r/science • u/smurfyjenkins • 7h ago
Social Science Across 24 developed democracies, there is a systematic pattern whereby economic crises tend to disproportionately favor the right. Even when center-right parties preside over a crisis, voters often drift further rightward to nationalist parties rather than defect to the left.
https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.70008661
u/cerevant 7h ago
Not really surprising. When times are tough, people worry less about being kind to others and become necessarily more selfish. They are also frustrated and angry about things they cannot control. The right gives them targets for their anger, and gives them the illusion of control.
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u/nanosam 7h ago
The right gives them nothing in reality, because no actual solutions are given just further descent into inequality, oppression, intolerance and injustice.
The far right world is cruel and unsustainable because ultimately, people want to live in a fair, free society that isn't based on authoritarian oppression.
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u/Low_Chance 5h ago
The right does give them those 2 things though:
targets for anger
The illusion of control
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u/nanosam 4h ago
Short term things that eventually lose their sway.
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u/The_Follower1 4h ago
The issue is they don’t lose their sway, people broadly just double down on those feelings instead.
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u/Low_Chance 3h ago
They're skilled at rotating the targets and moving the goalposts on the illusion. They're evergreen
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u/Interrophish 1h ago
never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.
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u/alpacas_anonymous 6h ago
In the west people will vote for somone if it hurts someone else they hate. The ideological loyalty of the poor trumps common sense. In so called developed countries where individualism is glorified, people tend to be more selfish and right leaning. The social contract is broken, self-entitlement reigns supreme.
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u/ceciliabee 6h ago
Let's not pretend it's only the west. That's intellectual dishonesty.
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u/alpacas_anonymous 6h ago
Not at all. These states have the funds to educate their working classes. They refuse to do so because the stupid are easier to control.
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u/rei0 5h ago
It’s not simply a matter of education: the people driving inequality and destabilizing societies to their own longterm detriment are often products of our most elite institutions. It doesn’t take much education to understand the benefits of labor unions, but political tribalism, decades of propaganda, and legalized bribery via unlimited contributions have all taken their toll.
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u/alpacas_anonymous 4h ago
What you are talking about is the symptoms of Capitalism on the Democratic process, mixed with human nature. As I said before, Capitalism is in essence a tumor, a sort of parasite that exists only to perpetuate itself and to grow (for better or worse, I'm not smart enough to say which).
State controls allow it to exist; in a lassiez faire type economy the whole thing collapses under it's own weight once there is no more room to grow. Ironically, all those captains of industry that are working tirelessly to undermine the state are also hastening their own doom.
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u/johnniewelker 33m ago
Can you explain what this education actually entails? Let’s not pretend people are not aware of this or haven’t learned it in a school setting… so what else is to be done?
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u/Mahameghabahana 5h ago
Any studies to back up your claims? Because I don't think mao's china, Pol pot's cambodia and Stalin's USSR were far right. Sure Hitler and mussolini wer far right but to me itseems cruelty and unsustainability isn't limited to the far right.
It's ok to have ideologies but don't treat ideologies as science because they aren't. They are just bunch biased opinions.
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u/lampstaple 4h ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/science/s/nD6dPAA2M5
here’s a study about how across 24 developed democracies there’s a systematic pattern whereby economic crises tend to disproportionately favor the right
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u/coconutpiecrust 6h ago
I think it’s also heavy propaganda. Having someone to blame offers a sense of control and security during uncertain times, and populist right-wing dictators/fascists always offer someone to blame and simple “intuitive” solutions to complex societal/economic issues.
People who actually want to fix problems and govern rarely fixate on witch hunting.
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u/Pancullo 1h ago
Yep, this, and they don't lack the money necessary to spread this message far and wide
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u/Kaiisim 6h ago
More accurate to say the entire media landscape is right wing and so only promotes right wing solutions.
People to this day will say the Occupy protests had no solutions, when they had more complicated plans than Trump ever did.
