this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
1392 points (92.0% liked)
Memes
45660 readers
1504 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm confident that I am in a bubble and that I'm not fully aware what kind of a bubble it is.
Well, that's more than I was expecting. Might I suggest you look around for signs that fascism (or at the very least, authoritarianism) is on the rise in many democratic countries? Some countries to look at are the US, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Turkey, India, and Israel.
Sure, some of those are obvious, like Turkey and Hungary. They've been on that path for several decades now. Some people in Turkey tried to fix the situation with a failed coup, which made things even worse of course.
I have to note that sometimes the pendulum still swings the other way. For instance, just a year ago, we (Finland) had the most left liberal government we've ever had before swinging to the current one -- which in turn is the most rightist government we've had in 50+ years. Poland just turned back from a rather conservative path that they had followed for quite long to a more liberal one.
India, Italy and Germany I don't know that much about. Germany also is currently on a rather liberal government, but the next one will probably be more conservative. The recent change seems to stem from Russia's war in Ukraine, that made everyone more conservative and militaristic out of fear. When the war ends (it should at some point, somehow), I believe/hope the fear can dissipate. Depends a lot on how it ends and if the risk of Russian invasion lingers.
Israel's government is pretty unpopular in Israel. They might very well vote a very different kind in the next elections, unless Netanjahu can somehow pull a win in Gaza.
Then there's the population crisis, coming from the boomer generation. People are old. That makes the political and economic situations worse, which in turn makes everything worse. In history, the left has usually been able to capitalize on such misery, but for some reason I don't quite understand the populist right has been snatching the sentiment.
And then there's Russia, possibly the most fascistic country on this side of the planet, directly funding and supporting the rise of fascism in Europe. There's a possible silver lining here too if Russia loses its war: a weakened Russia could mean weakened fascism everywhere.