Many things
In France, we have the RN ( National rally ? ) which is an ultra right party.
During the last elections, it got 9, 5 M of voters, or 34 %.
The debate to know if all these voters are racist and bigot has been raging.
There was a poll.
Half of them and of Reconquête, the other ultra-right party, recognize themselves as racists.
What is interesting is that, 20 years ago, most of them were not and voted for Left.
The question is what happened.
The lies of some medias and the propaganda on the social network is an explanation.
But this came after …, after the left gave them up, after the triumph of ultra-liberalism in economics, after a lengthy economic crisis, after 50 years of technocracy in managing the country.
And the same voters have become distrustful, believers of plot theories and so.
In fact, this is the result of our failures.
Sorry, it is in French.
The voters of the RN
In its broad sense, fascism is defined as a reaction to the values of democratic humanism of the Age of Enlightenment. Stemming from the frustrations generated by this new model of society, fascism rejects human rights, individual freedoms and political liberalism.
As a result, he rejects the notion of balance of power.
It is totalitarianism, nothing must escape its control, no segment of society, no act or thought. He asks not just obedience, but adherence.
It is based on the cult of the leader, on a hierarchical vision of society and human beings.
He needs an enemy, a scapegoat, another, posed as inferior and threatening who must be destroyed.
According to Umberto Eco,
1- The first characteristic of eternal fascism is the cult of tradition.
There can be no progress in knowledge. The truth has been stated once and for all, and we limit ourselves to increasingly interpreting its obscure message.
2- Conservatism implies the rejection of modernism. The rejection of the modern world is hidden under a rejection of the capitalist way of life, but it mainly consisted of a rejection of the spirit of 1789 (and of 1776, of course [United States Declaration of Independence]). The Renaissance, the Age of Reason, herald the beginning of modern depravity.
3- Eternal fascism maintains the cult of action for action’s sake. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Consequently, culture is suspect in that it is synonymous with critical thinking. Official fascist thinkers devoted much energy to attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for betraying these traditional values.
5- Eternal fascism cannot withstand analytical criticism. Critical thinking makes distinctions, and this is a sign of modernity. In modern culture, it is on disagreement that the scientific community bases progress in knowledge. For eternal fascism, disagreement is treason.
6- Furthermore, disagreement is synonymous with diversity. Eternal fascism expands and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the innate fear of difference. Eternal fascism is racist by definition.
7- Eternal fascism draws on individual or social frustration. This is why one of the most typical criteria of historical fascism has been the mobilization of a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from the economic crisis or from a feeling of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure that would exercise lower social groups.
8- To people deprived of a clear social identity, eternal fascism responds that they have the only privilege, rather common, of being born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism. Furthermore, those who will absolutely give shape to the identity of the nation are its enemies. Thus, at the origin of the psychology of eternal fascism there is an obsession with conspiracy, potentially international. And its perpetrators must be prosecuted. The best way to counter the conspiracy is to appeal to xenophobia. But the conspiracy must also come from within.
9- Supporters of fascism must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and power of their enemies. Fascist governments condemn themselves to losing wars because they are fundamentally incapable of objectively evaluating enemy forces.
10- For eternal fascism, there is no struggle for life but rather a life dedicated to struggle. Pacifism is a compromise with the enemy and it is bad from the moment life is a permanent battle.
11- Elitism is a characteristic aspect of all reactionary ideologies. Eternal fascism can only promote popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people in the world; party members are among the best citizens; every citizen can or must become a member of the party.
12- In such a perspective, everyone is invited to become a hero. The hero of eternal fascism dreams of a heroic death, which is sold to him as the ultimate reward for a heroic life.
13- The eternal fascist transports his will to power onto the sexual field. He is macho (which implies both contempt for women and intolerance and condemnation of non-standard sexual mores: chastity as well as homosexuality).
14- Eternal fascism is based on selective populism, or qualitative populism one could say. The People are perceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since large numbers of human beings cannot carry a Common Will, it is the Leader who can then claim to be their interpreter. Having lost their delegated powers, citizens do not act; they are called to play the role of the People.
15- Eternal fascism speaks Newspeak. Newspeak, invented by Orwell in 1984, is the official language of Angsoc, or English socialism. It is characterized by poor vocabulary and rudimentary syntax so as to limit the instruments of critical reason and complex thought.
Umberto Eco, Recognizing fascism, Grasset.
Wilhelm Reich, like most Freudo-Marxists, maintained that Nazism was in agreement with the charactere structure of the German masses, particularly the petty bourgeois and impoverished proletarians.
I am sure that most of this post is misplaced. I did not knew where to set it. I let the moderators move it.