Emotions are stronger then intellect, much stronger. And most of these people suffered in bad childhoods and were drilled or neglected into disempathy. (That’s not the necessary reaction to such childhoods but it’s a common reaction.)
How do people in this day in age become nazis/neonazies sexist or even incels when there is so much knowledge against it? Do they get anything out of being that way?
Submitted 2 months ago by Don_Dickle@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
ladicius@lemmy.world 2 months ago
marcos@lemmy.world 2 months ago
suffered in bad childhoods
Just to say, but what causes those things are hate and fear.
The second one doesn’t require trauma.
ladicius@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Fear is a general human trait woven into our existences and should/could be reduced in a loving and supporting childhood. If love and support are missing in your childhood you don’t learn to handle your fears in a mature and stable way.
(I know I’m painting this picture with a very broad brush. It’s to point in the general direction of feelings as the most plausible and applicable answer to OPs question.)
Don_Dickle@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Ok so your telling me since when I was bad in my childhood and spanked with a switch that I can become one?
Sanctus@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Anyone can become filled with hate.
ladicius@lemmy.world 2 months ago
No. Your response to such childhood is very individual. It’s a very common stance to live your life the opposite way of your parents lifestyle. That’s what produced the 1960s air of change in culture - hippies lived the very opposite of their parents ideals.
I simply point out well researched patterns in childhoods and their influence on character traits. Look up developmental psychology and transgenerational patterns. In Germany there’s a lot of research and publication about “war children” and “war grandchildren” (Kriegskinder und Kriegsenkel) which in general attributes a lot of the countries troubles and shortcomings to the upbringing of kids in a war and post war society with a lot of shame and guilt.
SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s weird how some people turn into neo-nazis or incels after that and I just pay sexy Russian dom mommies to beat me within an inch of my life.
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That’s certainly their rationale.
kemsat@lemmy.world 2 months ago
To be fair, those involved in the bad childhoods also are likely to have bad childhoods themselves (the adults I mean).
ladicius@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Transgenerational stuff, victims becoming offenders and the likes.
Yep, you’re right, that’s what’s meant here.
Avanera@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
I was raised in a left-leaning, progressive, atheist, LGBTQ+/minority-accepting household, but one surrounded by a white, largely conservative exurban community. I was raised to be inclusive of others, to be thoughtful, to be curious, to be polite and empathetic. I had good* parents who supported me, and taught me to treat others well.
In the middle of fifth grade, I transferred to a magnet program focusing on STEM concepts. It took me from a school that was almost entirely white, to a school which was very much multi-racial. I was really small for my age, nerdy, and the new kid. I’d always been bullied at school, but after the transfer it got a lot worse, and got pretty severely physical. A lot of the people who harassed me the worst were black. I honestly never understood the social circles enough to know what their deal was, and it certainly wasn’t only a race thing, but the fact that many of my tormentors were black wasn’t lost on me, to be sure.
When I was 11 or so, I used all the savings from a lifetime of cumulative birthdays, Christmas gifts, etc. to buy a laptop to play games on. My parents had always made us save a lot of what we were given, to be used on larger purchases like this. Pretty quickly, gaming became all I did. It was an escape, and I enjoyed it. I played whatever F2P games I could. Diablo clones, random MMOs, shitty pay-to-win FPS games, whatever. My parents didn’t supervise my activities very closely, and to be blunt, I quickly became way more savvy than them about subverting any surveillance they tried to put in place anyways.
Eventually I started looking into hacks for games. I found a really large forum (think 25k members) for sharing game hacks, and joined up. By the time I was maybe 13-14 or so, I was one of the highest-ranking moderators on the forum. I hung out in their IRC server (which definitely isn’t the internet chat-rooms you’re supposed to be careful about, those are different) all day, dabbled in making my own (occasionally illicit) software and hacks, and was firmly in the community. These weren’t good people, but I didn’t know that. When I got home from school and got online, they asked me how my day was. They cared about me, they played games with me, they were my friends. I remember I was gone for like 2 weeks when I was seriously ill, and one of them tracked me down and called my house to check in on me. I didn’t think anything of it, because of course they could do that. I’d been in a Skype call with one of them who was screen sharing the array of webcams they had access to through their botnet. I didn’t realize at the time that they were probably blackmailing people, or holding their data ransom. We just hacked in video games, none of that actually serious stuff. The malware I was toying with was just because I was interested in it, and of course, my friends must have been too, right? Just a learning exercise. I figured I might try to go into cybersecurity when I started high school and could actually start taking courses in computer topics. Programming was SO fucking interesting!
