On Late-Stage Capitalism's Slide into Authoritarianism

 A bit from former American journalist Nate Bear:

The almost universal desire to return to normal in a pandemic, despite normal being bad for most people, is one of the best examples of the hegemonic collusion of class interest as you will ever see. Brexit was another. Late stage capitalism is the most dangerous stage because at this stage class consciousness has been largely dissolved (as a deliberate strategy to fuel capital accumulation), leaving society open for opposing class interests to fuse in the search for safety as conditions deteriorate. But this fusing can only spur further deterioration of conditions. And this action-reaction dance between capital owners and workers becomes a spiral that, in the 20th century, ended in fascism and war. 

The institutions and economic settlements born from 20th century horror have both been broken, leaving us ripe for a new cycle. Right now, it looks like this new cycle will have one major element in common with the 20th century cycle: the acceptance of mass death as necessary for the maintenance of the security and safety of an imagined normal. Whether virus death or climate death, we are being primed to accept mass death as the cost of doing business, the only business, the business that, in the end, is best for everyone, regardless of the cost. We're running head first into ruling class fascism.

And then from UK journalist and author George Monbiot:

I've long wondered how nations slide into authoritarianism. Why do people accept the loss of their freedoms? Why do they not rise up together against oppression? Now that it's happening in the UK, I think I have an answer. What we see in many responses to the Police Act and Public Order Act - the most oppressive legislation of the modern era - is a force we underestimate in politics. It has always been there, but in less extreme times we tend not to notice it: Sadism. 

When life is pretty shit - as it is after 13 years of austerity in the UK - there's a short cut some people take to feeling better: revelling in the suffering of others. If someone else is being pushed down, you've risen in the pecking order, even if your life hasn't improved. This, I think, is why public executions - which often involved grotesque torture and mutilation - were so popular. Look at that bloody rag of a person. They are nothing compared to me! Cut off another part! We now see the same impulse in response to these draconian laws. It's what those scuzzy campaigners deserve! Lock them up and throw away the key! Let the police stamp on their heads! Then I'll be freer than them. 

While enjoying such spectacles, people might be vaguely aware that they too have lost some of their freedoms, that they too could one day find themselves on the scaffold. But at least someone else, right now, is getting it worse. Kill the beast! So those of us trying to contest the new authoritarianism, and the plutocratic misrule that gives rise to it, find ourselves being pushed back by people who have also had their freedoms truncated, but accept this in exchange for seeing other people hurt.