>>2578344this tbh, this year in US politics at least has for me confirmed how prescient Marx's "first as a tragedy, then as a farce" statement is in describing fascism. we're at a point of being many layers removed from there even being any coherent image of nationalism for the far-right to latch onto because we no longer live in a world broadly where geographic borders mean anything, but unfortunately there's still enough of a reserve of temporarily-embarrassed small business owners who were fucked over in the 2000s by the contradictions in capital leading to a decline in the neoliberal western imperial core having any relevance or viability through anything other than the increasingly naked and incompetent exercise of brute force on a third world that has increasingly developed its productive forces. these petit-bourg types who form the base of fascist movements only latch onto an image of nationalism because they've seen it in media and feel justified to be bad now, like it's very obvious that none of them actually believe in any of this shit and that it's all a big cope about how the old world is dying.
unfortunately it's also happening at enough of a pivotal point in history that the extinction burst fascist tantrum could succeed in dragging the rest of the world down with it.