My parents didn’t know what was going on. They should have. I was barely a teenager, I can’t possibly have been hiding my tracks all that well. But then, their marriage had started to fall apart, and things were bad a home. I didn’t know anything about that then, I was in my room gaming and running communities for terrible people. The headset kept their fighting far away from me. My parents didn’t know who I was hanging out with. They had raised me well, but now they weren’t doing what they should have been. So when my friends shared hateful content with me, “interesting” videos they’d found about how terrible women were, how violent minorities were, who was I to question it? They were speaking as those with knowledge. They taught me stuff, they knew better than me. And besides, I’d been physically harassed by black people before. I’d seen it for myself, right? My U.S. history teacher was REALLY smart, and she told us (in a MN classroom) that the civil war wasn’t actually about slavery either! That was super interesting to learn! And the women they complained about weren’t me. Just because a lot of the guys I hung out with had bitches for girlfriends didn’t mean they hated women, it was just bad luck with shitty women. Right?
I was a good person. I mean, I was a weird socially outcast nerd, but I wasn’t a bad person. My family was still caring. Still accepting. My Mom’s apartment was always a refuge for any of our friends, even (and especially) the queer ones who had been kicked out by their own terrible parents. They had a place to come and be safe and be themselves with us. So I was a good person too, right? Good people, smart people, they keep their online lives separate from their personal lives. They don’t talk about their online activities with others, and they don’t talk about their personal information with internet strangers in chatrooms. The only people I talked with were my FRIENDS. I ran their Minecraft servers. I discussed the Jordan Peterson videos they shared. He sounds so fucking smart after all. I hardly understand what he’s talking about, but I’m sure one day I will. And the parts I don’t understand, other people can explain to me. I laughed at their racist memes. After all, it’s just a joke. And of course, overt bigotry got stomped on. I was in charge, and I was a good person. I wouldn’t tolerate that sort of thing. But a dog-whistle is just a tool for training a pet, and we’d only ever kept cats.
I eventually joined a different gaming group on the side. We played Jailbreak in CS:S. I got really good at it. Really into it. And I stopped hanging out as much with my older friends. I still kept in touch, but I’d found a new hobby. These people weren’t good people either, but I mean, the fact that they liked my voice on mic wasn’t that they were creeping on a 15 year old who they wanted to fuck, it was because I had gotten a new microphone a few weeks ago and must have sounded good on it. I had gotten lucky though. These people weren’t great people, but they weren’t nearly as bad. They weren’t literally cybercriminals, just asshole kids on the internet. So when I became a moderator in THAT community and started running things, the community actually improved. But eventually that community collapsed, and I moved on again. And again. And again. I ended up with some Brits for a while, and “mate” settled itself into my vocabulary in a deeply unwelcome way.
I’ve been incredibly lucky. I’m 28 now. The last 14 years of my life, I’ve slowly climbed from one community to another, and mostly through random luck each of those have been better than the one I was leaving. I am surrounded now by some of my favorite people. They are TRULY good people. They care about others, and stand up for good causes. Some days, I even think maybe I might be a good person too. I wasn’t a good person. I fell WAY down the alt-right rabbit hole. I’m sure that I’ve hurt people, and I’ve made countless decisions that sicken me now. But I’ve been incredibly lucky. If I hadn’t been, I have no idea where I’d be now. Or what nonsense I’d still be believing, because everything around me told me it was normal.
Godric@lemmy.world 2 months ago
You know how they say “Show, not tell” when writing? Excellent job mate, thanks for it
Avanera@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
I’m glad you appreciated it! I think I can forgive the subtle jab xD
khannie@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Some days, I even think maybe I might be a good person too
You sound like a good person to me. That level of self reflection rarely / never leads to being a shithead in my experience.
