Why is The World so Messed Up?

A look at the underlying technology causes of Trump, Elon, Andrew Tate, Brexit, culture wars etc.

2025 is shaping up to be a crazy year. Just look like how Elon Musk is ravaging through the US federal government with a bunch of 19 year old engineers with no government experience. It is a crazy world but it is just one of many things.

• The Trump election

• Swedish far-right, Sweden Democrats getting into power

• Dutch far-right, Party for Freedom getting power in the Netherlands

• National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen in France getting ever closer to power

• German far-right party AfD with wind in their sails and support from Musk

• In my native Norway the populist right has higher ratings in polls than ever in history. If elections was tomorrow they would be the biggest party.

Crime and violence has seen an uptick. We are struggling with integration. There are a lot of things going wrong and many things that feel eerily similar to the 1930s. At the time there was fascist takeover of power all across the world. Most of you only really know or think of Germany and Italy. But the fascist ideas and movements spread all over the planet. It was a massive global phenomenon.

Fascism of the 1930s

Here is a summary I made with ChatGPT:

Europe

1. Italy (1922)

• Leader: Benito Mussolini

• Movement: National Fascist Party (Partito Nazionale Fascista, PNF)

• Takeover: Mussolini’s March on Rome in 1922 led King Victor Emmanuel III to appoint him as Prime Minister. By 1925, he had dismantled democracy and established a fascist dictatorship.

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2. Germany (1933)

• Leader: Adolf Hitler

• Movement: National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP)

• Takeover: Hitler became Chancellor in 1933. After the Reichstag Fire, the Enabling Act gave him dictatorial powers, leading to a totalitarian Nazi state.

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3. Spain (1936–1939)

• Leader: Francisco Franco

• Movement: Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (FET y de las JONS)

• Takeover: Franco led the Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). With support from fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, he overthrew the Spanish Republic and ruled as a military dictator until 1975.

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4. Portugal (1933)

• Leader: António de Oliveira Salazar

• Movement: Estado Novo (New State)

• Takeover: Salazar established a corporatist authoritarian regime in 1933, blending nationalism, anti-communism, and Catholic traditionalism with elements of fascism.

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5. Hungary (1932–1939)

• Leader: Gyula Gömbös (later Miklós Horthy and Ferenc Szálasi)

• Movement: Hungarian National Socialist Party / Arrow Cross Party

• Takeover: Gömbös aligned Hungary with fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in the 1930s. In 1939, the Arrow Cross Party rose to prominence, leading to full fascist control in 1944.

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6. Romania (1937–1940)

• Leader: Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (later Ion Antonescu)

• Movement: Iron Guard (Garda de Fier)

• Takeover: The Iron Guard gained influence in 1937 but was suppressed by King Carol II. In 1940, Antonescu allied with Nazi Germany and established a military dictatorship.

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7. Austria (1933–1938)

• Leader: Engelbert Dollfuss (followed by Kurt Schuschnigg)

• Movement: Fatherland Front (Vaterländische Front)

• Takeover: Dollfuss banned opposition parties in 1933, ruling as an authoritarian dictator until his assassination in 1934. Austria remained authoritarian until Germany annexed it in 1938.

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8. Greece (1936)

• Leader: Ioannis Metaxas

• Movement: 4th of August Regime

• Takeover: With King George II’s support, Metaxas established a fascist-style dictatorship in 1936, banning opposition parties and modeling his policies after Mussolini.

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Asia

9. Japan (1931–1936)

• Leader: Hideki Tojo (militarist faction)

• Movement: Imperial Rule Assistance Association (1936)

• Takeover: Japanese military factions took control by 1931 with the invasion of Manchuria. Full militarization occurred after 1936, leading to authoritarian rule under Emperor Hirohito and military leaders.

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Latin America

10. Brazil (1937)

• Leader: Getúlio Vargas

• Movement: Estado Novo (New State)

• Takeover: Vargas, initially a constitutional president, staged a self-coup in 1937, dissolving congress and establishing an authoritarian corporatist regime influenced by European fascism.

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11. Argentina (1930)

• Leader: José Félix Uriburu

• Movement: Nationalist-conservative military rule

• Takeover: Uriburu led a coup in 1930, overthrowing the democratic government. He admired fascist ideas but failed to consolidate a full fascist state before being replaced in 1932.

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12. Bolivia (1936)

• Leader: Germán Busch

• Movement: Military nationalism

• Takeover: Busch, a military officer, took power in 1936 and implemented nationalist policies. Though not fully fascist, his regime admired corporatism and authoritarianism before his mysterious death in 1939.

