• WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It’s not really equivalent. The USA has a significantly higher level of religious indoctrination/followers than the rest of the developed world, so it was easy for conservatism to wrap itself around the cross and achieve the devoted, religious cult-like brainwashing of MAGA. That level of political sports team fandom doesn’t win elections in other developed economies, where the buying and wearing of political merch is ridiculous to the vast majority of voters, and even the most diehard supporters really only wear it to political events or in the weeks immediately surrounding a vote.

    With that said, the mental illness of conservatism is very strong in the UK – they’ve held a majority in federal government for well over a decade, have similar regressive economic policies, have spearheaded a relatively similar level of damage to quality of life and standard of living, and use very similar psychological warfare tactics (blaming all the nations problems on the weakest and most vulnerable of society, political opposition, etc)… They just walk a much finer line in what what they can publicly get away with.