A big part of early 20th-c. sociology was specifically concerned with their equivalent of "elite overproduction". The problem as they saw it was not so much "losers" in anything like an objective sense, but aspiring elites who viewed themselves as oppressed losers out of a misguided sense of entitlement.

"Elite overproduction" is the elites' own term for too many disaffected college graduates packing boxes at amazon (or equivalent).

Put enough of them to work there and many will radicalize and unionize. Having an education and little investment in the existing social order makes them a dangerous political wildcard.

I doubt the Economist is fretting about incels shooting up shopping malls when they use this term. Theyre probably more worried about a wave of Gabriel Borics taking the reins of power across the world and screwing over investors.

> Having an education and little investment in the existing social order

The problem back then was the latter. Many of them were not interested in productive work of any kind, simply because their pre-modern worldview would've equated this with a loss of station. Hence the sense of "elite" entitlement and ensuing "radicalization".

It's the combination. People with little investment in the existing social order without education dont tend to organize themselves sufficiently to be any kind of threat by themselves.

>aspiring elites who viewed themselves as oppressed losers out of a misguided sense of entitlement.

Yep, sounds like the disaffected white males who kill others or themselves in droves, despite often having better conditions than (less aspirant/entitled) non-white males.

If you honestly reflect on your comment, do you see anything wrong with it?

When I read it, I got very angry at what I perceive to be pointed racism.

But I'd like to try to step away from that and instead of lashing out, to understand your perspective more.

Would you mind explaining your thinking a bit more?

The point being made (as I understand it) is that given that it is true (if you believe the national statistical authorities of the relevant western countries) that young white men are often substantially better off than young men of colour (even when controlling for all non-ethnicity relating factors), it is perhaps unexpected that the suicide rates for those groups would be higher. Adopting the principle of charity, I think we can assume that the original poster does not mean to in any way minimise the plight of desperate people who are suffering from mental health conditions. Instead, I think it is an interesting question as to why suicide rates are so much higher (and at least in the UK this is not an exaggeration - see e.g. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...) than those of groups whose material circumstances are worse.

p.s. I am aware that suicide is not a function solely of material circumstance (and material circumstance relative to other people's)

It's just racism. You're not missing anything; there's nothing more to it.

So...despair to the point of suicide is a marker of racial privilege??

I think the driving desire for purpose is not exclusive to delivery drivers without girlfriends. Fascism is compelling because it seems to fill that void. The power element is simply a byproduct. This is also why all ideologies which purport to offer meaning struggle to coexist with other ideologies with the same goal.

Purpose is only a component of what fascism is about.

Wielding power - owed power - is certainly not a byproduct of fascism. Its the core promise of the ideology to its "chosen" people.

Interesting the way that you group "not very smart" and "girlfriendless" with "delivery rider" as if being a gig worker makes you some kind of undesirable loser. Nice casual elitism.

<insert any other job that will be also automated in the next 15 years>

If a job can be done by a starship robot then it's not much of a job then is it? In the short term it's more productive and admirable than being unemployed but in the long run it won't be much different.

Code monkey is arguably on that list.

Yeah give copilot another decade of development and it should be able to replace a junior dev for sure.

Did I miss something? At what point have women stopped looking for a higher income man?

Why do you inherently ascribe it to "male loser" vs. just "loser"?

Because patriarchy. To females, being a "loser" was simply the status quo; there were no "winners" to aspire towards.

humbug. just because men have different measures of status and success does not mean women don’t have some of their own

Imagine erasing such murderous despots as Kathrine the Great and Elizabeth Tudor because of their genitalia.

Neither of whom were outside of a single standard deviation from the norm in Europe at this time.

I find the GP argument less the convincing, but I believe that women haven’t been the face of genocide and war because of lack of opportunity - But all such are historical outliers - regardless of sex.

Queen Victoria killed more people with famine than Stalin did.

The only way people can lie to themselves that women rulers have less blood on their hands is by not studying history.

Queen Victoria had a _lot_ less power than Stalin did (Stalin had virtually complete control of the entirety of the state machinery, whereas Victoria was much more of a figurehead, although certainly less so than the British monarchy has thankfully become)

Those stand-ins for men that didn't have a trace of parallels anywhere lower in the hierarchy.

How many female dictators or mass shooters are you aware of?

They've been mostly outside the West.

Tansu Çiller in Turkey, continued state policy of suppressing the Kurds

Khertek Anchimaa, Sükhbaataryn Yanjmaa, both chairwomen in Soviet satellites in Asia. I'm not aware of atrocities, just leading authoritarian regimes.

