Opinion: Why do so many young white men in America find fascism ‘cool’?

Rudderless men with little career prospects realizing they'll never get to a comfortable lifestyle without a major change.

They can either change themselves for the better or join a movement that aims to change society and hope that it propels them upward.

Better education, empathy, and economic conditions can turn the tide, but it's a big job.

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That’s literally all there is to it. Even in the olden days it was a well known fact that a generation of young men without (economic, social, romantic) perspective is a generation who will radicalize to either side. If the system isn’t working for them they will seek to change the system.

If politicians were serious about curbing extremism they would make sure everyone simply lives a decent standard of living, with prospects for their future.

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- This 💯
  
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- Its also why I believe most modern governments try REALLY hard not to go to war. Not because of the death and destruction but because they dont want a combat trained populace.
  
  Also because shared adversity unites, the differences between people get really unimportant when they are trying to keep each other alive in combat.
  
  The idea of a significant percentage of "us" coming back and being united and trained well enough to actually threaten the system scares the piss out of them.
  
  0
I think your more or less correct, but I wanted to point out that there is also a lack of support for these men.

I'm currently at university and so far as I have been able to find there is exactly zero support, or desire for white, cis men. There are advertised support groups, grants and bursaries, and programs for literally every other demographic on campus. If your a white man however your on your own, often because "oh, your part of the patriarchy and don't need help".

It makes it tough to change for the better when its seems that all the groups that seek to improve conditions for the repressed usually point at white men and say "Your bad and should feel bad because your a man". I either stand alone or with the fascists, so I stand alone and do my best to be supportive of human rights for all from the outside.

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- That is true, more support is needed all around, and there is a crisis of men questioning themselves and their society, along with well-funded outside forces ready to radicalize them.
  
  The central question is compelling because self development and changing society are both vitally important, and we need to be doing a LOT better than yelling "No, not like that!"
  
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It's the same logic as lotto players. Spend this little bit of money/effort while expecting life changing results.

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It also must be noted that the left in the US has been vilifying men for many years now. It's starting to change, but that made it easy for extremists to swoop in and radicalize men.

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- It's not the left who's been villifying men, it's TERFs, who are firmly right wing and in fact love hanging out with Nazis.
  
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@Pronell @spaduf after equity dismantled my son’s gifted programs as “vehicles of white supremacy” it became obvious that the new problem is a rapidly failing “symbolic elite.” Gaslighting is their main argument at this point in history. I am also profoundly academically with a high income an extremely effective rudder. 😉

https://musaalgharbi.com/2021/05/05/book-announcement-we-have-never-been-woke/

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One: because fascist would ensure their place at the top of the social/political/financial pyramid.

Two: because the world's economic system lied to them. Being a morally good, hard working human guaranteed a comfortable life. In fact being morally good and/or hard working may actually be a hindrance to living a comfortable life.

Three: poor education and exploitation. Ever book that is banned or text book that says, "slavery was understandable in fact slavers are benevolent leaders saving the 'others' from themselves." and you know, being used by those that actually hold power. Donald Trump would pretend to be the next Joseph Stalin if it ment he would be protected by those willing to do violence in his name. Just the fact that governments have" heads of state" means those that want to be president, king, prime minister probably should be allowed to be leaders.

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Not sure point One is fully correct. I think they often realize things is going to be shitty for everyone, but they think it will be less shitty for them if it gets more shitty for others. They know they will be an exploited working class (even if it is not phrased that way for them) as long as there is a part of the working class (immigrant workers, women workers, ...) that is beneath them it makes them feel more 'on top'.

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- Ya but making everyone else's life more shitty ensures they are still "on top" in their eyes. It's the same reason most confederate men fought in the civil war even though they didn't own slaves. Ya their life sucked but at least they weren't slaves. The moment more human beings get emancipated, be that from slavery, wage slavery, women suffrage, segregation, etc that means they have more competition in the flawed economic, social, and political systems designed around capitalism.
  
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Because they are immersed in an ecosystem that pretends that respect for human dignity and unearned respect for authority are identical because they use the same word.

