This myth applies to the ongoing problem of censorship; Pandora’s box was opened with the release of social media, and society has been dealing with the fallout of the flood of unchecked and unmoderated opinions. The approach that most Western governments (Commonwealth nations making certain speech and denying certain things as a crime) are using is not only incorrect and short-sighted, but has had the opposite effect of what they intended in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
marrow_monkey on
This misses an essential part of the problem: power asymmetry.
Fascist movements don’t survive on raw anger alone. Discontent might appear at the grassroots, but what turns it into a political force is organisation, funding, and media infrastructure. That backing often comes from wealthy actors who have a strong interest in shaping public discourse. Better arguments aren’t enough when one side literally owns the media, has professional propagandists, pr-firms, “think tanks”, lobbyists, Cambridge Analyticas, and more.
Propagandists don’t care about discussion or truth. It’s the old sophists-versus-philosophers problem: one side optimises for persuasion at any cost, the other for truth. On that terrain, sophistry has structural advantages. Humans react faster to confidence and outrage than to careful reasoning.
Fascism is a reaction to capitalism in crisis. When inequality reaches the point where people start asking why wealth keeps concentrating upward while everyone else struggles, the economic order is questioned. Instead of addressing the inequality, elites who benefit from the current system often support nationalist or authoritarian movements that redirect anger away from themselves and onto scapegoats: immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ+ people, whoever is convenient. Fascism may be unpleasant, but it leaves the economic hierarchy intact, which is why the elite find it preferable.
What we see is an arms race between truth and industrial-scale propaganda. The latter is backed by money and institutions that treat public discourse as a battlefield rather than a forum for reasoning. Without addressing the underlying wealth asymmetry nothing will get better, the same dynamics will just keep reproducing themselves.
Edit: just to be clear, you’re right that censorship isn’t the solution.
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This myth applies to the ongoing problem of censorship; Pandora’s box was opened with the release of social media, and society has been dealing with the fallout of the flood of unchecked and unmoderated opinions. The approach that most Western governments (Commonwealth nations making certain speech and denying certain things as a crime) are using is not only incorrect and short-sighted, but has had the opposite effect of what they intended in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
This misses an essential part of the problem: power asymmetry.
Fascist movements don’t survive on raw anger alone. Discontent might appear at the grassroots, but what turns it into a political force is organisation, funding, and media infrastructure. That backing often comes from wealthy actors who have a strong interest in shaping public discourse. Better arguments aren’t enough when one side literally owns the media, has professional propagandists, pr-firms, “think tanks”, lobbyists, Cambridge Analyticas, and more.
Propagandists don’t care about discussion or truth. It’s the old sophists-versus-philosophers problem: one side optimises for persuasion at any cost, the other for truth. On that terrain, sophistry has structural advantages. Humans react faster to confidence and outrage than to careful reasoning.
Fascism is a reaction to capitalism in crisis. When inequality reaches the point where people start asking why wealth keeps concentrating upward while everyone else struggles, the economic order is questioned. Instead of addressing the inequality, elites who benefit from the current system often support nationalist or authoritarian movements that redirect anger away from themselves and onto scapegoats: immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ+ people, whoever is convenient. Fascism may be unpleasant, but it leaves the economic hierarchy intact, which is why the elite find it preferable.
What we see is an arms race between truth and industrial-scale propaganda. The latter is backed by money and institutions that treat public discourse as a battlefield rather than a forum for reasoning. Without addressing the underlying wealth asymmetry nothing will get better, the same dynamics will just keep reproducing themselves.
Edit: just to be clear, you’re right that censorship isn’t the solution.