I have had the belief for a few years that the rise of fascism is an emotional response to being afraid of an uncertain future that people feel like they have no power over.
It was 9/11 butterfly effect. The US’s wars caused a refugee crisis, xenophobes across North America and Europe got their panties in a bunch about all the new brown people, turned to nationalism. New (and popular) authoritarian anti terrorism laws probably didn’t help either.
If that were the case, climate change caused the entire Roman Empire, the Chinese empire, the Mayans, the Songhai, all of feudalism…
Scared people want strong leaders (a daddy) to tell them it’s okay, it’s not the climate, it’s the queers, migrants, etc. And Daddy’s going to fix it.
Blame may not be the right word. But the destruction of our environment and everything that goes with it, certainly gives authoritarianism an opening.
Judith Butler goes pretty deep into this in Who’s Afraid of Gender? Of course their analysis focuses mostly on how gender queer people end up being targeted. But the unnamed fear of climate destruction is a big factor. And trans people one of many scapegoats for power hungry demagogues.
Changing climate did have a major impact on all of those Empires though.
Usually it’s a combination with dysfunctional politics, war, resource depletion and climate change.
Not entirely sure climate change couldn’t just be argued to be the cause of all the others there.
You can have succession wars, incompetent inbred rulers and overexploitation without any climate change. But climate change would make it more likely to happen and make the outcome worse.
Who upvotes this nonsense? lol.
The causes of problems today are not necessarily the causes of problems for mayans, ancient romans, etal. It’s sad that I have to say this.
Or maybe a broken political and economic system is causing a gathering of wealth in the hands of the 1% which is a major factor behind both climate change and increasing authoritarianism
Any system will become broken is the same way. The top always gets greedy.
Well in my ideal system (a form of decentralised anarchy) there is no “top”.
Broken education system is to blame
Late stage capitalism is to blame for both.
You got it backwards mate
Authoritarianism enables climate change, not the other way around
No.
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