The mystery that has always confounded me is why anyone supports this. Time and again history has demonstrated that there are enough people who WANT dictators that they spring up all the time, but I still don’t understand what the actual perceived benefit is.
My guess is that the perceived benefit is the that the dictator will enforce things they want, hurt people they want hurt, etc, with the (false) belief that there will be no negatives for them.
Social identity and cognitive biases. They want to be on the winning side, they seek answers which already confirm their preconceived notions. It’s the same with cults and fandom at large.
I thought you meant Joe schmo, what does he get out of a fascist dictatorship. Billionaires are all absolutely corrupted by wealth. Smeagols chasing the ring.
I think the biggest messaging is threat messaging. Working in a library, it’s easy to pick out the Republican shill books because they’re always about “War with these people”, “The battle for this”, “The fight over this other thing and why it’s worse now more than ever”, “Why the left are coming for you and hate your country”, “Crime is out of control and it’s a war zone”, etc…
They first get their marks to believe “Everyone is out to get me.”, then they push the idea that their incompetent blowhard of a “strongman” bully is going to fight all these imaginary threats like “regulation” and “diversity” and “immigration”, to secure resources and opportunities for them.
Resources and opportunities the fascists themselves stole to enrich themselves, of course.
The biggest factor for continued support here is what a lot of cults also prey on: Even in spite of overwhelming evidence, the human ego really, really doesn’t want to admit it’s been duped.
The mystery that has always confounded me is why anyone supports this. Time and again history has demonstrated that there are enough people who WANT dictators that they spring up all the time, but I still don’t understand what the actual perceived benefit is.
It’s just “our king is holy, unlike all the other kings we’ve ever had in history besides Greasy Josh” gets kind of tiring
Although Greasy Josh was kinda a bro, if mythology holds
My guess is that the perceived benefit is the that the dictator will enforce things they want, hurt people they want hurt, etc, with the (false) belief that there will be no negatives for them.
Social identity and cognitive biases. They want to be on the winning side, they seek answers which already confirm their preconceived notions. It’s the same with cults and fandom at large.
But aren’t rich people ALREADY on the winning side?
I thought you meant Joe schmo, what does he get out of a fascist dictatorship. Billionaires are all absolutely corrupted by wealth. Smeagols chasing the ring.
Fair enough. There are always rich people at the center of a dictatorship, but the support from regular working class people is the bigger mystery.
I think the biggest messaging is threat messaging. Working in a library, it’s easy to pick out the Republican shill books because they’re always about “War with these people”, “The battle for this”, “The fight over this other thing and why it’s worse now more than ever”, “Why the left are coming for you and hate your country”, “Crime is out of control and it’s a war zone”, etc…
They first get their marks to believe “Everyone is out to get me.”, then they push the idea that their incompetent blowhard of a “strongman” bully is going to fight all these imaginary threats like “regulation” and “diversity” and “immigration”, to secure resources and opportunities for them.
Resources and opportunities the fascists themselves stole to enrich themselves, of course.
The biggest factor for continued support here is what a lot of cults also prey on: Even in spite of overwhelming evidence, the human ego really, really doesn’t want to admit it’s been duped.
The right wing authoritarians love it. I think it should be treated like a mental disorder.
Read Bob Altemeyer’s The Authoritarians, it is freely available on his site.
https://theauthoritarians.org/
people with diagnosed mental illness do fall in to right wing fundamentalism quite often,.
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