Crazy story but a very interesting read. Thanks for sharing.
Avanera@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Thank you, I appreciate it.
ADTJ@feddit.uk 2 months ago
That was quite a read.
Thanks for sharing.
SeedyOne@lemm.ee 2 months ago
This is a fantastic read and a great explanation of how this can happen. You’ve come a long way and made it out the other side.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Genuinely, thanks for sharing your experience. I don’t think most people realize how insidiously easy it is to slowly slide down that path. I’m very glad to hear that you’re moving in a better direction these days.
Great writing style too, for what it’s worth.
TheBananaKing@lemmy.world 2 months ago
When you hollow out the middle class (in the US sense of the term), people go looking for a narrative to explain it, to give them a reason they don’t get (or can’t give their children) the lifestyle they were promised in the media.
One narrative that fits is corporate greed, late-stage capitalism, enshittification and staggering corruption.
Another narrative, however, is all this rampant social change going on, people changing the demographics, changing the rules, changing definitions, changing the comfortable rules of thumb they were used to - and now everything’s shit, the two must be connected, we need to slam the brakes and catch our breath, perhaps even go backwards, and maybe conditions will follow suit. Even if they don’t, change is a loss of control, and that’s scary. We need to pull our heads in, hunker down and take back what’s rightfully ours from those we’ve been forced to share it with.
Once people start looking through that lens, everything starts self-selecting to fit - and they start thinking yeah, maybe those guys had a point.
Yes, there’s horrible shitty filter bubbles on social media and 4chan and everything else, but this stuff doesn’t take root without the underlying socioeconomic issues driving it.
As for incels - I don’t think people realise just how much social privilege is involved in having a peer group during childhood and adolescence to develop the give and take of social skills necessary for actually courting a partner. Consider the weird kids, the fat kids, the (disproportionally) poor kids, the ones with a fucked up home life, who didn’t get to form stable relationships, who didn’t get the practice at human-wrangling, who maybe ended up in a socially-isolating job, who had no ‘third place’ to hang out with people, to socialise and to meet people they might be interested in.
And once people start out without social skills, it can be really hard to pick them up; the embarrassment and exclusion that can follow small fuckups get exponentially worse as time goes on. And you don’t have to be painfully awkward, you just have to… not have game. Just enough to kick you to the bottom of the rankings, so failure (or the likelihood thereof) stacks up and becomes progressively discouraging, so you don’t try and don’t get practice.
And then it’s the same situation: the world doesn’t work for them the way they were told it would; they do all the things that they’ve heard were supposed to work (but without any of the nuance needed to do it successfully), and it just doesn’t.
For some of them, they feel like they’re getting singled out to get ripped off, or that the whole damn system is rigged; it’s a big club and they aren’t in it, as it were. So they look for a narrative, they look for someone to blame, they look for the bad guy, they look for a coherent explanation of why they’re the victim here. And of course that spirals out of control and ends up in a very bad place.
avattar@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
It makes a lot of sense when you put in like that, and makes me feel like helping people instead of ignoring/hating/looking down on them. How did you get these insights? Are you in the field of psychology?
TheBananaKing@lemmy.world 2 months ago
As for helping - I think that once they get far enough down the path, there’s probably not much you can do for them. But compassion is always a good thing no matter who you spend it on.
As is sparing a thought for the poorly-socialised, and for the lack of opportunities people have to just hang out in any kind of casual social setting, if you’re not already part of a friend group.
Someone works a shit job in a dingy office with three people they hate and no general public flowing through, they’re exhausted at the end of the day and even if they had a place to go they just want to go home. Weekends are for laundry and chores and recovering from the week - and besides, what are they going to do, head to some bar and spend all their money drinking alone, just getting aloner?
Most of the opportunities out there rely on having either a pre-existing set of people to hang out with, or enough acquired charisma that they wouldn’t be in that situation in the first place.
Our society really needs to lower the barrier to entry for this stuff, but I have no idea how you’d go about that.