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u/Shaeress 5h ago
I don't think the entire media landscape is right wing as much as it is anti left. Large parts of western media is centre and liberal. They want gay rights and maybe a woman for president some day. But all the biggest media organisations are companies and they like capitalism and big business and low taxes, and so the left is the real enemy.
When things are going poorly in the world, when disasters and struggles happen, I think people naturally look for alternatives to the status quo. Alternatives to the left are shut down and slandered by big businesses that know that regulations and taxes will impact their bottom line. Disasters are anti-centre and the media is anti-left, so the only way is right.
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u/Fenix42 6h ago
A complicated plan that you have no way of communicating or executing is just a fanatasy. A simple plan that people understand and your group has the power to execute is a real one.
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u/Kaiisim 5h ago
Yeah kinda proves my point. The media is the gatekeeper and they decide what is communicated and how.
We see it today, how many Trump voters say "this isn't what I voted for!" And it's like...uh that was actually his main policy.
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u/Fenix42 5h ago
What policies did Ocupy Wallstreet have that they had the power to actually implement?
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u/Silvermoon3467 4h ago
What you are saying is that basically no one who isn't a highly placed politician has any business proposing solutions to anything, which is nonsense
Someone has the power to implement them, indeed has an obligation to implement them, and simply refuses to do so
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u/Fenix42 4h ago
Anyone can propose a solution. That is not my point.
My point is don't be shocked when no one listens because you have no way to implement it.
Someone has the power to implement them, indeed has an obligation to implement them, and simply refuses to do so
What makes you say they have an obligation?
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u/Silvermoon3467 4h ago
The point of having a government is to implement solutions, politicians have an ethical obligation to work in our best interest.
The fact that they refuse to solve problems, make problems worse, and in basically all respects ignore that obligation doesn't change the fact that it exists, it just means we don't care enough to hold them accountable for breaching that obligation.
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u/Fenix42 4h ago
The point of having a government is to implement solutions, politicians have an ethical obligation to work in our best interest.
This is just no reality based. Politicians have 1 obligation. Get elected. Nothing else matters. Our system is set up so that they need a truckload of money to do that. The result is they will do what the people with the money tell them to do.
If you want that to change, get money out of politics.
The fact that they refuse to solve problems, make problems worse, and in basically all respects ignore that obligation doesn't change the fact that it exists, it just means we don't care enough to hold them accountable for breaching that obligation.
They are solving problems for the people who give them money to get elected. If they did not, they would lose campaign funding.
I want to live in the world you are describing. It's just not the one we are in. We need to completely change the way politicians are elected to fix things.
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u/Silvermoon3467 2h ago
It requires politicians to change the laws about getting elected, which is probably not going to happen because they make truckloads of money off of the system the way it is now
What you are basically saying is that there are no solutions, and since there are no solutions we shouldn't talk about solutions
You've already been defeated, and are going around saying that defeat is inevitable and we shouldn't expect more because it isn't realistic
I understand very well the way things are, I am simply not interested in capitulating to them
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u/Djinnwrath 6h ago
Hey look, exactly the sort of rhetoric the person you're replying to was describing!
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u/angry_cucumber 6h ago
people worry less about being kind to others and become necessarily more selfish
most accounts of the great depression and ww2 are stories of kindness and communal effort.
I would say it's decades of RW media telling that you should be selfish and people are taking your things that tells you this is what happens, because most people in the US haven't lived through "tough times" on a grand scale
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u/T33CH33R 6h ago
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
-John Kenneth Galbraith
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u/Majestic-Effort-541 5h ago
It’s worth remembering that “shifts to the right” in crises often aren’t about ideology so much as psychology
Fear and uncertainty make people crave certainty and certainty is easier to package in a slogan than in a policy paper.
Complex reforms require trust in institutions and long-term thinking two things in short supply when people feel like the floor just dropped out from under them
In that sense it’s not so much that the right wins the argument but that the terrain of crisis tilts the field toward whoever can offer the fastest simplest explanation whether or not it solves anything.
