Chris
Chris
Sep 8, 2018 · 2 min read

You’ve hit the nail on the head, I think. But I’ll take it one step further. Because I am someone (though I did not vote for the incoherent narcissist who is Trump) that shares many of the traits you brought up in this article, I can relate to it on a visceral level. I am middle-aged, male, white, poor (living paycheck to paycheck, with great debt, and likely struggling with homelessness if not for the grace of my wife), and filled with bitterness about my hopeless future of endless debt and crippling anxiety + depression. I am, as you say, someone who felt promised the bourgeoise life, but no matter what job I have worked, I have always remained poor. What I’d like to add into the equation is gender: I think fascism also appeals particularly to men in this situation because men (not women) because men are the ones who are still “expected” to “earn a living” no matter how humiliating and impossibly degrading the economic situation is. I would argue that men are burdened by this economic anxiety in the same many women are burdened with anxieties about their physical appearance. For any man without any family support, and any man struggling with crippling anxiety and depression, this economic burden is especially difficult, and any collectivist belief/support system that alleviates that grief is going to be appealing. Might we also acknowledge that there is also another issue fanning the flames of fascism: The some 60 million first generation immigrants now in the United States, along with the billionaire-supported MSM’s promotion of the idea that we live in a stable white-majority middle class America, and that everything is basically okay for most white Americans, and if they could just accept new immigrants, that everything will be fine? In other words, for the MSM, the problem is not horrible economic instablity for the vast majority of once middle-class or hoping to be middle class Americans, it is just that Americans are not “tolerant” enough. I think this narrative, too, contributes greatly to the resentment that many are feeling in the country right now, and contributes greatly to any appeal of fascist ideology.

    Chris

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    Chris