this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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I don't mean only the US but in much of the world: in many European countries the populist far right is unseating Christian-Democratic parties (conservative parties), like in Hungary, Slovakia or Czechia. In others like Germany or France the far right is at the gates of power, in the UK, Reform UK is running high in the polls. In Turkey autocratic Erdogan is copying the Putin playbook to systematically dismantle the social-democratic opposition. In Japan, a neo Thatcherite that doesn't hide she honors Japanese war criminals is about to become the new PM.

Something common I see in all these parties is strong disaffection with the current state of their countries and a longing to an idealized past they promise to bring back, to make countries great again...

Except that societies have changed beyond recognition in the last 40 years, emerging China, India, Mexico and a myriad of south east Asian countries can produce cheaper than us in the developed countries, so called first world democracies are now much older and indebted than 40 years ago (no wonder societies have shifted so hard to the right), buying a house is now waaaay more expensive than 40 years ago, you cannot earn a livable wage just assembling toasters like 40 years ago, you just cannot roll automation and digitization back, no matter how much you complain...

The past cannot come back, neither will it come back just because some people want it to. It's completely futile, but people are not rational about this, they're completely emotional and tribal.

It's like a huge, collective effort in denial: denying that we in the developed world are older, not the first ones in the world anymore, that other countries we always considered inferior to us are even surpassing us technologically while we complain and hope for a savior that brings us 40 years back when we, the white guys, ruled all over.

I don't see it happening: being angry and voting the far right may make some people feel good, it may make them feel they're somehow taking their country back, but it's not going to stop China, India and other countries from developing, investing in new technologies and even creating trade alliances that bypass the US or the EU.

My question: was there a moment in history where societies were so shifted to the right like today? How long did it last?

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[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 87 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It lasted most of history. It seems like every time society shifts to the left, it only lasts for a few generations before it dies under autocratic control.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 49 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The problem is they'll always be shitty fascists who think they should be in charge of everything.

And the majority of people only realize how bad that is when they lived thru it.

For an enduring free society, it needs to be a foundational belief that everyone is equal and has basic inalienable rights....

And before anyone says we tried that, their "everyone" was just "white landowning men".

[–] madcaesar@lemmy.world 29 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The problem is that the left, progressives, whatever... are usually more open minded and liberal so they bicker and find nuance in EVERYTHING. Which is nice.... But also a massive weakness when it comes to building strong coalitions.

The left is endlessly sub dividing... each group gate keeping harder than the previous... each one more white knighting than the previous with endless, useless infighting.

Meanwhile the right is like "brown people are to blame for everything!"

"Sounds, good here's my vote...."

😐

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[–] SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world 54 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Evil always gets ahead because it's willing to do anything to "win." Good? Not so much. (Well actual good, anyway - not that fake shit that does things claiming their "Good Book" backs them up on it, for example.)

The only reason Good gets control every so often is because Evil is too focused on "winning" & ultimately inadvertently destroys its own foundations in order to do so. Once it figures out how to avoid that, we're really screwed.

The closest example of that I can think of is China's current leader. I'll grant many will somewhat rightly claim he's done a lot of good over there, but he's definitely accomplished a fair bit of it through some significant evils.

[–] essell@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The difference this time is that the underlying debate is around the definitions of good and evil.

A lot of people over the last ten years have heard about the evil things some people have done and plan to do and gone "yup, sounds good to me."

[–] SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I tend to doubt it's as different as you think. IMHO, the majority of people want good, but are clueless as to what exactly that looks like when it comes to more complex topics like managing the wide variety of people that make up a society. Understanding that usually requires a LOT more time and effort into reasoning things out than they're willing/able to put in, anyway.

They therefore pick someone to trust who seems (read: cons them into believing) like they know "the truth" to do all their thinking for them. Those arrogant enough to portray themselves as such are almost always malignant personality types interested primarily in manipulating others to do their bidding in order to benefit themselves. They "know" everything, and either are exceedingly unlikely to admit to human failings such as not knowing something, or always have a ready excuse that puts blame upon their enemies for their failings.

They divide people up & pit them against one another to distract, ensure loyalty, and keep control.