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u/jenkag 6h ago
It's also very tempting in that situation to trust in a singular person that says they can fix it, especially if they make it seem like they are the ONLY ones who can fix it.
The Left tends to offer measured, sensible, long-term approaches like changing tax law, reinforcing vulnerable systems, reducing corruption... things that take a long time to realize the benefits. The Right often just says "we have a guy who knows how to fix it right now, if you just put him in office".
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u/QwertzOne 6h ago
Well, I'd also consider that there's not much of real left in many countries. What is called left is often just another capitalist party, that wants slightly higher taxes, more immigrants and they don't care about workers, they care more about pensioners or some other specific groups like only public workers or immigrants.
Problem is that does not really improve anything for majority of society, because wealth inequality is still huge, basically everywhere and now there's even more problems, so housing is unaffordable, job market in many cases is also not great, so young people now are left with nothing, while immigrants are used to keep that system going, because they're easier to exploit.
Add to that lack of real democracy, so no democracy at work, everything is owned by small part of society, which lobbies politicians and a lot of people comes to conclusion that best course of action is burn down that system, because it provides them with nothing and right wing populists know how to use this anger.
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u/lampstaple 4h ago
Yea the study does mention that center-right rule tends to open up more opportunities for further right politics
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u/Rahm_Marek 6h ago
They give them an enemy to focus on.
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u/Ephemerror 6h ago
This is true, however it's also true for the left too. While the right promotes xenophobia and targets the already marginalised and powerless, the left targets the wealthy and powerful; or they should theoretically be at least.
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u/DirtyMonkey95 3h ago
All while their economic policies are primarily responsible for the economic collapse in the first place. It's unfortunate that being cruel and power hungry are easy in this world, whereas working to make a better world is so hard.
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u/kraghis 5h ago
It’s baked into the very definitions. Left wing politics support more egalitarian outcomes whereas right wing politics support more stratified, differential outcomes.
In an abundance mindset it makes sense people would be more willing to think of others. As opposed to in a scarcity mindset, where you would expect to see more people concerned about their own needs.
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u/HungryGur1243 4h ago
This can happen, but we also see when people have options, they can drift from family they don't like, or that when hard times happen, they move in with family and do care work.
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u/octnoir 15m ago
Maybe but I was about to interject with one of the biggest obvious examples that go against the trend, and started reading the paper:
and
Our study analyzes extensive data on financial crises and voting outcomes in elections held in 24 developed democracies between 1945 and 2019.
and
I think the readers here are putting the cart before the horse. We are examining history and saying "okay in most of the 24 scenarios we listed, the right ward parties got an advantage, because people became right ward".
Instead we're seeing "periods of economic crisis create opportunities" and the "left has not chosen to build its coalition to take advantage of said economic crisis" and then attributing this to "well voters NATURALLY chose right" instead of "political parties and apparatus and elites chose NOT to go left"
Politics isn't about "we need to figure out what the voters want and then match that". It's about creating a strong social identity that voters can relate to, and then systematically build policies that reinforce said identity and benefit said voter creating a cyclical loop. The job of politicians is to understand their base, and then use their power to take the voters where they need to be.
The FDR New Deal effectively locked the Democrats into power for the next five decades despite having a clearly powerful right wing culture force in the then active anti reformation Jim Crow regime. That coalition started fracturing near the end of the Civil Rights Movement when LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act, which created a schism. Republicans then started courting angry white bigots and their project to lock in the white working class vote since then. That old New Deal coalition basically collapsed by time of Raegan and the Conservative project in full swing and birthed the current (and fracturing) era of Neo Liberalism that we have today and probably going to see the death of in our lifetimes.
The New Deal is one example, but I think it is a strong enough example that deserve examining with these other trends.
And more importantly:
leaders from the RIGHT are substantially more likely to get elected in the aftermath of a crisis than leaders from the CENTER-LEFT.
I'm reading the examples they are using and it just feels like if you don't move hard left and build that coalition successfully but stay around center or center left, you basically get obliterated by the center-right and the right.
