Too much escapism here at Daughter Number Three in the last couple of days, so it's time for some more worry! (Sorry about that.)
Yesterday, after seeing an Australian poll showing a surge toward the Right, a person on BlueSky asked
what’s going on with the world man. why is the far right resurgent everywhere? it’s easy to blame whatever policy boogeyman (neoliberalism, housing shortage, immigration, etc etc) but I think it has to be something deeper.
maybe lived memory is dying out of how evil fascism is
Another person, whose bio says they study the Third Reich, reposted that with this comment:
More to the point, this is happening in *non-white* countries as well: Japan, Turkey, and India have huge far-right nativist blocs. So it's not merely white supremacy or nostalgia for the days when the West ruled.
Nor is it happening purely in developed post-material countries.
In turn, a sociologist named Katherine Alejandra Cross posted the previous two, along with this:
It's impossible to exonerate the internet, and social media in particular here. It allowed for the efficient networking and ratcheting-up of our worst impulses at unbelievable speed and scale. In-group/out-group dynamics are as old as the hills, but social media is a particle accelerator for them.
One response to Cross's thought, from a person named Mecha-Herz, may be correct, I'm afraid:
And counter to some of the arguments about eventual equilibrium after the introduction of the printing press, radio etc., I'm not convinced we can meaningfully adapt to these new technologies. Our brains are not evolved to deal with this shit.
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