TheBananaKing@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Nah, I’m just old - and I was the weird homeschooled kid; there but for sheer blind undeserved luck go I.
chilicheeselies@lemmy.world 2 months ago
A little empathy goes a long way. There are some truely shit evil people in the world, but most people are good people who werent given the same chances, lost their way, etc.
Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Fantastic summary! Thank you!
probableprotogen@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
For the nazis, a big problem is the alt-right pipeline that plagues sites like Youtube, along with an unstable political climate, which generally causes radicalization (Weimer Germany is also a very good example of this phemona)
As for incels, a big problem is admittably a mental health crisis plauging many men, generally causing them to become resentful of women out of loneliness.
TLDR: Poor mental health and instability
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 2 months ago
Yeah the Internet is full of traps that are engineered to draw men in. There’s blood on Google’s hands for just letting that happen. (And probably other companies too, but YouTube is big)
Related note: unchecked capitalism makes everything worse. Trying to get dates and the apps are just like “pay us $5 and maybe we’ll show your profile to someone. Be a shame if your beautiful profile just never showed up for anyone.”
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Ahhh, your almost there at realizing that capitalism commodified dating and is basically predatory against single men.
kent_eh@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
unchecked capitalism makes everything worse.
Both in the context of this discussion and in society in general.
ShepherdPie@midwest.social 2 months ago
The latter is aided by the same things as the former. Too many youtubers condition young men to think that women are the problem and the fact that they don’t take care of themselves or socialize with others doesn’t matter and it’s really the fault of everyone else. I used to online game with a couple of these guys who weren’t too bad until recently. They were both basically shut-ins who still somehow held strong beliefs about the outside world and why things are the way they are even though they didn’t really participate with the outside world.
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
YouTube but also porn. As it’s much less regulated in terms of tone and content, you get a lot of casual racism, misogyny and similar just thrown into the videos of pene and vagene
VelvetStorm@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Ok, so this is my time to admit my very shameful past. I used to be racist, homophobic, and sexist(known as the big 3). I used my religion as an excuse for the sexism and homophobia and my father(my mom isnt racist and they are divorced) and dam near everyone on his side of the family is racist so I just grew up in that culture. Once I stopped talking to him and met a lot of people from other races, i learned we are all the same. Then I stated reading the Bible, and once I did that, I obviously couldn’t continue believing it.
So basically, it’s willful ignorance, and it is always easier to blame others for your own downfalls and it makes you feel better about your own shitty life if you can hate on someone else.
Laborer3652@reddthat.com 2 months ago
This is my story too. Leaving Christianity behind has been an amazing and humbling experience.
VelvetStorm@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I can honestly say looking back idk if I ever really believed in it. I think I was just using it as an excuse to hate people while feeling morally superior.
Jarix@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Then I stated reading the Bible, and once I did that, I obviously couldn’t continue believing it.
Yeah nothing obvious about that. Your religion is idiotic, all religions are lies made up by con artists or crazy people. You cant be trusted if you need some book assembled over a 600 year period, edited and abused by religious leaders to control and manipulate the masses into maintaining and increasing their own powerbase.
Religion is just the old world version of todays billionaires
RubyRhod@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Couldn’t agree more. Fuck a safe space for insane blatherskite.
“willful ignorance” lol
Like I don’t wanna beat up on the guy but… fuckin hell.
Trigger2_2000@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
I’m so glad you were able to see the light and thank you for having the courage to put it out there for others to see.
The most difficult faults to see and change are our own.
kent_eh@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
I used my religion as an excuse for the sexism and homophobia
I’m my experience that is extremely common.
TokenBoomer@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Good for you.
RubyRhod@lemm.ee 2 months ago
I dunno it just made me think of that.
squirrel@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Additionally to what has already been mentioned: People are susceptible to politics that confirm their prejudices. Right-wing political thought is largely based on confirming that whatever prejudices people hold, they are morally good and justified. Thus elevating an in-group above out-groups. That is a powerful lure.
ArmokGoB@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 2 months ago
Garfield is wise. I vote for Garfield as dictator for life.
InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Lisan-al Gahib!!
Hupf@feddit.org 2 months ago
Armok and Alad at Anagra.
Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Consider this question: how is it that anyone under the age of 40 today has ever smoked?
By the time they were born, the bad effects of smoking were well understood. By the time they were teenagers, not smoking should have been as obvious as not jumping in front of a train. People already addicted find it difficult to quit, but it in no way explains anyone starting.
The question is different and yet very similar, because the things you mention wind up in a similar way. Somehow people start in that route even though it should be obvious not to. And these things you mention are much easier to fall into than smoking because parents, family, etc are all pushing it on people. Smokers generally aren’t pushing their kids, nieces and nephews, grandchildren, etc to smoke, and somehow smoking still proliferates to some degree, just consider how much more difficult to avoid it is for those whose families are actively encouraging them to fall into these methods of belief and hate.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
For me as a non-smoker, but vaper, it’s not as if I “fell” into anything. I actively choose to vape and like it. I quit before and did not like it. I get way more benefits from nicotine than downsides. These are factual benefits.
It’s a poor analogy for right-wing political beliefs which don’t really work. They do not really lead to the goals they claim.
Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Would i wrong to venture the guess that you didnt like quitting vaping because you were suffering from nicotine withdrawal? I swapped to vaping after years of smoking and eventually quit vaping. It was not enjoyable to quit but i feel a million times better not being beholden to the habit. My lungs feel better, my brain feels better, my stress levels are lower.
What benefits does nicotine bring other than satifyi g your craving for nicotine.
Charzard4261@programming.dev 2 months ago
The guy wasn’t talking about vaping though, but smoking. The one we know for sure gives you a ton of issues and health problems.
Whilst I agree it’s not a great analogy for right wing beliefs, I’d say it works as a good analogy for incel behaviour. I knew a guy who had fallen into that trap but managed to find his way out. When I asked him about it, he said it helped him cope, that it was easier to believe that it wasn’t his fault things were so shitty.
I really respect how he was able to realise that the things he and the people around him were saying was bullshit, and it made me realise that a lot of these people are being taken advantage of by “influencers” spewing this harmful rhetoric.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Somehow people start in that route even though it should be obvious not to.
Nicotine provides a short term mental stimulus that’s great for people who feel exhausted or have trouble staying focused.
That’s why lots of people start smoking in school and lots of professionals continue smoking well past the point at which the health effects are obvious.
I know a pulmonologist who smoked until he was in his thirties. Literally “how do you expect me to do my job without this?” was his response when I pressed him on it
angstylittlecatboy@reddthat.com 2 months ago
Fascists provide easy (but often fake) answers to hard problems. Loneliness, the fear of replacement, that kind of thing.
brygphilomena@lemmy.world 2 months ago
External locus of control.
Bad things in someone’s life is not their fault, but the fault of whatever scapegoat.
Can’t get a girlfriend? It’s women’s fault.
Can’t get a job? It’s illegal immigrants.
Can’t afford to do the things you like? It’s the government taking too many taxes.
Whatever problem someone has, they are looking to blame someone rather than make any changes in their own life.
doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
There’s a lot of information, there’s also a lot of misinformation. Many people don’t trust authorities, sometimes for understandable reasons, so they end up in the fringes.
Also, the Nazis, and even the Confederates, weren’t all that long ago in the grand scheme. A couple generations. Many people learn these tendencies from their family.
Also incels are somewhat different from Nazis/fascists. There’s obviously a lot of overlap. There’s always been men who had trouble with women, but I think being a male virgin after a certain age is enormously more vilified these days than it was in, for instance, the 50s, even among more progressive, left leaning groups. Admittedly, that’s anecdotal so I could be wrong.
adespoton@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Part of it is education and critical thinking. People don’t know what to trust because they don’t know how to test information for truthfulness and can’t reliably fact check. So they depend on an authority figure to tell them what and how to think, with expected results.
Note this isn’t limited to these people; some people just pick better authority figures than others.
otp@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
but I think being a male virgin after a certain age is enormously more vilified these days than it was in, for instance, the 50s, even among more progressive, left leaning groups.
Not sure if this is true, but I’m pretty sure that research says that people were having more sex back then. So probably fewer virgins back then.
