Ask Lemmy

I think when people feel like things are going downward (quality of life, economy, local security, international security, ecological crisis etc.), tend to regress towards a conservative reflex. They want to protect what they have, by extension, they don't want things to change out of fear of losing what they have, or they attribute the loss of what they had to unrelated change (I lost my job because of immigration).
I think it requires good quality education and information to go past this conservative reflex and understand that accepting some constrains (regulations, taxes) may make society better for everyone.
It also means that manipulating education and information can prevent that and encourage people to take the natural conservative slope. I think "evil" people have found a powerful tool to do that with the mass adoption of social media that they can buy and manipulate.

I see two big solutions, either falling so low that humanism bounces back out of terror of what happened like after WW2. Or managing to implement systems that will prevent nefarious manipulation of information and instead promote humanism.

It's a global far right power grab fueled by money from Russia using weaponized disinformation. It's been going on for decades at a smaller scale before Facebook, etc, even existed. It's also fueled by conservative dark money groups funded by conservative billionaires. You should read the book Dark Money, I highly recommend it.

Even the antivax stuff is from Russia and it way predates the big platforms. It was started in the crunchy mom communities on Livejournal, where they first experimented with seeing if westerners would glom on to weird mommy trends like not using shampoo, nursing your kids to ridiculous ages, "unassisted birth", which is where people deliver babies without any medical care at all, "unschooling", etc. That took off in a big way and then they began with the antivax stuff, and used Livejournal as a tool of Russian government propaganda.

Then they started funding white supremacist groups, and the groups like the yellow vests, Moms for Liberty, etc. Really recommend learning about dark money and Russian weaponized disinformation.

Because it is.

Because people say stupid shit like "but they have laser-guided drones and you have a rifle!"

Fucking idiots do not understand how revolution works and dont know that the US military has failed every invasion.

We are entering a major transition period, with many technological changes happening to disrupt the existing economy. One of the most important is the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

For hundreds of years, the energy economy has been a system where certain countries and companies controlled the locations on earth where fossil fuels are located, and had the technology to process the fuels. Fossil fuels by their nature require the user to buy "feedstock" as they go. The countries and companies that control fossil fuel production profit from this system and are some of the wealthiest groups in the world.

Renewable energy systems, such as solar, wind and batteries, require an upfront payment for the equipment. The cost of equipment for renewable energy is dropping every year. They can be located almost everywhere. There is no ongoing feedstock payment. Renewables break the fossil fuel industry model, and some of the wealthiest people in the world are scrambling to control governments to somehow retain their income flow. Currently their strategy is to delay implementation of renewables, but eventually they will try to create monopolies where they control the source of power and charge the customer about the same as they are paying now, with the utilities benefitting from the low cost of renewable power.

This is only one of the transitions happening at this time. There are many major disruptions coming from implementing AI in the economy, from electric vehicles and self-driving vehicles. There are probably many more transitions that no one is predicting or even imagining at this time. You can expect things to be crazy for a decade or more as these technologies change the way our economy, infrastructure and society is shaped.

Because it always has been. It's called capitalism. This system will literally destroy the planet and enslave all live for the profits of a few ultra privileged man babies.

I think the same but feel a bit better when I go to protests to meet people, working out, reading.

Im taking this time to improve myself and meditate. System is designed to keep the rich without any checks and balances. But we cannot lose our faith in each other, stay close and make tribes. Join clubs. Stick together.

We got this.

because theyve been laying groundwork and slowly infiltrating every corner of our society for over 50 years.

The slow burn was for purpose, to keep people from noticing, and so that anyone that did notice and point it out would look like a crackpot.

and, imho, I think they didnt expect the opportunity trump presented globally, in his first term, but they chose to come out of the shadows and try to exploit it regardless, which is why they've had the stumbling blocks they have had that has given opportunity to fight it.

A ruling class of ultra wealthy lording over the vast majority of people who are left with crumbs is a common sign that an empire is in decline. With the US having more global influence than any previous empire, the whole world will be feeling the effects in one way or another.

You probably feel that way because this is what it feels like when evil wins.

Because good doesn't have the stomach to go blow for blow with evil anymore.

Because people have become comfortable enough (can't remember the downside) to flirt with populism.

Once they get the short sharp shock of what it actually means to be governed by these people we might recover from it... Maybe

Can I reccomend for you Vlad Vexler on utube. He is a polital philosopher in the UK, whp spends most of his time dealing with this topic. He has some wonderul content which is both educated and humane.

In some ways, evil is getting the upper hand at the moment, mostly brought on by moderates failing to address basic and fundamental problems forming in society due to being corporate captured.