Any of this sound familiar? It's a pattern repeated among humans throughout history.

[–] TheCriticalMember@aussie.zone 8 points 1 week ago (7 children)

I dunno about that. You can blame it on right wing media brainwashing or whatever else, but I don't believe that anyone didn't know that electing trump was going to bring harm to several groups of people. They knew it, and they decided they were ok with it because they thought trump would be good for them personally.

[–] SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yeah, I suppose that's fair to an extent. The slow burn of Faux Snuz brainwashing and anger buildup definitely contributed as you mentioned, but it is possibly unusual in that the buildup period was so long (Republicans have been working from a basic plan since the mid 70s when some strategist of theirs came to the realization that abortion would be an extremely effective wedge issue) before it reached its peak without anything happening to break that spell.

I'm not really a history buff, so I don't have a lot to compare to off the top of my head. My argument was based more upon what I know of human psychology - a subject of much more interest to me personally, but which doesn't have nearly the same amount of documented historical details with which to compare.

Honestly, though, the only thing I think is different today is our level of knowledge and understanding. Data warehousing, statistical analysis, psychological profiling, etc., etc. are all new additions to the dynamic that I strongly suspect have made successful manipulations possible at such as massive scale.

People themselves are still the same as they've basically always been - some good, some not, some smart, etc. It's just now we have the ability to give those in power much more certainly with regards to methods of achieving their goals. Since those who actually desire to be in positions of power are almost invariably the types who shouldn't have it, the end result is sadly predictably ugly.

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 41 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I've been alive for almost 41 years and this is the first time I've seen anything like this with my own eyes. All other examples happened decades before I was born. The biggest and, HOPEFULLY, most well know example would be Germany in the late 1930s.

[–] FelixCress@lemmy.world 39 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yes, in 1930s. Lasted till 1945.

[–] ZMoney@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (6 children)

There were huge countervailing forces then. New Deal US. Soviet Union. Socialist parties gaining power the world over. The rise of fascism was limited to a few powerful countries, not systematic like it is today.

[–] FelixCress@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Strongly disagree. Fascists wave went through the substantial part of Europe, not a "few powerful countries".

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[–] BurgerBaron@piefed.social 26 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Humans being awful is most of our entire written history. Bill Wurst has the cliff notes:

https://youtu.be/xuCn8ux2gbs

The powerful made themselves divine deities directly or made up religions where the deity gave them power over others. Conquest, war, rape, tribalism, raids, corruption, oppression, suppression, slavery, spice trade, disease, volancoes causing crop failures and wiping out empires, or causing starving pirate raids who did the same, ice ages causing genetic bottle necks where we almost go extinct, whatever.

You could read David Mitchell's recent book "Unruly" about the ~1600 years of violent dumb misery following the fall of Rome just in the land whuch became the U.K. if you like. Pretty dry material but he does his best as a comedian to get through it all. It's a very long list of short lived Kings (and a couple Queens) murdering each other and peasants while the Northerners did the same and eventually settled and interbred and continued murdering each other and living short violent dumb lives. A lot of them aspired to be like a fictional King Arthur. There's your yearning for past glories. A little like today. It's not real, it's fantasy.

Until the printing press and the renaissance, sort of. Temporarily destabilised the powerful. Kinda like the internet. Or radio broadcast I suppose. The old guard didn't know how to exploit it at first. Printing press fucked up the massively corrupt Catholics at the time, fresh off their crusades and coming up with the idea of paying money to get into heaven. They really hated the idea of peasants learning how to read too. Martin Luther had a bunch of reasons they sucked. One was a complaint about how many little boys each priest kept. Nothing new under the Sun.

Relating any of it to the "right wing" becomes incoherent in a hurry when trying to compare things to modernity. Conservatives are what Royalists became after people kept cutting Royal heads off. Suffice to say though, it was shit fucking awful almost all the time humans have existed.

Looking to the future with climate change in a few hundred years and I expect way more extremism and a lot of death fighting and starving over the dwindling habitable land near the poles.

