Fascism doesn’t just come and go because people wax and wane in collective stupidity, it’s a very specific set of conditions including Class Colaborationism, rising nationalism, and declining material conditions causing people to long for “the good old days” and “take care of our own, the immigrants are stealing from us so we can’t.” The Class Colaborationism bit is important, because it explains why Social Democracies are especially vulnerable to fascism, as Social Democracy is also based on Class Colaborationism, just not based on nationalism and violent suppression.
People don’t randomly become fascist out of nowhere, it’s a failure to move forward and improve conditions that is being taken advantage of by bad actors to solidify power.
Note that conditions haven’t been getting worse in America, but there’s a campaign by the populists to make people feel like it’s worse.
The economy is better than before the pandemic, the wages have finally started beating inflation (to the point people are making more now in wages than before the pandemic). But if you’re on social media you would not think this is the case.
Conditions have been getting worse. Capitalism requires this. Wealth disparity is skyrocketing, wages fail to keep up with productivity, and American Imperialism is causing genocide.
A minor uptick as compared to a couple years ago does not mean Capitalism is no longer declining.
Except the uptick is from 1990, it’s been getting better for about 34 years now, with setbacks in the dotcom crash, financial crisis and the pandemic.
There haven’t been better wages at any point in US history as we beat the uptick of the 1970s some time ago
Yeah, free, happy and educated people don’t suddenly wake up as fascists one day.