And where the Left was unable to get its act together.
When the center-left heads the government at the onset of a crisis, parties on the center-right are the chief beneficiaries. Yet when center-right parties head government at the time the economic crisis occurs, left-wing parties gain only a modest, statistically nonsignificant uptick in their vote share.
I think the more interesting research from there would be:
Why did the New Deal work? How did that coalition form? Why did it get passed? Is this a completely unicorn moment in politics or are there things happening around the New Deal with certain choices and opportunities that failed or weren't present (or maybe were and then the New Deal was truly a unicorn).
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u/LordBaneoftheSith 4h ago
The left isn't just "kind to others" though. In an unequal society, there is self interest in redistribution for the majority of people. The capitalist establishment is just more hostile to those redistributive policies than they are to the far right, and when the solution to the crisis is just "get back to the status quo" people naturally find that unsatisfying.
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u/cerevant 4h ago
In an unequal society, there is self interest in redistribution for the majority of people.
People in crisis don't have this kind of long-term thinking.
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u/Embarrassed-Depthu 2h ago
Hmmm, not really.
It's more like misunderstood crisis that lead to hatred against minorities and leads to conservatism, nationalism all those things that were present in "good times" and nationalisms gives you an identity even tho' you didn't do anything for it.
If you know who your enemy is you can do something against it. It gives a good feeling because you "know" who did this to you, and you know what you can do. And since they are minorities, there is little to no resistance.
You can see these developments in the middle age where jews were blamed during the times of the black plague and the well poisonings. You can see this in witch hunts where several crises swept over europe.
Note: This is all pre industrialization and pre capitalism. Those crisis I described were external. Nothing really the people could do. What we have now is a different matter. We have a system that almost every major country is following and that is dependant on crisis. It creates crisis out of "thin air". There is no materialistic issues like destroyed crops, hunger because there is lack of food, "poisioned" wells, black plague.
Oil crisis, 1929, euro crisis, covid, argentina blablabla. e.g OVERPRODUCTION of food after WW2 that the US, Germany etc. exported and the price dropped! Farmers couldn't pay their bills, lost their jobs and farms. That just does not make sense if you think about it (only in capitalism).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_economic_crises
You can see this during the rise of the nazis and the 1929 crisis that gave the nazis a huge boost (among other factors like a lost war, weak democracy, skepticism of democracy). The economic crisis enabled the NSDAP to grow in power immensely and it's the same stuff we're dealing with today. The majority of people really actually think that migrants are causing house prices to go up. That jobless people are actually stealing taxpayers money. (Without unemployment there would be no capitalism but doesn't matter.)
Most of the population cannot realize that there are no issues with food, resources, energy, housing. We (at least in the west) have everything we need on paper. But people fail to realize, just like the people back then didn't know about why the black plague happened, that capitalism is one of the root causes for many crises. We cannot think about any other way because we were socialized that way.
It's not well I think about myself so I vote right. You vote right because you want the easy solution. You want someone to blame, and you cannot understand that capitalism is putting you in this situation because "that is how the world is". If you vote right you vote against your own interest: If unemployed people are being treated worse, you will get treated worse when the next crisis comes and you lose your job. When you have to live in a tent and have 3 jobs at the same time. It just does not make sense on a factual base. It just makes sense when you think of capitalism as nature and want someone to blame.
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u/YourFuture2000 3h ago
I think that government always incite segregation among people, so people accuse each other as being the problem instead of unite force and moviment against the government. It is any government self-preservation interests.
Adding that in time of crises the rich and corporations also look for self preservation and the same happens.
Right wing politics and strategies has always been the strategy of authorities and the rich for self-preservation.
Historically, even left wing parties in power have done that for their power self-preservation, and many radical ir just moderate leftwing parties tend to become conservatives like this.
Their power is to spread fear and then sell themselves as the salvation.
