I want to find out if Wilhelm Reich's theory about where fascism comes from is true. This isn't a scientific survey so regardless of the results I still won't really know, but I suppose it's still better than nothing. I'm also not an academic so I can't get access to research grants, and I'm not sure anyone would pay for a study like this to begin with (correct me if I'm wrong).
Wilhelm Reich, in The Mass Psychology of Fascism, basically says that fascists are created by two factors: severe economic exploitation / anxiety on the part of the petite bourgeoisie, combined with severe child abuse. Reich believes that the abuse takes place while people are too young to remember it (and/or that the memories may be suppressed), but I imagine that it could have easily continued afterward. (Others who understand Reich better than me, again: correct me if I'm wrong.)
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Do you believe that you experienced severe abuse or neglect from your parents or guardians?
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Do you come from a petite bourgeois family? (Do your parents own their home, but still have to work in order to survive?)
Being rejected and isolated from literally everybody at your school has no doubt been the most influential factor in my development in general, let alone with my fascism bout. Internet fascism gave idiot preteen me something to belong to, and my "outsider looking in" perspective on life allowed be to see through the bullshit of liberalism, wich I hold to this day. My parents are literally the best parents I have ever seen in real life and I would not trade them for the world, so unless fascism is when you have good parents, I don't think it's that. I was always deep into "internet culture" and was on 4chan since I was 12 years old, and as 4chan turned from idiot libertarian website into idiot fascist website in 2015, I went with it. I don't need to go on about my whole life story so I'll keep it brief, ended high school as a Internet fascist, my only friend that stuck with me afterwords was also a fascist (also an outcast) I then went to community college trade school for a bit, dropped out to get a blue collar job unrelated to the field I was studying, tried to kill myself, quit, went to a public uni for education, felt the need to end it coming on, dropped out before I did the deed, now I'm a NEET in my extremely supportive parent's basement. I was de-radiclized by fucking ContraPoint's Incels video, yes, cringe, I know, but the fact that someone on the left just fucking acknowledged the fucking agony I experienced just snapped me put of it. I then saw a richard wolfe video on marxism and from there I went down the leftist rabbit hole and have read a fair bit of theory. I also dropped my only friend (a fascist) along the way, after trying and failing to "convert" him. The difference between me and him? Even when I was a fascist, I was convinced that it was whats "best" for humanity (I know how stupid that sounds, but I had never been exposed to leftism so to me it seemed like the only options were neoliberal hell or fascism) while he literally just values brown people less (despite his only friend being Chinese). Basicly, I think fascism and its causes are a lot more complex than bad parents, own house.
Damn man. I’m sorry to hear that but I’m glad you made it out. I remember the only Chinese kid from an all-white high school I was in and it was rough for him. He was awkward and kind of an outsider. Someone I knew once made fun of his name to his face and I joined in. It didn’t seem to get to him but it must have. This was over fifteen years ago and except for one class we had together I haven’t seen him since. I liked him though and would apologize for that if I saw him now. There’s so much casual racism directed toward Asians in America it’s just insane.
So far we just have a sample size of one, and I think you might be right that the fash pipeline isn’t as simple as I made it sound. But the thing is—you made it out. Maybe your case wasn’t as severe, even though you were suicidal. I don’t know because I’m far from an expert and I know virtually nothing about you. A lot of other people are still trapped there. They could probably look at that same contrapoints video and it wouldn’t phase them at all. If your parents sucked, do you think you still would have escaped? What about your friend? Do you know why he became a fascist as well?
Maybe a big factor is loss of status? You were rejected by your school and you wanted answers. 4chan provided them. Sadly, they got to you before any leftists could, at least until later. But yeah. I don’t know. I think I’m a little older than you, and in the late 90s and early 00s when I was getting on the internet, it was all liberal, at least for me. The most leftwing sites I could find never mentioned socialism; they just really hated Bush. Had I been stuck there longer it’s possible the pickup artist forums I looked at (pathetic I know) would have led me toward something bad.