I’ve been thinking on this question for a while now, and here’s what I came up with:
Nazi’s (and their enablers/apologists) are people who actively choose to be monsters.
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There’s variation in location and obfuscation in the difference between statistics and live culture.
Where I’ve lived for a decade and a half, Trump supporters seem to be largely middle-class or above. Working class was more likely to go Clinton or Sanders.
But where I lived for many years in the south, a lot of the working class very vocally supports everything Trump-related. That may not show in the poll statistics, since relatively fewer of them vote. But they’ll continue to spread Trump propaganda (and all that goes along with it) the same way they loudly cheer on their local football team. They’ll wear the hats and the t-shirts, share the memes, and make anyone anti-Trump feel like an outcast.
In one strict sense, the opinions of those who don’t vote may be considered not to matter. But it can still affect things culturally. Humans are social creatures, and when everyone around is waving confederate flags and chanting Trump slogans, that becomes the norm.
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Yup, for sure.
I don’t think you intended this, and I don’t want to actually seriously poke you, and I’m trying to phrase this as diplomatically as possible, but…
It’s kinda distinctive that those quoted paragraphs treat “working class” and “white working class” as synonymous. You don’t see a lot of Confederate flags in Southern Black neighbourhoods.
But, there is some truth to this:
However, I do not believe that poor white Southerners are more racist than rich white Southerners. And the enthusiasm with which Liberals endorse LBJ’s sentiment often has more than a touch of classist motivation to it. Diverting responsibility for social ills onto the poor is a perenially popular pastime for the middle and upper classes.
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A very apt point. In the south, some areas are still (after all this time) quite segregated and whites still have quite a majority. That’s the type of area that I was describing. I’m sure in the black neighborhoods things are quite different. Most likely, they’re having a very unpleasant time, considering the neighborhoods they’re surrounded by.
And having been there, I’d say that the LBJ quote is quite apt, but you’re right that it’s not just the lower class.
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As was German fascism. Thyssen, Krupp and Bayer to be exact.
All of whom enthusiastically used slave labour and watched Hitler pass laws that basically meant they could exploit their workers.
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Yet some sports fans do show that their loyalty isn’t unconditional
(I know, different game of football)
A few years ago some British Antifa sources told me that John Terry is a true believer in fascism, but I have no evidence to back that up. His past behaviour is enough for me to hope that he never plays for Carlisle, but I figure that Keith Curle is unlikely to sign a player who will give him or other players abuse for the colour of their skin. In my mind he’s on the same blacklist as Paolo di Canio (Who is openly fascist and really does believe that Mussolini didn’t do anything wrong).
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This guy has been making the press rounds, but in this interview, I was particularly interested in his discussion of how they move people out of Nazi groups.
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Because they hate themselves.
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Which Rome? Mussolini’s Rome? Caesars Rome as it was? Casesar’s Rome as the fascists describe it?
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I thought it was obvious. Republican Rome. Once there were emperors, ultimate rule rested with the Army, but the Senate and the Knights continued to function on a more local scale.
Look at the history, including the gerrymandering of the law courts (fas and nefas days that only the patricians had the calendar to know about), and the conflicts with the Tribunes. Patrician control of the religion in general, and the control of the masses by the lictors.
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Minor nit, I don’t get much of a middle class vibe here. Lots of people working what used to be middle-class jobs. Not so much what’s going on now.
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I call it the death cult: the dystopian idea that there are a massive number of disposable people at the bottom of society while the rich, who are disposable in their behavior at least, are thought to be the indispensible inheritors of everything.
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Exactly this. I’m getting a lower class vibe here, even though a lot of people are still working middle class jobs.
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Isn’t it just that Trumpists are whiter, richer, and less educated? (Setting aside racister, sexister, and xenophobicer, and pro-police-brutalitier.) So of course a disproportionate number are going to have had jobs which paid well and didn’t require as much education.
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It’s more that wages haven’t caught up to inflation yet.
This doesn’t justify Trumpism, it’s just a growing trend that has yet to be addressed.
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I’m not even talking about low-paid work, but all work. Cost of living has gone up 2-3x since I left college, but wages have increased maybe half that.
As for low-paid exploitative work, the minimum wage should be $15/hr, end of story, and the gig economy can DIAF.
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But what does that have to do with Trump’s support? In terms of economics, Trumpists were and are richer and less educated.
I know the newspapers like to attribute this to the “white working class,” but it ain’t so, and it is a way to insinuate that the working class is really white.
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IMO inflation really is as low as the official indices say. The reason elites prefer low inflation is decreasing inflation improves real return beyond expectations. Increasing inflation on the contrary improves return of labor vs capital. You can’t do either indefinitely – and there’s other ways to improve returns to labor – but there’s reasons pegging low inflation was correlated with other post-1970s conservative economic reforms deforms.
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Because there are economic issues that are affecting everybody. We know we can’t just vote for the same old same old. The younger and poorer are trending more towards socialism, and the older and richer (or, more middle-class) are turning toward fascism.
Plus, there’s the strong racist undercurrents that have always been present in US politics, that have nothing to do with economic issues, but we’re acting like we’re just learning about these things now.
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Especially in some police forces. Then there are all the manual jobs which have been displaced by automation, or in which more education is now required (the certifications required for plumbers and electricians these days are quite complicated.)
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