Zompist Bboard Again

Recently malloc asked a pretty good question: "The fact that this keeps happening all across the world cries out for some systemic explanation but I struggle to imagine what."

Is there some set of causes that explain all of these?
-- Trump's fascism in the US
-- a growing far right in the UK
-- the National Front, AfD, Meloni
-- Orbán (though he's out now)
-- Putin's fascism and constant war
-- Xi's turn toward even more authoritarianism
-- Netanyahu
-- Modi
-- Bolsonaro
-- Right-wing victories in Argentina, Chile, Peru

Now, it's possible that these are not very connected at all, just pathologies within each nation. The fash obviously watch each other, but it's by no means the case that they all love one another. (E.g. Meloni has supported Ukraine, and Trump has cratered rather than encouraged the right in Canada.)

I don't think there's a single economic explanation. Sure, "late capitalism" blah blah blah; that doesn't explain Xi or Putin, and it doesn't explain the change of systems in the UK/US in the 1980s— the move from Roosevelt/Labour liberalism to plutocracy. It's also hard to point out anyplace where a hard-left turn has reversed the trend. (The closest is Brazil, but then Brazil just turned right again.)

I have a few theories.

One: things have always been dire. As ever, read a bunch of Orwell to gain perspective: things looked far worse in the 1930s, to say nothing of the middle of WWII. But more generally: terrible elites have been in charge, in every part of the world, for four thousand years. Not fascists, but extremely hierarchical and oppressive systems that kept the bulk of the population on the edge of starvation.

Orwell himself pointed out that things do progress over long periods. It's not helpful to ignore the positive changes since 1800 (or 800). The very idea that we can be outraged at authoritarianism is a huge advance: the best you could do in premodern times was go live in a monastery or something.

The thing to explain is perhaps not so much the present-day strength of the right, as the almost unprecedented progressiveness of the 1945–1980 period. But even this shouldn't be romanticized. Very roughly, it sucked to be in the Third World in that period... and it doesn't suck so much today. Large parts of the world were starving and regressive and living under dictatorships in 1950, and aren't today.

Why do right-wing movements do as well as they do? I think there are commonalities among the democracies in the list:

* It turns out you can get elected by victimizing some group that isn't liked very much: immigrants in the US, Muslims in India, etc.
* In Europe, Russia, and the US, pure revanchism: "we used to be on top of the world, we want that feeling back." It's not coming back, but it can take centuries for historical grievances to fade.
* As Robert Sapolsky points out, authoritarian and Us Vs. Them mindsets go back to our animal heritage.
* Imitation of whatever is popular in the US. Ironically Trump is so hostile and incompetent that he undermines the supremacy he'd love to have over right-wingers everywhere.
* Rising inequality. This is less explanatory in (say) France; on the other hand, you can make a case that Macron has been too center-right, which makes things like raising the retirement age inflammatory.
* Frustration with the center in general. The temptation is to rehearse everyone's complaints about their own left-of-center parties; I'd rather focus on global tendencies, if any. Unless you want to dump on Labour, which seems incredibly dumpable.
* Right-wing policies tend to produce recessions or underdevelopment... which makes people unhappy... and unhappiness reinforces right-wing parties. Sure, people are short-sighted, but it's the Southern Strategy and it's very effective: use culture-war tactics to make the less-well-off of the majority support traditional hierarchy so that those people are kept below them.
* As Paul Krugman has pointed out, right-wing regimes can be popular at first if the economy is improving (e.g. Orbán, Putin, China). But they have no particular ability to keep this going.

I don't like bringing this up, because I first read about it in a post by Noah Smith, and I now have a much lower opinion of Noah Smith. But he argued (talking entirely about Trump, but a similar dynamic might be at work in other places) that 21st century fascism happened because traditional conservatism failed. That is, the failures of traditional conservative policy and leadership piled on until even many traditional conservatives couldn't help notice them - but at the same time, these same traditional conservatives had spent their whole political life (or the time since whatever political conversion they may have had) hating everything they saw as left-wing (which is a lot more than the things actual left-wingers would see as left-wing). So they were disenchanted with traditional conservatism, but they absolutely hated the idea of turning left. They had to go somewhere else.

zompist wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2026 9:27 am Recently malloc asked a pretty good question: "The fact that this keeps happening all across the world cries out for some systemic explanation but I struggle to imagine what."

