Ask Lemmy

Class solidarity among the rich. Rich people want willing servants. They want people to fear disobeying them.

People are scared and angry and want action without thinking about the long-term gains only the short term. Creating fear is fascism 101 and how many rise to power

We are losing the class war.

Hate drives engagement and can have multiple intersections with opposing view points. Take our algorithmic methods of serving content and you get silos of positivity with oceans of hate in between that fuel metrics of user engagement and view time. Drive your share price by those metrics and run the economy on those share prices. Viola hate becomes the new most important resource to generate and those who can spread it most effectively or direct that hate become those with the most power. If we want to break that grasp on power we need to break the cycle of engagement being tied to hate, find a way to drive engagement through positive action and understanding. I talk like I know how to do that but in reality that's one of the most difficult problems humanity has in general. Like greed is terrible but if you could figure out how to make positivity and mutual understanding more profitable than spewing hate and divisiveness you could channel those at the tops greed into positive feedback loops. Once you have more understanding, and equity in individuals understanding each other we can them finally work as a collective to start eliminating things like bigotry, poverty, etc.

Because Evil is winning globally.

We need more violent good guys

Well. Lots of people drank the kool aid. As long as some people getting a feeling of Power (like shitting on minorities), they will take the blow from the ruling class.

The last time that shit worked started WWII.

But yeah. What will we do about it. There are days where I think we will make it through. But other days I just feel weak and powerless and think we're doomed.

Fuck greed, eat the rich.

Fascism is rising because the bourgeoisie is funding it to keep out Communism, Socialism, Marxism, and other things that explain why most people globally cannot afford a house, or why England pays such low wages, or why groceries are so expensive in America, or why Germany is undergoing an economic collapse. Once you understand Marxism even simply, these quotes will start to make sense.

P.S. If you're going to say that fascism is rising in power, please just say that. I know that things are shitty because fascism is rising, but I hate when people are vague.

Neuroscience says that the scared brain has a lower IQ, which is good for giving in to survival instincts in an acute threat situation, but really bad to make any longterm decisions. Populists try to scare us for this very reason. Scared people are easier to manipulate. It's working, and it's fucking scary how effective it is. But I am not scared in the way that lowers my critical reflection. So I hope someone brings out the guillotines before more poor people (our people) die.

because theyve been laying groundwork and slowly infiltrating every corner of our society for over 50 years.

The slow burn was for purpose, to keep people from noticing, and so that anyone that did notice and point it out would look like a crackpot.

and, imho, I think they didnt expect the opportunity trump presented globally, in his first term, but they chose to come out of the shadows and try to exploit it regardless, which is why they've had the stumbling blocks they have had that has given opportunity to fight it.

I think the same but feel a bit better when I go to protests to meet people, working out, reading.

Im taking this time to improve myself and meditate. System is designed to keep the rich without any checks and balances. But we cannot lose our faith in each other, stay close and make tribes. Join clubs. Stick together.

We got this.

Evil has always been there. People have a tendency to turn a blind eye when it isn't directed at them. Recently it's very much been directed at Europe and North America. It brings the problems of the world into sharp focus.

Because evil is loud and self-important, and people doing good have learned to be mycelial, underground, quietly building the new world in the shell of the old.

Because good doesn't have the stomach to go blow for blow with evil anymore.

The rebels in Myanmar are winning.

There's a new miracle drug for addictions.

That's all I can think of.

One aspect is that mass media is overall owned by those people and is propaganda. If you don't have ways of seeing what's happening on the ground, you miss a lot of the good news. Even your twitter/bs/mastodon feeds won't give you the full story, you have to (where possible) get involved in a real community organization.

Capitalism is dying because of unchecked greed and people are turning to socialism. The wealthy choose fascism. Until we have class unity. Once we bring out the guillotines, They will retreat to spending the rest of their lives in the bunkers they have built with their stolen wealth.

While times seem bad, and they are worse than they used to be, especially with the election of Donald Trump, imagine what it was like during WW2. Nazi Germany invaded France, Czechoslovakia, and half of Poland (with the Soviet Union the other half); Britain stood alone. Spain was under fascist dictatorship. Now Russia barely controls 1/5 of Ukraine, and has suffered many thousands of losses in tanks and armoured vehicles. Modern Russia is now weaker than the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany was (for their time period).

Because people say stupid shit like "but they have laser-guided drones and you have a rifle!"

Fucking idiots do not understand how revolution works and dont know that the US military has failed every invasion.

Because now it is affecting you personally. Before it was in the middle east or some random aftican nation where people dont speak english, and media make sure it is not in the front page. Reading some history of any conflict will show the root starting a while back but no one cares.

