Thanks, and you’re absolutely right that right wing populism is taking root because there is fertile ground for it. In my view, the question of why people are becoming increasingly enamoured with these ideas is the one that really needs to be asked more. People like Trump have always been around, so what factors are enabling these opportunists today that didn’t exist previously. The systemic pressures leading us where we are today are the real problem that needs to be addressed.
I have a strong intuition that the internet and its incentives and pervasiveness accounts for a large majority of these factors. I don’t know how to evaluate that intuition for truth value, to be honest. Part of the problem is for any given question you look for an answer on the internet, you can find a thousand different answers, and the one you’re most likely to find is the one you already believe (fuck you google). Part of it is regulatory capture- there are practically only restrictions on what the end user of internet services can do, but no real restrictions on ISPs and telecom and data services etc. Part of it is the NSA spying not just on its own sitizens which would be unconscionable by itself, but also the entire rest of the world’s citizens, which is abhorrent and terrifying. Part of it is self-styled “social” media, which is generally understood to mean “advertisment platforms with token incentives to drive users to view advertisements” leading to the mass adoption of lowest common denominator media, entertainment, news. Part of it is increasing incentives to ratchet up viewer engagement, and the easiest way to do that is to make them angry. Put it all together and you find people in echo chambers being fed unregulated corporate propaganda not in their interests, being spied on and potentially reported for non-conforming thought, arguing angrily with people they’ve never met about issues they don’t, couldn’t possibly, fully understand. On both sides. There’s no doubt in my mind that you and I both fall into this trap, but can’t see the forest for the trees.
I love the idea of the internet, and fediverse seems like the perfect incarnation of that ideal. In practice, the internet has mostly been a disaster in my opinion, and given enough time I suspect it will be competing with the industrial revolution for “the worst thing humanity ever achieved.”
I’d actually argue the internet has been a net positive overall because it counters a lot of the control the oligarchs have over the media. For example, if Israel was conducting the genocide before the days of the internet we simply wouldn’t know about it. And we’ve had the internet for a long time now, so access to things like social media and different views doesn’t really explain why particular views become more popular than others.
In my opinion, the main driver of discontent is the deteriorating economic situation. We have major crashes roughly once a decade, and each time a crash happens we see a massive wealth transfer to the top occur. This happened during dot-com bubble, then in 2008, and now with the pandemic. Each time the rich got bailed out while the public was left out to dry. People end up being pushed further and further to the margins, and they have less and less of ability to absorb the next crash that comes. Many people are losing whatever savings they had, and have no hope of retirement. Younger people see little opportunity for themselves, while becoming increasingly pessimistic about the future and problems like the environment.
All of this is pushing people out of the mainstream because they see that the system is not working in their interest. Once people leave the liberal mainstream they become open to different ideas. These come either from the right or the left, and because the left has been effectively gutted in the west, the right is the main source of alternative ideas.
Though I would definitely argue that the internet contributed to, eg, amazon and dotcom bubble, and that it has tended to solidify oligarchic control of information rather than the reverse, I think I have to concede that overall independent economic factors play a larger role.