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13. Chile (1932, briefly)

• Leader: Carlos Ibáñez del Campo (influential from 1927)

• Movement: Nationalist authoritarianism

• Takeover: Though not fully fascist, Ibáñez ruled Chile as a dictator from 1927 to 1931, imposing a strongman government that admired Mussolini. A brief socialist-fascist military regime occurred in 1932 but collapsed within months.

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Other Regions with Fascist Influence

The previous list was places where fascists or fascist inspired autocratic movements took power. There were plenty of places where they got close but never made it.

• Paraguay (Alfredo Stroessner’s later rule was fascist-leaning but occurred post-WWII).

• Mexico (The Gold Shirts, a fascist paramilitary group, failed to seize power).

• South Africa (The Ossewabrandwag, a pro-Nazi group, gained influence but never took over).

And my native Norway has fascists like Quisling. His party just never got that big. But the US, UK and many others have massive fascist movements and sympathizers.

When a something becomes a global phenomenon we cannot merely look at individual people. It is too easy to point to Hitler and Trump as the cause of what happened then or now. That could only explain one country. It could not explain a global phenomenon.

The Role of Technology and Economics in Shaping Politics

Much of my writing is precisely about the role of things such as geography, technology, and economics in shaping the broad arcs of history as opposed to a belief in unique characters shaping history. I think many of the people we associated with transformative change are really just people at the right place at the right time.

Do Civilizations Prosper and Evolve Due to Ideas or Material Conditions?

To give you some ideas. If Einstein was born in the 1600s Ethiopia, he would have been unlikely to have developed the theory of relativity or to have been known for much at all. His ability to create the theory of relativity was influenced by being born in the scientific powerhouse of the time. And the pre-requisite science, mathematics, and technology to develop the theory of relativity existed.

Henry Ford is famous for inventing the assembly line for car manufacture. However, the idea wasn't new. What made it transformative and possible was the electrical revolution. While Henry Ford's cars were not electric, it was the recent availability of electric and pneumatic power tools that made it possible to build assembly lines.

Mass Communication Tech in 1920s

Likewise, the development of large political movements such as the fascist movements was the development of new communication technologies such as telegraphs, radio, movie theaters and newspapers. You could argue that newspapers were not new but they were quite expensive originally. Gentlemen in the 1800s used to join clubs to share in the reading of newspapers.

In the 1920s, due to technology change newspapers were significantly cheaper. It was a combination of improvements in rotary presses and linotype machines and pulp paper production, made newspapers faster and cheaper to produce.

For instance, it was not until 1880s that that pulp paper replaced rag paper for newspapers, books and magazines. By 1900, paper was 90% cheaper than in 1800. Hence, the golden age of newspapers (1900–1930s) began.

Mass literacy and cheap printing was potent combination. Large popular movements arose. They could be organized thanks to writing and reading. Political parties could have their own newspapers to spread their ideas. They could easily make pamphlets.

It made mass movement run by powerful rhetoric possible in a way that had not been possible before. Mass transportation such as buses, trams, and trains made it possible for large groups of people to gather. It made things like the large Nazi rallies possible.

Fascism fed off the labour movements. It is not accident that they happened in the aftermath of large labour movements organizing. Workers had learned to organize at large scale to push for their rights. Initially this technology had not actually caused the rise of fascism but the opposite. It had let democracy spreading and workers rights expanding.

Counter Revolutions

Fascism can be seen as a reaction against the rapid changes brought by modernity—industrialization, mass democracy, economic globalization, and shifting class structures. It promised a return to stability, hierarchy, and national greatness, appealing to those who felt threatened by the uncertainties of the 20th century.

It was, in many ways, a counter-revolution—against economic liberalism, socialist revolution, and parliamentary democracy—all of which seemed to be failing in the eyes of many during this chaotic period.

If we look at Nazi rhetoric, it was profoundly against anything progressive. They had their three Ks Kinder Kirche Küche, translated to Children, Church and Kitchen. Fascism in general was a hypermasculine ideology. They wanted to push women back into the kitchen and make women's only role to attend to children and cook meals for their husbands. It seems silly to us today because women's rights had not advanced very far in the 1920s. Most women were still at home.

We see the same today. The places in the world with the strongest backlash against women's rights are not actually very progressive. South Korea for instance is still a very traditional society but anti-feminism is reaching hysterical levels there.

