/b/ - Siberia

this year in US politics at least has for me confirmed how prescient Marx's "first as a tragedy, then as a farce" statement is in describing fascism. we're at a point of being many layers removed from there even being any coherent image of nationalism for the far-right to latch onto because we no longer live in a world broadly where geographic borders mean anything, but unfortunately there's still enough of a reserve of temporarily-embarrassed small business owners who were fucked over in the 2000s by the contradictions in capital leading to a decline in the neoliberal western imperial core having any relevance or viability through anything other than the increasingly naked and incompetent exercise of brute force on a third world that has increasingly developed its productive forces. these petit-bourg types who form the base of fascist movements only latch onto an image of nationalism because they've seen it in media and feel justified to be bad now, like it's very obvious that none of them actually believe in any of this shit and that it's all a big cope about how the old world is dying.

it's odd today because right-parties say stuff that is kind of fascist, I see it most of all in the U.S. with Homeland Security and ICE, especially this weird HOI IV mod-inspired aesthetic that they put out on social media. But then Mamdani wins (he's also a "socialist") and then he meets Trump in the White House and they have a "productive conversation about lowering the cost of living for New Yorkers." It still falls back on that technocratic, apolitical and non-ideological framework when they do "politics."

It throws people who read a lot of ideology into these people for a spin. A lot of younger people change ideology so often because it's all memes. You change your ideology when the memes become cringe. Look at the ideologies adopted by 99 percent of people on any side. Marxist-Leninist. Catholic Integralist. Leftcom (Italian), Leftcom (Dutch-German), l/r/e/u/acc. Classical Fascist. NatSoc. SocDem. SocLib. AnCom. AnCap. It's hard to discern the actual positions between them that's either not that far removed from the center-left or center-right, or if edgier than that is not just contrarianism.

unfortunately it's also happening at enough of a pivotal point in history that the extinction burst fascist tantrum could succeed in dragging the rest of the world down with it.