Row 25204

Content Data

This page contains data entry 25204 from the Axioma AXP content repository. The structured data below represents the complete record for this entry.

Raw Record

{
  "text": "> Where this has happened historically there has been a genuinely perceived threat to the moderates from the hard left, which has driven them into the arms of the hard right. What's worrying today is that that threat doesn't exist, but is still being projected against moderate, milquetoast centrists of all people by the far right, which is either being ignored or being treated as normal polical discourse.\n\nThat is true, but perception is the key word here. In most countries, this perceived threat included social democracy, unions, ..., and the moderate right went along with it all the same. There is no far left to destroy any more, do they take aim at social democracy and its institutions.\n\n> What's worrying today is that that threat doesn't exist, but is still being projected against moderate, milquetoast centrists of all people by the far right, which is either being ignored or being treated as normal polical discourse.\n\nIndeed. IMHO, this difference is there because the position of the moderate right had, for a time, changed and then reverted to their pre-war position. Society has changed, they have gone backwards.\n\nThey more or less accepted things like unions, social security, political participation by the working class, ... They were forced to draw a distinction between these things and the threat of the radical left (i.e. communism) because if they didn't, they would lose most of their voters, who might disagree on which people should get those rights but do, in fact, want them for themselves. But in the 80'ies the post-war consensus shattered. They no longer accept social democracy, but the institutions created by the latter are now embedded in society. Hence the disconnect between their rhetoric and what a rational person would see: they want to remove institutions that are now part of everyday life, and to do so they have to pretend that they are exponents of the far left. The logical conclusion is that every milquetoast centrist who defends them must be far left.\n\n> Nothing is driven by rationality or even self interest, but rather a huge rump of stupidity and ignorance. There is no honestly in reporting, far right plans and positions are casually brushed off whilst the people pushing them are presented as a moderate, normal politicians by the media, allowing the ignorant to vote for them without agreeing with their positions outside of a few popular curated arguments. I think it's really dangerous.\n\nIndeed, but this broadly mirrors the mood in the 30'ies. Those far right movements were seen as lunatics back then too, even by the moderate right and its leaders. In many cases the political / military leadership despised them because of the populist aspects they incorporated into their ideology. They saw them as a useful distraction of the \"ignorant\" working classes. They still supported them, mostly because they promised to destroy the left. In practice, this wasn't just the communists but also the unions and the social democrats. Those promises were kept too, and that formed the basis of the reactionary coalition that took over.\n\nThe similarities with today are striking. Today's oligarchs (from media moghuls to tech CEO's) also tend to hold reactionary views. They, the racists, the misogynists, the neo-fascists, the religious fundamentalists, ..., are in the same camp because, however much they disagree about everything else and however disparate their material interests, they all believe in a moral and social hierarchy where they are placed above everyone they dislike. What unites them is a hatred of equality and a sense of their own superiority. And just like them, they offer their followers a pleasing alternative to the actual social hierarchy based on wealth, where your social status depends on your identity and, implicitly, on their capacity to destroy equality and turn what used to be rights into privileges.\n\nTo those susceptible to these views, who already internalize the basic reactionary idea of a moral and social hierarchy, this alternative becomes more rather than less appealing as more and more avenues to prosperity and social mobility get shut down by the very people who bankroll these movements. This explains why they don't see the problem with depicting moderate social democrats as communists. It has nothing to do with the actual meaning of either term, and everything to do with the fact that they don't (or no longer) believe in equality. Progress becomes degeneracy when you believe in an unchangeable order, any institution or party promoting equality as an assault on your own rights if you see society as a zero sum game, democracy itself as \"rigged\" when it empowers others.\n\nIt's madness, IMHO, but then it was so before.",
  "label": "r/politics",
  "dataType": "comment",
  "communityName": "r/politics",
  "datetime": "2024-05-21",
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}

Entry Information

• Entry ID: 25204
• Repository: Axioma AXP
• Dataset: arrmlet/reddit_dataset_36
• Total Entries: 100,000