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u/ZranaSC2 4h ago
Why is there an economic crisis in the first place? It's almost always caused by the wealthier or ruling classes. Who is left still empowered during a crash? It's the people who were wealthy beforehand and complicit in the crisis Which political side allows them to keep their power and wealth?
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u/angry_cucumber 7h ago
apparently hard times create weak men
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u/Orderly_Liquidation 4h ago
I always hated the original expression because I incorrectly assumed ‘weak’ meant ‘unwilling to quickly resort to physical violence’.
Now with a little more grey hair I’m realizing it means the opposite…unwilling to work hard to find cooperative solutions to difficult problems.
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u/sgtpeppers508 2h ago
It absolutely is meant to mean weak the way you originally thought. It’s fascist pseudohistory.
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u/Bionic_Bromando 36m ago
Yeah but it’s hilarious that it works perfectly if you simply phase shift what weak men and hard times are haha
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u/Correct-Cat-5308 7h ago
People have always been stupid and preferred simple beliefs, tribal instincts, and "our bully" for a leader, than long term complex thinking and cooperation.
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u/fables_of_faubus 7h ago
Fear and uncertainty tend to encourage emotional decision making, too, which isn't great for big picture or long-term planning.
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u/theStaircaseProject 7h ago
Can I over generalize it even further down to a scarcity mindset? Apes running out of bananas feel the anxiety and pressure to not only secure more bananas but also partner with the apes who also seem to be working toward the same hoard.
If, as has been said, democracy is an artifact of abundant resources, the shift on the political spectrum seems to visualize a clear move from surplus-mindset egalitarianism on the left to a more right-ward “it’s just business” us vs them.
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u/itwillmakesenselater 6h ago
"It's just business" might be the most evil phrase in the world. It excuses all sorts of anti-social behavior and policies by diminishing the individual's motives for action. "I didn't really want to evict the families. It's just business."
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u/Low_Chance 5h ago
I literally had someone say this to a friend of mine recently while (illegally) threatening to evict in order to get a better window for renovations: "mercy is mercy, but business is business and this is just business."
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u/theStaircaseProject 3h ago
When times get tough, people seem to really need to fall back on black-and-white thinking. I get it makes decisions easier and faster (not the same as making better decisions), but that whole “maintaining my perspective requires devaluing you” part of it really blows.
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u/Optimoprimo Grad Student | Ecology | Evolution 6h ago
Yes we are a very tribal species with brains that are still running operating systems designed only to handle the understanding of small groups of a few hundred people. We weren't meant for a national society or a global society. As much as the average person would like to think they don't use the instinctual part of their psyche to make decisions, it is often driving most of their life choices. We tend towards in group/out group mentalities and defference to strong man leaders as a result, because it originally helped our survival to be so insular and conservative. This is misfiring in the global era and is incompatible with it. I don't know that we will be able to survive it because we are causing damage faster than our species is adapting to a global society.
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u/alpacas_anonymous 6h ago
Education would solve this... that is why Americans are for the most part ignorant, myopic, and stupid.
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u/Eradicator_1729 7h ago
This isn’t remotely surprising if you’ve got any understanding of psychology and politics. But it’s good to have research behind it.
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u/almisami 7h ago
Decades of Red Scare propaganda probably had a lot to do with it.
People polarize in a crisis, but people have been scared away from the Left-left.
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u/Actual-Toe-8686 5h ago
Left? What left? Your only options are liberal or conservative.
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u/almisami 2h ago
They're really not, but you've been led to believe that. We got so close with Layton...
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u/mynamenospaces 2h ago
And liberalism offers no solution or alternative to fascism so everything continues to the right
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u/kafkowski 7h ago
Let’s see, on one side, there are billions of dollars of propaganda money ready to be spent to radicalize people constantly, persistently, and through a thousand different avenues. On the other side, we have gestures vaguely nothing?
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u/PandoraPanorama 5h ago edited 1h ago
Yup, capitalism benefits from right wing attitudes because it provides a shield for the systematic inequalities it introduces, and fake solutions that further stabilise the status quo rather than addressing the real issues. So it’s no surprise that there’s money being spent on promoting right wing ideas/ That’s where the saying “capitalism is fascism’s handmaiden” comes from.
