When you have zero or low economic growth for well over a decade, and when young people are placed in debt with diminishing opportunities, in contrast to older generations, and when mainstream politics has failed them, this is what happened.
Musk | Fascist
- Thread starter Pogue Mahone
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) and Jamie (@Vault Dweller) are here to celebrate rare back-to-back victories for Manchester United! They analyse the late win in the Europa League vs. Rangers and then try and find things to analyse in a pretty dour game vs. Fulham. They also chat about the latest Marcus Rashford news, and look at the latest transfer news.
Those white maga boys are hardly victims of any of that. They just want to keep the rest of society in a perpetual suffering state. They know exactly who and what they are voting for.
Makes me remember of one of my friends, who have had every single opportunity available to him, whose friend circle include several of the wealthiest families in the country.
He said "it's hard to be white these days", unironically.
ps. Not to confuse with plenty young men that voted against their own interests thanks to ignorance and media disinformation campaigns.
It really is. I think a lot of us really missed how much this was shifting in the last 4 years, perhaps because I'm older and not on Twitter or Tiktok. I think the early 80s is a great comparison though because it does feel like the first time since then that the right has really captured an influential segment of the 20-30 age group. I do think its interesting how much this seems to matter "This set’s most visible political stance is a reaction to what it sees as the left’s puritanical obsessions with policing language and talking about identity." It's been mentioned here over the years but does feel like too much attention paid to policing language and identity politics and not close to enough attention to how to frame all the economic issues in a way that reaches short attention span people of all ages.
There are racists and racialists in the far-right, that is true. And there is a core group who do undertake the things you say. My point is that this alone cannot explain the millions and tens of millions who are no longer voting for 'mainstream' parties and who are shifting to the extremes. If the economy was benefitting the masses, and if politics was more than managed decline, then I don't think this would be as much an issue. We see similar throughout history during periods of economic downturn. We need an alternative to the status quo, and fast, else the far-right will win power by default.
There was a country a few decades ago that were in the shit because of their government's failed decisions. Some right wingers managed to garner support by giving the people someone to blame that wasn't themselves. I can't remember who they were but they used the same salute Elon was using, which according to the BBC means that it was the Roman Empire.
Say what you like about Caesar but he built the autobahn
For the first half of that, I was convinced you were talking about the UK and the Tories blaming the EU.
It's all the same game. Get the rich (or rich enough) by promising to protect their wealth. Get the others by blaming all their woes on some outside force, ideally something the competition embraces (or otherwise make it into a wedge issue and fake the embracing). And there you go.
No actual solutions to anything, but as long as the competition (the former left, now usually centre-left or even centre-right) doesn't actually have something useful to say on economic issues, it's a run for the right.
Absolutely. I was just referring to the type of kids that appear in the magazine cover. Those were never something else.
As for the rest, those young people not rich or white, and voting for MAGA to punish the status quo. Of course it can be explained by diminishing opportunities, low economic growth within a capitalistic system, etc. As @Mr Pigeon says, its what happened in Germany and what has happened in many places all around the world.
Whenever shit goes bad (usually when wealth inequality reach crazy levels, like now), the oligarchs will blame the "minorities and immigrants that are taking your job and committing crimes".
Because they own not only the means of production and political system, but the means of mass communication as well, their voice will always be amplified, and more often than not, they will get the people in line to vote for their chosen populist "saviour".
Just to clarify, there are black people in that magazine photo too (the uncropped version).
Probably rich though.
Exactly, it’s really worrying. Like, if you look at the average Instagram comment section it’s full of these cnuts. I was looking at a comment section yesterday of a post by a left-wing account that said that immigrants and refugees are not your (the white working class’) enemy, and the comment section was full of people saying that both are the enemy or even worse, saying that they have more in common with a white billionaire or that billionaires are good because they built themselves up with hard work (like hell they did) while claiming that immigrants are all just rapists or murderers. It was literal Nazi shit. There was so much of this that it genuinely made me angry and upset.
You may need to find the aliens from Cocoon to help with this.
A train was never late in ancient rome.
Don't forget the cool uniforms.
