I’ve received skepticism when bringing this up, but American fascism is currently doing a distributed breadth first search to figure out how to best coopt socialist language without calling it socialism and create false consciousness.
They tried that by positioning social media moderators as the ruling class but that's so absurd on its face that it doesn't go anywhere.
I think they'll have more success positioning teachers as their elitist enemy, maybe? There's a huge reactionary movement against schools themselves right now.
You're right though, we're in a position where American fascism is attempting to become a coherent ideology and movement rather than the ambient feelings of suburban white people. But they're their own enemies right now, like you said. They're so primed against adopting socialist rhetoric they can't articulate their nonsense grievances without sounding too socialist for their own tastes.
I think academia in general seems to be going well as a target. Teachers can be seen by fascists as footsoldiers of the liberal academy, trying to funnel kids onto campuses where they’re taught to be less conservative.
That said, college campus politics are a dead end. There’s an upper limit on how much people give a shit about fascists getting talked over by college students in places they’ve never heard of. So, like you said, teachers are a good bet.
I hate it when they do this shit. Part of the reason I came to left politics was the fact that I saw them as a chance to not only reject every single conservative idea, but adopt positions on everything that they could not touch and would find fundamentally unpalatable.
If a conservative starts agreeing with me, I just keep doubling down until I get a “well, I don’t know about that”. Works like a charm. I’ve been pleasantly surprised several times while talking about union politics with entry-level factory workers. But them’s just material conditions.
I’ve received skepticism when bringing this up, but American fascism is currently doing a distributed breadth first search to figure out how to best coopt socialist language without calling it socialism and create false consciousness.
They tried that by positioning social media moderators as the ruling class but that's so absurd on its face that it doesn't go anywhere.
I think they'll have more success positioning teachers as their elitist enemy, maybe? There's a huge reactionary movement against schools themselves right now.
You're right though, we're in a position where American fascism is attempting to become a coherent ideology and movement rather than the ambient feelings of suburban white people. But they're their own enemies right now, like you said. They're so primed against adopting socialist rhetoric they can't articulate their nonsense grievances without sounding too socialist for their own tastes.
I think academia in general seems to be going well as a target. Teachers can be seen by fascists as footsoldiers of the liberal academy, trying to funnel kids onto campuses where they’re taught to be less conservative.
That said, college campus politics are a dead end. There’s an upper limit on how much people give a shit about fascists getting talked over by college students in places they’ve never heard of. So, like you said, teachers are a good bet.
I hate it when they do this shit. Part of the reason I came to left politics was the fact that I saw them as a chance to not only reject every single conservative idea, but adopt positions on everything that they could not touch and would find fundamentally unpalatable.
I am trying to get away from them.
If a conservative starts agreeing with me, I just keep doubling down until I get a “well, I don’t know about that”. Works like a charm. I’ve been pleasantly surprised several times while talking about union politics with entry-level factory workers. But them’s just material conditions.