We've reached late-stage Trumpism
Sorry for doomposting, but I need to say something...
So a few days ago, a jury in Texas convicted nine defendants on charges that require Antifa to be a terrorist organization. Antifa is not a terrorist organization under federal law. Terrorist organizations are legally required to be operating outside of the United States (foreign).
This jury basically convicted nine people on an extrajudicial, illegal basis. And considering that the prosecutions case was basically, "They're Antifa," they were almost certainly convicted because of their political beliefs. Which suggests that if you live in Texas, you can be arbitrarily arrested at a protest and convicted on whatever because you disagree with conservatives. I can't imagine how this wouldn't shake peoples' faith in trial by jury and the American legal system as a whole.
Other than, once again, conservatives proving they are enemies of democracy, it is also now clear that Western societies are just breaking open. Even if the European fascist movements don't take over, they are polling so well that, at the very least, American-style polarization (at the very least) is, at this point, the inevitable fate of the European Continent. And the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment and the fascist movements in Latin America is shocking. It's probably likely, especially looking at the behavior of the "conservatives" that this will lead to chaos, tyranny, and/or bloodshed.
We have never seen anything quite like this in the modern world, but when stuff like this happened, like Germany after WW1, they tend to very much not be the best of times.
I think right now, we are ultimately facing whether Western societies are too deprived for liberal democracy to work.
Online Tankies, Anarkiddies and the Chinese Communists are smirking right now. Gloating that, in their view, liberal democracy is crumbling in favor of their "sensible" Marxist-Lenninost model. Of course, they are wrong, and History proves this. But just like the United States in the 1950's, they look at their luck right now and try to apply it universally, while the record isn't great for Marxist-Lenninism generally. If you were to ask Chinese Communist Party thinkers (I can think of at least one), they would tell you that the reason why the West is collapsing is because of the three facets of liberalism: economic liberalism, political liberalism, and cultural liberalism. Clearly, they are wrong about political liberalism being the culprit of Western decline. If liberal democracy is a root of decline, then why did the West perform so well as democratic states from the 1950's through the 1990's?
Now, democratic socialists like me would agree that the economic liberalism that pervaded the post-Cold War era is the fundamental root for, at least the dysfunction of Western societies. Neoliberal policies in ESG, DEI, carbon neutrality and unchecked stock market control created incredible wealth inequality that lead to a grave decline in quality of life and increased corporate influence in politics enforces it. The reason democracy stops working is because the power imbalance created by such a wealth gap corrupts democratic institutions. The problem is fundamentally material (or class-based). But conservatives will tell you that the problem is cultural liberalism. That the reason democracy stops working is because there is no longer a cultural consensus for democracies to operate by. That multiculturalism eroded the foundation of Western Civilization and now the West no longer has a direction to its liberal democracy towards.
To them the, the problem is fundamentally cultural (often race-based). The CPC, despite being communist, is also ultranationalist and anti-multiculturalism. They demand cultural conformity in to ensure that enough of a consensus can be reached within the Party to make effective decisions, or, at least that's what they think. It's therefore no surprise that they are committing genocide against their Uyghur population.
To the Communist Party of China, the perceived cultural unity required to maintain the ideological unity necessary for effective Party control of the State means that the Uyghur people have no right to exist. Here, we see the CPC continue the lessons that Stalin taught, as, under his rule, Stalin demanded the Russification of all Soviet Socialist Republics in the Soviet Union in his attempt to answer the 'National Question.' To the government of China, China is Han, and will continue to always be Han. This is simply Marxist-Lenninist ideology.
But it must also be acknowledged that in the 1950's, when Western democracy functioned at its best, was also when Western societies were just, extremely racist. Not just that democratic institutions functioned well at that time, but these societies were also well-funded social democracies too.
The U.S. had relatively low wealth inequality in the 1950's, with income tax rates in the rich up to 90% for the federal highway system, and even in the 60's, they only went down to 70% rates. Today, it's more like 50%. Corporate gains taxes are now half of what they used to be (around 25% down from 50%). Western societies were well funded, but they were also extremely White, and minorities were brutally subjugated. Do you want to know when neoliberalism started to gain traction in the U.S.? The 1960's, when Southern states started to vote for 1920's style laissez-faire Republicans like Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan got elected govenor of California. Do you know what also happened in the 60's? The Civil Rights Act. Racist Whites who couldn't accept African-Americans having the right to vote started voting for the first generation of neoliberal politicians because they realized laissez-faire policies could be weaponized against Blacks and because said politicians had questionable views on race issues. And when you take a good look at when fascist movements started to get big in Europe, it began with the 2015 European Migrant Crisis (per Wikipedia). And we see countless examples all over the world of xenophobia and bigotry tied to worsening problems and rising fascist movements.
The heart of the current crisis, not just of the West, but of the entire Human Race, is multiculturalism. The Western world never really believed this, but that doesn't change the fact that the most core belief of liberalism is that all men are created equal. That for a society to be meaningfully free, it must be able to allow for the coexistence of different cultures. That people must be free to exist as themselves. This sacred belief is what's being challenged worldwide.
Reactionaries love to say that different cultures can't coexist in the same borders. But if people of different cultures can't work together to make a state work, what makes them think that they could work together as separate states now that war becomes a legitimate tool in dealing with each other?
We are now fighting not just for the survival of freedom, but for the future of Humanity. We will either learn to work together, or we will doom ourselves to endless war and struggle.
I've met people with ancestries and cultures from all over the world. We all got along fine. Europe has its problems, and even tensions with groups sometimes, but I see people of all races and cultures get along fine all the time whether it's in the inter-city or out in the Mojave Desert. You want to know who are the people afraid of immigrants?
People in parts of the U.S far away from the Mexican border. Whites who live in such homogeneous communities that they rarely ever see someone of a different ethnicity. Conservatives lie to you. We are not mere vicious animals. Yes, we fear what we do not know, but we can learn and experience.
Conservatives claim we are too different from each other to coexist peacefully, but the truth is that they just don't want to. They don't want to learn about other cultures because they view themselves better than everyone else, so they come to fear what they don't understand.
We can all chose to try to resurrect bygone eras like a Frankenstein monster, glories that never existed on the suffering of others, or we can do what humans have always done: allow our cultures to merge together. After all, the cultures that conservatives want to 'conserve' are modern products that only exist because of these cultural exchanges. It's time to embrace our human heritage.