Europe is in a very sorry state lately. A lot of far-right parties are gaining ground and/or winning the elections. Italy has elected a far-righr politician, France and Germany are very close to electing one.
I feel like the 2016 US elections have had a profound influence on ours as well. (Not faulting Americans for how the situation evolved, of course; it's our fault in the first place).
I (American) felt like the Brexit election was a huge catalyst of right wing sentiment across the world. We’re also seeing a big swing in it after the rise of social media in young men’s lives.
I'm convinced it's an economic issue. The oligarchs are canibalizing society as we know it and it's reaching an inevitable tipping point. And the story line that always tracks in a situation of economic unrest, is that brown people are fucking stuff up.
It's both. The western economy is in a slump, people are getting disillusioned and that creates the perfect environment for populist ideas like Fascism to pop-up. The right has wisely noticed the power of social media and they've been flooding the web with propaganda, couple that with bad-faith actors like Russia taking advantage of the situation and you've got yourself a bunch of young, gullible people with no positive outlook for the future being dragged into all sorts of extremism with false promises of change for the better. Not to mention all the boomers coming out of their closets as full-on fascists now that the right has been extremely vocal in favor of said views.
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