There was less to do for entertainment in the 50s, lol
yeather@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Still a culture shift. Back then you were a stand up guy waiting for a dynamite gal to call his own, now you’re that weird 30yo who couldn’t get an easy lay in college and is too socially akward to date now.
SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Social media algorithms present different things to different people. So if you fall for a grift, the algorithm will just show you things that support the grift and never show anything that debunks it.
Someone going down a weird rabbit hole will stay on that for a long time, watching many ads along the way. Someone that starts to think “hey maybe there’s something to this thing” then immediately sees something debunking it may conclude “well that last video was a waste of time” and may decide to go do something else that’s a more worthwhile use of their time. End result, they watch fewer ads. Less revenue for the social media companies.
Weird internet rabbit holes are more profitable than seeing contradicting opinions. So the algorithms are tuned to send people down rabbit holes and not offer information contradicting them.
ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 2 months ago
I just confronted a guy I know who told me with a straight face that poor people struggle with budgeting.
I asked him where he got that info. He then sent me a bunch of YouTubers.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Payday loans sort of suggest this. Bit it’s more how society is biased to keep poor people poor.
CitizenKong@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Yes, but it’s important to note that confirmation bias is always present in our views of the world because our brain tends to keep things simple by prefering confirming to contradicting information. It just has been amplified by recommendation algorithms meant to increase engagement by showing you “more of the stuff you like”.
xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
As someone who used to visit incel communities (though I never supported the misogynist views), I think a lot of the appeal comes from the fact that they seem to be the only support groups for lonely men. Why aren’t there any non-toxic ones?
hightrix@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Few exist, but they do exist.
The issue is that many times in the past when men have tried to creat men only groups, they get called sexist and forced to open the group.
Men aren’t allowed to discuss their issues (men’s rights discussion is seen as hate), they aren’t allowed to discuss that they aren’t allowed to discuss men’s issues ( this is seen as hate ). Because men are seen as privileged.
I fully expect hate for this comment and I won’t engage.
Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The biggest reason support groups for men aren’t well supported, is due to men enforcing the ideas of stoic machismo onto men. This leads to numerous things, one is a lack of support for men who are struggling, failing, lonely, whatever. Men aren’t allowed to discuss their feelings because men have created a society that looks at them as losers for doing so. This is, very slowly, changing though.
The problem with a lot of men’s right advocacy is that is really does end up being misogynist. Most men’s right spaces I have encountered want to blame women for being lonely, for failing to make a family, etc. Meanwhile it is men that have had the primary hand in create society, and it has been that way for thousands of years. We can’t really affect change if we don’t recognize that this is a bed that we made. If we are not happy lying in it, then we need to change, not women. I am also saying not saying women are just perfectly fine. Clearly everyone can have serious negative issues due to life. However, as it stands, the problems we believe are brought on by society, are the constructs of men.
abcdqfr@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The preferred alternative is a healthy relationship after enough therapy, the latter being a [pay]wall for some
xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
There are more straight men who want a partner than women, so someone will be inevitably left out no matter the amount of therapy.
ulkesh@lemmy.world 2 months ago
In case it wasn’t a typo, and just to help OP for the future…
It’s “this day and age,” not “this day in age.”
I know I’ll probably get downvoted for the pedantry here especially since everyone understands what was meant, but hopefully OP will appreciate the information about the common phrase.
Also to answer the OP’s question: inferiority complex. It runs rampant in society, especially among men.
mycodesucks@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Nazis and incels need to be dealt with, yes, but the important thing to keep in mind is they are symptomatic of suffering swaths of the population. People don’t just do hate because it’s fun.
We let big businesses and the rich steamroll entire communities and industries, pay lip service to helping people who’ve been damaged by capitalism, and then after the election cycles are over leave their communities to rot. They are desperate and turn to the wrong answers because there aren’t any others.
We allow entertainment and advertising to blast our society with a particular view of what relationship “success” is, and accept mockery of those who cannot thrive in that narrow definition due to social anxiety or other mental issues as fair game. Those men are desperate and turn to the wrong answers because there aren’t any others.