A few thoughts. I'd say Putin and Xi belong to a different category, which is summed up rather easily: they're what happens if you take communist dictatorships and then remove the 'communism' part.
Of course, there's no shortage of people who saw the results and thought 'well, that looks like a pretty good example to follow.'

zompist wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2026 9:27 am The thing to explain is perhaps not so much the present-day strength of the right, as the almost unprecedented progressiveness of the 1945–1980 period. But even this shouldn't be romanticized. Very roughly, it sucked to be in the Third World in that period... and it doesn't suck so much today. Large parts of the world were starving and regressive and living under dictatorships in 1950, and aren't today.

I agree entirely. Leaving romanticism aside, how could we explain it? First, keeping all the suffering in mind, of course, it remains that the very existence of the Eastern Bloc provided a very vivid example of what would happen if you didn't try to make the working class as prosperous as possible. By contrast, Xi and Putin show that you can also apply boots on faces indefinitely, which is a lot less tiresome.
Second, fascism was a very vivid memory. Quite a number of European leaders during that time had seen the inside of a concentration camp.

zompist wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2026 9:27 am * It turns out you can get elected by victimizing some group that isn't liked very much: immigrants in the US, Muslims in India, etc.

Yes. Also, as a French comedian once quipped, every day, there are more and more foreigners in the world. Which means a greater supply of scapegoats than were previously thought possible.

zompist wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2026 9:27 am* Imitation of whatever is popular in the US. Ironically Trump is so hostile and incompetent that he undermines the supremacy he'd love to have over right-wingers everywhere.

True. Though it started earlier than Trump, with Moldbugs and Tea Partiers.

zompist wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2026 9:27 am* Rising inequality. This is less explanatory in (say) France; on the other hand, you can make a case that Macron has been too center-right, which makes things like raising the retirement age inflammatory.

Inequality has been rising here as well, quite a lot. Not, I think, to the levels found in other countries but on the other hand we're less used to it and don't tend to tolerate it much.

zompist wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2026 9:27 am* Frustration with the center in general. The temptation is to rehearse everyone's complaints about their own left-of-center parties; I'd rather focus on global tendencies, if any. Unless you want to dump on Labour, which seems incredibly dumpable.

During the 90s or the 2000s, it was difficult to take socialism seriously. First, the Eastern Bloc fell. Second, left-of-center used to work fine.
The problem is, left-of-center has two consequences: it becomes hard to tell left-wing and right-wing parties apart; conversely, it's tempting for right-wingers to move to the hard right as the obvious counter.

The problem with centrism is that you can't do much wrong -- you'll stick to the consensus and stay with what's more or less effective. But you can't do much right either. If there's no clear centrist consensus on, say, healthcare or housing, any problems you have there will remain.

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2026 10:37 am I don't like bringing this up, because I first read about it in a post by Noah Smith, and I now have a much lower opinion of Noah Smith. But he argued (talking entirely about Trump, but a similar dynamic might be at work in other places) that 21st century fascism happened because traditional conservatism failed. That is, the failures of traditional conservative policy and leadership piled on until even many traditional conservatives couldn't help notice them - but at the same time, these same traditional conservatives had spent their whole political life (or the time since whatever political conversion they may have had) hating everything they saw as left-wing (which is a lot more than the things actual left-wingers would see as left-wing). So they were disenchanted with traditional conservatism, but they absolutely hated the idea of turning left. They had to go somewhere else.

Looking up Noah Smith, well, yeah, it looks like he has some peculiar opinions.

On that particular view, though, I believe it's a very clever observation.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2026 10:43 am

zompist wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2026 9:27 am Recently malloc asked a pretty good question: "The fact that this keeps happening all across the world cries out for some systemic explanation but I struggle to imagine what."

A few thoughts. I'd say Putin and Xi belong to a different category, which is summed up rather easily: they're what happens if you take communist dictatorships and then remove the 'communism' part.

Yeah... I'd say the novelty is American conservatives worshipping a foreign dictator, but in fact that's not a novelty either. Orwell talks several times about James Burnham who admired first Hitler than Stalin and then decided he was anticommunist after all.

zompist wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2026 9:27 am The thing to explain is perhaps not so much the present-day strength of the right, as the almost unprecedented progressiveness of the 1945–1980 period. But even this shouldn't be romanticized. Very roughly, it sucked to be in the Third World in that period... and it doesn't suck so much today. Large parts of the world were starving and regressive and living under dictatorships in 1950, and aren't today.

