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During the 1930s, a beast called fascism stirred to life and began overwhelming societies across the world. Within 10 years, it was clear this had been one of historys worst ideas. But the unappealing reality is that during the fascist moment, many, many people thrilled to its appeal and not just in the places that would become the Axis powers in World War II.

Yetthe United States didnt go fascist. Why? In 1941, the journalist Dorothy Thompson wrote an unsettling article for Harpers Magazine which asked the question, Who Goes Nazi? Based on her time spent in Europe she was the first U.S. reporter expelled from Nazi Germany Thompson explained, Nazism has nothing to do with race and nationality. It appeals to a certain type ofmind. Moreover, Thompson wrote, huge swaths of Americans possessed this type of mind.

Looked at from a distance of nearly a century, the reason the U.S. evaded fascism seems clear. It wasnt that were nicer or better than other countries, thanks to our inherent sterling character. We just got lucky. The prolate spheroid-shaped football of history bounced the right way for the country. And a huge part of that luck was Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal.

We forgot the New Deal was not a mountain range created by nature but an extraordinary achievement that was erected by humans and could therefore eitherbe extended or destroyed.

Roosevelt was exactly the right president at the right time. The New Deal demonstrated that democracy could deliver unmistakable benefits, both material and emotional, to desperate people, and thereby drained away much of the psychological poison that powers fascism.

Then, over the next 30 years, something terrible happened: America forgot all this. We forgot how lucky we got. We forgot the New Deal was not a mountain range created by nature but an extraordinary achievement that was erected by humans and could therefore eitherbe extended or destroyed.

Robert Kuttner illustrates this eloquently in his new book Going Big: FDRs Legacy, Bidens New Deal, and the Struggle to Save Democracy. Kuttner, born in 1943, writes, I am a child of the New Deal. My parents bought their first home with a government-insured mortgage. When my father was stricken with cancer, the VA paid for excellent medical care. After he died, my mother was able to keep our house thanks to my dads veterans benefits and her widows pension from Social Security.

The problem, he says, is, My generation grew up thinking of the system wrought by the Roosevelt revolution as normal. But this seemingly permanent social contract was exceptional. Above all, it was fragile, built on circumstances and luck as much as enduring structural change.

Kuttner has been fighting for the New Deal, and against its ferocious enemies, for his entire life. He started as one of journalist I.F. Stones assistants, served as a congressional investigator, was general manager of Pacificas WBAI Radio in New York City, and has been a regular newspaper columnist. Perhaps most significantly, hes co-founded two enduring institutions: the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, and The American Prospect, one of the zestiest liberal publications in the U.S.

During much of this time, Kuttner has been trying to persuade the Democratic Party to care about its heritage and stop collaborating with the U.S. right in undermining the New Deal extended universe. But in Going Big, Kuttner makes a scary case that the stakes are now much larger than this. The books first words are Joe Bidens presidency will be either a historic pivot back to New Deal economics and forward to energized democracy, or heartbreaking interregnum between two bouts of deepening American fascism. The final chapter is titled Americas Last Chance.

Going Big is largely the story of how we got to this moment, starting with Roosevelt and ending inJanuary of this year, when it went to press. Its filled with peculiar and little-known history, such as the fact that at the 1932 Democratic Party convention, candidates required two-thirds of the delegate vote to secure the nomination. This rule was championed by the conservative white Democratic powerbrokers of the South whose ideological descendants are now Republicans to give them a veto over who would lead the party. Kuttner quotes a New Deal historian as saying, Roosevelt came within an eyelash of being denied the nomination thanks to this; he only squeaked through by allying with the extremely unpalatable Southerners.

Kuttner highlights examples of the 200-proof racism then at the commanding heights of the Democratic Party. At the 1936 convention, the invocation was delivered by Marshall Shepard, an African American pastor from Philadelphia. Cotton Ed Smith, a senator from South Carolina, called Shepard a slew-footed, blue-gummed, kinky-headed Senegambian, and that was the nicer part. Smith walked off the floor in outrage.