However, we have a few options at our disposal to fight back:

1. Joining and organizing within your local community to create connections with others is incredibly powerful, will make the coming months much more bearable, and lay the ground work for effective resistance.
2. We can still effect things drastically with a general strike. This massively impacts their income streams, and can bring the country to its knees if done on a large enough scale.
3. Join the IWW and attempt to unionize your workplace, so that the general strike is even more effective.

If we put in the work, we can resist this and we can win. Don't become paralyzed with doubt and fear, march on and push as much you can. Together we're strong, separated we are weak. So join up with allies while we still can easily!

Why does it feel like evil is winning globally?

Propaganda works.

We are now innundated with it. And the answer is not "anti-propaganda" although sometimes that helps a little.

The answer is everyone needs to learn how media works; How words and images and sounds form the world.

And to do that requires the help of media corporations.

Fascism is rising because the bourgeoisie is funding it to keep out Communism, Socialism, Marxism, and other things that explain why most people globally cannot afford a house, or why England pays such low wages, or why groceries are so expensive in America, or why Germany is undergoing an economic collapse. Once you understand Marxism even simply, these quotes will start to make sense.

P.S. If you're going to say that fascism is rising in power, please just say that. I know that things are shitty because fascism is rising, but I hate when people are vague.

Because the slow decay of the capitalist order that has been occurring since the neoliberal turn has reached the point where it's effects are being felt in the global North

Evil people control almost all sources of information

That is the eventual conclusion of capitalism, the way it is currently set to play out.

The only forces that could act against it depend on the distribution of critical information.... And those are owned by the same private interests.. Soooooo. We'll see. Doesn't bode well at all.

Because history is cyclical, and at all times some forces are on the losing side of it. Back in the days when the left was more powerful, the right complained about winning evil. Now it's the other way around.

Note: this is not a "both sides" argument, I am left.

Change requires a massive push, and apparently people need to suffer much much more, to inspire that momentum.

Just an hour ago I heard EmiliaRoig.com talking on the EuropeansPodcast.com (minute 28) and she said something that at first sounded naïve to me. But in hindsight, it may be true.

She said that "times are changing for the better (i.e. referring to the last 10 years or more.) and what we are seeing nowadays is just a shout of despair to that, being done by right-wing extremists, and is loud."

I can recommend all that she said afterwards, be warned: talks fast ;p

I saw a chart that globally, the incumbent parties have lost more in these elections than before. https://www.ft.com/content/e8ac09ea-c300-4249-af7d-109003afb893

I'd guess this is because things are going badly economically, so people wanted change.

Evil is not held back by scruples or moral boundaries. Evil people will do whatever they need to to succeed. That includes manipulating people, something which today's technology facilitates. Add to that the fact that for many people in developed countries, life is slowly getting worse instead of improving over the last few years. The frustration over that can easily be turned into hate against minorities, foreigners etc.

Evil use to hide - but through Trump's no filter twitter postings, Musk's self-aggrandizing incompetence, and Russia's realization that they no longer have to hide their evil-doing, a lot of the evil these days is just out in the open.

Imagine a world where a competent president is hiding behind close doors planning a way to defund USAID and starve millions of people. Planning behind close doors cutting medicare by 1 trillion dollars, killing thousands of Americans, and using that money to fund a trillion dollar tax break for the mega rich. You wouldn't know any of that is happening.

Now it is front page news, and people are reacting by boycotting Amazon for one day on the 28th.

Media bias. Trump is outrage and outrage moves views and views are profit. Trump is the greatest thing to happen to the media - regardless of side. We're also more connected today than we ever were before so this media gets to everyone in an instant.

Are evil people really winning globally more than they were in the past? Well.. no. We've seen more shit in the second half of the 20th century than we are now. There's still 25 years to catch up though. Heres some shit thats gone down fro 1950-2000.

• Cold War - though it does seem like we are moving back to this state, we're far from living like that
• Korean War, Vietnam War, Kuwait,
• Cuban Missile Crisis,
• Basically every Arab nation against Israel - wars galore,
• Suez crisis,
• Iranian revolutions,
• Sino-Soviet Split,
• India-Pakistan,
• Soviet-Afghan war,
• Numerous African civil wars in the 60s, 70s and 90s (till ongoing),
• South African Apartheid,
• Numerous south American dictatorships (+ CIA interventions in south America backing right wing dictators),
• Falklands war - the fucking UK went to war with Argentina in the fucking 80s!
• All the shit in Yugoslavia (wars, genocide),
• "The Troubles" in N. Ireland.

A lot of these have been resolved.

Simple material effect.

People are shaped by the interrest of the social and material class they are part of. And the evil people are always the one in power and have the money, so they act in the interest of their class and do things that help themselves.

Fucking Marx wrote about this quite a while ago, now his predictions just manifest more visibly, but the cultural and material forces have always been at play. Now we just reached a breaking point as a planet and population, so the underlying systems start to break too and the people on top do everything to stay in power, including ditching reality altogether.