I agree entirely. Leaving romanticism aside, how could we explain it? First, keeping all the suffering in mind, of course, it remains that the very existence of the Eastern Bloc provided a very vivid example of what would happen if you didn't try to make the working class as prosperous as possible. By contrast, Xi and Putin show that you can also apply boots on faces indefinitely, which is a lot less tiresome.
Second, fascism was a very vivid memory. Quite a number of European leaders during that time had seen the inside of a concentration camp.

Good points-- in fact I had something like that in mind but forgot to add it to my list.

It is known that economic anxiety triggers the effects of Terror Management Theory. These effects include conservatism. Things that make you nostalgic about your childhood make you feel safer in a world that seems hostile to a rational exercise of power.

However, fascism is not particularly conservative. In fact, fascists accuse liberals of unthinking conservatism! I feel like these emotions are like drugs: They amplify pre-existing urges, making leftists socialist and conservatives fascist.

The rich do put forward an argument as to why they deserve economic support: Under capitalism, they can only justify creating jobs when profit margins are high. That is why the economy should be geared towards enriching them if you feel like it's hard to find a job.

The issue is that the poor spend what money they get, putting it back into circulation. Meanwhile, the rich keep growing their Scrooge McDuck gold vaults forever. This means that under the current system, jobs get created only if someone takes more money from society by creating my job than they pay into it. They literally oppose improving people's lives because lowering scarcity will remove opportunities to take people's money!

Monetary profit removes so much money from society that the economy used to collapse every 7 years until governments started artificially maintaining a positive inflation rate by printing money. That is what makes hard earned cash slowly but surely become worthless, incentivizing desperate but stupid people to support all kinds of demagogues, though I'm not sure those demagogues need necessarily be fascist.

The fascism could be a fashion and institution thing. Currently, fascist institutions have spread across the world and have a lot of money backing them.

My socialist alternative is to create government jobs by fiat that don't necessarily have to be profitable. Historically, this ran into the problem of authoritarianism, but with current technology, we can measure demand directly by vote. We don't need to rely on a skewed K-shaped economy to measure demand monetarily.

Of course, humans aren't naturally inclined to do things that make sense. As far as I can see, there is only one way to solve this problem:

1. Antihumanism. Do things that make the people rue the day they were born human: https://youtu.be/_JkDsPS8Z_I
2. Despair. Write catchy songs that suck all joy out of the world and/or make humans lose the will to live: https://youtu.be/hkTgYiMDRHY
3. Bullying. Slap the people until they are sadder: https://youtu.be/hHZvUeAdzeI

I call this praxis Joy Accelerationism. The sadder we make humans, the happier we will be when the joy naturally bounces back. Or maybe the fascists will get tired of our unending stream of sadness and give in. We can always hope.

Well, business as usual is not an attractive option when things are going wrong, as they currently do in obvious ways. People want change, but in which direction? It seems as if many people expect the future to be worse than the present; also, many progressives communicate in unattractive ways, by warning of the imminent threats and failing to offer attractive alternatives. The reactionaries promise to bring back a better past when identities were clear, the economy was booming and things like climate change were unheard of, and that seems more attractive to many people.

The traditional leftist strategy where I'm from was to depict the oppressed as tragic characters. It was very annoying when I grew up. Every serious story was like Oliver Twist: Bibhutibhusan Bandopadhyay, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay and even the Maoist writer Mahasweta Devi were taught in school. The experience might have turned me into a leftist though. Back then, I preferred comic stories by a writer I later learned was Hindutva.

If stories do affect politics, our current predicament could be a reaction to the annoyance leftists inflicted on us. The current generation could be rejecting emotional manipulation through tragedy. I prefer rational leftism to turning everything into a tragedy anyway.

On the other hand, maybe the tragic strategy still works. All the fascists did was lie and depict oppressors as tragic heroes instead of the oppressed. (Their signature move is to copy leftist strategies that work.) There is some evidence that this is the case in India. Not sure about other countries. This works better when the oppressors are in the majority. Regardless of real world facts, the majority reacts more strongly to a character from their community.

We could start a Church of Inconsolable Sorrow and see if it has any effect. Nothing supernatural. Only tears for anyone oppressed by the world.

My thoughts:

(1) Housing, schooling, and healthcare get ever more expensive, yet pay barely increases.