Kuttner identifies this type of racial insanity as one of two potent undertows that would hobble the New Deal and make it vulnerable to attacks in the future. But while racism remains pervasive, writes Kuttner, the U.S. is not the same place as it was in the 1930s. Nevertheless, the Democratic failure to deliver economic gains for ordinary people has allowed white racism once again to fill the political vacuum. This is thanks to the second factor undermining New Deal politics: the residual power of capitalists in a capitalist economy.

The books more recent history features the enjoyable intellectual dismantlement of some of the personifications of this power particularly two of Bill Clintons treasury secretaries, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers. The 2008 economic collapse can to a significant degree be laid at their feet. Kuttner takes deserved satisfaction in pointing out that they or their followers were regnant in the Obama administration but have largely been marginalized by Biden. Summers in particular was reduced to griping from the sidelines as the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Act Plan far larger than anything dreamed of by Obama was passed in March 2021.

And thats great. But that brings the book to the obvious, core problem of U.S. politics right now. Biden could try to makethe 2022 midterms and the 2024 election a referendum on his Build Back Better agenda, or the PRO Act (which would make union organizing much easer), or abortion rights, or expanding Social Security, or a crackdown on corporate villainy, or any and all of the many popular positions that Democrats theoretically hold.

Biden and the Democrats now seem intent on going small so smol and petite and inoffensive that no one notices or gets mad at them.

Roosevelt would have relished the fight and going big. But Biden and the Democrats now seem intent on going small so smol and petite and inoffensive that no one notices or gets mad at them. One especially dispiriting example of this that Kuttner does not address in the book, but has elsewhere, is inflation. The Biden administration could have gone on the offensive and made the case that inflation is being driven by supply chain issues, corporate price-gouging,and Saudi Arabias crown prince as opposed to rising wages and government spending but insteadhas largely settled into a silent defensive crouch. Now Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve reappointed by Biden, is saying that the Feds policy is to get wages down, something Americans will enjoy even less than inflation.

The novel Love in the Ruins by Walker Percy was published in 1971, just as the energy of the New Deal was quietly dissipating. It begins:

Now in these dread latter days of the old violent beloved U.S.A. and of the Christ-forgetting Christ-haunted death-dealing Western world I came to myself in a grove of young pines and the question came to me: has it happened at last?

Is it that God has at last removed his blessing from the U.S.A. and what we feel now is just the clank of the old historical machinery, the sudden jerking ahead of the roller-coaster cars as the chain catches hold and carries us back into history with its ordinary catastrophes, carries us out and up toward the brink from that felicitous and privileged siding where even unbelievers admitted that if it was not God who blessed the U.S.A., then at least some great good luck had befallen us, and that now the blessing or the luck is over, the machinery clanks, the chain catches hold, and the cars jerk forward?

Were about to find out whether that luck in fact is over. But part of that charmed existence has always been people like Kuttner. Were fortunate to have him, and now its up to everyone else to take his warning seriously, and try to make our own luck.

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History Says Democracy Will Die if Democrats Don't Try Going Big - The Intercept

Yall, I listen to a lot of political podcasts, and the general consensus among Democratic podcasters is that Biden is having a bunch of successes and things are going great and its just unfair that the media isnt helping him get his message out.

Yesterday, I went to the Sonic on Clarksville Pike. Their ice cream machine was down. Their soda machine was down. They couldnt take cash unless it was exact change, and only the drive-thru was open. The workers seemed to be in OK spirits, but I cant imagine spending my Saturday shift on a warm summer day having to tell everyone that theres nothing cool. Like, either fix shit or put the place out of its misery.

Also, MNPS has put chain-link fences around the schools in my neighborhood, but they cant pay staff living wages. Its a crapshoot whether theres going to be milk at the grocery store. And authorities just pulled a gaggle of fascists presumably on their way to attack gay people out of the back of a U-Haul. Not to mention gas prices.

