Fascism isn't new, nor it the urge to go back to "the good old days."
Back in the 1920s, people were having altogether too much fun. My own grandmother was a "flapper" who bobbed her hair and wore tight dresses and went to "blind pig" speakeasies in New York, much to the chagrin of her strict Lutheran parents. In other parts of the world, liberalism also took hold. New ideas were being flaunted, people were toying with ideas like Communism. In Germany, gay rights groups were formed.
Then it all came crashing down in 1929.
And like clockwork, people decided that our economic problems were not caused by economic causes, but by social ones. Too much liberal thinking! Scandalous behavior! If only we went back to the good old days, things would be better!
How that would fix the economy is anyone's guess. And the crash of 1929 wasn't caused by liberalism, but by capitalism run wild. A few people made a lot of money in that crash - a lot lost a little and some lost everything. This was, of course, by design. And I suspect the attempt to blame our woes on social issues was also by design.
And if you go back through history, you see this pattern. Crops fail? Burn a witch. Failing that, well, persecute a minority group with a pogrom. Blame the "others" for your self-inflicted problems. It has always been a popular sport.
We were treated to a diatribe by an Uber driver in Portugal about how "immigrants" were ruining the economy. You see, as I have harped upon time and time again, this immigration thing is not unique to the USA. The population of the earth has expanded by a factor of three since I was a kid, and the battle for scare resources is getting increasingly ugly.
Sure, you might think of some war or conflict in terms of religious or political conflict or tribal warfare, but the bottom line is, people are fighting for land and the resources that come with it. And those caught in the middle are looking at Western countries and their high standard of living and thinking, "It's worth risking my life to go there - I have literally nothing left to lose!"
Like gas expanding to fill a container (Boyle's law) populations migrate from crowded areas to less crowded areas - from areas where resources are scarce to places where they are plentiful. It is almost an inexorable force that cannot be stopped with walls or deportations, only perhaps managed at best.
So here we are again in 2025 facing economic insecurity and a worldwide struggle for limited resources, and the far-right is blaming it all on transgender people and immigrants. The real reasons, of course - exponential population growth and squandering of scarce resources - are dismissed out of hand. In fact, the far-right promotes even greater population growth, claiming it is a civic duty to have children. And they also claim that resources on a finite planet are, in fact, infinite. It is a hell of a sell-job.
But it has been years in the making. When I was a kid, there were protests and riots such as at the 1968 Democratic convention. Those on the right claimed this was a sign of moral degradation, and if only people would get their act together - and march in lock-step, the world would be a better place.
People protested "Down with the Police!" or "Up with Pot!" so this phaseology become common. The CEO of Avis, the car rental company, even published a book, called "Up The Organization!" which is a good read if you get the time.
So the phraseology was co-opted by the far right to create "Up With People!' - a singing troupe of a hundred clean-faced young people singing in harmony. And the songs? Well, the best I can say is they are along the lines of the "I Love You, You Love Me!" song sung by Barney the Purple Dinosaur. Insipid. Vacuous. Superficial. Boring.
The organization itself was an outgrowth of the "Moral Re-Armament" movement that dated back to the 1930's. Same shit different day - in the depths of the depression, the founder of "MRA" opined that the solution to our economic problems was to install a theocratic dictatorship. And say, that fella Hitler has the right idea! Too bad about the Jews, thoug!. No, he really said things like that. MRA needed a re-branding and Up With People! fit the bill.
So, Up With People! was formed in part to ditch that tainted legacy and present a clean-cut view of how America should be. Why can't kids today be more like the Up With People! singers instead of dirty stinking hippies? It was an easy sell to Mom and Dad America, but not necessarily to their kids.
And as you might imagine, it was sponsored by major corporations who wanted to see more social order and preserve the status-quo. Coca-Cola was one of the big early sponsors and they sort of co-opted the idea with their "I'd like to teach the world to sing!" promotion, which sort of sold the same message as Up With People! albeit with a bottle of coke in hand.
It kept going for a few decades, although it sort of petered out by the 1980s. They are credited (by some) as creating the first Superbowl halftime show that didn't involve marching bands. It is still around today even, in a limited form. But what got me started on this - other than nostalgia - was the idea that political or economic problems could be solved by enforcing moral standards onto other people.
Saving and Loan crash? Can't be lax regulation! Must be the Gays! Throw in a religious angle - that we have somehow displeased God - and you have a perfect storm. Just have to find a witch to burn, or some other handy scapegoat.
For Hitler it was the Jews. For the new right-wing, it is immigrants who eat dogs and cats, Furries who put litter boxes in classrooms. Trans people using the "wrong" bathroom (which is to say, any bathroom, apparently). It won't be long before they go after other minorities and in fact, they already are. Spanish-speaking people are being assaulted for speaking Spanish. Blacks are being "put in their place" by claiming any accomplishment by a black person is due to "D.E.I." This is how it starts, and as economic conditions worsen, well, they will find more and more scapegoats to go after. Perhaps you. Probably me.
The struggle for resources isn't just limited to migration. Just as in 1938, we have Putin invading Ukraine to expand his empire, with plans to vacuum up other former Soviet bloc countries thereafter. Trump talks of annexing Canada, Panama, and Greenland. Everyone, it seems, is in the land-grab business. We need more land for our population to grow! Lebensraum! Hey, there's plenty of room on Mars, right?
Of course, you only want to expand the population of the right kind of people. You know, Up With People! kind of people.
Up! Up with people!
You meet ‘em wherever you go,
Up! Up with People!
They’re the best kind of folks we know.
If more people were for people,
All people ev’rywhere,
There’d be a lot less people to worry about,
And a lot more people who care!