(2) "Left" parties have decided that working class people people are backwards racist losers, and that they'd rather hang out with cool, enlightened billionaires and the top 10% who are the winners of the New Economy, so they abandoned the former for the latter. If the former complains about (1), they just tell them they should've gone to college and increase the amount of student loans given out.

(3) Contrary to what "leftists" think, working class people are not obligated to vote for them, and can and do vote for other parties if they better present a story (which may not necessarily be true) that explains and promises to improve their life.

As a corollary, this explains why "leftists" alternate between claiming that they have no problem winning working class votes (because they vaguely know that historically, leftists won them), and getting upset and throwing them out of the house when they lose because they didn't win them (because they're angry that their minimum effort attempt to win their votes that was easily seen through, failed).

The current attempt at framing "populism" as conservative is an attempt by "leftists" to make a clean break from the past, so they can finally free themselves from feeling guilty about no longer winning working class votes, by basically saying that the working class was never truly left-wing to begin with!

(4) Conservatives have realized that Israel is a genocidal ethnostate, and are asking why they don't get to have one too if their government is going to support Israel. This causes both jealousy of how Israel genocides people, and hatred of how Israel promotes a double standard through their lobbying in other countries.

jcb wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2026 6:42 am My thoughts:

(1) Housing, schooling, and healthcare get ever more expensive, yet pay barely increases.

(2) "Left" parties have decided that working class people people are backwards racist losers, and that they'd rather hang out with cool, enlightened billionaires and the top 10% who are the winners of the New Economy, so they abandoned the former for the latter. If the former complains about (1), they just tell them they should've gone to college and increase the amount of student loans given out.

I'm not sure where you have gotten the idea that leftists would rather hang out with billionaires from, considering the amount of complaining I have heard about techbros...

Your view here seems to promote the position that people who consistently support reactionary politics (e.g. the kind of people who go about wearing MAGAt wear and who put thin blue line stickers on their trucks) despite it being painfully obvious that they are acting against their own self-interest (and despite the best efforts to convince them of such) should still be pandered to.

jcb wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2026 6:42 am (3) Contrary to what "leftists" think, working class people are not obligated to vote for them, and can and do vote for other parties if they better present a story (which may not necessarily be true) that explains and promises to improve their life.

Anyone who votes Republican is either stupid (i.e. they haven't yet caught on that the Republicans never actually really do anything good for the working class despite it being painfully obvious) or evil (i.e. they realize that the Republicans will consistently do evil, and support them because of this), and thus any working class people who vote Republican are either stupid or evil.

Working class people don't get a pass on this because they are working class.

jcb wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2026 6:42 am As a corollary, this explains why "leftists" alternate between claiming that they have no problem winning working class votes (because they vaguely know that historically, leftists won them), and getting upset and throwing them out of the house when they lose because they didn't win them (because they're angry that their minimum effort attempt to win their votes that was easily seen through, failed).

The thing is that people on the left do try to get working class votes, while certain sections of the working class consistently vote for the right despite it being painfully obvious that the right does not and never has helped them (due to things like White identity politics and tribalism).

You act as if people who consistently vote Republican out of tribalism are some failure of the left for being anemic rather than a fundamental failure of these people as human beings.

jcb wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2026 6:42 am The current attempt at framing "populism" as conservative is an attempt by "leftists" to make a clean break from the past, so they can finally free themselves from feeling guilty about no longer winning working class votes, by basically saying that the working class was never truly left-wing to begin with!

The use of the term "populism" here of course refers to superficial support for majoritarian White working class tribalist politics, you should remember. Modern-day left-wing positions rather have adopted the term "progressivism".

jcb wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2026 6:42 am My thoughts:

(1) Housing, schooling, and healthcare get ever more expensive, yet pay barely increases.

That mainly explains things for the USA, while we're dealing with a global thing.

Left-wing parties (of the kind that wins elections) are generally too centrist. I think that's generally true.

But that's an entirely separate issue (to the extent that things can ever be cleanly separate in politics) from the fascism.

I think this leaves aside entirely the issue of the racism, misogyny and homophobia/transphobia. There's a school of thought that holds that more left-wing policies/agenda would eliminate racism somehow. I don't believe in that.

I think what's required to move away from the fascism crisis is competent leadership (which certainly implies moving left from the centrist consensus, which isn't doing anything good) but also at some point the idea that racism is wrong has to re-enter the collective consciousness.

Regarding center-left election victories: The problem with representative democracy is that the people suffering the most get trapped in cycles of strategic voting and never get the policies that would actually benefit them.

