No Stupid Questions

As someone who's had several long debates with a neonazi on discord, it usually boils down to them saying "Goldbloom controls you, all your arguments are therefore nullified"

Their aptitude for dismissing information is amazing

Fascism is a result of declining Capitalism, as an example. Ideas come from material reality, not spontaneously.

It's a slippery slope. First it's either a community they can share anything with, or it is a subject dear to them that they see people give solution to. Then, slowly, one idea at a time, they get litteraly corrupted. Ideas are imprinted through repetition, values are suggested. Then, or before, you imprint the idea that the others are lying. This is key because it seed doubt in everything, but as he is closer from this group, this group get to imprint its own ideas through repetition alone. Distance is built with relatives so that the group is the only group he has. Then if he starts to disagree, he will be kicked, sometimes also punished, and he'll be left alone, or at least he must be convinced of it. Once there radicalisation is a process that's hard to stop.

Doubt, distrust, and a group to be with are the key ingredients. Liberalism is a fertile ground for this because it promotes individualism when humans are social creatures. So it's very easy to find people in need of a social group that gives belonging. And racism makes the easiest pretense : you belong because of your blood, or because you're born here.

For sexism, it's mostly a reactionary backlash, and secondly this liberalism problem of promoting individualism to humans who seek belonging. Feminism did won, and the old way of treating women is being addressed. But it is a process, and while we know what's bad, we don't have much new examples to follow. Yet most people have been trained in the old way, so now they are at lost. It's not the first reason why they're alone, liberalism has this place, but it is far easier to blame it on women and feminism than to try to build a new society. And also, it again gives them belonging with men like them that understands them and give explanations and solutions to their problems. Not good ones, but that's not the point.

It's the same as it's always been. We gravitate towards what we feel.

The internet has just allowed certain groups who wmight be ashamed to announce their true feelings to say the quiet part out loud anonymously. This gets the next generation to not see a problem with it and go from there.

As an example. Take an impressionable young boy (14-18), he has trouble getting dates, doesn't have a great home life. Little bit of a loner. Before the internet, hed have to figure out a purpose. Maybe he'd start going to a gym or hitting the books harder to be smarter or something.... With the Internet he's able to find "friends", he finds a community, that community may lead him down dark paths.... Where some in better living situations may say "this is too much" and walk away, he doesn't have anything to walk to... So he gets more and more indoctrinated into the cause.

"so much knowledge against it"? We live in a n overwhelming ocean of information, what seems obvious to many people may be completely unheard of in other areas, we're not all getting our information from the same sources. Or some people have become indoctrinated by other groups and have become basically inoculated against "wokeism". Plato's allegory of the cave is just as relevant today as it was in his time (if not more so). There are people spending their whole lives looking at shadow puppets dancing on the wall, thinking that that's reality. Who knows, maybe it's us, but the point is, even though we're awash in information, ignorance is alive and well.

Feels > reals.

As a young person who grew up on the internet, with no parental oversight, I can say it's because there is a lot of right wing bullshit online that media companies love to push on their users. When I was a tween I got suckered into it hard when one day youtube decided to put mgtow videos in my recommended feed. I never initially searched for them. I did eventually get out of it, and I'm not entirely sure how, but I remember as a 13yo seeing trump in 2016 bully that disabled reporter and it really put a sour taste in my mouth. And then over the next few years that led to me leaving catholicism, becoming a socialist, and realizing I'm transgender and very gay.

With me being transgender and pan, that adds another aspect to it, because I think I knew subconsciously that I was queer as a tween, but growing up in an environment where I was repeatedly told those things were wrong led to me feeling absolutely miserable about myself, and misery loves company. And this also makes me wonder how many nazis are queer and don't even realize it or refuse to recognize it.

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.

It's not a matter of knowledge, it's a matter of what they want.

One may desire to be advantaged/superior to some others, and particularly nice and easy if race or gender is a convenient shorthand for knowing who is 'in' and 'out', as long as you are in the 'in' group of course.

So life is just plain easier if women are just supposed to sit there and please them. If the 'natural order' justifies that convenience, then one may be attracted to that thought. To the extent fairness and equality makes their life harder, they are inclined to be upset at that obstackle. It's convenient if the legal and labor world gives their race preferential treatment, and other groups are left desperate enough to do whatever they need done but don't want to do, and scared enough of the government to not get "uppity".

Sometimes overt evil, sometimes more subconscious manifesting as being very receptive to narratives that correlate with those feelings.

Disenfranchisement is a hell of a drug. A lot don’t believe in the ideology at first, but are forced into it because they lacked proper role models when they were young.

Echo chambers which most social media apps and websites really love to create