Yes, Nazis and incels are absolutely awful, hateful problems that must be dealt with. And by the time they reach that point, it’s debatable that they can be saved. But they don’t fall out of the sky. They come from normal people whose cries for help went unheard, sometimes for decades, or generations. They’re the product of systemic injustices that we can mitigate with outreach programs and getting serious about mitigating the social problems that create the soil they spring from. Stopping them is a necessary band-aid, but the real solution is to address the situations that allow them to thrive in the first place.
Don_Dickle@lemmy.world 2 months ago
symptomatic
Still reading your post and came across the word symptomatic being used correctly and if I had a hat I would either tip it to you or say my hats off to you…no sarcasm.
mycodesucks@lemmy.world 2 months ago
if I had a hat I would either tip it to you or say my hats off to you
Hat inequity… yet another social ill we need to address.
Nemo@midwest.social 2 months ago
What they get is blaming others for their problems.
Don_Dickle@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Seriously? So they fill themselves up with this shit and are ok with putting it out there? I will never understand it because I am very very lazy and it kind of seems like hate requires alot of effort.
ICastFist@programming.dev 2 months ago
Ironically, this kind of hate requires no effort, someone says “GROUP BAD!” and you just sneer and shout towards them. It’s way, way easier to blame a group than understanding all the things that are making your life/city/country/world go wrong
“Of COURSE the evil jew gay black communist feminist conspiracy is the root of all evil, they hate MY way of life!”
There’s also the point that most conspiracy theories capitalize on the “this is a secret THEY don’t want you to know!”, so it makes people feel smart (despite them believing in utter bullshit)
TSG_Asmodeus@lemmy.world 2 months ago
This video is actually shockingly relevant right now, and does go through (some of) the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’.
Remember that tradwife/incel/etc shit is all just fascism boiled down into specifics. The Nazi’s sent women who wouldn’t marry to camps just as easily as Jewish people, gypsies, etc. We think of the Fascist movement as specifically anti-Jewish people, maybe throw in some gay people/etc, but Unionists, Communists, Socialists, and Women were targeted as well.
The reason it works is because it offers easy answers, and the average person has been made to be so lazy they’ll accept what they’re told, especially if they’re told everyone else is doing it. They aren’t a Nazi, they’re part of the Nazi’s.
We also have a huge backlog of emotional baggage for men post the 1980’s. At some point we all accepted that men wouldn’t show any emotions except anger, rage, frustration, etc, and then kept doubling down on it. Now you have groups of young men fed directly into a pipeline of Facebook/Youtube/whatever platform that spoon feeds them fascist garbage. Why? Because it makes them tame and easier to control. You notice fascists aren’t out there killing rich people, they’re killing minorities? That’s by design, because the wealthy know they’re fucked if young men turn that rage against them, the real perpetrators of said poor people’s suffering.
The wealthy love fascism, it gives them everything they want. They don’t see the poor people below them as human, so it’s all just a giant menagerie to them so they can have their Line Go Up Faster than the other rich people.
yourgodlucifer@lemmy.world 2 months ago
during gamer gate i started going down the alt right rabbithole (at some point i stopped when i realized this was associated with out right nazi shit and re-evaluated my beliefs)
I was one of those “i am very smart” people as a teenager but I’m actually an idiot I was also a pick me (I am a woman). I found those video clips of feminists everyone was sharing at that time and became convinced that feminist = man hater it can be easy for people to twist fringe beliefs from a group and present that as common among that group. Due to this and me being a lazy idiot who didn’t fact check because I thought I was to smart to be mislead I went further down the rabbithole
I also blame poor us education on civil rights issues my state (new mexico) is on the bottom of the list for education i think it was around 49th at the time I was in school they presented civil rights issues as if they were solved so i thought “these sjws don’t want equality they want women/minority superiority” I thought they wanted to oppress the previously oppressive groups as revenge not realizing that civil rights issues have not been solved that we haven’t attained equality even though the law was supposedly equal.
I believed in equality but it got twisted by fascist lies into opposing actual progress and equality.
