Is a bigoted dystopia really feasible anymore?

[Ideologue]

In the Western world, I mean.

I was listening to a movie review podcast today (Yeah, It's That Bad, which helps me get through my ten hour days of decreasing the aggregate utility of humanity--their critical chops are sometimes suspect, but they're very funny; even jokes are oft-reused, as an MST3K fan it should come as no surprise I enjoy such callback-heavy style) and they were doing V For Vendetta.

Leaving aside the fact that, in a key scene, the film terribly undermines the comic and basically destroys the V character in the space of one shot, it's an okay movie, but how likely is it really?  Indeed, how likely was it from the vantage point of ~1982 when Alan Moore wrote the source material?  I have no idea, since I was not just not alive, I was not even British.

I cannot imagine any scenario where a country such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, basically any place you'd be likely to set a movie or book, would be very likely to be run by 40s-style throwback fascists that want to gas all the fags, coloreds, Jews (seriously?), or any discrete population group to death and all the women enslaved (e.g., Handmaid's Tale).  China?  Sure.  Poland?  Absolutely.  But it just does not strike me as really very politically plausible in a real country, given the widespread support for tolerance of race, religion, sexual liberation, etc.  At the least, you'd need quite a few points of cultural departure between A of now and the Z of the post-apocalyptic homo-hangin' future, which is lacking in many future dystopias that seem to have a higher GDP per capita than we do.  There's also the bald fact that a genocide or even overt curtailment of civil rights against highly-conscious minority groups would be logistically and militarily difficult, especially for our pussy modern armies that can't even pacify real-enemy territory.

Thoughts?  Is a new NSDAP a possibility any longer in the West?

[Tonitrus]

Depending on the severity of the apocalypse....sure.  V for Vendetta level?  Probably not.  Barter-town?  Sure (perhaps a bad reference, being it was run by Tina Turner and a midget).

[Josquius]

Just look to the modern UK and the amount of hate that gets stirred up against those on benefits, assylum seekers, etc...
It's possible.

I wouldn't say its plausible. But then a plausible scenario of a crazy regime popping up in African shit hole number 8 doesn't really appeal to a western audience as much as something terrible happening in their own country.

[Ed Anger]

I'd be Robert Duvall in Handmaid's Tale.

[Ideologue]

Depending on the severity of the apocalypse....sure.  V for Vendetta level?  Probably not.  Barter-town?  Sure (perhaps a bad reference, being it was run by Tina Turner and a midget).

See?  Diversity.

Just look to the modern UK and the amount of hate that gets stirred up against those on benefits, assylum seekers, etc...

I do want to distinguish between an immutable trait-based dystopia, which is what I don't find terribly convincing, and a class-based dystopia, i.e. Earth-Prime 2013.

[ulmont]

Based on Tamas's snippets of Hungarian politics, such a dystopia is more than possible...

[Josquius]

Depending on the severity of the apocalypse....sure.  V for Vendetta level?  Probably not.  Barter-town?  Sure (perhaps a bad reference, being it was run by Tina Turner and a midget).

See?  Diversity.

Just look to the modern UK and the amount of hate that gets stirred up against those on benefits, assylum seekers, etc...

I do want to distinguish between an immutable trait-based dystopia, which is what I don't find terribly convincing, and a class-based dystopia, i.e. Earth-Prime 2013.

Class is a large extent an immutable trait.
Its hard to become rich when you're poor, to lose you native accent, etc....

[Valmy]

Based on Tamas's snippets of Hungarian politics, such a dystopia is more than possible...

Heh.  I was just about to say I think Europe is making at least one as we speak.

[Valmy]

Class is a large extent an immutable trait.
Its hard to become rich when you're poor, to lose you native accent, etc....

I would say it is pretty hard...but a great many orders of magnitude easier than changing your race.

[Camerus]

The way things are now?  No.  If the economy goes to hell in a handbasket over a sustained period of time, or there is some other major disruption causing extended suffering, then obviously it becomes progressively more likely.

However, I would also argue that the point of dystopic literature isn't always to suggest that such a society is actually realistic at present, but also to point and and warn about particular phenomena in our actual society that the author deems worrying.

[PDH]

Of course it is possible.  Ordinary people, following orders they think come from a legitimate authority, can easily sink into committing unspeakable acts.  The true tragedy of people going along with such horrific orders is that they are not inhuman monsters but rather normal people doing what they are told.  I am not saying such will happen, but the fact that we might kid ourselves that the Western States are beyond this shows we are in a self-congratulating mode that denies basic human social possibilities.

[Ideologue]

Of course it is possible.  Ordinary people, following orders they think come from a legitimate authority, can easily sink into committing unspeakable acts.  The true tragedy of people going along with such horrific orders is that they are not inhuman monsters but rather normal people doing what they are told.  I am not saying such will happen, but the fact that we might kid ourselves that the Western States are beyond this shows we are in a self-congratulating mode that denies basic human social possibilities.

But you do need a critical mass of people who are gung-ho, and probably a majority who don't give a shit.

I'd also argue that the "normal people" view of the Holocaust and other dystopic situations, e.g. the antebellum American South, either doesn't stick, because of ample opportunities to oppose the status quo before the full power of the state was brought against dissension, or proves too much, that the "normal person" is a coward and a monster himself.  Which is, indeed, the belief I actually subscribe to, since I don't have a great deal of respect for the people of the past, morally speaking (though I am awed and troubled by their ability to at least feel passionately about things, fight overwhelming forces of authority, and die for their often-wrong beliefs, which is something else I don't think will ever happen again in the real West, probably because we don't let large numbers of mentally-sound people actually starve very much).

It's a different situation in the real West (to which Hungary and its shitty cohorts arguably do not belong)--there is no critical mass of people who are really gung ho about anything,* nor is there likely to be, while contrariwise the majority does give a shit about what would happen to their gay Kenyan Muslim friends and colleagues (and, one should not forget, family).  The odds of this trend reversing seem remote, to say the least.

*Except maybe immigrants in the American SW.  But that's different too, though because it's America, of course it winds up being racialized, when it's really about how IT'S 2013 NOT 1888 WE'RE FULL SO GO HOME.

[Jacob]

Of course it is possible.  Ordinary people, following orders they think come from a legitimate authority, can easily sink into committing unspeakable acts.  The true tragedy of people going along with such horrific orders is that they are not inhuman monsters but rather normal people doing what they are told.  I am not saying such will happen, but the fact that we might kid ourselves that the Western States are beyond this shows we are in a self-congratulating mode that denies basic human social possibilities.

Yeah, pretty much this.

[Neil]

Moore might be a fine writer, but he suffers from a bit of Jos-ism.  He thought that Britain turned into Nazi Germany the second Thatcher won the election.

It's certainly possible, but not very likely.  I know I'd probably vote for a party that would brutalize homosexuals and persecute lawyers.

[CountDeMoney]

Thoughts?  Is a new NSDAP a possibility any longer in the West?

Sure.  It's called "The South".