Thread by @JYSexton

When capitalism starts to buckle and the people demand dignity and equality, liberalism’s soft pressures and meritocratic promises give way to fascism, which reinforces the economy through violence and offers meaning through war.

The market disguises patriarchal, white supremacist hierarchies, blaming human suffering on forces “beyond the benefactors’ control.”

When that fiction wears thin, fascism celebrates those ideas as natural and supernatural, the bedrock of society, and protects them as sacred.

Fascism rises from the stumbling of capitalist systems, replacing the internal, quiet systems with bombastic violence and attacking reformers as traitors and conspirators until the society is brought under widespread, self-destructive control.

The religious, esoteric nature of fascism, with its spectacle and cult of power and mysteries, is an answer to the alienation and underlying nihilism of exploitation and production. It turns material pursuit of profit into sacrament, industrial sacrifice into martyrdom.

What we’re seeing, with these conspiracy theories, is a masking of economic exploitation with religious mythologies that attempt to transfer blame from the wealthy class to their political enemies. It’s a spiritual weapon and it happens over and over again.

The answer is to find faith in one another and meaning beyond consumerism, nationalism, and personal advancement. These things bleed into fascism as capitalism breaks the emergency glass. But this crisis is as spiritual as it is political or economic.

These conspiracy theories feed off the taught belief that we are all economic competitors and to trust one another means risking oblivion and apocalypse. That’s been the story we’ve been told and it’s to the benefit of wealthiest few. And they’re powerful triggers for fascists.

So, as economic conditions worsen and calls for reform grow, the wealthy turn up cultural terror, warning their base that they’re under attack, an apocalyptic threat looms, then aims the blame at the reformers and dissatisfied classes. Meaningless struggle becomes religion.

CRT, the War on Christmas, immigration, all of it becomes a purpose to people desperate for meaning. The toll and toil of the economy leaves them searching for something. The conspiracy theories off a crusade, a threat to meet. Suddenly the system needs saving from enemies.

Finally, the meaningless sacrifice of working becomes tantamount to heroism, sacred martyrdom. It’s a spiritual act to do more and be paid less. The system becomes a religion that “cures” the meaningless toil and the agitators are purged as heretics/evil threats.