They had ideological economic coverage in the 1980s - there isn't any of that today. Neoliberalism was just kicking off and Thatcher/Reagan. There's no corresponding economic ideology to this, more of a cultural pendulum which is dialectically moving from left to right as the political class struggles to answer the questions of the age: housing, healthcare, education (jobs in the face of AI, global warming, etc). It's the absence of ideology except GDP which is nothing by itself. There's not really a Western plan for the next century in the same way the Brics (whatever about their viability) have a cohesive plan.
There will be a reaction in the years to come from centrist-right wing politics (Europe's general level atm). And whatever the Americans are doing. Always is.
The only plan the West, through people like Musk and others have, is to shore up right wing factions and retreat behind a false image of state power as things get messy.
If you think Corbyn was far leftist you don't know much about European politics.Haven't looked too closely for a while, but my impressions from polling in the US:
Younger Gen Z are split by gender. Younger millennials/older Gen Z are left-wing. Older millennials/Gen X are quite solidly right. Boomers are of course right, and are Trump's base, but actually less now than in 2016.
Some similarities and differences in Europe. The far-right parties (Le Pen, AfD) do best among the young voters... as do the far-left and sometimes the Greens. I would guess, again, gender and race play a role in which young voter goes to which side. Polls show this sharp youth vote polarisation in many European countries - France, the Nordics, sometimes Germany and Italy.
In France, Le Pen is basically being held back by the retirees, who vote for Macron or the traditional right in massive numbers. They give her and the centre-left a few votes, and nothing for Melenchon. She has a comfortable plurality among people under 50. The far-left has limited appeal among people over 30, but there are enough centrists between 30-60 who accept them as a strategic option to keep her out. It seems like the generation that remembers/was directly told about WW2 has a far-right taboo in France.
In UK, when FPTP forced a far-leftist on the ballot (Corbyn), he got a massive age gradient in both his elections. More than any election before or since, he collapsed among retirees, and cleaned up among under-40s. The age group that cost him the 2017 election was the 40-65 group, where he got some votes, but needed more to overcome the (editorialising) zombies crushing all hope for a future.
The obviously AI generated caption stopped me even looking at the fecking thing.
I'd argue that there absolutely is, they just don't use the term that describes them - neo-mercantilist.
Just using a quick Wiki definition:
"Mercantilism is a nationalist economic policy that is designed to maximize the exports and minimize the imports of an economy. In other words, it seeks to maximize the accumulation of resources within the country and use those resources for one-sided trade. The concept aims to reduce a possible current account deficit or reach a current account surplus, and it includes measures aimed at accumulating monetary reserves by a positive balance of trade, especially of finished goods....
High tariffs, especially on manufactured goods, were almost universally a feature of mercantilist policy."
I'd say that's a very accurate description of Trump Admins view of world economics. Mercantilists saw economics as a zero-sum nationalist exercise exactly the way Trump does now. His speeches about forcing Europe to pay into Nato, high tariffs on Canada and Mexico because they are currently "exploiting" the US, starting trade war with China, wanting to buy Greenland and "merge" with Canada all to claim their natural resources, trying to enforce the US having a positive trade balance with every other nation...it's all 100% neo-mercantilist even if they don't call it that.
I'd agree with that to be fair. I've encountered it before.
Telsa had shit earnings, there's a suggestion 26% of earnings could be bitcoin gains. Dude "running" the company is in government and has the Presidents ear, and the stock barely responds to the news. In fact it went up.
Market Irrationality is one thing, congressional stock trading is obviously corruption. But how do you investigate stuff like this? Congressional trading you can obviously see the link between insider info and buying stock. But how can anyone rule out manipulation of this stock as a way to get an "in" with musk to get to trump? It's utter madness.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/29/tesla-tsla-2024-q4-earnings.html
Market Irrationality is one thing, congressional stock trading is obviously corruption. But how do you investigate stuff like this? Congressional trading you can obviously see the link between insider info and buying stock. But how can anyone rule out manipulation of this stock as a way to get an "in" with musk to get to trump? It's utter madness.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/29/tesla-tsla-2024-q4-earnings.html