I was sliding down the alt-right rabbit hole, mostly out of loneliness. Algorithms and echo chambers love loneliness.
I think there’s a really important threshold, and I’m ashamed to say I reached it, where you know it’s propaganda. Where you stop falling down the rabbit hole and start walking down it of your own accord.
The first propaganda, you believe. Some people commit crimes, or hate you, or are dangerous. Capitalism is freedom. The stuff an uncurious and uncareful person can believe all of and still be internally consistent, if wrong.
Then there’s the propaganda that requires you to acknowledge the lies you believed earlier were lies. No, it isn’t Hispanic people that commit crimes - it’s Jewish people! Capitalism isn’t freedom - libertarianism, or state capitalism, or whatever buzzword for company towns is in vogue.
And you know the stuff you believed before isn’t true. But you still say it in polite company, you mask and start to pretend you aren’t someone who believes what you do. You know it’s unacceptable.
That’s what got me out. Realizing that I was in a dark cycle of self-isolation and internet addiction, and trying to be deliberately social and empathetic and present. Therapy helps, but you’ve gotta want it.
Wasn’t a fascist but was maybe 30% baked into one around 2015. One day I was in my room, listening to a Sargon video, when I was stuck by a moment of clarity and thought “Jesus christ, all these people are unbelievably whiny fucking dorks who never stop complaining about shit that doesn’t matter, and also the bigotry was never actually a joke.”
Then I found CTH and never looked back. Just generally growing up and maturing helped too.
Do they pretend it’s a joke or something?
What’s “CTH” mean? Contract-to-hire, Carson Tahoe Health, Confederation of Tourism & Hospitality, Closer To Home, Commonwealth, Chemotherapy, Chal Theek Hai, Chug the Handle, or was it Cranking The Hog? You meant Cranking the Hog, didn’t you? …and you didn’t look back.
Probably Chapo trap house
You’re both right
Me too. They just wouldn’t stfu about trans people
not truly fascist but i was raised reactionary and held these views for a while on and off as a kid.
there weren’t fascism influencers back then, but when i thought of following the rabbit hole to its logical conclusion, the overt racism and swastikas started coming out and that’s what shook me awake. the leftists in my life who talked to me helped a lot.
my country had to project a fascist into the mainstream who openly said the quiet part out loud and i had to see a lot of people around me falling for the rabbit hole i almost fell into myself for me to truly radicalize though. i looked up what that scary phenomenon was, and finally knew for sure what side i wanted to be on.
Not a fascist at any point, but in music spaces you do notice many of these pipelines. It just takes personal responsibility to find artists who reject that from their scene. Electronic music is littered with fascists but plenty of radicals too
I was raised fascist and bought into it. But the inherent unfairness of capitalism can’t be hidden. My first thought was that the people who said “capitalism is the only way” weren’t wrong but just outdated, that even if capitalism had been a go of system it was obsolete. This cracked open the door to Marxism which lead to a whole transformation over time.
I share this because I think it provides us some hope: even if the fascists won their ideas would only last so long before their own children became anarchists.
I wouldn’t say I used to be far-right but at high school, I have some right-wing opinion which is mostly from YouTubers I used to watch as well as I have internalise my homophobia and ableism because I get made fun of being queer and autistic that I felt like something was wrong with me.
It was around lockdown that I graduated from high school. It made me realise of the times I tried to get validation from my classmates which I never really got. Also, Black Lives Matter was trending on TikTok which made me realise how very shallow right-wing space is with them constantly moving the goalpost and framing certain scenario a certain way to fit to their agenda.
I still hate myself for it and despite I have changed, I still beat myself over it and wish I can cut myself. Better late than never but I wish I wasn’t that desperate for validation that I think even the slight gay representation is too “on the nose”.
Don’t beat yourself up about your opinions as a high schooler, it’s an age where you are very vulnerable to outside inputs, very attached to the opinions of your family (don’t know if that’s your case at all), and barely have any life experience that can disprove a lot of these ideas in practice. You should feel proud that you managed to realize these issues with your self and fix them instead of letting them fester like so many people do.
One might very well argue that someone who came to a realization and mended their way has an even better understanding and appreciation for the new value than someone who didn’t question their upbringing, even if they always had noble values.
Don’t beat yourself over it. The fact that you came to that realisation, makes you human. You aspire to be a better person, and that’s what is important. Don’t let wrong choices direct you in life! We all make ‘em.
I feel like the Venn diagram of Lemmy users and (current or ex-) fascists has very little overlap.
Happy to be proved wrong though.
I think the ex-fascists subgroup you mentioned, addressed in this question, is actually representative of intrinsic critical thinkers whose nature overcame their upbringing. These I think are quite natural lemmings (a particularly ironic name).
I’m not happy for you to be proved wrong! Deplatforming fascists is always welcome.
Seconded, but they did say ex-fascists
Agreed, but you mentioned current ones, and I was replying to you.
tru
♥️ Lemmy
I saw a post a couple days ago defending north Korea… so there is definitely some overlap. .
The country that was genocided by a military partially made up of actual former Nazis? And then rebuilt themselves under embargo into a society where housing is a human right? Not sure you’re super familiar with fascism.
You can’t just call everything you deem bad fascist, you’re taking away all the meaning from that word
Fascism is characterized by support for a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
Explain how that doesn’t describe North Korea.
Because you omitted the most important characteristic of fascism. The melding of State and Capital to further the interests of Capital
Fascism is just one of the many forms of authoritarianism
Totally different species of retard, they are not fascists
In the west, they teach that communism = authoritarianism and totalitarianism. They teach that no one would willingly let an elected government plan anything, and therefore we should submit to the will of random ass rich people.
OK so the current communist leaders aren’t random ass rich people? I’m pretty sure if you ranked the North Koreans by wealth, their current leader would miraculously be #1.
Source:
“My racist ass feels like it’s true, so it must be the truth”
Behold, the pinnacle of liberal logic
Please stop using ableist language.
Never been a fascist but perhaps I can see how it could have gone?
Extreme dislike to being told what I can find funny. Any time some people try and cancel a comedian for example. Who are the people who end up defending it? If you keep following a lot of those people it may lead you down that route.
But then my entire reason for being there in the first place is based on a dislike for authoritarianism, so perhaps that is why I lost interest as they moved towards fascism.
I feel that there were a lot of people who got caught in a right wing whirlpool on YouTube just around the time before Trump was getting into his run. I know I watched some before I realized they were all hacks and the entire right wing space was a scam.
The only thing they did better was convincing people that they were the more accepting group. And yeah I guess they were, for nazis, assholes, and idiots.
Finding out that a lot of it was cultured from Epstein and his ilk is very unsurprising in hindsight.
I remember it quite a bit before Trump but yeah, and then kinda seeing it progress into more and more pro Trump stuff.
I guess it’s always been there in one form or another, thats just when it started making its way to broader media appeal, or how I remember it anyhow