Regarding social justice and the left: Radical anti-racists among African Americans tend to be Marxist. Their argument is not that anti-capitalism will solve racism. The argument is that without anti-capitalism, the problem of racist discrimination cannot be solved. Books: Soledad Brother by George Jackson (Trigger warning: Contains misogyny), Revolutionary Suicide by Huey P. Newton. Channels: https://www.youtube.com/@jaredaball/videos (especially: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rnbyxj-NWa4), https://www.youtube.com/@BlackLiberationMedia/videos

There is a tendency for radical feminists to be pro-CIA though. Not sure how prevalent it is in the wider movement.

Regarding "populism": The right-wing populism making the rounds in the US and elsewhere is clearly cozy with the billionaire class.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2026 8:56 am I'm not sure where you have gotten the idea that leftists would rather hang out with billionaires from, considering the amount of complaining I have heard about techbros...

It depends on the ratios. One or two leftists in a room with a bunch of billionaires is like one or two humans near a bunch of hippos, but one or two billionaires in a room with a bunch of leftists is a fun game where you find out how hard you have to threaten the piñata before the money falls out.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2026 10:47 am Radical anti-racists among African Americans tend to be Marxist. Their argument is not that anti-capitalism will solve racism. The argument is that without anti-capitalism, the problem of racist discrimination cannot be solved.

The argument is sound, but it's not an argument for Marxism. Opposing capitalism doesn't require Marxism any more than getting vitamins in your diet would require eating any specific vitamin-rich vegetable. There are various vegetables out there. And in politics, there's the additional possibility that if you don't like any of the collections of thoughts available, you can try to come up with your own. After all, that's basically what most of the famous founders of political movements did, including Marx himself.

Ketsuban wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2026 11:05 am

Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2026 8:56 am I'm not sure where you have gotten the idea that leftists would rather hang out with billionaires from, considering the amount of complaining I have heard about techbros...

It depends on the ratios. One or two leftists in a room with a bunch of billionaires is like one or two humans near a bunch of hippos, but one or two billionaires in a room with a bunch of leftists is a fun game where you find out how hard you have to threaten the piñata before the money falls out.

No, I think in the original jcb post, by "leftists", jcb meant "leaders of nominally sort of center-left political parties".

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2026 11:34 am

Ketsuban wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2026 11:05 am

Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2026 8:56 am I'm not sure where you have gotten the idea that leftists would rather hang out with billionaires from, considering the amount of complaining I have heard about techbros...

It depends on the ratios. One or two leftists in a room with a bunch of billionaires is like one or two humans near a bunch of hippos, but one or two billionaires in a room with a bunch of leftists is a fun game where you find out how hard you have to threaten the piñata before the money falls out.

No, I think in the original jcb post, by "leftists", jcb meant "leaders of nominally sort of center-left political parties".

In recent times I have heard plenty of complaining about billionaires from thoroughly center to center-left (i.e. not actually leftist) people like my parents.

jcb wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2026 6:42 am(2) "Left" parties have decided that working class people people are backwards racist losers. . .

[. . .]

(3) Contrary to what "leftists" think, working class people are not obligated to vote for them, and can and do vote for other parties if they better present a story (which may not necessarily be true) that explains and promises to improve their life.

Universal suffrage necessarily implies that the poorly-educated have a right to vote. Given a choice between someone who writes off your entire demographic as a “basket of deplorables” and someone who outright states “I love the poorly-educated”, if you were poorly-educated, whom would you want to listen to? (This is not helped by the trope of the asshat who is then propped up as a true hero—see: Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Luigi Mangione.) I prefer the Daryl Davis approach to things—if you don’t know, Mr. Davis is a Black man who has deradicalized quite a few KKK members by befriending them.

Man in Space wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2026 4:55 pm Given a choice between someone who writes off your entire demographic as a “basket of deplorables”

Err, no. That statement was about people with specific attitudes, not people in specific demographics.

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2026 5:08 pm

Man in Space wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2026 4:55 pm Given a choice between someone who writes off your entire demographic as a “basket of deplorables”

Err, no. That statement was about people with specific attitudes, not people in specific demographics.

I find it a small jump from the actual words of the quote to attitudes of alienation from the liberal side of the aisle:

Hillary Clinton wrote:You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.

I reïterate—if you’re poorly educated, would you even want to entertain the notion of voting for this person and their party?