As a Scandinavian, it is hard to not notice this irony. I lived in the US about 20 years ago and have visited regularly since and of course keep up today on American news. Based on everything I know and have experienced, the US is not a pioneer on women's rights. National paid maternity leave is today in almost every country in the world. Norway had it back in 1908. The US still doesn't have it. Access to reproductive rights is today much better in oppressive China than the US. It suggests that the idea that feminism has gone too far in the US is preposterous. Yet ultimately, it is what people feel. In the 1930s many men "felt" women's rights had gone too far. They were outraged. In fact, they were outraged by pretty much any progressive idea.

They were outraged that common people got to have their voices heard. They were outraged that what had been "traditional" values was being eroded. Ironically, the people with the same ideas today worship the 1950s as a time of traditional values. Yet the same kind of people would have complained endlessly about eroding traditional values back then.

As someone who grew up in the 1980s, I don't know whether to laugh or cry why I see 20 year old men idolize the 1980s. They clearly have no idea of what the 80s was like.

So what am I getting at here? We always have pendulum swings. After a period of progressive improvements where women got to enter the workplace, got the right to vote, workers got more rights and democracy spread we got a reaction. Many people didn't like the new changes and they "wanted their country back."

The 1950s were fairly conservative, while in the 1960s you got hippies, and a youth revolution. Young people in universities. Rock and pop music. Civil rights movement. Later Vietnam protests. Here in Norway, the 1970s was more of the left-wing surge. Radical socialists and feminist groups gained traction. US got a sort of counter revolution with Richard Nixon. But later you had Jimmy Carter back.

The 1980s was yet another counter revolution. The 1970s had very political music. People were all very engaged politically, in particular in left wing politics. The 80s became a rejection of that and an embrace of hedonism. Wall Street speculators, testosterone action heroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone were the new movie icons. It was reflected in the music. More mindless and hedonistic. Hair rock metal was perhaps the best example of the 1980s culture.

The 1990s were a reaction to the excesses of the 1980s. You had rockers in the 1980s with leather outfits with spikes, massive hair, makeup etc. It was all over the top. Then Grunge band Nirvana explodes on the scenes with guys only dressed in regular jeans and T-shirts, as if they walked right off the street. Politics is back, but not in the 1970s way. The lead singer of Nirvana Kurt Cobain was a feminist and strongly opposed to commercialization and excesses that exemplified the 1980s.

The 2020s Counter Revolution

So what about the 2020s? What happened? Like the 1930s we are in a counter revolution against a previous strong progressive movement pushed forward by new technology. It is not radio and newspapers today but the internet, social media and smartphones.

We have long lived a sort of 1930s style media world. While TV was an innovation over radio it still represented mass media. It still required larger well funded organizations to broadcast. Communication is one way from powerful organizations out to the common people. Only a handful of TV channels would exist in each country.

With the internet the game has changed totally. YouTube for instance has in effect made it possible for everyone to run their own personal TV channel. Teenage girls doing makeup from their bedroom can suddenly have millions of followers. Twenty years ago that was unthinkable. It has given rise to a whole new class of people "influencers."

Or anyone can be a newspaper publisher. I am an example of this. You can read my articles on my newsletter. Anyone in the world can and I didn't need to build up a large expensive organization with printing presses, typographers and distribution channels to make that happen. All I need was an internet connection and a computer. Something people even in the third world can afford today.

Just like with newspapers, the internet has gone through many phases. The impact of newspaper requires several factors such as going below a threshold and having mass literacy. Likewise in the early internet we didn't have social media as it exists today. The methods of information distribution was more modeled on the old ways of creating a publication and have people read it. Typically you need to know how to program HTML to make websites. It wasn't accessible to all people.

But sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter changed all that. Anyone could join and share content with minimal technical skills. But the real explosion was with smartphones. Not everyone had a computer before, but everyone needed a phone. Once phones were media consumption devices, we had the whole world hooked in 24/7.

The prediction had been that when everyone could voice their opinion we would usher in a world of understanding, harmony and peace. Oh... what sweet summer child (Game of Thrones). The consequence was instead that all the loudest and most divisive people who could never get their word out now had a chance. Major newspaper and TV channels had a reputation to uphold and so they could not spread direct lies. For Joe Average, that same calculation didn't apply.

