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Comment by RicDan | Hacker News Reader

I wonder why tho; humans by themselves should have an intrinsic interest in knowing how things work and behave, and being sure of it. Or maybe that's just influenced by my personality? Like I couldn't fathom doing things without being sure of it, due to being afraid of failure. Are Far-Right populists considered those fear-/hatemongering? I can imagine that when you have a scapegoat defined to push any issue to, you lose the first appeal of actually understanding things?

This is quite an interesting topic, which would be fascinating to deeper understand, because from a superficial look it does appear that introducing directed hate makes masses much more susceptible to being controlled. Also helps my theory, that whilst the left did like Elon for quite some time, that doesn't mind they blindly trusted him and pointed out his issues when they came up, which pushed him to a more... comforting? right wing embracement.

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It is not just 'interesting' it is in fact essential to prevent disaster on the scale of the Second World War or worse. It seems there are people who are intrinsically motivated to hate. These are the ones who are on the far right even in peaceful times. I think they are pretty much the high school bully who never grew up. Then there are those who are uncertain about the future and therefore inciteable to mistrust/hate. Then there are political leaders who estimate the size of both groups and notice that if they add them up and maybe add some violence around the elections in the mix, they might just reach a majority. Actually being interested in how things work is the business of none of the people described here.

You and I may prefer not to operate from a place of ignorance or naiveté but there genuinely are people who do not give a shit about knowledge, learning, logic, reality, or sanity.

They couldn’t give a shit about anything that doesn’t impact them negatively.

I used to know several of these people and they were utterly exhausting. If ever I tried to answer a question, the question was suddenly rhetorical and I was somehow a weirdo for being able to answer it. They would say things like “I don’t actually care” in response to attempting to answer a question or engage in honest dialogue. About anything.

Totally cynical, off-the-cuff, knee-jerk response: we're social monkeys, and group membership is more important than abstract concepts.

I received a hard lesson in this topic during Covid, when I didn't start wearing a mask until everyone else did. I knew I should, but I didn't want to stand out from the crowd.

The left also has its shibboleths. As I'm sure do stamp collectors, submariners, cryptozoologists, forensic accountants, etc etc etc. Human nature.

(Did you see how the conversation got poisoned, then flagged? Call me paranoid, but...)

I mean, the narrative pushed by right wing politicians is often more vibes based than the one by the left. Look right now: "the immigrants are ruining America/Europe" Vs "the ultra wealthy are hoarding capital which is ruining the economy and breeds economic injustice".

The far right Swedish party says (more or less) "all the problems are the immigrants' fault". The left says "can we expect the government to do as much as it did 30 years ago when we cut taxes by 500 billion sek (adjusted for inflation and population size)".

The can be some points to both, but I do think the second one has more merits with regards to explaining the health care problems.

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