1) Moving the goalposts.
The right has worked diligently behind the scenes for many decades to shift the centre of political discourse as far right as possible. It began with the "Red Scare" of the Cold War era, and systematically continued long after the dissolution of the former Soviet Bloc. Consider the recent American election as the quintessential example. Americans were presented a false political dichotomy between a right wing war hawk who voted to invade Iraq, and a man who kept a book of Hitler speeches on his bedside table. Hardly the fullest representation of the ideological smorgasbord.
Those of us old enough to remember the Cold War should consider that many of the same character smears and arguments the right now uses against Liberals, it once used against Communists.
How the right has continued to unilaterally push the system in modern years is a matter of pressure, especially upon the media. Which brings us nicely onto point two.
2) Charging the media with Liberalism.
Concluding their analysis of the MSM over the past half a century, Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky discovered in 1988 that this accusation was categorically false. Furthermore, the vast amount of material evidence they gathered supports that the opposite is true. The MSM is bullied -- and kept on the back foot -- by a perpetual wave of criticism from the right that it has a Liberal bias, and it is precisely this ceaseless pressure which prevents it from venturing too far outside the false dichotomy of right and further right. The terminology used by Herman and Chomsky is "flak", and it effectively restricts the media through its advertising clients, who throw a disgruntled tantrum if the political views of their customer base are ever offended.
3) Resurrection of nationalism.
As the great Albert Einstein once said: "Nationalism is the measles of mankind." It is a religion in which the place of origin is perceived as the deity, unifying its followers and inflaming them with a common purpose. Defend the country. Defend the god. It is the same primitive form of social control packaged slightly differently. Dictators and demagogues adore things like nationalism and religion because they are great unifiers of people. Love of king and country, and so forth...
4) Calculated projection.
Many people are familiar with Hitler's "big lie" (that is, you tell an absolute whopper and just keep repeating it over and over and over again), but the modern right has adopted a considerably more sinister technique from their German ancestors. This can be illustrated in the form of very deliberately accusing the opposition of their own crimes.
The Nazis of course were vehemently anti-Communist and anti-Jewish, and wanted every piece of leftist literature out of The Reichstag. So, they simply burned down The Reichstag and accused the Communists of doing it before they could make any statements to the contrary. On the smaller scale of internet debating forums, this technique is applied constantly by right wing trolls, who turn up by the dozen in "fake news" threads they have spammed with upvotes, to accuse the sole dissenter of being a CIA shill or Communist spy. More often than not the people spamming these threads know the sources are complete bunk because a thirty second media bias fact check red flags them as extremely untrustworthy. But they continue to spam them with upvotes and call anybody who interferes a shill. This is calculated projection, and with a distinctly Nazi flavour (i.e. brute force the dissenters).
5) Populism.
A more egregious beast than even nationalism, populism is the anti-Christ of the ideological kingdom for the simple reason that it works to reverse cause and effect. No longer should that which is true be popular. Instead, that which is popular becomes true. Populism is the sparkling eye of the deceiver. His justification to tell you to go kill yourself when you point out the duplicity of his words. The emperor laughing at your "stupidity" when you tell him he isn't wearing any clothes. Children run their societies based upon popularity. Adults run their societies based upon the law of truth and reason.
For these reasons, far right philosophy is the product of regressive thinking and reminiscent of more primitive times both in our own lives and as a species. If humanity is permitted to subjectively shape that which is demonstrably objective -- truth -- then humanity becomes a self-consuming snake, attacking itself in a perpetual state of hungry madness.
It all comes down to this. The right wants a strict hierarchical order to society, where your worth is a direct representation of your economic output. It wants you competing for the same jobs and the same resources, without ever considering how much more we could achieve were we all moving in the same direction. Things like religion, nationalism, patriotism and populism are all popular with the far right for the exact same reason. They all offer ways outside the constraints of logic to unite people to the common goal of power, whenever it is considered necessary.
If you have read through all of my bullshit to the very end, then I thank you kindly for spending your time with me.
Peace.
view the rest of the comments →
Rainy-Day-Dream ago
an artist who loved animals and fought for peace and his people once explained this quite clearly