3 ms·

It seems in a lot of europe people are over the cycle and are thinking that going ultra right is a Good Plan again. Portugal voted way too right these elections

It seems in a lot of europe people are over the cycle and are thinking that going ultra right is a Good Plan again. Portugal voted way too right these elections.

scotty79 3y ago
I think it's a general vulnerability of democracies when things go sideways. Hardships bring fear for oneself and fear for oneself is psychological reason why people are conservative and right-wing. Those people vote in right-wing parties. And leaders of those parties are not very smart because position they achieved is solely due to psychology of their voters, not actually earned by their own political merits. So the only way those leaders can imagine for retaining power is to dismantle democracy that handed them this power on a silver plate. If they only cultivated fear in the populace they won over (whist avoiding the blame for the hardships) and create political alliances to avoid being replaced with somebody more right-winged they could retain power indefinitely.
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  > to dismantle democracy For hard numbers on how quickly that happened in 1933: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39305877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39305877
bloopernova 3y ago
People forgot the horrors of world war 2. Once the WW2 veterans started dying, people on the "right" started drifting back to the old, shitty ideas of fascism. I wish the greatest generation was still around to verbally tear the fascist demagogues apart.
- unpopularopp 3y ago
  >I wish the greatest generation was still around to verbally tear the fascist demagogues apart. And the socialists and communists, 1945 to 1990 wasn't fun either under the soviet rule. From one shit to another.
banish-m4 3y ago
Populist nationalist fascism with a flavor of racism is all the rage again in most of North America and Europe. The masses seek scapegoats and quick fixes to their manufactured discontent and declining fortunes, but somehow they believe narcissistic strongmen promise to fix everything if they just give them total power on day 1.
int_19h 3y ago
"us vs them" is always the easiest thing to sell, probably because parochial altruism is biologically hardwired in us monkeys (or at least that's what the ethologists say their experiments show).

It seems in a lot of europe people are over the cycle and are thinking that going ultra right is a Good Plan again. Portugal voted way too right these elections.

scotty79 3y ago

I think it's a general vulnerability of democracies when things go sideways. Hardships bring fear for oneself and fear for oneself is psychological reason why people are conservative and right-wing. Those people vote in right-wing parties. And leaders of those parties are not very smart because position they achieved is solely due to psychology of their voters, not actually earned by their own political merits. So the only way those leaders can imagine for retaining power is to dismantle democracy that handed them this power on a silver plate. If they only cultivated fear in the populace they won over (whist avoiding the blame for the hardships) and create political alliances to avoid being replaced with somebody more right-winged they could retain power indefinitely.

082349872349872 3y ago
> to dismantle democracy For hard numbers on how quickly that happened in 1933: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39305877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39305877

bloopernova 3y ago

People forgot the horrors of world war 2. Once the WW2 veterans started dying, people on the "right" started drifting back to the old, shitty ideas of fascism. I wish the greatest generation was still around to verbally tear the fascist demagogues apart.

unpopularopp 3y ago
>I wish the greatest generation was still around to verbally tear the fascist demagogues apart. And the socialists and communists, 1945 to 1990 wasn't fun either under the soviet rule. From one shit to another.

banish-m4 3y ago

Populist nationalist fascism with a flavor of racism is all the rage again in most of North America and Europe. The masses seek scapegoats and quick fixes to their manufactured discontent and declining fortunes, but somehow they believe narcissistic strongmen promise to fix everything if they just give them total power on day 1.

int_19h 3y ago

"us vs them" is always the easiest thing to sell, probably because parochial altruism is biologically hardwired in us monkeys (or at least that's what the ethologists say their experiments show).