Eventually the Sun gets too hot even if we were perfect and peaceful and the oceans boil into space. Long before the Red Giant phase swallows the scorched Earth entirely. The end.

Anyways, I've deliberately sterilised myself.

[–] icylobster@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

This is a big reason why I hated learning history. It is very depressing. I'm always amazed how people can't seem to understand things they didn't personally live through. It is a constant cycle of exploitation then revenge on the exploiters and then a new way to exploit.

I'm trying to be hopeful, but it feels like we are in the phase where most need to suffer in order to get to a better place. Climate change is scary, but I try to remember progress can be explosive in ways you don't expect.

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[–] Onyxonblack@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I love your comment, very frank about it. Thank you!

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[–] JizzmasterD@lemmy.ca 23 points 1 week ago

Until a war, famine or plague was terrible enough to make people realize that most of their social differences weren’t as important as they thought and they had to rally round an ideal to survive.

[–] Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

The fascist times throughout Europe. It was at a different time in each country.

Before, there weren't what we would call democracies, but some were democracies at an early stage. Later, people learned to get along with people who voted for other parties.

[–] MolochAlter@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Then they collectively forgot about that last part.

[–] hanrahan@piefed.social 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

It's all... perspective and relative ?

The UK oversaw the slaughter of Kenyans in the Mau Mau rebellion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_1965%E2%80%9366?wprov=sfla1

The CIA helping Suharto slaughter Indonesians in a genocide

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_1965%E2%80%9366?wprov=sfla1

Israel's existence is becase the US and UK taking native lands

The Kurds were supposed to be free but too much Oil and that was stopped.

Around 80 years ago, Eric Blair (aka George Orwell) wrote this:

All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have internationalist aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible. We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are 'enlightened' all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free; but our standard of living, and hence our 'enlightenment,' demands that the robbery shall continue.

Somewhat more recently, Wendell Berry, in an essay entitled "Word and Flesh", wrote this:

This statement of Orwell's is clearly applicable to our situation now; all we need to do is change a few nouns. The religion and the environmentalism of the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something they do not really wish to destroy. We all live by robbing nature, but our standard of living demands that the robbery shall continue. We must achieve the character and acquire the skills to live much poorer than we do. We must waste less. We must do more for ourselves and each other. It is either that or continue merely to think and talk about changes that we are inviting catastrophe to make. The great obstacle is simply this: the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependent on what is wrong. But that is the addict's excuse, and we know that it will not do.

The destruction of the natural world is not the result of global capitalism, industrialisation, ‘Western civilisation’ or any flaw in human institutions. It is a consequence of the evolutionary success of an exceptionally rapacious primate. Throughout all of history and prehistory, human advance has coincided with ecological devastation.” ― John Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts On Humans And Other Animals

We pretend we've been anything other then fascist since ...? Most (many) German's in Nazi Germany lived good lives, like most in the developed world have been living.

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[–] Randomgal@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It ended with guillotines.

[–] AshMan85@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

No, there is more recent time in 1930s germany

[–] bunkyprewster@startrek.website 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Ends with invading foreign army liberating USians from fascist dictator.

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 1 points 6 days ago

It's not their responsibility.

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago

Look for the grift in every single country you mentioned, because ultimately, that's the goal. They want the power and control of money. A narcissist is probably behind every one too. They think they can do it.

[–] Kornblumenratte@feddit.org 5 points 1 week ago

I'd say all of history until 1968?

[–] DarkAri@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I think the best thing to do is just find our own alternative communities. Make our own hangouts. Our own clubs. We can still live life and be happy even if the rest of society is shit. Depending on how this upcoming elections goes. I might go underground. Just disconnect from society. Stop talking to normies outside of business. I will have put in my 35 years of fighting. I don't want to be miserable my entire life. I don't want to argue with people my entire life. Maybe it's just impossible to connect with people who arent like us. That doesn't mean we have to be sad. It doesn't mean we have to be alone. We can make our own spaces. Stay off the grid and under the radar. Have fun and have our own culture with people who like us.

[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It constantly goes in cycles, three steps forwards, two steps backward.

