this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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I can't really provide a good source, didn't find a proper study by a quick google search, I believe it would be hard to track worldwide. But here in germany it's definitely the point with the party AfD.
And i mean it makes sense. Right populist politicians providing simple, easy to understand solutions, that don't work or even harm their own voters, for problems that they're addressing, that they made up, blaming easy targets, mostly foreigners who didn't do shit, for it. No need to think on your own if you have a stronk Führer to follow, promising paradise for you.
It's also easier to focus on a smaller group that you feel more affiliated, familiar with, than to think about absolute fairness on a bigger scale and make concessions. It's easier to shout "they're stealing our jobs" than thinking about being part of the problem by fucking up the economy of the country they came from. Or support the countries development, because that way they'd lose a useful scapegoat
Your observations are similar to my experience as well. Conservatives I know are regular people who, I think, feel overwhelmed by things they don't understand and whose self-protection response to fear and change is anger. They essentially want to simplify the world by reducing diversity.
One thing that I find interesting about this group is that most of them used to stew relatively quietly until imposed upon. I think that the rise of social censure for politically incorrect speech has had a strong rallying effect on them. That's why people like Jordan Peterson went from zeroes to heroes on the right. I hate to say it, but I think we on the left made a huge tactical error by aggressively regulating speech through social censure. Obviously, conservatives have always been out there in large numbers, but the imposition of rather doctrinaire political correctness, combined with the connecting and "outing" power of the internet, has led to them becoming much more vocal and politically active. Now, the right and the left have become not just rivals but mortal enemies.
There are also the religious extremists who want to remake the world in the image of their holy book, but that's a whole other nefarious kettle of fish. They are rather cynically using the anger of the populist right to forward their agenda. There is no better example of this than evangelicals lionizing a moral retard like Trump.
"ThEy sTeaL oUr fReEduM"
People have to be taught that every individual's freedom has the limit where someone else's begins..
Very true, the danger of the "other" is very easy to whip up some support against and create a sense of something to unite against.. scary how easy a populace is to manipulate