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u/PandoraPanorama 5h ago edited 2h ago
Yup, capitalism benefits for right wing attitudes because it provides a shield for the systematic inequalities it introduces, and fake solutions that further stabilise the status quo rather than addressing the real issues. So it’s no surprise that there’s money being spent on promoting right wing ideas/ That’s where the saying “capitalism is fascisms handmaiden” comes from.
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u/Cruxisinhibitor 7h ago
It's rooted in economic hegemony. You're not going to see compassionate, empathetic humans capable of critical thought on the levers of power in a capitalist society because the relationships of production don't incentivize those individuals to remain compassionate, empathetic, or a challenge to "authority" through critical reflection on power dynamics. We live in a corruption machine simply because it keeps a lot of apes fed with a feeling of prestige over others. As the adage goes, "its impossible to get someone to understand something for which their paycheck depends on not understanding it."
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u/ionthrown 6h ago
If we take the UK as an example, the Victorian era had far higher economic and political inequality than the 20th century. It represents ‘peak capitalism’ in the country. Yet throughout the period we see a considerable expansion of the franchise, and increasing state spending on social welfare. How do you explain this?
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u/Roland_Barthender 2h ago edited 1h ago
Not the person to whom you're responding, but I think the issue is somewhat complicated in specifically aristocratic societies, where you often have a cultural concept of noblesse oblige as a "justification" for inequality that is more-or-less absent in a purely capitalistic society that relies on "meritocratic" ideas about individual achievement/talent to justify its inequality. Even if both serve the same purpose of giving people in power a handy way to not understand the proverbial ideas on which their paycheck depends, they will nonetheless lead to some differences in how people exercise that power; for example, a fully capitalist society might be less hostile to upward mobility from the lower classes (because these examples "prove" the system actually is fair), a more aristocratic one less hostile towards spending on social welfare (because doing so "proves" that they are benevolent protectors of society they believe themselves to be). In both cases, they are largely still invested in maintaining the status quo above above doing the right thing, but may end up doing the right thing when that overlaps with their specific rhetorical defense of the status quo.
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u/ionthrown 18m ago
There’s probably some truth in what you say. Notably the more ‘aristocratic’ Conservative Party was usually pushing for social change, while the Liberals pushed for constitutional change.
Still, aristocracy as a concept decreases in importance in this period. I don’t think it’s too contentious to suggest the most successful leaders of these parties were Gladstone (from a family of successful merchants, no notable ancestry) and Disraeli (very middle class, no nobles in the family, didn’t even go to a prestigious school). Money, and support for the mercantile class, is probably more important in gaining power than ancestry or policies based on ancestry. So I think the latter Victorian period is better characterised as capitalist, even in the Reddit sense of the word, than aristocratic.
Of course, societies are complex things, and leaders have all sorts of influences upon them; the same is true today.
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u/Cruxisinhibitor 6h ago
Im not exactly sure how that relates to the concept of hegemonic control of the economy by right wing idealogues, but in order to answer in any meaningful way, id need you to provide statistics, sources, and also a more thorough explanation of the point you're trying to argue. What is the point you're trying to make and could you define what you mean by "franchise" in the above context?
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u/ionthrown 5h ago
I understood your point to be that a capitalist society, inherently linked to the domination of the economy by relatively few individuals, prevents both consideration and change of the political system, and the intentional support of those with less power in the system.
My point is that your statement, of things that are not possible, is incorrect, as an example of their happening exists. And ‘franchise’ is a word commonly used to describe who is allowed to vote on a matter.
But perhaps I misunderstood. Perhaps you’d like to provide statistics, sources, and also a more thorough explanation of the point you're trying to argue.
