Pro-democracy activists have shown that far-right demonstrations of power have six core goals: To legitimize their views, strengthen their self-image as part of the downtrodden, unite their squabbling factions, attract new people to the movement, control media coverage, and feel powerful and heroic. https://bad-faith-times.ghost.io/weird-and-the-breaking-of-the-fascist-fever/
And from Anne-Marie Scott @Ammienoot@social.ds106.us
@grantpotter “Progressives should have learned to build a politics that em- braces the dreams of people and fashions spectacles which give these fantasies form—a politics that understands desire and speaks to the irrational; a politics that employs symbols and as- sociations; a politics that tells good stories. In brief, we should have learned to manufacture dissent.” (Stephen Duncombe, Dream/Nightmare)
There was a period of great prosperity in the west between say 1950 and 1973 where even regular workers could buy a home, feed a family, retire without want, and even hope for higher education for their children.
In this time of prosperity our attention could turn to other things, and it did: things like feminism, ending racism, promoting civil rights, opposing war, etc. The social goals of a progressive society.
Since that time, and this is well documented, this period of prosperity has been ended, as personal income has fallen far behind relative to economic productivity and their share of the wealth. No longer can people count on having things like a home, retirement, health, education, and the like.
The politics of the right sell the story of a return to that time of prosperity. The politics of the left remain focused on the values that emerged during that period of prosperity.
The story sold by the right is a lie. Opposing progressive values will not return us to prosperity. Only sharing the wealth will. But the right has been captured by those who ended the period of prosperity in the first place, and want to ensure it never returns.
Some sell that story because they oppose those progressive values – the social right. Others do it because they want to keep the wealth stolen from the workers – the economic right.
But the story told by the left is a chimera. It suggests we can return to these progressive values before (or worse, instead of) a return to economic prosperity.
And it ignores, or even (in a spirit of collectivism) disparages the economic aspirations of those who seek a return to economic prosperity for the average worker.
To the extent that it focuses on prosperity, the left is an ideology of opposition and negativity, using the rhetoric of ‘fight’ rather than ‘build’.
Progressives need to embrace the dreams of people, yes. But not to dismiss them as irrational or as fantasies. But to accept them for want they are, as valuable and necessary: a home, an income, a retirement, the right to dream of a better future.