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Why the far right is surging all over the world: The “reactionary spirit” and the roots of the US authoritarian moment (www.vox.com)

submitted 4 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

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While Americans have long clashed over our country’s cruel and bigoted past, Germans have undertaken one of the most thoroughgoing efforts of any nation on the planet to reckon with their history. Germany, perhaps more than any other country, has attempted to pull out by the roots its homegrown variant of the reactionary spirit — the tendency of opponents of social change to choose hierarchy over democracy, trying to constrain or even topple democracy to protect hierarchies of wealth and status.

The Nazis were born out of disgust with post-World War I Weimar democracy, led by men furious about both the new government’s weakness and acceptance of the Jewish minority into German society. After Nazism brought Germany to ruin, preventing a reactionary resurgence became one of the central goals of the country’s subsequent leaders.

So it’s all the more extraordinary that in the past few years, Germany’s far right has been on the rise.

In 2015, at the peak of the global refugee crisis, German chancellor Angela Merkel announced an open-door policy for those fleeing violence in Syria and elsewhere. In response, the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party, a Euroskeptic faction without a single seat in Parliament, morphed into a virulently xenophobic force calling for Germany to slam Merkel’s open door shut.

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But its rise illustrates something vitally important: That Germany, of all countries, could fail to prevent a surge in reactionary antidemocratic politics suggests there’s something eternal and enduring about the reactionary spirit. And there is something about our current time period that makes it especially likely to flourish — not just in Germany, but around the world.

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[-] DeanFogg@lemm.ee 11 points 4 months ago

I kinda get what you're saying but the whole "we'll pick a shitty totalitarian government over having to hear about lesbians getting married" really seems bitchy and weak

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The left is making inroads on some areas, and not on others. In particular, it's making progress on the social justice front without having much to show for on the economic front. I don't think it's particularly fruitful to get into a discussion of "is it because one is harder or because people have slanted priorities", the important part is to recognise that that disparity in progress exists, it's real, people feel left behind and betrayed, the right is brilliant at exploiting emotions, and you're not going to convince someone working three jobs to barely make rent that the actual issue is pronouns.

Quoth Berthold Brecht, in the Threepenny Opera:

You gentlemen who think you have a mission
to purge us of the seven deadly sins,
should first sort out the basic food position,
then start your preaching! Thats where it begins.
You lot who preach restraint and watch your waist as well,
should learn, for once, the way the world is run:
However much you twist, whatever lies you tell,
food is the first thing, morals follow on.
So first make sure that those who now are starving
get proper helpings when we all start carving.

this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2024

266 points (94.6% liked)

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