Not just Germany, in most of the western Europe.
And I wouldn’t exactly call it subtle - quite the opposite, in fact: in Germany, for example, politicians step in front of the camera and openly spout Nazi slogans. Just 10 years ago, they would have had to resign for that, and rightly so.
Yeah, the rise of the AfD party is no secret, and neither are their conservative, nationalist, anti-immigration (and other Nazi-like) views.
Indeed, I do believe, however, that neo-Nazi parties like the AfD are by no means successful on their own merits.
As in the U.S., I think, this is only possible thanks to the active support of the very same billionaires who, in the U.S., ensured that a pedophile serial criminal could become president. In my view, this is only made possible by an artificial illusion of public opinion, which is now predominantly propagated through mainstream social media platforms.
If one considers public opinion according to the definition by the renowned political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, I think it becomes clear what I mean:
“Public opinion is the sum of those opinions on a given issue that individuals express publicly because they believe they are socially acceptable and will not lead to isolation.”
Elisabeth Noelle-Neuman, The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion - Our Social Skin
Mainstream Social Media platforms are, after all, controlled unilaterally by billionaires who use them to advance their interests - something Musk for example makes particularly obvious. In doing so, they control public discourse and make Nazi ideology appear socially acceptable again by artificially amplifying it to make it seem like a majority opinion.
Unfortunately, this has by now eliminated the effect of social isolation, which explains why, even in Germany and despite its terrible history, Nazi ideology appears to be a socially acceptable viewpoint - which, in turn, has a very significant effect on political discourse.
@DandomRude you hit the nail on the head. This is exactly why we are where we are.
And how easy it is for bad actors to exploit these new platforms, pushing the limit of what’s acceptable, and changing people’s opinions.
Not just Western Europe, it’s the whole of it. But also Asia, and the Americas. And Africa as well. Quite a tribal species we furless apes are.
Denazification efforts were abandoned in Germany, nazi scientists were recruited by Allied nations (especially the US) and the first secretary of NATO was a nazi.
Fascism was never defeated. We must abolish capitalism.
How does capitalism inevitably lead to fascism?
Basically, the issue with capitalism is that the more wealth you have, the easier it is for you to make more money. And since money can be used to buy goods, services and influence, there is always a way to use money to gain more political and social power. With that political and social power, you can push society and the legal system in the direction you want to go. So you can use your wealth to gain power, and then you can use your power to change laws and society so that you can make even more wealth and power. It’s a positive feedback loop.
Obviously, though, if the billionaires and ruling class are accumulating more and more of our society’s wealth, that inevitably means that there’s less for everyone else to go around - therefore, working class people feel poorer and poorer. Meanwhile, the economy is going absolutely great for rich people, so inflation continues to go up - everything gets more expensive, but wages don’t increase. The wealthy just keep more and more of the wealth for themselves. To accumulate more and more wealth, they change the laws so that they can avoid paying taxes, so public services collapse. Politicians are lobbied to ensure that public funds are diverted away from where it is most needed - housing, healthcare, transportation, infrastructure - and instead into industries where their class interests most benefit from it, such as weapons manufacturing and extractive industries such as fossil fuels and mining.
The working class are bound to notice that their lives are getting shittier and shittier, and if that situation is left unchecked, the working class would realize that the ruling class are fucking them over, rise up, and overthrow their rulers. Obviously, the ruling class need to do something about this, but there’s no solution that the ruling class can offer. They’re causing all of the problems, to fix them they’d have to give up some of their wealth and power - and that’s not something they’re going to do. So they need to find someone else to blame the problems we have in society on. Unfortunately, though, no matter who they blame the problems on, and no matter what they do to “fix” it, the issue will continue to persist, because the material conditions underlying the issues are, very intentionally, never addressed.
So, the conundrum returns: The ruling class said that minority A caused all of the problems, minority A is persecuted and oppressed, but society doesn’t actually get any better. Either the problem wasn’t minority A, or minority A just hasn’t been oppressed enough yet. So the ruling class can either escalate the oppression, or they can shift the focus to another minority group. The division continues to escalate in terms of how vitriolic and extreme it is, and it also continues to divide the working class into smaller and smaller groups.