Social Media became a platform for spreading lies and disinformation at a scale never seen before. Rather than bringing harmony and understanding, it ironically pulled us apart. People like Andrew Tate would never have had a voice in the earlier mass media world. He brags about being a misogynist and basically teach young men how to exploit women. Imagine a show running with him on traditional TV? He would have lasted a day before a massive storm of protests from viewers would have caused the channel to pull the show.

That is not the world we live in today. My last days on X (Twitter renamed by Elon Musk) I saw holocaust deniers weekly. I debate straight out Nazis of a fairly regular basis. Such a reality would have been unknown just 10 years ago. Nazis were not people you generally encountered or debated anything with.

Migrants and Smartphones

The story about social media in the West is probably well enough known. But what most don't pay much attention to is the revolution phones have had in the third world.

Between 1990 and 2020, the global migrant population increased by 83%, from 153 million to 281 million, outpacing the 47% growth in the global population during the same period Source: Pew Research.

In the 1990s, migration processes were more complex due to limited access to information and communication tools.

Migrants often relied on personal networks, word of mouth, and physical intermediaries to gather information about destination countries and navigate migration routes.

The absence of widespread internet and mobile phone usage made it challenging to access real-time data or connect with support networks during transit.

The proliferation of mobile phones and internet access in developing countries has significantly transformed migration dynamics.

In 2013, there were approximately 6.8 billion mobile-cellular subscriptions worldwide, with 5.2 billion in developing countries Source: Wikipedia - Mobiles for Development.

By 2024, internet access in the least developed countries reached 35%, compared to over 80% in developed nations Source: Statista.

This increased connectivity allows potential migrants to access information about destination countries, legal requirements, and travel logistics more readily.
Social media and messaging apps facilitate communication with diaspora communities and can aid in coordinating migration plans.

Not only has the ability to organize trips grown but populations in poor countries have grown much faster than in the West.

A common misunderstanding is that poverty and war are the main drivers of migration. When migration from Europe to the US exploded in the late 1870s Europe had not gotten poorer or faced more wars. Instead it was prosperity that made it possible. People had more money and the price of travel due to modern steam ships had fallen. It wasn't actually people from the poorest part of Europe that traveled but often people from relatively developed areas.

My native Norway had the highest percentage of citizens leaving for America after Ireland. However, Norway was by European standards not particularly poor. It was richer than Eastern European and Souther European countries.

Norwegians like smart phone owning migrants today had the advantage of being able to communicate effectively relative to their time. Norway was one of the first fully literate countries in Europe. Public schooling began in the 1700s a whole 150 years before the UK. This is also part of the reason why Scandinavians tended to do better than other immigration groups in the US. They were simply better educated.

Literacy mattered because migrants who had traveled across earlier could send back letters and give advice. Suggest what was the best way to travel. Tell people about the living conditions and opportunities in this new country.

So you could say the migration in the 1800s was a combination of poverty and prosperity. The migrants were came from a country developed enough that they could make the travel happen:

• They had the money to pay for tickets, food, and equipment

• Education to read letters and info about the new country and opportunities

We can, of course, not rule out poverty. If Norway was that rich and great then people would have stayed. But the reality is that working as a sailor on a US ship paid 3-4 times more than in Norway. Through the homestead act farmers could get for free 20 times more land than the average farm in Norway. In other words, the US represented a gigantic upgrade for normal people. So people left in droves from Norway despite the fact that Norwegians lived in one of the most democratic, free and prosperous countries in the world. It is just that it couldn't measure up to the US at all.

A similar process has happened in the poor world today. They are still very poor relative to us in the West. However, they are much better educated today. They have access to modern technology such as phones and internet. Cars and trucks are cheaper and more widespread. Hence arranging trips is easier than before.

You can see the same with European migration to the US. The largest flow of migrants came each time a country hit some kind of threshold of development. Italians and Poles came in large numbers in the 1920s to 1950s. At that time those countries had become more literate and prosperous. Poor people had gotten rich enough to make the move.

At this time, migration from my native Norway had dwindled to almost nothing because Norway had simply gotten rich enough that the incentive to move wasn't there anymore. In other words really poor people and affluent people don't migrate. It is the moderately poor people who migrate.

Migration is not a Globalist Conspiracy

Giving this background for why migration is happening as such scale today is important context because on the populist right today there is the idea that somehow a liberal globalist imposed multiculturalism on the population. That somehow the left decided, "We want to be multicultural and have as many immigrants as possible."

In their minds, the world hasn't changed outside the West. Rather, Western leaders just woke up one day and decided "Let us flood our nations with people from the Third World." The populist right think it is a deliberate, planned and wanted development.

