Fascism is often a pipeline. Not everyone who votes for the far right is fully on board with everything they wish to do quite yet. They’re really good at making you think that the people more than a step or two right of you aren’t that big of a deal. They see the people waving swastikas as not a big group or a particularly influential one. Similar to how the center left sees the people waving black and red flags. I’d even go so far as to say that on both sides a decent chunk of political propaganda is pointing at the other side’s cranks and far [side] members.
The difference is aside from the crux of the ideology and inherent morality contained within that, that the far right has a lot of power over the right, while the left is routinely bending over to centrists of both the left and right. However, people are idiots. If they weren’t we wouldn’t be in this mess.
In 2017 in Charlottesville North Carolina, the American fascist movement made a bad call. In an attempt to shift the overton window to their acceptance, demonstrate power, and create a unified movement they organized a rally to unite the right. Images of swastikas, fasches, and angry young men in business casual clothing carrying tiki torches and chanting antisemitic slogans alongside a dead young woman who protested against them became the image of the far right for a time. Short attention spans, a global pandemic, the economic crisis caused by that, and sustained propaganda from the right (especially regarding left wing protests against police brutality) led to people slowly stopping thinking about it.
Right now America is a bit too divided and radicalized for this to impact us. But other countries are seeing this and us torpedoing international relationships and making clearly stupid choices and they’re asking themselves if they want to be associated with people who support the politics of Adolf Hitler and don’t believe in regulating food safety.
Fascism is often a pipeline. Not everyone who votes for the far right is fully on board with everything they wish to do quite yet. They’re really good at making you think that the people more than a step or two right of you aren’t that big of a deal. They see the people waving swastikas as not a big group or a particularly influential one. Similar to how the center left sees the people waving black and red flags. I’d even go so far as to say that on both sides a decent chunk of political propaganda is pointing at the other side’s cranks and far [side] members.
The difference is aside from the crux of the ideology and inherent morality contained within that, that the far right has a lot of power over the right, while the left is routinely bending over to centrists of both the left and right. However, people are idiots. If they weren’t we wouldn’t be in this mess.
In 2017 in Charlottesville North Carolina, the American fascist movement made a bad call. In an attempt to shift the overton window to their acceptance, demonstrate power, and create a unified movement they organized a rally to unite the right. Images of swastikas, fasches, and angry young men in business casual clothing carrying tiki torches and chanting antisemitic slogans alongside a dead young woman who protested against them became the image of the far right for a time. Short attention spans, a global pandemic, the economic crisis caused by that, and sustained propaganda from the right (especially regarding left wing protests against police brutality) led to people slowly stopping thinking about it.
Right now America is a bit too divided and radicalized for this to impact us. But other countries are seeing this and us torpedoing international relationships and making clearly stupid choices and they’re asking themselves if they want to be associated with people who support the politics of Adolf Hitler and don’t believe in regulating food safety.