Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i think this “reconciliation”, from a piece by me a while back drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/08/14/f... may hold for “communities” defined by demographics as well as by place.
Text: With this account, we can reconcile the conflicting evidence about economic anxiety and cultural resentment. At the communal level, economic factors predict which places are likely to become susceptible to a fascist dynamic, because the case for dividing and culling begins with a perception of scarcity. Communities don’t triage when resources are widely perceived to be abundant and secure. But at an individual level, within distressed communities, the people most enthusiastic to participate in the fascist dynamic are not likely to be the weak and dispossessed (who after all, might be susceptible to culling, depending what internal enemy gets identified) but those who feel safe in their own position and have preexisting resentments against candidate enemies. The political dynamic can’t successfully take hold, has no fertile habitat, without the “economic anxiety”. The members of the community who most enthusiastically participate in the thrill of fascism are not primarily the downtrodden, however, but relatively safe people who perceive an opportunity long denied to give effect to resentments they stewed in privately when prosperity and security bred norms of magnanimity and tolerance in their communities.