Its no Siege of Leningrad out here or anything, but so many things feel rundown or neglected, just a little harder than they should be. Everything sucks a little bit.

Of course, Biden isnt responsible for the Sonic, or how much Nashville pays school employees. Hes not causing the explosion of white supremacist activism were seeing. Gas prices are high the world over. These things objectively are not his fault.

But its like, for example, if a friend tells you he has a broken foot and cant afford to go to the doctor to get it fixed, and you tell him that the weathers lovely and he should just get outside and move around some and hell feel better you are going to sound clueless and disconnected, and you shouldnt be surprised if he gets mad at you.

There are so many frustrating things about Trump, but one of the most frustrating is that for the rest of our lives, if we are able to sustain some semblance of a country, the bar will have been set so low for politicians that being somewhat sentient will be a great achievement.

Biden is not a good president. Obviously, hes not the worst president in living memory, because one dude tried to stage a coup. But Biden is objectively out of touch with the fact that most of us are living in The Great Suck, and whatever it is hes doing to make things better, they dont seem to be changing peoples day-to-day lives.

When the Democrats get their asses handed to them at the polls this fall, voters are going to catch the blame for it. But voters put a Democratic president in office and gave him a Democratic Congress to get things done, and even then, nothing happened. We apparently need to vote even harder. Now they dont need just a majority, they need a filibuster-proof majority. Whatever. Joe Manchin is a gift to Democrats with him, they dont have to do anything.

I dont know, yall. I was going to continue to rant, but Im stuck on a couple of questions. First, do you think a country can be too large, with too many constituencies, to be governed by democracy? The point of a democracy is supposed to be that the people elect representatives to make decisions that enact policies that the people who elected them either support or benefit from. But were in a situation now where many politicians dont feel beholden to voters. Do you think Sen. Marsha Blackburn loses even one minute of sleep worried that not being available to constituents might hurt her? I dont.

Or it could be that Blackburn sees her constituents not as people who live in her district, not even as people who voted for her, but as the people who give her money. But I dont think that changes my question. Is there just some limit to the amount of people any one person or group of people can give a shit about? Because it seems like politicians use all kinds of ways to winnow down the number of people they have to pay attention to. Its an asshole move, but maybe its an asshole move with roots in biology. I dont know. Maybe a country this big cant function as a democracy because people cant care about this many people?

Its depressing to think about, but it certainly explains the resurgence in white supremacist Christian nationalism this is a group of political ideologies committed to actively shrinking the number of people most Americans give a shit about through demonizing out-groups, and then actively shrinking the numbers of people most Americans dont give a shit about through violence.

Maybe were failing because were too big? But thats not satisfying to me, because theres never been a point in our countrys history where all of us have been represented. We dont even know if it would work, let alone if its failing, because we have never fully tried it.

But this brings me to the next thing I cant quit thinking about: Do you think white people are more committed to the U.S. as an as-of-yet not-fully realized democracy and beacon of freedom than they are to the U.S. as a white supremacist country? In other words, will most white people sell out democracy in order to keep power? I think weve seen that the answer to this question is yes. On both sides of the aisle.

And I think the hard lesson Im having to learn, and maybe you are too, is that even with my relatively advantaged position in my community I have a job, I own a house, etc. I am not worth consideration for most of the politicians who represent me.

But Im not entirely sure they realize theyre drawing a circle around the small subset of the people they should be serving and focusing solely on them.

I mean, when Bidens surrogates say, Things are going so much better for you, why arent you happy? do they know theyre not talking to all of us? Do they even realize how many of us are invisible to them?

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Biden, American Democracy and The Great Suck | Pith in the Wind | nashvillescene.com - Nashville Scene

Meanwhile, Russias invasion of Ukraine is making Western democracies rethink some of their most fundamental assumptions about how democratic norms take hold.

So what do we know about democracies, anyway? How do they stack up against other kinds of governments? And how can they be strengthened? Heres a roundup of some our research on the topic.