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u/hawkwings 6h ago
In the US, right wing is whatever the Republican party politicians support and that changes over time. Republican politicians tend to agree on various issues. Voters aren't necessarily aligned the same way. If an anti-immigrant voter supports Medicare for All, is that voter right wing or left wing? If you define right-wing as a series of policies, is there a specific policy within that group that corelates more strongly with what voters gravitate towards during crisis?
George W. Bush was pro-immigrant while many Republican voters were anti-immigrant. This created a crisis within the Republican party which culminated with Trump flipping the party over to anti-immigrant. Then Democrats reflexively switched to the opposite position. Do Republican voters support the same tax cuts that Trump supports? Tax cuts can be used to bribe voters and Democrat politicians are afraid to advocate higher taxes.
Voters have to choose between Democrats and Republicans which can cause voters to vote for things they don't support.
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u/Grantmitch1 5h ago
You can be right wing and still support something resembling a welfare state: see Bismarck.
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u/FuzzyYellow9046 2h ago
This whole Right versus Left paradigm is broken and doesn't capture modern politics.
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u/notmyclementine 6h ago
This should be viewed within the context of the modern world having witnessed communist revolutions across many countries failing to produce improved economic conditions. A push to the right was certainly not the case in, say, 1789, or the 1840s.
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u/steamcube 3h ago
Its also within the context of large global media institutions pushing right wing propaganda for the last 50 years. Journalism has been snuffed in favor of sanitized puff pieces and lies, en masse.
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u/mynamenospaces 2h ago
The two largest communist revolutions, in Russia and in China, dramatically improved quality of life and economic conditions in those countries.
The smaller countries that could be easily bullied by the "Western" world, could not do the same.
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u/InsuranceToTheRescue 5h ago edited 5h ago
Economic crises lead to chaos. This is all very broad but: Right wing politics is about hierarchy and maintaining the status quo, which can often be seen as stabilizing.
Now, to be clear, this is different than conservative politics, although they're often very similar. Conservatism is about maintaining traditional customs, institutions, etc. Something being right-wing is absolute, it just means that you believe social hierarchy is inevitable or even desirable, but conservatism is relative, since what's considered traditional to one could be very radical to someone else.
I find this shift to the right both obvious and strange. I totally understand why people might look to hierarchy and stable social positions as inherently orderly. I get why someone might find comfort in that when everything looks very scary. However, crises, by their nature, require action to address. They're something right-wing politics tends to be very bad at solving, because the crisis itself was typically either caused by that status quo's inability to solve the problem or the rigidness intrinsic in trying to keep everything in society as is.
Essentially, the Right has trouble adapting to circumstances, so they're often not the kind of folks you want to respond to novel situations.
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u/FeelsGoodMan2 6h ago
This is why voting right wing is never going to work out, they have no incentive to improve your life. They know this fact too, so in making your life worse, they know people radicalize.
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u/svefnugr 3h ago
Not really surprising. When tomes are tough, people want someone who will actually try and deal with the problem and not ignore it or reframe it as the new norm.
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u/needlestack 5h ago
When experiencing pain, people want simple answers, complete confidence, and to be told it is somebody else’s fault.
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u/computo2000 6h ago
Because there are no strong left wing movements anymore. When the present system fails, people look for the antisystemic alternatives, which are only the far right nowadays.
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u/thr0w_10 6h ago
Because the left is dominated by people who a lot of the electorate considers the establishment
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u/esituism 3h ago
anyone who thinks the left is 'the establishment' while not pinning this same reputation on the right is a straight dummy.
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u/ShiningRayde 6h ago
'Things are changing because of complex socioeconomic issues that require sufficient planning and foresight to navigate to a equitable end' doesnt sell as well as 'kill the (insert minority of choice) and you will be personally rich.'
