Comment by krapp
13 hours ago
The more I study 20th century fascism - and by "study" I mean "listen to podcasts like Behind the Bastards" - the more I learn that, yes, they were just as goofy and cringe in their time as their modern equivalents. Hitler was seen as a bit of a comic buffoon with his over-the-top rhetoric, he had an Austrian accent which made him come off as a country bumpkin, and many people were unimpressed by him. Trump in 2016 was a joke, a C-list celebrity game show host only known for being rich and sleazy and playing himself on television.
The core elements are usually similar. Fetishism of militarism often by people who never see a day of combat, occult and antiscientific beliefs, grifts, purges and nepotism, brutish mocking cruelty. The Nazi Totenkopf was the shiba inu of its day.
History doesn't repeat but it does rhyme. I think the lesson here is people tend to understimate what they can't respect. Thinking "no one would be stupid enough to take this guy seriously" is often a mistake.
There's a lot of stupid people out there waiting for someone who knows how to speak to them. Sounding like a country bumpkin and being unimpressive to the elites is probably good qualities if you want to be that sort of person.
>a lot of stupid people
I mean not being condescending to them would go a long way.
They're generally not on HN. And since they're not here, we might as well speak about the problem using plain language.
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How else do you describe people who didn't know what a tariff was, didn't care to check how it works, blindly believes that other countries will pay for it (especially after Mexico didn't really pay for the wall the first time around?), and will likely still believe whatever misinformation they're fed next time?