A common notion is that a democracy should be superior to dictatorships because they are able to select the best people, says Georgy Egorov, a professor of managerial economics and decision sciences. That is, democratic regimes should oversee more economic success and experience more longevity. But this is not always the case, according to a 2012 study from Egorov and his collaborators.

Where democracies have the edge, the researchers find, is in their ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

Imagine a country composed of both generals and economists. The country goes to war and the generals form a government. In this scenario, the government is effective whether it was formed as a democracy or a dictatorship because the best wartime leadersthe generalsare already in place.

Now, however, imagine that the war ends and the country experiences an economic recession. A democracy can adapt by electing the economists to powerbut a dictatorship cannot. After all, even though the generals are unable to manage the crisis efficiently, they are unlikely to cede power.

Here is where we get an unambiguous prediction that the more democratic a country is, the more able it is to fire people that are no longer competent and bring in people that are needed at the moment, Egorov says.

Ameet Morjaria, an associate professor of managerial economics and decision sciences, is a native of Tanzania, but attended school in Kenya, where hed long observed how curiously haphazard Kenyas road network seemed to be. He points out that, if you were to look at a road map of Kenya from the 1970s and 1980s, you literally see roads going nowhere.

The haphazardness is largely due to mismanagement of public funds leading to corruption, which was more acute during periods of autocracy, according to a study by Morjaria and his colleagues.

Since gaining independence from Great Britain in the early 1960s, Kenya has experienced alternating periods of autocracy and democracy, often within the same leaders. Under autocracy, districts in which the population shared the presidents ethnicity received three times more investment in road-building projects than their population size would indicatehence the construction of all of those roads that were seemingly designed without transportation goals in mind. But those funding imbalances largely attenuated during periods of democracy, suggesting the power of democracy to prevent corruption.

Not only does political competition become better regulated, but the constraints on executive action are better monitored as parliamentary committees are formed, and civil society gains voice, Morjaria says. He adds that simply the possibility, albeit a small one, of being kicked out of office can cascade into constraining those in charge.

Social mobility is important to maintaining a stable democracy. When people believe that they are likely to move into a different social class in the future, they will vote in the interest of those future selves, not necessarily their current selves.

But there is a catch: having high social mobility isnt enough to maintain a stable democracy. Pivotal decision-makers also have to plausibly believe that they (or their descendants) are equally likely to move up or down in class. Such is the finding of a separate study from Egorov and his colleagues.

For example, if you are currently in the middle class and believe, correctly or not, that you are more likely to become rich than poor, this may lead you to favor an autocratic government that benefits the wealthy, rather than a democratic one that works in the interest of the middle class.

This is why a thick middle class makes democracy more stable than a thin one, Egorov says. When the middle class constitutes much of the population, and middle-class citizens feel they are likely to either remain or return there, they will be reluctant to give power to the rich.

Political scientists think about regimes as being a spectrum. On the one end are true democracies, in which democratic norms exist and function. On the other end are strong dictatorships, where power is concentrated in the hands of an individual or small group, without any limits or oversight. Between these poles fall limited democracies and weak dictatorships: regimes in which democratic norms exist but do not function, or in which power is concentrated, but not absolutely.

Its these limited democracies and weak dictatorships that are most likely to respond with aggression to a foreign conflict, compared with true democracies and strong dictatorships, according to a model from Sandeep Baliga, a professor of managerial economics and decision sciences.

He and his coauthor constructed a game-theory model in which conflicts are triggered by leaders who fear both being attacked by other nations and being removed from power by the people they govern.

In their model, limited democracies (and weak dictatorships) tend to be more aggressive in response to a foreign threat than either true democracies or strong dictatorships. Thats because voters are likely to punish leaders in a true democracy if they deem a war to be unnecessary, making democratic leaders more dovish. Leaders of a limited democracy (or weak dictatorship), however, face only some checks on their power, making them less concerned about political blowback from engaging in an unnecessary war, and more worried about appearing weak in the face of aggression. Meanwhile, strong dictators, confident in their power, are less concerned about appearances, making them less aggressive than weak dictators.

