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A Root Enabler of Fascism is Nostalgia At the Bottom of Your Cereal Box [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-07-10
I have discussed this in past pieces, the idea that social media is not being used to bring people together but to convince you that everything was better in the past. “Simpler times” is a phrase you will often hear “middle America” invoke when they simply don’t want to admit that is just code for, “the whole neighborhood used to be white.”
Oh did I mention I am not going to pull any punches?
Aside from “simpler times” are other code words like, “candy store” or “street lamps.” Sometimes “ballpark.” All code for saying that children were safer and now you can’t even go out your front door unarmed. There is a reason for this.
The only way to make a sale is to build a demand. If you convince people the present blows and the future is bleak, they will long for the past. In steps Russia. If you go onto YouTube it is easy to find retro American culture. It might be old cartoons, or commericals, all under the guise of how much better things were when you could say what was on your mind. In the days before political correctness, when actual respect had to be shown for others. Cartoons are a great source of nostalgia for nefarious purposes, considering they were a great source of bigotry itself.
If you ever find yourself wondering why Looney Tunes were pulled from network broadcast think about the examples of racial stereotyping, from indigineous peoples to Africans, to Latinos to Asians in them. No trope was left unexplored. Of course, people who long for the era of “simpler times” feel all of this was perfectly fine and fed the innocence of their era. Their era. Interesting term. If we are talking about the 1960’s, this was remembered for three assassinations, Vietnam, and the height of the Cold War. You long for that?
The 1970’s brought us Nixon’s Watergate and an energy crisis, leaving a complete mess for decades.
You long for that?
The 1980’s brought us HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. I don’t long for that. This morning I went to my refrigerator, thirsty, and with the press of two buttons I had filtered ice and water. I like that. I can speak into my remote to look for any most movie ever made and I can get information on anything from recipes to Roman History. I like that. But, I also like to learn.
And Professor from Yale Jason Stanley has a theory on it:
No matter where they appear, “fascist politicians are cut from the same cloth,” he says. The elements of his formula are: 1. Conjuring a “mythic past” that has supposedly been destroyed (“by liberals, feminists, and immigrants”). Mussolini had Rome, Turkey’s Erdoğan has the Ottoman Empire, and Hungary’s Viktor Orban rewrote the country’s constitution with the aim of “making Hungary great again.” These myths rely on an “overwhelming sense of nostalgia for a past that is racially pure, traditional, and patriarchal.” Fascist leaders “position themselves as father figures and strongmen” who alone can restore lost greatness. And yes, the fascist leader is “always a ‘he.’” 2. Fascist leaders sow division; they succeed by “turning groups against each other,” inflaming historical antagonisms and ancient hatreds for their own advantage. Social divisions in themselves—between classes, religions, ethnic groups and so on—are what we might call pre-existing conditions. Fascists may not invent the hate, but they cynically instrumentalize it: demonizing outgroups, normalizing and naturalizing bigotry, stoking violence to justify repressive “law and order” policies, the curtailing of civil rights and due process, and the mass imprisonment and killing of manufactured enemies.
I have always been wary of “remember when” salespeople I remember watching cancer related pneumonia take my grandfather. I remember watching Michael Dukakis get obliterated by George Bush.
I remember Bobby Ewing being brought back to life. I don’t miss any of it.
Were there good moments of youth? Sure. Would I go back there to watch Daffy Duck and eat Cap’n Crunch? Absolutely not. The future demands I work to win it today. The solutions we seek, the diseases we wish to eliminate, the communities we wish to build all depend on us not looking backward.
It’s all garbage gaslighting. Weak minded fall for it. So who is propagating it? If you look at the YouTube channels, you will find most comments are from bots. You can catch it in their phrasing. If you look at Facebook, it is easy to see that most of the “good ol’ days” pages rarely have any actual comments by the page operators. They are likely Russian.
Russian agents intending to sow discord among American citizens disseminated inflammatory posts that reached 126 million users on Facebook, published more than 131,000 messages on Twitter and uploaded over 1,000 videos to Google’s YouTube service, according to copies of prepared remarks from the companies that were obtained by The New York Times. The detailed disclosures, sent to Congress on Monday by companies whose products are among the most widely used on the internet, came before a series of congressional hearings this week into how third parties used social networks and online services to influence millions of Americans before the 2016 presidential election.
Here is an example on Twitter. Ask yourself if you believe this is a real profile.
x Digging around for toys in cereal boxes, finding the rubbery octopus toy, drinking milk from an E. T. glass & watching Saturday morning cartoons are some of my greatest childhood memories. ❤️
https://t.co/zmct7bzI9e — Amanda (@amanda261121) July 8, 2023
Who talks like this? What actual human not paid to write it is rattling off this list randomly on a Saturday?
It is not a coincidence most of these posts come from “Ultra MAGAS” on Twitter. And a secret about Twitter, 21-29 percent of U.S. content is bots. And that is probably a generously low estimate.
What exactly was simpler? Drinking water from a tap? Cigarrette smoke filling every public building? Here is one, and this hits home, let’s talk kidney disease.
Until Clyde Shields in 1960, no human had ever been treated successfully with haemodialysis. That means kidney disease was terminal. Still miss the 1950’s? Probably not if you are a person of color. Back then black Americans needed their own guide to secure basic services while travelling. The great American road trip, and little deuce coupes were probably far more memorable if you were white.
The truth is all generations could be victimized by nostalgia. Particularly by the generations that know they are weaponizing it.
I can still buy cereal, if I want to eat processed sugar and derivatives of jet fuel. I can find cartoons on YouTube. But if I take that time machine back to the 1980’s, I won’t have as clean of water, or air, I won’t have energy efficiency, I won’t have a flu vaccine.
Nostalgia is an important weapon for narcissists, because they want to control their targets’ memories. It’s one of the reasons they act out so much during the holidays, etc. — there are nostalgic forces at work that are much more powerful than theirs. Narcissists tactically create memories with their targets that make them look good and intermittently reinforce them. When they have a gang of collaborators to help them orchestrate and recall these moments, it puts immense pressure on targets. The group dynamics also strengthen the gaslighting campaigns that reshape the target’s perception of reality. Sharing nostalgic moments to reinforce an idealized or phony reality is a reason social media is so important to many narcissists.
All people wish for the time when life was carefree, if you ever had that feeling. I never really did. And there is nothing wrong with warm memories, so long as they are real, and they don’t detract from your goals and your hope.
There are more important concerns than the prize that was at the bottom of the cereal box. When I hear people sigh, in places like Branson or Williams, AZ, and go to throwback diners, and reminisce about a past that never existed, I wonder if intervention would be like waking up a sleepwalker.
What damage could be done if I talked to this clueless blabbermouth about Selma, or Polio, cars without seat belts and smoking lounges on hydrogen dirigibles. How did humanity become so weak, so intellectually disinterested in forward progress that a grown man’s fondest memories involve Count Chocula and Bugs Bunny?
And what, if anything, will make us realize the real prize is the future, if we have the courage to make it what we want it to be?
-ROC
I need to add to my The Claw News family. I work tirelessly each week to bring useful content that fights for real progressive change. Join me. If you don’t get your $3.99’s worth, I will personally refund you the month and take the loss on the fees. Guaranteed.
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Love,
-ROC
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