During the last 2-3 years, a certain social trend became more and more visible. A mix of far right and traditionalism, spreading around the world and popping in places you’d never thought something like this will ever exist.
In Europe, Hungary and Poland (and, coming strong from the backyard, Romania too) are slipping into an authoritarian regime, mixing xenophobia with populism.
In Italy, the government is made by the far right.
In Brasil, the new President is also from the same so called “extreme right” ideology.
Looks like the world wants to slip back into social structures that killed millions of people just to protect a certain status quo. Seems like nationalism is on the rise.
Only I think it isn’t.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe these regimes _aren’t_ toxic, on the contrary, I think they are extremely dangerous. Only I don’t believe their support is ideological. On the surface, it looks like we’re seeing far right and nationalism all over again, but these are just circumstance clothes, something that makes these new regimes recognizable, but they are not defined, nor built around these ideologies.
They aren’t in fact built on any ideology.
The fracture that the world is experiencing right now is generated by technology. Or, to be more precise, by the variable speed of adopting and mastering technology by various social structures. The faster is a certain group to understand and adopt a certain technology, the bigger the gap from the ones that can’t.
The pace at which technology is changing the world is insane. In the most clear sense of the world: it can create disease if it’s not properly managed.
Cognitive pressure is huge. The effort necessary to understand, let aside to use, new technologies is overwhelming for the vast majority of people. Think about the fact that many of us didn’t use a mobile phone until 10 years ago. Just 10 years ago.
So, I think the rise of the authoritarian regime means in fact, that an increasing part of the world is lagging behind in technology adoption. Because they can’t control what’s happening around, they turn towards paternal figures to protect them and towards violence-enforced regimes. Because they can’t adjust, they strive to protect what they already have, and they choose familiar symbols and characters.
At the beginning of the last century, communism and capitalism fought for supremacy, and, for decades, they split the world in two. I don’t think capitalism is what we may call the winner here, but what is sure is that communism died.
I think we’re witnessing a similar revolution, one that will impact humanity for at least a century, in which the catalyst is not ideology, like in communism versus capitalism, but technology adoption.
And yes, I’m writing these disparate thoughts on a platform built on the most advanced technology for information distribution and governance, and yet, just a few thousands people have access to it.
The rest of the world is afraid of it.