The researchers then put their model to the test on real-world data. They found that two countries with limited democracies are more likely to fight each other than any other combination, while peace is most likely at either extreme.

To Baliga, the results suggest that spreading democracy can be risky: when it is not fully implemented, a democratic government could be more aggressive than the regime it replaced. If you take half measures, you can make matters worse, says Baliga.

Economic crises often lead to political unrestbut not always.

According to research from Nancy Qian, a professor of managerial economics and decision sciences, in countries with high levels of trust, a recession is less likely to trigger political turnover than in countries with lower levels of trust.

If Im a less-trusting person, I might say something like, I dont understand the details of what our leader is doing, but most politicians are bad and theyre lazy, so it is probably his fault, Qian explains. Alternately, a trusting person might blame factors beyond politicians control. Its about how likely I am to attribute the economic problems to circumstance or luck versus to the political leadership.

But critically, she and her colleagues find, this relationship was only seen in democracies, where people had the power to vote officials out of office.

We didnt see this pattern in autocracies, which makes sense, Qian says. You can change your leadership in an autocracy by having a revolution or a coup, but that is more difficult to pull off, so theres not much people can do, even if they are generally slow to trust.

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Take 5: Democracies and How They Thrive - Kellogg Insight

Color me naive, but I do not view the attempted coup orchestrated by former President Trump and executed by his most rabid supporters last January 6 as a serious threat to democracy in the United States. I think it was an extremely serious crime and expect the House Select Committee will have little trouble establishing Trumps legal and moral responsibility for the assault on the U.S. Capitol. And I do not for a moment minimize the severity of what took place. It was horrific. It was criminal. It was anti-democratic in its aim.

Its just that it never had any chance of overturning the result of the 2020 election. It caused great damage and ruined far too many lives. Indeed, it couldve been even worse. But it never wouldve made a difference. It would not have thwarted the will of the electorate or kept Trump in power. Even if the horde had succeeded in preventing the House from certifying the vote that day, the Representatives would have certified it the day after. And, God forbid, if the mob had reached and killed Vice President Pence or other elected officials, it wouldve been a capital crime but Joe Biden would still be President.

Like many people ensnared in their own delusions, Trump and his fanatical supporters may have thought their attack would lead the people to rise up, throw their weight behind the madness and somehow bend the entire machinery of state and federal government to their will. But this is a common fantasy; fanatics routinely believe that others secretly see the world as they do. It is an especially common psychosis among some white supremacists, who imagine that all Whites see the world just like they do and that they just need a martyr to lead the way and ignite a race war. But like so much of their toxic ideology, this is just a castle in the air.

I am not particularly surprised by the coverage of January 6. It is customary, at least in the United States, to construct crises in three steps: cast events as an existential threat to dearly held values; trace the threat to the perfidy of an identifiable person or group; and present a solution that relies on readily available levers. The first step is obviously meant to grab our attention, the second to pinpoint a villain, and the third to specify a fix. The whole dance is easy to learn and impossible to forget, which makes it the staple of political persuasion and media propaganda. Partisans on the political right have always been especially fond of this script; Tucker Carlson, with his interminable and catholic attacks on practically all things Black and Brown, is merely the most recent champion of a White nationalism that was already old when Father Coughlin came along.

Recognizing that January 6 could not have changed the result of the election, some people say the threat to democracy was not in the day itself, but in the culture of violence it promotes. They point to various polls that appear to show alarming levels of support among Republicans for violence as a way of achieving political goals. In a poll by the American Enterprise Institute, nearly 40 percent of Republicans agreed that if elected leaders will not protect America, the people must do it themselves, even if it requires violent actions. Likewise, a September 2021 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 30 percent of Republicans agreed that, Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.