They believe that others should respect the innate authority they feel they should hold as men. Simultaneously, since they don't get that, they don't feel like they need to respect other people's right to exist.

And then a group promises them everything they've ever wanted, if they are willing to do fascist shit. Of course they're into it.

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I highly doubt any language is more correlated with authoritarianism, particularly the English language. There is a cultural aspect to collective action over individualism, but I think authoritarianism is a base human personality trait.

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- You might change your view about that if you ever read "Mutual Aid" by Peter Kropotkin. I used to think the same, but it appears things like authoritarianism and hierarchies actually run contrary to evolution. Not that the trait doesn't exist, but it appears to be something that has been exacerbated in cultures that deliberately adopt a hierarchical system vs. something that's just natural to all humans.
  
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Couple of things:

Social justice influencers acridly piling blame for social problems onto cis white males without nuance. This makes a lot of cis white males feel targeted for factors outside their control, and so they flock to ideologies that venerate them.
General dissatisfaction with career and other life prospects, in the shadow of an idyllic bygone status-quo propped up by exploitative short term policies. They saw their parents and grandparents thrive in that trad-coded utopia, and they're noticing the inadequacies of their own prospects.

So mostly those two things, exacerbated by fascist propagandists who have taken advantage of them to promote the facade of a return-to-roots. Also good old fashioned cult of personality.

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I feel that point 1 is actually a fascist in disguise psyop in the first place.

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- You’d think that, but no, there are tons of people on the left who code “white people” as bad. It just pushes these guys (and gals) to the right.
  
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To your first point, the nature of communicating right now, particularly on the internet, means there is no room to have two different voices:

You can’t have an “inside voice” (communicating to those who already agree with you and reinforcing micro-cultural support) and an “outside voice” (communicating with everyone else, potentially finding or convincing new supporters); every statement is heard by everyone and is, de facto, outside voice.

And that’s only for people who would otherwise care to differentiate— the overall culture views conflict as a virtue, and so rewards people who “tell it like it is,” ignoring the fact that you can tell it like it is in ways that don’t maximize belligerence and alienation.

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Bro Rogan.

Its real simple. It gives them identity and something to go after in a society that offers them nothing. So they get into woodworking, hunting, fighting, only eat meat for a while or some shit.

Males are expendable, the way that all people in capitalism are expendable. But to quote Babe from animal farm: Some are more expendable than others. Males have lower impulse control and have a biological more likely to engage in high risk/ high reward. Most white males are facing the same dilemmas and contradictions around the shittiness and meaninglessness of their existence as everyone else; every one else just doesn't have a direct pipeline to radicalism engineered for them. For years YT has been trying to steer me down the white nationalist rabbit hole, in-spite of how unappologetically leftist the programing I consume is. I'm a bit older and I've been around and politically aware since I was a teen and made the impulsive decision to enlist, then months later we were invading Afghanistan and then Iraq.

To incorrectly quote Michael Brooks quoting MLK incorrectly: "Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.". The right offers a clear moral framework for engaging with young men and giving them a 'moral right' to fight for. The left is contradicted on this, and don't understand what it means to take on a spiritual crusade. But Michael Brooks did. He understood that having something to base your work around is critical.

This same issue plagues young men from all nationalities and walks of life, not just young white men in the US. We have to collectively find a way to give meaning to peoples lives or that innate search for meaning will be taken advantage of.

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Some dude building a bench is an issue?

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There is no overlap ... they are the same thing. It's not new, it's a continuation.

This isn't a new movement, its the same idea that was forwarded by fascists that started the second world war.

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I suspect there are a lot of disenfranchised people looking for a strongman to tell them they belong.

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Because they are the one group that doesn't need to think "If I start singling out this group of people for any reason, then others will use that same approach with me". Ironically, the reason for the vigour of their fascism is the blindly stupid argument that young white men will soon be exctinct.

1

They're butthurt that being white men doesn't give them enough unfair advantages anymore, and they're not capable enough to succeed without them.

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I mean, you don't have to sympathize with someone to try and understand them.

You'll never beat something you don't understand.

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