Back in 2017, I read a book called How Democracies Die. Despite being authored by two left wing professors, it's a very, very good book. The book is about how (mostly) populist movements kill democratic systems. The overwhelming majority of the book covers how right wing movements topple democracies. It's very well researched and cited, and I enjoyed reading it immensely. But as I read through all the examples, I couldn't help but wonder: why in the world did these right wing movements wake up one day and decide to destroy these supposedly perfectly stable societies? It just didn't make sense. So after I finished the book, I made a list of ten examples in the book to research. The first thing I found is that these right wing movements were reacting to something. That's why they're called reactionary movements. And what were they reacting to? Socialist or communist movements. In EVERY SINGLE CASE*, the right wing movement arose in direct response to the rise of a violent socialist or communist movement. It's an immune reaction. In EVERY SINGLE CASE*, the socialist or communist movement had either already taken power or was threatening to and, in the latter cases, the right wing movements that took power simply beat the communists to the punch. The Right took power before the communists did. That's it. That's literally all you need to know about why and how right wing movements take power. That's how your vaunted democracies die. Not because right wingers wake up one day and, for no reason at all, decide to take power, but because the Far Left threatened to do it first. What Joel Berry and James Lindsay and all the others should understand (if they don't already), is that if you want to stop the so-called "Woke Right" then the real enemy is the Woke Left. There is no right wing immune response if there's no cancerous Far Left movement threatening to destroy their country. There is no reactionary movement if there's nothing to react to. Why, then, do they spend SO MUCH TIME antagonizing the populist right wing? And why does Joel Berry keep posting these absolute dog shit takes that actually illustrate the point of his opposition? Is his IQ actually 300 instead of 30? Inquiring minds want to know. (*One claimed exception is right-wing Imperial Japan, which did not start as an outgrowth of opposition to communism, but a reaction to the coercive influence of Western imperialism. Once the right-wing imperial system was adopted, Japan did suppress socialist and communist movement, and passed laws that effectively banned both. I don't believe Japan is an exception, but some ACKSHUALLY reply guy might bring it up, and here's your sign.)