I'm not confident about any of this

[rinue]

Something I'm optimistic about which also gives you significant insight into how pessimistic I am is: I don't think there's a Trumpist equivalent of the Hitler Youth. In pretty much all of the long-running totalitarian takeovers which include mass murder, it seems like there is a Hitler Youth or a Red Guard or some type of child soldier contingent which is under the thrall of the regime. This seems valuable to a dictatorship for two reasons - one being the value of the youth movement itself (for all the reasons you'd want young soldiers) and the other being the symbolic value - children are the future and your remaking of society is also the irresistible future.

I'm not saying here that there aren't teens for Trump; we've seen there are. I'm also not saying there weren't middle-aged people behind Hitler, Mussolini, etc. What I'm saying is (1) if there was a sizeable organized pro-Trump youth movement, we'd see it paraded around, which is not happening, and (2) not to get complacent, but it's fairly weird how gerontological the Trump movement is. Fascism as we have seen it before has been invested in the idea of youth and virility and physical strength and physical purity, both as an aesthetic and an ideal.

Maybe that was a coincidence of the futurism of the 1930s and we have a different futurism now, one that is mediated by screens, in which the physical body is irrelevant, but I have trouble believing it is possible have a non-physical fascism. Fascism is obsessed with bodies. We talk about how the good guys have the edge demographically (Trump's base is dying off), but this is also an emotional weakness: the GOP's literal soft white underbellies are also its figurative soft white underbelly, a constant visual reminder that they are not likely to be made great again. That future does not exist.

I don't know what to think. It's like there is a group of people trying very hard to build a death ray, but they are missing the firing pin and don't know how to get one because the only people who make firing pins are their worst enemies. So that's scary but also comical.

I wonder whether at this particular moment in the U.S. we have flipped our youth and our elders. Teenagers are under a lot of pressure right now to work hard and solve everything and not make any mistakes and cover up frailties, which is stuff I'd typically associate with an aging head of household. Then you have this group of retirees who have teenage anxieties about not fitting in socially, who have free time to fill, and who are awkward about reading social cues (overestimating threats, not being able to tell what is appropriate).

Comments

[sabotabby]

I want to believe you’re right but also I know a lot of far-right youth. Much more than I knew ten years ago (though, granted, that was a different demographic: racialized working class kids who may have had prejudices but not institutional power). There’s a generation that’s been radicalized by GamerGate, and ironic fascism is the aesthetic, and I don’t think we can discount their influence, even though by and large they don’t vote, and in my case, none are US voters.

[rinue]

I agree there are far right youth and I think there always will be and it will always be worrying and always must be countered (although you'd have a better perspective than I would on whether it's more or less common now than it was 10 or 20 years ago). It seems like about 30% of people just...like authoritarianism. And what we control as a society is whether that's socially funneled in a contstructive or destructive way.

At the moment, the right-affiliated young people I know (or know of) are libertarian rather than fascist, which I still don't like and which still could be violent, but "lone wolf" and "join brigades behind charismatic leader" are different pathologies I figure. I guess the proud boys are joiners? Identity Europa? Gamergaters and Atomwaffen and incels seem very "I am my own soverign."

I am skeptical, continuously, of the whole prep school thing, but that's the closest I can think of to "affiliated with and sancioned by the government" in a feeder system like fascist youth movements (and only in a weird way since it's private and not linked to a figurehead and not publicly funded, although they're trying to push for vouchers and stuff).

[sovay]

At the moment, the right-affiliated young people I know (or know of) are libertarian rather than fascist, which I still don't like and which still could be violent, but "lone wolf" and "join brigades behind charismatic leader" are different pathologies I figure.

You do get kids being radicalized alt-right—I think it behaves differently than when their parents send them away to nationalist camp, but it does mean a younger generation who really believe they have seen the deep structures of the world which tell them it's the fault of [fill in the many, many marginalized blanks]. I don't know how readily the government could mobilize them en masse, but I worry very much about a pattern of tacitly condoned murder sprees of the "who will rid me of this turbulent Congresswoman" variety. I agree about the age of your average MAGA.

[rinue]

Oh absolutely. To put this in a clearer frame, I was looking at Trumpism and how far down the track we are, and was like "wait a second, where is the organized semi-paramilitary Republican youth movement? There should be one by now. Have I missed it?" and was pleased but confused. This is not something that I think will die off on its own if we just wait out the demographics (a type of complacency I've run into too many times).

[sovay]

and was like "wait a second, where is the organized semi-paramilitary Republican youth movement? There should be one by now. Have I missed it?" and was pleased but confused.

Check. It is true that I wondered if something like the Boy Scouts would go far-right and they don't seem to have. I suspect it would be no more remarkable to the majority of the country than concentration camps if it were organized.

This is not something that I think will die off on its own if we just wait out the demographics (a type of complacency I've run into too many times).

Agreed. I'm still in favor of outliving them.

[sovay]

It's like there is a group of people trying very hard to build a death ray, but they are missing the firing pin and don't know how to get one because the only people who make firing pins are their worst enemies.

I still worry that people who can't build their own death ray might still manage a dirty bomb.