What do you think attracts people to "fascist like leaders"

AxlRoseBaby

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I think from this interview about "Leni Riefensthal" that i get the jest of it. Its distorted charisma.

Take Razorfist for example. (Fyi not calling him a nazi or a fascist) YouTuber, at best he's lord contrarian. But its the distorted charisma part that gets people to follow a guy.
 
"When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, they will naturally want to side with the strong horse." -Osama Bin Laden

You'll never make liberalism as magnetically attractive as fascism, because liberalism is essentially just a cult of entropy. It's message translates directly to "we must make ourselves weaker than ever imagined, and we must surrender everything we have to foreigners".
 
Feels like a mix of those who genuinely buy into what's being sold and also those who lack strong role models.
 
Hitler was pretty cool. But what I really like is all the pomp and pageantry. That Nuremberg rally was so cool. If I was a dictator, I would do something just like that. Those torch light marches. The music. The uniforms and goosestepping. It's all super awesome. Then you have the authoritarianism and control. It's all just so great and cool.

Just look at this and tell me it's not super fucking awesome.

 
I would guess appeal due to their charisma, but also an align of interests (for those who do).

I don't see the appeal since it would most likely be a ticking bomb, for starters.
 
It seems like it would be obvious, especially in periods where things aren't going very well or people are dissatisfied. Hitler came to prominence in the period post WWI where there was global depression and things in Germany in particular were going very poorly, and in that globally depressed period it wasn't just Germany where movements like that were happening.

When a person is struggling and frustrated they like to have someone uncompromising who seems confident, strong, sure of their direction, and who's offering an ideology that returns some type of collective pride/hope even if (or especially because) it means finding a scapegoat to rally against.
Get enough of those people together and you get nationalist extremist movements.

Charisma and the ability to pull people's stings is a plus, but without a somewhat desperate audience it won't ever turn into a thing of consequence.
 
I suppose dislike of the status quo and how nothing ever changes. A fascist government is merely one with a very clear purpose, and tries to be efficient, effective and quick about goals. This actually appeals to the pragmatism that Americans admire as well.

But those are just empty promises. All governments suck ass. All governments are the DMV with varying levels of bureaucracy, paper pushing, waiting, and incompetent sheboons
 
I suppose dislike of the status quo and how nothing ever changes. A fascist government is merely one with a very clear purpose, and tries to be efficient, effective and quick about goals. This actually appeals to the pragmatism that Americans admire as well.

But those are just empty promises. All governments suck ass. All governments are the DMV with varying levels of bureaucracy, paper pushing, waiting, and incompetent sheboons
I have seen the videos of life in Nazi era Germany. People were happy. Unlike now.
 
Honestly? Its not even just charisma. Its the fact that fascists can speak about real problems and they sandwich real concerns with manipulating the audience. In times of extreme struggle, you have one side going "Its fine, nothing's wrong!" Even if something clearly is wrong. Meanwhile, the fascist leader will say "Something IS wrong, and its THAT GUY'S fault! When I'm in charge, we'll do something about it!"

That's why, if you look at Nazi germany, people looked happy. People WERE happy, but only a certain kind of people, and even those people knew to not speak too loudly lest the secret police show up at their door.
 
The NSDAP got 2.63% of the vote in the 1928 German election, 18.25% in the 1930 German election and 37.27% in the 1932 German election. Make of that what you will.
 
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well, here's the thing. no matter how much you disapprove of the guy, no matter how much you dislike him - which I do - you have to be aware of, you have to admit to yourself that having somebody with that level of cachet, that level of swagger, that level of panache, that level of je ne sais quois, that level of savoir faire, that level of, um, X factor, as we call it in the sales business... having the eye of somebody like that on you, and you're his top guy? that's crazy. that's crazy. I mean, hey, you know what, I wish that they would travel back in time to before he was born and take him out then. that's what I wish happened. but look, notorious figures throughout history - Dracula, right? Count Chocula? you got all the bad guys in history, you got the whole lineup. Frankenstein. what if Frankenstein was looking at you, saying, hey, you are my go-to guy, you're my guy that I go to when I need a problem solved. what if Hitler was saying that to you. can you imagine that for a second? what if Adolf Hitler said that you're such a physical nasty beast dude, you're such a nasty physical beast right now, that I'm basically gonna make you in charge of a platoon of Panzers, okay? you're basically so hunked up and shredded that I have no choice but to make you a legend in Nazi Germany. I would say to myself, man, this Hitler guy is up to no good. I hate this! I can't take any more of this, I don't know what I'm gonna do! what am I gonna do, I'm Hitler's top guy! what am I gonna do! Adolf Hitler chose me to lead the revolution! look, I'm an alpha male, okay? I dominate a lot of people daily. people I work with, I dominate them, okay? I absolutely dominate the people in my office. I dominate them. with my physical presence, with my smell, with my pheromones, the way I talk, my eye contact, my hand motions, my body language. I dominate. daily. on a daily basis. even the women, I dominate them. I dominate the women in my workplace, okay? I use a combination of lies, manipulation, cheating, stealing, gaslighting, bullying, insulting, and flexing to make sure that everybody in my office stays under my thumb where I want them. you cannot say no to somebody in that position, like Hitler, or Alexander the Great - if you want somebody that did less bad things, wow - if Alexander the Great tells you you're his top guy, you're now in a position where you have no choice but to go, oh, I'm Alexander the Great's top guy! dude, even if Tom Cruise was Jewish and he had ancestors in Auschwitz and you were injecting him with testosterone and gorilla steroids to make him the most alpha male possible, if Adolf Hitler locked in his attention beams on Tom Cruise and said, Tom, you're now my top guy, there's no way to resist that. whoah... Adolf Hitler needs me? okay, I'll do it. I'm going to bat for you, Hitler! I got your back, Hitler! that's my point. and I say that with the most respect for your ancestors and for what happened and the most disdain for Hitler and what he did.
 
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I think a big part of it is fear and uncertainty, and wanting a strong person to make it stop. Fascism, communism, or any other ideology than milquetoast liberalism and conservatism taking hold in the US would have been unthinkable in 1993. Even a slightly removed from the establishment ideology or party like MAGA or the German AfD would have been on the fringes. Occasionally a Pat Buchanan or Ross Perot would sound the alarm about the things that would end up killing the middle class 20 years later and make some amount of headway, but too many people were comfortable for them to actually succeed. It takes running with wheelbarrows full of cash to the grocery store hoping it will still be worth something by the time you get there and hoping they have food in stock when you get there to make people run to a fascist.
 
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