.
Hatred then hits everyone in society who seems weak, as this is risk-free for the politicians. They don’t want to get up against strong opponents.
The “beauty” of this model is that the left-wings, who wants to protect all people, not just a selected group, by themselves seem weak. Helpfulness and empathy can easily be described as weaknesses, because of the stress-factors involved. People, who feel that they themselves need help more than others, may not have the patience to see how others apparently get more help than they themselves do. That stresses them, and they can easily start believing that the helpers have been misled by the presumed evil other groups.
All the weak groups in the society are, naturally, the most prone to get some kind of help or be talked about as needing help, and, hence, they will then be considered enemies.
I think that all this is well-known, even though some people will prefer to describe it as facts of life rather than a matter of perception. They will be defending the “fact” that there are evil, weak, groups in society that drag out all resources because of the “weak” left-wing politicians’ stupidity. And they will want a cure for this in the shape of a strong man who can deal with all the problems, a man who has no moral reservations.
And that is why a person like Donald Trump, who definitely doesn’t show many good character features, will attract a big following. In a sense, he is the right leader because of his personality problems. They are kind of a guarantee that he will do all that is necessary to clean up the society.
But how did we get to a point where a large group of workers feels that they need help — so much that they start hating all others who seemingly get help?
I think that this paradoxically is a result of a good development in society, where it is obvious that some people can accumulate wealth, that there are technical and other products available that can make life nice, if you have them, and a general feeling that society should be able to provide such a life for everybody — but doesn’t.
Some people will become frustrated by the fact that they cannot see a way to take part in the rich life they see described in the media.
So we have factors like technology, wealthy people, and media in play.
In these years, I think we have seen a perfect storm of wealthy people getting even more wealthy, some of them starting from scratch and becoming billionaires in no time, seemingly out of thin air (by establishing a non-productive social media, for instance) — combined with media growing to be everywhere, all the time, being consumed many hours a day by everyone, due to the technologies needed being, literally, in the hands of everyone.
It is too much.
And the reaction should, logically, be to reduce the media consumption, caring less about the tech moguls and other super-rich, and try finding something good in life. But we are being stressed into believing that we need more. When we have too much already, we want more. We want a new phone model all the time, we want more social media, we want news 24 hours a day. And this is being pushed by those very same moguls who people see as their inspirations, those who prove that it is possible to get wealthy and have it all.
And that makes people ruminate over the fact that they themselves are not there, and why? There must be something preventing them. It is not their inspirations, the moguls, because they are somehow seen as drivers for this dream. So, it has to be some others. Has to be those who the people compete with about the money. The other workers.
As nobody can survive seeing everybody as their enemy, they pick out the easiest enemies out there: the immigrants, the physically or mentally challenged, the poor, the women, whoever. Anyone weak becomes an enemy.
And there comes Trump or any other fascist and tell them that they are right — these groups of people are indeed the enemy, let’s get rid of them. Let’s forbid them, throw them out of our country, cleaning our world from anything that steals our dream of becoming as wealthy as the moguls.
In this process, apparently, people get so excited about the possibility to finally get rid of the problems that they see are in the way of their personal success, so they forget to think about the logic of it all: we can’t all be billionaires. The idea of some people being super-rich demands that a lot of people are far from being super-rich. It is the idea of scraping up all money in the society and distribute them among very few, powerful people.
In this way, fascism becomes very misleading. But the hope of personal improvement hides this, blinds the supporters of the idea.
This is the USA of today.
Other countries may have other reasons. A main one seems to be connected with that expression, the right-wing supporters like to use: “our own”. About people who are like them. Their pack. Their nation.
Because, many people have felt that society wasn’t about them. Either they have been uneducated and felt that all the good jobs went to the educated, or they have felt inferior in some other way, longing to be accepted by the pack. When a chance appears to join a group of similarly thinking people, then suddenly a life goal has been fulfilled. It may require them to subscribe to the ideas about others being less worthy to be in this society, but that’s okay with them, as this has been their own reality for so long, so they can’t see why they should pity that it now hits some others instead. They may even feel that this is some kind of revenge.
Becoming one of “our own” may just be the biggest dream in life for these people, and they are willing to exclude large groups of others to get there.
Looking at these reasons for electing fascists as the country leaders also tell why it is difficult to reverse it. If large groups see this as their preferred solution, they don’t want it reversed. They are happy now.
Happy people are difficult to influence. There was a society out of balance, for various reasons, but now it has found an equilibrium. The drawbacks are outweighed by the advantages for most of the population.
It no longer becomes a matter of improving the society even further, and that original dream of becoming rich may also step into the background, because now, at least people have become part of the same team as the super-rich. That is almost as good, they think, as being one themselves.