As someone who’s had several long debates with a neonazi on discord, it usually boils down to them saying “Goldbloom controls you, all your arguments are therefore nullified”
Their aptitude for dismissing information is amazing
Which is why we don’t debate them, and avoid giving them a public platform!
Fascism is a result of declining Capitalism, as an example. Ideas come from material reality, not spontaneously.
It’s a slippery slope. First it’s either a community they can share anything with, or it is a subject dear to them that they see people give solution to. Then, slowly, one idea at a time, they get litteraly corrupted. Ideas are imprinted through repetition, values are suggested. Then, or before, you imprint the idea that the others are lying. This is key because it seed doubt in everything, but as he is closer from this group, this group get to imprint its own ideas through repetition alone. Distance is built with relatives so that the group is the only group he has. Then if he starts to disagree, he will be kicked, sometimes also punished, and he’ll be left alone, or at least he must be convinced of it. Once there radicalisation is a process that’s hard to stop.
Doubt, distrust, and a group to be with are the key ingredients. Liberalism is a fertile ground for this because it promotes individualism when humans are social creatures. So it’s very easy to find people in need of a social group that gives belonging. And racism makes the easiest pretense : you belong because of your blood, or because you’re born here.
For sexism, it’s mostly a reactionary backlash, and secondly this liberalism problem of promoting individualism to humans who seek belonging. Feminism did won, and the old way of treating women is being addressed. But it is a process, and while we know what’s bad, we don’t have much new examples to follow. Yet most people have been trained in the old way, so now they are at lost. It’s not the first reason why they’re alone, liberalism has this place, but it is far easier to blame it on women and feminism than to try to build a new society. And also, it again gives them belonging with men like them that understands them and give explanations and solutions to their problems. Not good ones, but that’s not the point.
Ok got to ask and if you don’t know thats ok…how come it seems females are not in this type of group.? Or is there some and we just don’t hear about it? I only bring it up because you kept using he and men so thats what got me wondering…but really want to say thank you for typing all that out and a thought provocing answer…no sarcasm
For the first, it can be women too. For misogyny it’s harder. But there is a trend currently to attract and radicalise women into conservatism too. The trad wives movement. I don’t remember the names but there are movement for spirituality and naturalism that are also linked to trad wives. That is also a slippery slope : first you hook them spirituality, and at the end you have JK Rowling who is an anti-trans activist.
Women and men are not in the same groups simply because conservatives are misogynistic so they like to separate men and women.
Overall it is a culture war lead by the far right.
It’s the same as it’s always been. We gravitate towards what we feel.
The internet has just allowed certain groups who wmight be ashamed to announce their true feelings to say the quiet part out loud anonymously. This gets the next generation to not see a problem with it and go from there.
As an example. Take an impressionable young boy (14-18), he has trouble getting dates, doesn’t have a great home life. Little bit of a loner. Before the internet, hed have to figure out a purpose. Maybe he’d start going to a gym or hitting the books harder to be smarter or something… With the Internet he’s able to find “friends”, he finds a community, that community may lead him down dark paths… Where some in better living situations may say “this is too much” and walk away, he doesn’t have anything to walk to… So he gets more and more indoctrinated into the cause.
“so much knowledge against it”? We live in a n overwhelming ocean of information, what seems obvious to many people may be completely unheard of in other areas, we’re not all getting our information from the same sources. Or some people have become indoctrinated by other groups and have become basically inoculated against “wokeism”. Plato’s allegory of the cave is just as relevant today as it was in his time (if not more so). There are people spending their whole lives looking at shadow puppets dancing on the wall, thinking that that’s reality. Who knows, maybe it’s us, but the point is, even though we’re awash in information, ignorance is alive and well.