These are indeed extraordinary results, and if they reliably predicted the risk of political violence, wed all be in a great deal of trouble. Fortunately for us, however, what they probably reveal is the danger of inartful polling. As political scientist Sean Westwood and his co-authors have shown, various design flaws and definitional problems in these polls likely inflated the support for violence. When a subsequent group of political scientists corrected for these flaws and conducted a more careful poll, support for violence plummeted. Mind you, it is still surprisingly high4 percent of respondents indicated that it could be justified for members of their party to commit a violent felony to advance their political goals. Though a far cry from earlier numbers, thats still millions of people.

But even this number probably overstates the risk of violence. The pollsters asked, How much do you feel it is justified for members of your own party (Democrats or Republicans) to use various forms of violence, ranging from non-violent misdemeanors to violent felonies, in advancing their political goals these days? In other words, the pollsters did not ask, and probably could not have asked, whether someone would themselves be violent, but whether they thought it might be justified for some nameless other to be violent, which is a very different thing. I do not doubt that some people and groups support the violent overthrow of democracy, but we dont know how large that number is. All we know is that its probably much lower than people have been led to believe.

Finally, when many people talk about threats to democracy coming out of the Trump presidency, they point to the states that imposed restrictions on voting after the 2020 elections. Most of these restrictions were passed in Republican states and I do not doubt that they were adopted for partisan purposes. I will even grant that some unknown number of Republican legislators hoped and expected the new laws would suppress Black votes; there is a folk-wisdom among many Whites that conservative White voters will exercise the franchise come hell or high water but that Blacks will stay home when the going gets tough. I have always thought that this myth was the direct descendant of hoary racist lie that Blacks are lazy and unfit for the demands of citizenship. It was a lie then and its a lie now.

To that point, there is very little evidence that voting restrictions of the sort adopted by states in 2020 suppress turnout. On the contrary, careful academic research consistently shows they have little to no effect. Indeed, because minority voters might suspect the true purpose is to strip them of their vote, there is some evidence these restrictions can increase turnout; no right is more precious than the one under attack, and there is no voter like a motivated voter. In fairness, some protest that academics have not yet studied the effect of the bills passed after the 2020 election. Thats true, the legislation is simply too new. But as Sarah Isgur recently explained in Politico, the new laws are not nearly as far from the mainstream as some irresponsible hyperbole has suggested. In any case, last months election in Georgia showed that the laws may not suppress turnout at all. In fact, turnout was high and Trumps handpicked candidates lost.

I accept that at least one purpose of the 2020 legislation was to suppress minority voting. The aim, in other words, at least among some legislators, is anti-democratic. In that respect, Im confident that some legislators hoped to accomplish by lawful means what Trump hoped to accomplish January 6 by unlawful meansto subvert democracy. They do not really believe in democracy and are more than happy to throw it out the window if doing so keeps them in power. But this is hardly a new impulse in American life. On the contrary, the impulse has never been absent, and we ought not fear for democracy simply because we detect it again. Indeed, as one scholar put it in a comprehensive review of the literature, voting restrictions imposed in the 21st century are quite tame compared to those of earlier eras.

Nothing I have written should be taken to suggest that democracy is secure. I dont believe that for a minute. I believe, for instance, that climate change is likely to trigger global migrations on an unprecedented scale that will destabilize economies and encourage nativist populism. In the chaos that follows, many insecure nations will be tempted to follow an anti-democratic path. And that is just one of democracys looming challenges.

But overblown partisan rhetoric, by either side, does not equip us to confront these challenges. On the contrary, it makes our task all the more difficult in ways I will explain in my next essay.

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Was It Really a Threat to Democracy? - Justia Verdict

The prevalence of social media and support from right-wing politicians have enabled white supremacist, anti-government and other domestic extremist groups to become much greater threats to American security than foreign terrorist movements ever have been, according to a panel of security experts.

The threat presented by jihadist extremism is always going to be infitesimally small compared to the threat presented by white nationalist extremism in this country where you have a much, much bigger pool of potential adherents. And when that giant mass of people starts to mobilize, then youre starting to deal with a complicated problem, said J.M. Berger, an extremism expert, author and research fellow at VOX-Pol. He spoke during a June 10 Brookings Institution webinar.

