The funny thing is that those spaces are themselves very heavy on enforcing dogma through fear of social rejection. For example when the Christchurch massacre happened, I decided to go see what /pol/ was saying, and there were actually a few comments expressing mild disapproval, in a “I hate muslims too but cheering at people being brutally murdered as they try to get away is too far” kind of way. These people were of course shouted down and insulted and their sympathy painted as weakness. That validation is conditional.
The less leeway people are given by their community to explore and express their genuine thoughts and feelings, the more inaccurate and fucked up the popular consensus is free to get.
Fascists know exactly what they’re doing. They study this shit. The study the environmental and mental conditions that led to the original fascist movement and they actively want that. The part I don’t get, the thing that scares the shit out of me, is why. They got scooped out, emptied out, by our culture of emptiness and are refilling themselves with violence and they view this as good. Instead of building community through love, they build it through hate. Best I can figure out is that its easier to hate than to love.
My thoughts on this are, humans are pattern propagation machines. If someone is infused with spite and misery to begin with, love which fails to acknowledge and process that spite comes off as hollow and meaningless. Seeing others express the same things you feel is cathartic and generates trust. There is a profound need for sharing in feelings like contempt, rage, and the desire to hurt others that isn’t fulfilled, and that gets exploited by people crafting those feelings to fit into their ideological narratives.
The funny thing is that those spaces are themselves very heavy on enforcing dogma through fear of social rejection. For example when the Christchurch massacre happened, I decided to go see what /pol/ was saying, and there were actually a few comments expressing mild disapproval, in a “I hate muslims too but cheering at people being brutally murdered as they try to get away is too far” kind of way. These people were of course shouted down and insulted and their sympathy painted as weakness. That validation is conditional.
The less leeway people are given by their community to explore and express their genuine thoughts and feelings, the more inaccurate and fucked up the popular consensus is free to get.
Fascists know exactly what they’re doing. They study this shit. The study the environmental and mental conditions that led to the original fascist movement and they actively want that. The part I don’t get, the thing that scares the shit out of me, is why. They got scooped out, emptied out, by our culture of emptiness and are refilling themselves with violence and they view this as good. Instead of building community through love, they build it through hate. Best I can figure out is that its easier to hate than to love.
My thoughts on this are, humans are pattern propagation machines. If someone is infused with spite and misery to begin with, love which fails to acknowledge and process that spite comes off as hollow and meaningless. Seeing others express the same things you feel is cathartic and generates trust. There is a profound need for sharing in feelings like contempt, rage, and the desire to hurt others that isn’t fulfilled, and that gets exploited by people crafting those feelings to fit into their ideological narratives.