I see Communism and Fascism as two flavors of junk food

[gulliver]

They're basically both cases of the simple-minded folks (whether educated or uneducated simple-minded folks) effectively crashing out and binging on junk. The wiser people (former simple-minded people who have learned life the hard way, usually) divide themselves into politics mongers or spectators. The mongers sell "rage stew" to the crashed out, simple-minded suckers, flavoring it with intellectually third-rate ideas like Communism or Fascism. The spectators look on with empathic horror or cruel amusement. (Or combine the two to create great satire.)

On edit: There's another category of the wise people. They're the ones who try to get everyone to put down the political fritos, chocolate donuts, and hooch. They piss everyone off. They're credited for being right post-cancellation or posthumously.

[LS0999]

1. Anything Fox News doesn't like is considered "Communism"

The natural response to the far right is going to be the far left, but who brought us here to this point?

[gulliver]

3. Modernity and computers brought us here

It created mass confusion and error. The cray cray and the rationalizable, plausible cray cray broke containment.

I see folks like Trump, Fuentes, and Piker as "mongers." Did they start it? No. They're just feeding on it. It was really, really bad well before them.

I didn't really start to notice the blue skin lesions and unexplained weight loss in the body politic until George W. Bush assumed office (which is why I joined DU). I think it predates Dubya by at least a century or two, but he is a sort of common ancestor of the predators who feed on the crashed out, normal folks. He sped it up dramatically, imo.The simple folks and the wiser, burnt, experienced folks really just want to sit in an inner tube with a beer hat and a fishing pole (well, I do anyway), but the world keeps "improving."

[DFW]

2. Here in EU-land, the far left has been the fertilizer of the far right.

"Tolerance" for overboard acts of protégés of the far left, and refusal to treat them equally as every other citizen, has drawn disproportional attention, and has fed rage on the part of the far right, which they have predictably blown out of proportion with the time-tested "they're coming to get you, so you need us to protect you from them." It never fails. The AfD in Germany thanks its lucky stars every day for it.