That is precisely the origin of reactionary movements. If we look at Weimar Germany, Francisco Franco’s Spain, and Portugal’s brief experiment with dictatorship, we see a pattern: elite squandering of public resources directly cause the sort of instability that leads to fascism.
Also, Liberal Democracies tend to be very permissive of reactionary movements, owing to a combination of elite preferences for wealth inequality, manipulation of public discourse, and weak democratic structures, which the fascists easily undermine and destroy.
Liberal Democracies tend to have “freedom of the press” which leads to a large number of voices influencing political discourse. The press are usually owned by elites. Elites prefer inequality because that is what allows them to own things. So we have many voices being heard but elite voices are the loudest. This leads to corruption and theft from public funds. In the case of the first rise of fascism, elites bankrupted the states of Europe by pursuing a pointless war. The US was able to abrogate a third World War because they forgave many war debts and instead chose to economically develop nations which had been ravaged by war.
Elite today are looking at US government indebtedness and are falsely swallowing the narrative that public entitlements are causing the problem, when the real issue is war debt incurred by the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.
That is precisely the origin of reactionary movements. If we look at Weimar Germany, Francisco Franco’s Spain, and Portugal’s brief experiment with dictatorship, we see a pattern: elite squandering of public resources directly cause the sort of instability that leads to fascism.
Also, Liberal Democracies tend to be very permissive of reactionary movements, owing to a combination of elite preferences for wealth inequality, manipulation of public discourse, and weak democratic structures, which the fascists easily undermine and destroy.
Liberal Democracies tend to have “freedom of the press” which leads to a large number of voices influencing political discourse. The press are usually owned by elites. Elites prefer inequality because that is what allows them to own things. So we have many voices being heard but elite voices are the loudest. This leads to corruption and theft from public funds. In the case of the first rise of fascism, elites bankrupted the states of Europe by pursuing a pointless war. The US was able to abrogate a third World War because they forgave many war debts and instead chose to economically develop nations which had been ravaged by war.
Elite today are looking at US government indebtedness and are falsely swallowing the narrative that public entitlements are causing the problem, when the real issue is war debt incurred by the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.