To paraphrase philosopher Antonio Gramsci, we are witnessing not an event, but an epoch. The eventual rise to power of the National Rally would be one of its chapters.

This epoch began with the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and the forces at play today are the mature offspring of that “war on terror”. While these movements refuse to hide their supremacist nature and authoritarian intent behind a veneer of political decorum, they do not fundamentally differ at their core from the governments that preceded them; they merely call for draconian Islamophobic measures to be adopted faster, with the backing of entire societies.

The proposed hijab referendum in France should not be understood only as the move of an obsessively Islamophobic party, nostalgic for its colonial past. More broadly, it offers a perfect opportunity for an obsessively Islamophobic nation, nostalgic for its colonial past, to adopt legislation that could drive the last nail into the coffin of Muslims’ freedom of religion.

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Socialism isn't that hard to market to the working class.

"We will bring democracy to the workplace, which is where you spend the majority of your waking life." (Marketing the idea of transforming all businesses into worker cooperatives in a way that's relatable and easy to understand for the layman)

"The government will have a universal safety net available for all who wish to use it, and that will include taking care of all basic necessities, including a universal basic income, shelter, utilities, education, and food."

"It's not your neighbor who has no money and no power who has been causing all of your life's issues, but the wealthy elite, who hide behind their piles of money and their propaganda machines and try to tell you how to think and who to blame for the issues that they caused."

The issue with socialism in the past has been that the wealthy elite are very good at coopting social and political movements across the globe, and often times they go unnoticed. The "left" in modern day, western countries are still inherently capitalists who don't truly believe in the above idiology, at least not in full, which is why they continue to fail to deliver the necessary solutions to prevent fascist uprisings.

Fascism comes as a direct result of three things: a top-down divide and conquer strategy, mass financial hardship, and lack of a proper education system that extends equally to all of society.

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