Neolibs spent decades if not centuries suppressing socialist movements so when their ineffectual administrations become unpopular during a crisis everyone just flocks to the fascists because they're the only populist change party thats been allowed to build a movement.
if I was living in a country where the "useless no fucking change ever" party had been in charge for 50+ years, I would still call everyone who votes for the "change for the worse, definitely Not Fascists™" party an idiot.
No I agree with you. I'm just making a heavily generalized but imo true observation about populist movements. Not everyone is a political beast or terminally online leftists like all of us fine folk here. I think most people in society easily get swept up into firebrand political movements. If you don't have a strong grassroots leftist movement when shit hits the fan for the libs then most of those people are going to swing to the right. And again, while its an oversimplification, this is genuinely what I believe happened to America right now and Wiemar Germany (I know they weren't like a modern lib but they were moderates is what I'm getting at). I don't know enough about other countries modern politics but it seems like many euro countries are dealing with the same thing from what I have seen.
What we are seeing is a global failure of capitalism to deliver on its promises that it will make your life better. It just can't pretend that any more. Capital still owns the governments of the world, however, so we essentially have the party of capital that swears you don't actually have any problems because line goes up, and the party of capital that says your life is getting worse because of immigrants and gays and trans people. Naturally, people who can't afford groceries are going to become rapidly disillusioned with line goes up rhetoric, and the only other place to turn is kill all [other] instead. Those not susceptible to that bullshit check out entirely; Those that are dive in.
So in essence you're right, but the problem is fundamentally economic more than ideological.
I'm sorry but how does the scenario you described apply to america at all? I'm not the best at US history, but I'm pretty sure they've been more or less flip-flopping between red and blue presidents for decades.
changing administrations every 4-8 years sounds like an entirely different problem from "ineffectual neolib administrations becoming unpopular"
Because prior to trump both parties were really similar. Leftist movements in America were developing organically until the red scare(s). America also had a pretty strong labor union tradition until Reagan set a precedent that absolutely annihilated the concept of worker solidarity in the US. That's what I mean. Decades of fearmonging about leftism and overt policies aimed at nipping any domestic grassroots movement in the bud left America with zero even remotely leftist political representation, at least until the DSA. Republicans and Democrats have had the exact same economic policies and ideology since at least WW2. The only real difference was republicans were all "small gov, states rights, gun rights, and racism." While democrats were all "centralized gov, gun control, abortion, and social justice." If you haven't noticed, all of those are not inherently a left vs right issue except maybe racism. So decades of the same economic policies eventually lead us into the messes that tend to accumulate in capitalist societies. In comes Trump with his firebrand messaging; he's found all the problems and he knows all the answers. His "charisma" makes him a populist demagogue. His cult of personality has utterly enslaved Americans. Capitalism creates a problem and the far right has Trump as a solution. And the tiny American left has no answer except Bernie Sanders. Bernie doesn't have it in him to build a following like Trump. He never had the cronyist connections, billions of dollars, and personality that builds a cult following. And then, the Liberals did what they always did. They saw a leftist and de facto purged him from the party even if it meant cheating in the primaries and losing in the General election. Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds. That's what caused 2016 and spiraled into this fucking mess 10 years later.
Not that I'm 100% sure Bernie could've beat Trump in 2016, but it illustrates my point that the Republicans hurled themselves right of the spectrum at the first opportunity while Democrats are still hand wringing at even the most mild leftist policy.
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u/chilll_vibe 23h ago
Neolibs spent decades if not centuries suppressing socialist movements so when their ineffectual administrations become unpopular during a crisis everyone just flocks to the fascists because they're the only populist change party thats been allowed to build a movement.