I’ll concede that I may have been scapegoating centrist politicians when they are a symptom, not an origin. Concentrated wealth shapes candidate pipelines, party apparatus, and the media environment. Donor networks decide who can mount a viable campaign, party machinery is responsive to the same funders, and media ownership concentrates alongside both. Conservative policies are the observable surface of that capture, not its source.
The actors doing the capturing intend the outcomes they directly want (deregulation, tax cuts, weakened labor bargaining power, weakened regulators). They are indifferent to, or welcoming of, the downstream authoritarian coalition, because that coalition serves those same ends by weakening the same mediating institutions. Both want the administrative state, the regulators, and the credibility of mainstream institutions diminished. They don’t need to share goals to keep ending up on the same side. They need only share enemies.
Eroded public services, stagnating wages, visible regional decline; these are the concrete grievances that outrage media has to work with. The media environment matters here, and it isn’t a static backdrop. It’s part of the same captured structure. Voting-age citizens, especially older and less-educated demographics, increasingly get their news through social media, and the medium is the message and that message is outrage, anger, and fear. Identity politics, scapegoating, and demonization are what the feed rewards. But outrage needs something to be outraged about, and the material conditions supply it. That’s the interaction, cultivated grievance plus an amplifier optimized for grievance.
So I’m not saying BC conservatives are the anti-Christ, and I’m not saying they’ll be personally engineering fascism. I’m saying the levers they pull are connected to actors with a project, the project benefits from the ground being fertile, and the ground is being made fertile in a structure where the beneficiaries are identifiable. The vulnerability isn’t an accident of boring policy. It’s the predictable output of a structure where the people pulling the levers profit from the conditions fascist movements exploit.
You were right that structural factors set the odds and agency determines the outcome. I’m saying the odds are being shifted by actors who profit from the conditions, and those actors don’t need to intend fascism to keep producing its preconditions. That’s a vulnerability, not a fate, which is exactly why the collective agency you named is the thing that has to reverse it. Equilibria can be broken, which is why this is a claim about odds rather than destiny.
I’ll concede that I may have been scapegoating centrist politicians when they are a symptom, not an origin. Concentrated wealth shapes candidate pipelines, party apparatus, and the media environment. Donor networks decide who can mount a viable campaign, party machinery is responsive to the same funders, and media ownership concentrates alongside both. Conservative policies are the observable surface of that capture, not its source.
The actors doing the capturing intend the outcomes they directly want (deregulation, tax cuts, weakened labor bargaining power, weakened regulators). They are indifferent to, or welcoming of, the downstream authoritarian coalition, because that coalition serves those same ends by weakening the same mediating institutions. Both want the administrative state, the regulators, and the credibility of mainstream institutions diminished. They don’t need to share goals to keep ending up on the same side. They need only share enemies.
Eroded public services, stagnating wages, visible regional decline; these are the concrete grievances that outrage media has to work with. The media environment matters here, and it isn’t a static backdrop. It’s part of the same captured structure. Voting-age citizens, especially older and less-educated demographics, increasingly get their news through social media, and the medium is the message and that message is outrage, anger, and fear. Identity politics, scapegoating, and demonization are what the feed rewards. But outrage needs something to be outraged about, and the material conditions supply it. That’s the interaction, cultivated grievance plus an amplifier optimized for grievance.
So I’m not saying BC conservatives are the anti-Christ, and I’m not saying they’ll be personally engineering fascism. I’m saying the levers they pull are connected to actors with a project, the project benefits from the ground being fertile, and the ground is being made fertile in a structure where the beneficiaries are identifiable. The vulnerability isn’t an accident of boring policy. It’s the predictable output of a structure where the people pulling the levers profit from the conditions fascist movements exploit.
You were right that structural factors set the odds and agency determines the outcome. I’m saying the odds are being shifted by actors who profit from the conditions, and those actors don’t need to intend fascism to keep producing its preconditions. That’s a vulnerability, not a fate, which is exactly why the collective agency you named is the thing that has to reverse it. Equilibria can be broken, which is why this is a claim about odds rather than destiny.