Because it always has been. It's called capitalism. This system will literally destroy the planet and enslave all live for the profits of a few ultra privileged man babies.

I think the issue in America, is that the Constitution only addressed political power, but failed to account for fiscal strength. Money is inherently a thing that manipulates the fates of individuals, companies, and nations alike. By not setting down rules, limitations, and expectations regarding economics, the Founding Fathers allowed a key form of power go unaddressed.

The vast majority of Project 2025's major backers are wealthy people, who have far beyond what any normal person can ever hope to possess. This imbalance means that workers have to sacrifice much time, money, and energy to be barely heard on a single issue, while a rich person can just hire experts to massage every aspect of their many messages and to deliver it everywhere with a mighty voice.

IMO, we will need a Constitution v2.0 that fixes not only assorted political flaws like the voting system, but also prevents wealth from being a microphone that only a few can afford.

We have a global economic system that encourages and rewards evil. More and more countries have political systems that do the same. Good people would rather help others and make the world a better place, and this prevents them from attaining power. It would probably require doing some evil to remove the evil people from power.

Because people have become comfortable enough (can't remember the downside) to flirt with populism.

Once they get the short sharp shock of what it actually means to be governed by these people we might recover from it... Maybe

Because good natured people don't want conflict so they avoid it.

Bad natured people actively seek conflict and engage with it whenever possible.

Evil never sleeps. Peace does.

The internet. It led to the following:

• Good social change occurred very rapidly from the 1990s-2010s, causing highly motivated pushback from those who didn't like the changes
• Rising wealth inequality caused by tech billionaires increased incentives and capability for a small number of extremely wealthy people to seize control of media and political power centers
• Foreign dictator governments became more able to more easily spread pro-dictator propaganda
• Media became more decentralized, leading to some good things but also the hijacking of our psychology to spread fear and disgust for the sake of grabbing attention

That is the eventual conclusion of capitalism, the way it is currently set to play out.

The only forces that could act against it depend on the distribution of critical information.... And those are owned by the same private interests.. Soooooo. We'll see. Doesn't bode well at all.

Because evil people control all the media

Unpopular opinion, but in the west particularly, folk have mistaken writing on the internet for action.

Tweeting resistance rather than performing it.

A lapse into inaction framed as radical rest and self care.

Online they are fierce warriors of justice, offline they go to work in Starbucks, use their apple devices to talk to their families and enjoy the treadmill of streaming services.

And this isn't to blame them. This is the point of consumerist capitalism. To trap you in a gilded cage.

What you're saying is true, but we must also remember that construction is always slower than destruction. What this means is that slow, steady improvements are not newsworthy - and thus gets no airtime - compared to destruction which happens over night and is thus newsworthy.

So there is also a lot of slow, steady improvements going on in the world that we never hear about. There's not enough of it, I don't think, to offset the big evils of greed, climate change, and fake news. But it is there, and we must not forget it.

Can I reccomend for you Vlad Vexler on utube. He is a polital philosopher in the UK, whp spends most of his time dealing with this topic. He has some wonderul content which is both educated and humane.

1. Rampant unchecked capitalism of recent decades has created large wealth disparities akin to the earlier decades of the last century. It is no longer possible for one person in a household with a regular job to support a modest lifestyle for their family. All benefits especially medical for the whole family, being completely intertwined with the current job reduces mobility and further feeds into the wealth gap by keeping wages low. It’s easier to blame the powerless for this state of affairs than the powerful because the powerless cannot object.
2. The fear of the other has been accentuated by media and misinformation. Targeted algorithms feeding most of the information that is consumed has created echo chambers that reinforce existing beliefs and fears. The propaganda state has never had it easier.
3. The large military and police has given never before control to the state about what is allowed to be protested. Combined with the day to day struggles, it’s extremely hard to come together for what is right. The ruling class is able to maintain the fine balance between absolute misery and general dissatisfaction that it is still better to struggle through a thankless job than to say fuck it. Failures of recent large uprisings like Middle East and Hong Kong have reinforced the futility of standing up against the rulers.
4. Evil has many heads and there’s always one head that you can find alignment with. It could be the deregulation of businesses, lower taxes, anti abortion, racism, but as long as there’s one thing you can align on, the general sense of powerlessness makes it easier to overlook the other heads.
5. The line between evil and good has never been murkier, especially with globalization. If you focus on the betterment of your community, it would be considered good, but what if it leads to suffering of others outside the community. Is it also evil? What is community - is it the people in your neighborhood, your religion, your country, fellow business owners? The fuzzier these lines are, the harder it is to untangle them.