So here we see how the Smartphone and Internet technology revolution collides in the West and the global South. The technology that allows migration to balloon is also the technology that has allowed the right-wing to spread wild conspiracies about this migration and paint the establishments as traitors.

For me, this is quite personal, since Norwegian far-right terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik blew up the government building in Oslo. That is the city I live in. He went on the slaughter close to 80 teens on the Utøya island who were members of the Labour Party youth organization AUF. I was a member of the same organization many years ago. In fact, I have been on summer camp on Utøya myself. During the Breivik trial I recognized all the places and locations on that Island. I had been at the same buildings, walked on the same forest paths.

This was back in 2011. Already then the internet was helping radicals connect in a way they could not do before. Breivik was not radicalized by some local Neo Nazi chapter in Norway. We hardly have any far-right organizations to speak of. Instead, he was primarily radicalized online by American right-wing media personalities and forums. This doesn't just happen for the far-right. It is how many Jihadists got radicalized as well. So much for the peace and democracy the internet would bring us.

I bring him up because his rational for mass murder was built on the idea that a left-wing globalist elite, specifically the Norwegian Labour Party, had sold-out Norway. That they somehow deliberately flooded the country with immigrants.

The reality is that no European nation has had free migration since the 1970s. A poor person cannot simply move to Europe and get a work permit. Only high-skill labour is allowed. So policies are stricter, not looser, today than in say the 1960s when there were very few immigrants here.

Most of the people who come today are through family reunions, asylum seekers or refugees. Family reunions are something you kind of have to allow at some level. You cannot bar people of different nationality from marrying. Nor can you bar their children from staying in the same country as their parents.

Accepting refugees has been an important humanitarian principle. Back in WW2, I had family members who had to flee to Sweden. All countries can experience war, and we must be ready to help refugees. Remember, Jews to a large degree got gassed because so many countries refused to accept more Jewish refugees.

For a long time, accepting refugees was a workable solution because people primarily fled to neighboring countries. But people have always sought more distant lands. Many Jews fled to the US. Much further away than say Switzerland or Morocco. Naturally, once people need to flee, they will often seek the better opportunities for their family.

It is thus not surprising that people would want to travel to the West. In the past, such distant travels to the West were very difficult to organize. Due to the Internet and Smartphone revolution, that has become possible. That is why we are flooded today. It is not a globalist woke Jewish conspiracy against white people. It is technology and population growth.

We didn't get new policies, rather our old policies became outdated due to technological change. This is what right-wingers never understand. They love looking at the past with nostalgia. They dream that we can simply turn the clock back and implement whatever rules or laws existed back then. But you can't. The world has changed. What do you want to do? Destroy the internet and hunt down all smart phones in the third world?

The Rise of Trumpism

Every country today has a variant of Trumpism. The populist right is rising everywhere. It is not surprising. We have what seems like a flood of migrants into our countries and it has been going on for enough time that the problems are starting to be felt acutely. I live in an immigrant majority area of Oslo. Reality is in between what the left and right will claim. It is not the sharia law no-go zone that right-wingers will claim. I lived here for 13 years without any problems. Both my sons have had good experiences at school. How do I know? I suggested we should move to the posh side of Oslo, with minimal number of immigrants. To give context: It wasn't specifically because I was anti-immigration but rather because I worked there and wanted to avoid long commutes. Non of my kids wanted to move.

At the same time as parents attending various school meetings over the years and looking around what is going on, being party of the community, it is clear that we have challenges here.

What was called "white flight" in the US is happening here as well. It cannot keep going like this. We look at horror at how Sweden is descending into violence. It is not exactly as FOX News will have you believe. The most violent town in Sweden still has a homicide rate similar to the national average in the US. It is nothing like violent cities like Baltimore or Chicago in the US. Yet Sweden is very violent relative to what we have become accustomed to in the Nordics. We are quite a peaceful part of the world. Much less so now.

The picture, however is complex. While immigration has ballooned since the 1990s, the crime level is actually down all over the West. The US in particular has significantly less crime today. Around 1986 Norway had almost three times higher homicide rate than today.

At the same time minorities from outside the West are profoundly overrepresented on crime statistics and in prison. If you look at Sweden homicide rates have steadily move upwards since early 2010s.

Statistics cannot show everything however. Notice how relatively homogenous Finland has long has far more homicides than more ethnically diverse Sweden. Yet statistics betray important difference.