Comments on: The world just became a bit more stupid… https://www.habitablezone.com/2019/07/23/the-world-just-became-a-bit-more-stupid/ Sun, 05 Apr 2026 21:05:37 -0700 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: ER https://www.habitablezone.com/2019/07/23/the-world-just-became-a-bit-more-stupid/#comment-43378 ER Tue, 23 Jul 2019 13:12:23 +0000 https://habitablezone.com/?p=77502#comment-43378 At least Boris doesn't seem stupid himself. Flamboyant, disruptive, outrageous, self-centered, opportunist, cynical, but not stupid. Highly educated, very articulate, well-read and completely unprincipled. If Trump is the Devil, then Boris is the Antichrist. You might call Boris the Newt Gingrich (or the TED Cruz)of UK politics. So why is this sort of populist unscrupulous demagogue seem to be arising all over the world? Where did all this Fascism come from? Well, I have a theory, you may not believe it, and I may be wrong (yes, I've been wrong before and I can't guarantee I'm not wrong now). But here it is. Fascism seems to be on the upsurge because the flowering of prosperity and freedom that followed the Second World War suddenly began to falter and stumble. Why that happened is irrelevant, it was probably a combination of things anyway: blind historical forces and human greed and stupidity. But the beneficiaries of that social and economic progress sense what is happening and they are frightened. They feel it all slipping through their fingers. They see their children being brought into a shabbier, crueler, poorer world. They want reassurance that the good times they have come to expect as normal will never end, they want action, and they demand a strong leader who will give them easy solutions and scapegoats. Its happened once before, the burst of social welfare legislation, the spread of democracy and the riches unleashed by industrialization and colonialism at the turn of the twentieth century, (the end of the Gilded Age), eventually faltered and led to the Depression and European Fascism--and then WWII. In both cases, the middle classes felt that the prosperity and freedom was over, and they demanded a strong man to bring it back. Fascism is the dictatorship of the middle class. At least Boris doesn’t seem stupid himself. Flamboyant, disruptive, outrageous, self-centered, opportunist, cynical, but not stupid. Highly educated, very articulate, well-read and completely unprincipled. If Trump is the Devil, then Boris is the Antichrist. You might call Boris the Newt Gingrich (or the TED Cruz)of UK politics.

So why is this sort of populist unscrupulous demagogue seem to be arising all over the world? Where did all this Fascism come from? Well, I have a theory, you may not believe it, and I may be wrong (yes, I’ve been wrong before and I can’t guarantee I’m not wrong
now). But here it is.

Fascism seems to be on the upsurge because the flowering of prosperity and freedom that followed the Second World War suddenly began to falter and stumble. Why that happened is irrelevant, it was probably a combination of things anyway: blind historical forces and human greed and stupidity.

But the beneficiaries of that social and economic progress sense what is happening and they are frightened. They feel it all slipping through their fingers. They see their children being brought into a shabbier, crueler, poorer world. They want reassurance that the good times they have come to expect as normal will never end, they want action, and they demand a strong leader who will give them easy solutions and scapegoats.

Its happened once before, the burst of social welfare legislation, the spread of democracy and the riches unleashed by industrialization and colonialism at the turn of the twentieth century, (the end of the Gilded Age), eventually faltered and led to the Depression and European Fascism–and then WWII.

In both cases, the middle classes felt that the prosperity and freedom was over, and they demanded a strong man to bring it back. Fascism is the dictatorship of the middle class.

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