While American extremist groups often are at odds with each other and lack coherent vision and coordination, they are benefitting from social media use and from increasing mainstream political support from Republican politicians and candidates, panelists said.

What they have right now is a mainstream figure Donald Trump who is willing to elevate these concepts, these arguments and is careless, or careful enough, with his language that he can mobilize a lot of people who have a lot of different views in the same direction of nativism and hate and fearmongering. You cant underestimate the power of a charismatic leader in this context, Berger said.

He was joined on the panel by Heidi Beirich, chief strategy officer and co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, and Daniel Byman, senior fellow at the Brookings Center for Middle East Policy. Vanda Felbab-Brown, senior fellow and director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors for Brookings, moderated the event.

Byman noted that endless conspiracy theories around race and national identity are nothing new in the U.S. or worldwide.

What were seeing is what people are calling the great replacement, a set of ideas about the white community being replaced by immigrants and others. There is a whole range of variations about birth rates, about deliberate intermarriage, or the problem with the gay community that is decreasing white birth rates, on and on and on, he said. The specifics are all variations on old themes that the white race is under attack, and you can find echoes going back decades and centuries.

Although ancient, these notions are now spreading wider and faster than ever before and, thanks to social media, can be seen inspiring high-visibility acts of violence such as the May 14 shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., which mostly targeted Black shoppers, the 2019 El Paso, Texas, Walmart shooting that targeted Hispanics, as well as numerous synagogue and mosque shootings in the U.S. and around the world, he said.

What has changed, though, is there is more connectivity due to social media. You see ideas that are ricocheting around the world from Europe to the United States to New Zealand and show up in numerous different contexts. And social media is providing a lot of interaction.

But Byman said his main concern isnt the violence of individual and uncoordinated acts of violence but the overlap with politics. We see in the United States, for example, real concern about demographic change. There is a strong sense of white grievance, that its a very difficult place to be a white man. There is a tremendous concern over immigration. There is tremendous bias and hatred toward immigrants.

That context creates an environment in which right-wing ideas flourish and nurture things like white supremacy, he added. This is the kind of thing that can shape politics and can shape the lives of millions or even hundreds of millions of people.

Plenty of evidence exists globally that those detrimental changes already have been happening, Beirich said.

We have now, through the actions of Trump and other far-right populist leaders in other countries, activated these disengaged, disparate movements, into politics.

We have now, through the actions of Trump and other far-right populist leaders in other countries, activated these disengaged, disparate movements, into politics. And they all agree and we can thank social media for spreading things that they face the same kind of threat, which is a threat of demographic change thats going to displace them from their place of pride and displace white people. And as a result of that, they are being activated into politics in some cases, as in Hungary, where an entire regime has arisen that has targeted populations like immigrants, the LGBTQ community, women and literally undone the kinds of civil rights and other liberal protections that were put in place after the fall of communism.

While stripping those populations of their rights, authoritarian leaders like Viktor Orbn in Hungary and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil are elevating extremist elements in their societies to solidify their own power as heads of state, she said.

The biggest threat we have today when it comes to these movements is the possibility of an illiberal society like that evolving here in the United States, the possibility of extremist groups having a huge impact on the elections coming up.

In many cases, such negative transformation may occur from the inside-out with conspiracy theorists, anti-government extremists and white supremacists if their political candidates win elections, Beirich said.

We have people running for office who are members of groups like the Proud Boys and others. We have many, many people who are running for office on the conservative side who are using the great replacement language that we saw from the Buffalo shooter and the El Paso shooter. That shift in politics is related to this invasion of these extremist ideas into the mainstream and the way that Donald Trump activated people into the political system.

Related articles:

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On anniversary of El Paso massacre, leaders connect the bullets to beliefs of white supremacy

The Beloved Community and the heresy of white replacement: How Beyonc Mass gave me hope after the Buffalo massacre | Opinion by Robert P. Jones

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Social media and right-wing politicians are fueling threat to democracy, panelists warn - Baptist News Global