To get the working class to buy into this hateful message, they need to take advantage of our worst instincts, and one of those instincts is the in-group bias. The majority are manipulated into being suspicious, then intolerant, then hateful, then violent, then genocidal, towards whatever the targeted minority of the day is. Anything that can be used to divide the working class - sexuality, nationality, immigration status, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender identity, age, all of these will be used as wedges to keep the working class split apart and not working together, because they know that if the working class actually unite against them, they are completely and truly fucked.
That’s exactly how fascism manifests. It’s because it’s possible for people to accumulate power through wealth. This is why capitalism must be abolished. If we do not abolish capitalism, fascism will always return. It’s just a matter of time.
How does capitalism inevitably lead to fascism?
While that text describes a lot of well documented and widely acknowledged problematic mechanisms, such as the positive feedback loop of wealth, political influence/lobbying through wealth, social inequality as the breeding ground of extremism and using minorities as scape goats, the strict determinism presented here (“inevitably”), as well as in other (neo-) marxist theories is untenable both from a historical and political science perspective.
It fails to acknowledge the existence of democratic resilience, degrading the state to a mere puppet of the rich, ignoring existence and effectiveness of unions, civil society, independent courts and welfare state. Historically, both the New Deal and the social market economy emerging post-war show how capitalist societies reacted to inequality without drifting into fascism.
Also, historical fascism has not been thought up and installed by the capitalists to divide the working class, but was an authentic mass movement driven by widespread nationalism, traumata of WW1, cultural fears and militant anti-marxism. Sure, the industrialists happily collaborated with the fascists to subdue the left, but eventually, the fascist states completely subdued the economy to its own (war) goals. The state controlled the capital and not the other way round.
Furthermore, painting the ‘ruling class’ as a monolith, acting as a secret homogenous group in dark back rooms where they orchestrate their oppression of minorities, is a bit too simple. It fails to acknowledge the diverging interests and rivalries within this diverse group.
Similarly, the ‘working class’ is painted as dumb and easily manipulable sheep which are readily distracted from their own interest by artificially created hatred towards minorities. That completely rids them of their own agency, ignoring their subjective rootedness in cultural, religious or even nationalistic beliefs.
I never understood the need for this fundamentalist determinism. Who can reliably and honestly use words such as “inevitable” when describing something as complex as societies? Instead, it will put you in a corner where it is becoming increasingly harder to explain why the deterministic path you described before did not come to be. If, irrespective of the inputs, the output shall always be the same and known, something is not right…
The fact is that we either need to abolish capitalism or we will constantly be fighting against the tide of fascism. You can take issue with my points all you want. If money can be exchanged for goods and services, then democracy is for sale. Reforms can, and have been, gutted. Unions can be bought. Wake the fuck up and stop coping.
The fact is that we either need to abolish capitalism or we will constantly be fighting against the tide of fascism.
There is always a constant battle to defend societies against its enemies. That fact is not limited to capitalism, as can be seen in the extensive surveillance in socialist countries. Even fascism itself felt so insecure that they massively surveilled and suppressed their own population. How so, if fascism really is the deterministic end point?
There is no stillstand or equilibrium in societies and I severely doubt there’ll ever be.
@Quittenbrot @bearboiblake
How would you define equilibrium in this context anyway?I think they’re making the point that societies always change, which I would agree with. My argument isn’t that there is a process from capitalism to fascism and then that’s the endpoint, there is obviously no endpoint to society, it’ll always change and grow – after all, societies are living things. But I strongly believe that there is a path towards a truly free and equitable society - a utopia, if you want - and that path necessitates the end of capitalism.
A society that reaches a stable state, as in there are no forces tilting it in either one or the other direction. A society in ongoing balance.
The so-called socialist countries still have capitalist economies. And yes, you’re right, that a truly socialist society would indeed need to defend itself against its enemies - i.e. capitalists - but under a capitalist system, the system itself inevitably trends towards fascism for the reasons I outlined in great detail in my comment.
Fascism is inherently a very fragile and unstable system – that’s why the fascist need for control and authoritarianism is so urgent, because the ideology is so unnatural. So, yes, fascism does indeed inevitably collapse, because it’s fundamentally a suicide cult. but if that collapse leads back to capitalism with reforms, then it’ll just cycle back towards fascism again.