I can see how people went further down the rabbit hole one of the things these videos talked about was how the crime rate was higher for black people and that’s why there is more police brutality against black people. I can see how someone could take this information out of context and start thinking that black people were more crime prone inherently and that’s where some of these people took it.
ignorance is one of the biggest causes of prejudice.
jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
“When dealing with people, and remember that you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion. Bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.”
– Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Racism and bigotry aren’t logical positions, but emotional ones. People have an emotional need to be part of a group and feel included. If the group a person joins is antagonistic towards other groups then the person will internalize that and become bigoted. The dislike of other groups becomes a part of their identity and belonging.
The documentary Behind The Curve illustrates this pretty effectively. They follow some flat eathers around and interview them and they all say the same thing. They love being a part of the group. They didn’t have a group before and now they do. Their beliefs keep the group together and they’re not going to get rid of them just because the beliefs can be proven to be wrong.
The desire to be a part of a group is strong enough that people will believe anything as long as it gets them some friends. There isn’t anything wrong with that unless the beliefs of the group are harmful and hateful.
bloodfart@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Naziism and fascism are broadly a response to the same material conditions as communism and anarchism (to an extent).
Liberalism does not put forth a response to those conditions because it created them and has no internal process to relieve them (instead it externalizes them) or stop perpetuating them.
When faced with a choice between communism or fascism people generally don’t perform an in-depth analysis of what’s best for them or their cohort but instead attach to the group that provides some relief or aid.
That’s why it’s important to always help people around you when you can.
Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world 2 months ago
People become lonely, disaffected, and negative towards the world they live in. They then reach out to other communities, and due to one thing, or another, primarily their personality, they don’t get accepted. However, communities based around hate will gladly take them in, as long as they fit a profile they are looking for.
"Are you a young, white, male, that is dissatisfied with their life, and the world? Well, we accept you here. These things are not your fault, it is the fault of others. You aren’t the reason you cannot get a relationship with a women, it is the women who are fault for this. The reason it is so hard to get a good paying job? Immigrants. Why is housing so expensive, and hard to get, at least anywhere with a large enough job market to really advance somewhere? The Jews. Why can’t you rise on the corporate ladder where you work? Progressive policies… also jews, and immigrants. You are a white man, you should be rightfully at the top of the hierarchy. Women should be given, by their fathers, to men, on a mutually beneficial, transactional, basis. Women should submit to your authority. "
Or, in the case of incels “Are you depressed? Have no friends? No social life? No relationship with a woman? Are you an adult virgin, loser? Well that is because women are evil. We will accept you, unlike the evil female species.”
Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Don’t Be a Sucker
This is an anti-fascism film made by the U.S. in the 1940s. It pretty much focuses on answering your exact question. It’s a decent film too.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Because they provided simple answers to complex problems. Doesn’t matter if the answers are wrong. If a government is providing the simple answers, it’s because they don’t want to solve the problems for whatever reason.
mineralfellow@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Feels > reals.
someguy3@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I think the basis of this is that it’s not about knowledge. It’s about emotion, and anger and hate are easy emotions.
BlucifersVeinyAnus@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
It’s a temper tantrum turned into a personality.
Yambu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
One of my closer friends is on a weird path atm. He’s full into Russian propaganda, anti-western stuff, flat earth, anti vaxx and whatnot.
I tried to reason with him. Turns out he doesn’t even know how to verify something he’s read online. Check sources? Nope. Google something you’ve seen in a video that sounds super weird? Nope, just believe it.
I came to accept that he might just be too stupid to navigate modern media without being a victim of misinformation, propaganda and lies.
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That knowledge needs active reaching out, otherwise you’ll just be in the “bigotry is when irrational hatred of group for the sake of doing evil” camp, which can be easily converted with “experiences”, “statistics”, etc.
I grew up in a very prejudiced family, and my family liked to scream off their lungs at me when I called them racists, because racism was supposed to be done for the sake of evil like in a cartoon, and them having “extensive experiences” of Roma wrongdoings against them makes it okay for them to throw everyone of them under the bus, for the illusion of safety.
theywilleatthestars@lemmy.world 2 months ago
They get to feel superior to vast swaths of the population without doing anything.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Probably generally starting with either an inferiority complex, or being a sociopath.