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u/420cherubi 6h ago
Which countries are they referring to? I saw the US, France, and Netherlands here, and if all of the countries they studied were similarly Western European countries it's no surprise. The left hardly exists as a viable option in these places due to generations of anti-left cold war propaganda pushed by the states themselves. For most people, there's nowhere to go but further right
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u/Epiccure93 6h ago
Germany just had a mostly left-wing government and Labor is in power in Britain
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u/420cherubi 2h ago
Left wing in the West is very rarely left at all. I don't know about Germany, but Labor is very much a centrist party at this point
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u/ionthrown 6h ago
The left in Europe still gains a significant vote share. In most places it’s shrunk since the “Cold War” and its propaganda ended.
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u/Lonely-Agent-7479 5h ago
And that is exactly why most of the media are pushing the debt crisis narrative lately.
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u/ILuvYou_YouAreSoGood 4h ago
So is it saying that democracy always fades and trends towards the right/fascism?
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u/BayLeafCapital 4h ago
It's disheartening to read the comments that people live on r/science. The very foundation of our civilization, which allows the scientific developments that have occurred, is really in great danger.
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u/indiscernable1 6h ago
Every democracy in the history of civilization has ended in totalitarianism and fascism.
Sad but true.
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u/nanosam 6h ago edited 6h ago
Then every country in the world would be a fascist society. But this is clearly not the case.
Nobody wants to live in an oppressive fascist society.
Also every fascist society failed too.
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u/owhatakiwi 4h ago
You’re correct. We go in cycles. We just happen to be in the decline collapse cycle which always coincides with authoritarianism.
None of it is personal. It’s just human nature.
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u/dovahkiitten16 4h ago
My slightly less pessimistic take on this is that the right is a group that focuses on the individual, meanwhile the left focuses on “disadvantaged” groups. The issue being that in times of hardship, more and more people become disadvantaged so focusing on helping people who are worse off historically starts to feel less and less justified when new groups start to join them.
Obviously, screw the far right. But this is something I’ve noticed in Canada leading up to the election.
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u/belovedkid 3h ago
It’s because the right is openly embracing broad populism while the left is focused on virtue signaling about niche topics that don’t really matter and aren’t very important to the majority of voters.
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u/omeguito 2h ago
Maybe because left-leaning parties fail to prove efficiency of their social programs for which the struggling population have to pay for?
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u/Bluebearder 6h ago
The right wing lies, while the left is much more factual. The right has no problem pointing at foreigners or climate protection or science for every goddamn thing that goes wrong, and that's how they win. We should make mis- and especially disinformation illegal to find the center again.
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u/thr0w_10 6h ago
The right has what I would call a scarcity and zero sum mindset. They believe that the pie is inherently limited and giving others more means you have less. And this is not a totally irrational mindset either. In places like Europe, economic growth and productivity has slowed to a crawl. You can debate the causes but if this has happened, but when this happens, the pie has stopped growing, and giving others more means getting less yourself. So this philosophy is more appealing to the electorate when this actually happens.
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u/Zvenigora 5h ago
On a finite planet all economic activity is ultimately going to evolve toward a zero-sum endpoint. This is logic, not ideology. Endless growth is a fantasy.
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u/HungryGur1243 4h ago
In times of crisis, a more pleasurable illusion that isn't bound by reality is way more enticing than a vision that has to be somewhat bound by reality. Eg mamdani's free buses, vs Trump's you'll never have to see another immigrant again.
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u/Patara 1h ago
Right-wing politics offer no solutions, only boogeyman terms to blame while the politicians siphon out the economy to themselves from underneath.
No, your problems will not be solved if you vote for a pedophile rapist that is telling you its the immigrants that are running your country.
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u/Actual-Toe-8686 5h ago
It's fundamentally easier to blame the other than to understand how the system itself creates economic crises.
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u/DependentFeature3028 6h ago
Communism would solve all our problems but people refuse to embrace it
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u/SweetHoneyBee365 4h ago
The right validates people's anger. Emotional intelligence 101. The left needs to start doing this.
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u/Kaimuund 3h ago
Because strong man fascists just straight up lie while blaming someone for your woes. People get desperate and want to believe the lies and find someone to blame.
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u/wellhiyabuddy 5h ago
Yeah, people are naturally selfish and will default to easy. This makes sense
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