The so-called socialist countries still have capitalist economies.
If you’re talking about China, yea. But what about the USSR and it’s satellite states?
but under a capitalist system, the system itself inevitably trends towards fascism for the reasons I outlined in great detail in my comment.
My remarks to these I stated in my initial reply.
And yes, you’re right, that a truly socialist society would indeed need to defend itself against its enemies
Not only capitalists, to be honest. What started as a revolution in the name of the working class with the Bolsheviks soon ‘degraded’ into an authoritarian ruling system with a strong party elite and - again - exploited workers. As said: I’ve yet to find a society that is completely stable and has no driving forces pushing it towards tyranny of some form.
@Quittenbrot @bearboiblake
This is because of the nature of “Leadership”: It is impossible to become a “Leader” of a major nation (/corp/institution) with any tangible power without having done strings of deals (i.e. compromises, i.e. selling out popular interests for private/personal ones, i.e. corruption).
The most successful “Leaders” are simply the most convincing liars.I agree.
But wouldn’t you agree that this fundamental dilemma of power inviting abuse has been proven by humanity to be irrespective of the label of the respective societal system?
what about the USSR
There’s no doubt that the USSR was extremely authoritarian, for sure. I’d say that was due to a variety of complex reasons, but foremost among them would be that there wasn’t a social revolution, there was a military revolution which replaced the existing ruling class with a different ruling class, rather than actually eliminating the ruling class altogether. The levers of power were maintained, and abused for personal gain, until capitalism was restored - and now we have the capitalist Russian Federation. The abolition of capitalism isn’t a magic bullet, and I’m not arguing that it is - but that does not change the fact that capitalism does inevitably lead towards fascism.
I’ve yet to find a society that is completely stable and has no driving forces pushing it towards tyranny of some form.
Well, I’d be glad to introduce you to anarchism. For what it’s worth, too, I’d say that Cuba demonstrates a pretty good model of a socialist society, despite the constant US terrorist attacks and interventions/blockades – quality of life, literacy rates, health care, etc. have all hugely improved, they have cures for lung cancer and Alzheimers in Cuba that we don’t even have in the West. Again, it’s not perfect, and there are no good states, but out of all of them, I’d say Cuba probably comes the closest.
but capitalism does inevitably lead towards fascism.
Again, in my initial response I pointed out why I have problems with this ‘inevitable’ and think it is a dogmatic statement.
Also, I stumble across comparing the flawed capitalism that actually exists with an idealised theoretical utopia of socialism/anarchism. Especially, since the socialism that did actually exist, was not only also flawed but eventually failed. Let’s be honest here. We cannot credibly say the flaws of the one system being actually applied are ‘signs of its inherent true nature’, while the other simply gets relabeled in a no-true-scotsman fashion. When a theoretical model collides with realities, the inherent flaws will emerge.
As did with the USSR. It was indeed a social revolution, nationalisation and expropriation of large landowners did take place. Only, transferring this then into the hands of the state under central planning made it necessary to create a huge state apparatus. Hence, also a new elite was created.
Denazification was a formal effort. It was never the spectacular purge people imagine it to have been, nor was it ever meant as such.
This thread inspired me to create a post about it on the YouShouldKnow community, but I’ll quote a section of the Wikipedia article about denazification here:
Very soon after the program started, due to the emergence of the Cold War, the western powers and the United States in particular began to lose interest in the program, somewhat mirroring the Reverse Course in American-occupied Japan.
Denazification was carried out in an increasingly lenient and lukewarm way until being officially abolished in 1951. The American government soon came to view the program as ineffective and counterproductive. Additionally, the program was highly unpopular in West Germany, where many Nazis maintained positions of power.
So russia turned also fascist for taking in nazi scientists?
I would absolutely say that the Russian Federation is a fascist state, yeah, wouldn’t you agree?
I dont disagree with russia being fascist. But i disagree on the cause of fascism being back and in america, europe or russia. Yes West and East should have persecuted the true nazis further. But i dont see this as the cause for the current state of being.
What is the distinction you’re drawing between the Russian Federation and the US?
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Another thing they learned from America.
American centralism at its best
‘exceptionalism’
Learned from America? That’s funny.