[–] M1ch431@slrpnk.net 0 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

In my opinion, it's always been a cycle of pretending to take a step forward while simultaneously slowly walking backwards unbeknownst to everyone, and then taking 2 steps backwards for good measure.

[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

That's just untrue. People live in better conditions today, even just considering social acceptance, and not technology or medicine. Most societies are at least in theory democratic, where people get some input towards the ruler. There are legal protections against slavery, misogyny, homophobia, racism, transphobia, and anti monopolistic agencies that try to temper the worst parts of capitalism. Trade unions have successfully campaigned so that now people work less than they have since the start of the industrial revolution, in unprecedentedly better conditions.

Don't get me wrong, there's a long way to go, and many of these things exist a lot more in theory than practice. Child rights, in particularly, are woefully lacking.

However, claiming that the past, at any point, was better for the vast majority of people is the same nostalgic, rose tinted, incorrect thinking that MAGA (when was America 'great' the first time?) Republicans fall prey to.

[–] M1ch431@slrpnk.net 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

People live in better conditions today

I see way too many poor, chronically ill, and visibly distressed people. This isn't normal, not even a little bit.

even just considering social acceptance

Social acceptance has been nonexistent for me as a gay, autistic male - people frequently tell me about their similarly horrible experiences.

and not technology

Technology has advanced, sure, but it just serves to enslave, manipulate, and spy on us in increasingly dystopian ways as the years go by. Mass surveillance, centralized databases, and unregulated AI have been normalized. What's next?

or medicine

As a chronically ill person, medicine has caused me significantly more harm than good because doctors are too overworked to identify side effects and complications - and I have nearly died several times due to medical negligence/iatrogenic illness. No, I'm not exaggerating. There have been many key advancements in medicine, but our healthcare industry is very sick - even in countries with socialized healthcare. There are people experiencing relief that previously wasn't possible - I'm not denying that.

Most societies are at least in theory democratic, where people get some input towards the ruler.

Democracy is largely illusory, especially here in the states. Consent of the governed is not present in many "democratic" societies if you've been paying attention.

There are legal protections against slavery

Slavery and third-world exploitation have exploded overseas to support first-world needs (even child slavery), prison/slave labor is incredibly pervasive in the states, and before Trump became Führer an estimated 40%~ of US agricultural workers were undocumented immigrants - modern slaves.

misogyny, homophobia, racism, transphobia

The legal protections are effectively nonexistent to prevent or remediate discrimination in practice. Two-party consent laws for recording are really terrible for those subject to abuse.

Trade unions have successfully campaigned so that now people work less than they have since the start of the industrial revolution

Here in the states, unions are largely nonexistent, people still work significantly more than they need to, productivity has risen but wages have largely stagnated, people are largely in significant debt and they cannot afford a house or a car, they cannot afford to reliably access healthcare (and even if they can "afford" it, it isn't timely), higher education is inaccessible and college debt is unreal, etc.

in unprecedentedly better conditions.

Yes, and no. There are many careers that harm you in ways that only modern society can. Like plastics workers being exposed to a greater risk of cancer. I have known many people that have been denied access to necessary PPE in multiple fields and have suffered workplace injuries that have been covered up. We can do so much better, but our society still revolves around exploiting people while pinching pennies.

Have we taken some steps? Sure. But we've taken many, many, many more backwards while people are oblivious in their bubbles. Pop your bubble, please. More people than ever before in history are suffering silently in ways that only can happen in modern times. Denying or whitewashing the extreme levels of suffering people are experiencing because some aspects are better than the past isn't helping anybody.

[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

You are pointing out how the world is a terrible place with lots of suffering. I completely agree with you. But in each of these areas, the way things are now is still better than they've ever been. They've always been bad and horrible, and in most places and times, worse.

[–] M1ch431@slrpnk.net 1 points 6 days ago

the way things are now is still better than they’ve ever been.

Untrue, and again, it's whitewashing. You make a lot of big claims, but they don't hold true in reality. The advancements you tout are as weighty as a corporate slogan for real people.

[–] LSNLDN@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 week ago

Two steps back somehow in 2025 involves tripping and falling behind by nearly a century

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