[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSS4GCA__As[/YOUTUBE]
This is bang on. The Democrats abandoned the people and actual liberals paying only lip service and depending on the rhetoric that they are all that stand between the people and disaster from the far right... well people finally called their bluff and now you got Trump. Let's hope this means a reformation on the left for a real political party looking out for interests other than the banksters'
I disagree. That does nothing to explain Trump's appeal or the global rise is fascistic ideology.
The Democrats issues only explain people not getting on board with Hillary. No union worker in Michigan voted for Trump merely because he fed them blatant lies about using protectionism to bring back their well paid low-skilled jobs that cannot be brought back.
If they let themselves believe such nonsense, it was only because his socially right-wing, racist, sexist rhetoric struck a chord with them, just as such rhetoric is gaining appeal throughout Europe with school children in Rome standing on their desks and saluting Hitler and
Mein Kampf becoming among the top 10 most popular books read in Italy.
The Dems not being authentically left-wing enough in their economic policy doesn't explain the increasing appeal of dangerously right-wing rhetoric in the US or anywhere else, especially countries with economic policies far to the left of the US but with a similar rise in right-wing extremism.
I think the author is onto something. There is a portion of people, mostly males, who regardless of cultural influence want a more aggressive world where they are free to be cruel and hateful than modern sensibilities will allow. They are inherently drawn towards non-egalitarian views and bigotry, and toward simplistic non-relativistic morality and mono-culturalism.
I think at least 4 factors that are on the rise contribute to their increasing willingness to openly embrace such rhetoric are:
1) Increasing immigration, particular of people of other "races" and cultures which inherently destabilizes the simple norms they prefer and threatens the believed rightful dominance of their group. It doesn't help when the immigrants themselves embrace a hateful bigoted close-minded worldview like Islam. Despite these rightists being racist and sexist themselves, the cultural racism and sexism of Islam adds to their ability to rationalize their hatred of the immigrants.
2) Legitimate progress in liberal egalitarian ethics that push these people more and more to the margins
3) Illegitimate, unreasoned, and unfair leftist rhetoric and policies that give them an excuse to reject liberalism as a whole.
4) The interwebs
Despite the emoji, I am serious about that one. These people have been an increasing marginalized minority whose views have not been allowed as part of polite public discourse. This has kept them quiet and disorganized. Online communities mean they can have a "safe-space" in which to develop, entrench, and intensify their views without real critique and to hear all others anywhere in the world with similar views, giving them more and more confidence to begin voicing and voting these views in public. It speaks to the inherent dangers of such intellectual "safe-spaces" in that they breed irrationality because honest and fair critique is not allowed.
There is nothing that can or should be done about numbers 2 and 4. However, liberals can and should do something about numbers 1 and 3. #1 doesn't require stopping immigration, just stopping the irrational denial that the pre-Enlightenment culture so many of the immigrants are bringing with them pose no danger to the modern secular culture into which they are coming. Such denials and bullshit arguments that such observations are "racist" only serve to allow actual racists and rightists to be the only ones acknowledging those realities, which gives legitimacy to their actual racist and unreasonable views and policies on immigrants. If reasonable acknowledgment of the problems posed by these immigrants was part of liberal rhetoric that still embraced the humanitarian concerns of their plight, then rightist would not be able to own that issue and could only stand on their real racist and xenophobic anti-immigrant views.
Fighting #3 requires something similar but applies to all issues and not just immigration. It requires actual liberals taking pseudo-liberal leftists and marxists to task when their views, arguments, evidence, or policies are irrational or against principles of fairness and decency toward individual persons and myopically focused upon heavy handed forcing of group level equality of outcomes.