Isabel Perón in Argentina was democratically elected, but acted as a strongwoman in a time of political convolution. She was often eclipsed by her far more volatile, openly fascist Minister of Social Welfare, José López Rega, so you can contend how much repression came from each.

Sheikh Hasina, currently active, an electoral autocrat of modern times, violently suppresses opposition in Bangladesh.

Right now Jeanine Añez is serving jail time in Bolivia, following a show trial, the likes of which she was arranging for political opposition, that she also suppressed with the military. She stomped into the Bolivian Government palace with Bible in hand and her goons tearing down indigenous banners, promising to bring God back into the country.

And well, more, but none leading the great empires, no.

Queen Victoria has a death count much higher than Hitlers. Something quite impressive considering the world had a quarter the population of 1940 when she started.

Factually correct, but as head of state her direct impact on policy was minor - I'm not aware of her dismissing governments of whose policies she disapproved, for example. Accepting the fruits of imperialistic tyranny is morally culpable, but it's also a systemic problem, distinctly different from the active application of executive power.

There is no evidence Hitler was at all involved with the execution of the holocaust either.

Funny how you're holding one responsible for the crimes of their regime and the other was a figurehead. The moral of the story is don't lose a world war if you've committed genocide.

> There is no evidence Hitler was at all involved with the holocaust either.

There's considerable evidence he was, actually.

> Funny how you're holding one responsible for the crimes of their regime and the other was a figurehead.

It's almost like a head of state and a combined executive head of government and head of state are different things.

There is evidence he wanted the Jews out of Germany and he didn't much care if they left in a boat to Madagascar or on a train to an extermination camp. There isn't evidence that he was involved with either attempt.

If we applied the standards of the Nuremberg trials to the British Empire during the Boer war Queen Victoria would have been hung.

> There isn't evidence that he was involved with either attempt.

This simply isn't true. There's plenty of evidence of that. (There's one specific kind of evidence—an documented order—that doesn't exist, but there is plenty of other evidence, including a series of public statements stating intent to exterminate the Jews stretching back to 1922, and a statement in 1942 referring back to those anticipatory statements and claiming to have silenced those who would have laughed at them, among other anticipatory and inculpatory statements.)

> If we applied the standards of the Nuremberg trials to the British Empire during the Boer war Queen Victoria would have been hung.

There might be an interesting argument for that, but the assertion is not the argument, and since no person similarly situated to the British Monarch was tried at Nuremberg, such an argument would require something much more specific behavioral analogy to make.

Probably because the only thing that can physically stop a man is another man, and when men get so unhinged as to support ruthless leaders to get what they want, all bets are off and you’re dealing with a carnage waiting to happen.

As long as a woman has a womb, she’s never the loser.

Could you elaborate on that?

No.

What you describe is well documented in psychology. A lot people who are attracted by power, hierarchy and domination are sexually frustrated and more often man than women.

A quick search online yields many reliable publications on the topic.

The fact that your comment is being downvoted worries me.

>I sometimes wonder if I were not very smart, girlfriendless and a delivery rider if it wouldnt appeal to me too.

How do you explain that 45% of votes for Nazis came from Women?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Nazi_Germany#Nazi_fem...

You mean that 55% of pro Nazi votes, and thus a majority, were male? And that the NSDAP had, at least when the election was free, nowhere near a majority, so a vast majority of women actually voted against them? Well, I think because women just didn't like em that much.

The point that is being made is that the Nazi's electoral support base had a _lot_ of women, and the question is "how did a party which had a patriarchal ontology of society attract support from women". Your comment is missing some evidence - the Nazis did not achieve a majority in a number of elections, but to conclude that women as a category specifically disliked them (given that many men also voted against them, likely for much the same reasons as women) is not evidenced by this.

At least 80% of German women voted for Henlein and SdP in 1938 long after Hitler had been in power and known for what he was. "Women just didn't like em that much" is pure fantasy.

Henlein's SdP, the Nazi-aligned party of the German minority in Chekoslovakia, got 90% of the vote of that minority in the last elections before the Sudetenland was absorbed by Naz-Germany in 1938. All German women never did vote for the SdP, basically becaise the SdP was a party in Chekoslovakia and not Germany. Also, by 1938, elections were no longer free and thus are a bad baseline.

So, as a matter of fact, the only German women that ever voted for the SdP / Henlein were part of the German minority. And even there, women voted less for SdP than the overall German community did.

That a German minority would be largely in favor joining Germany is propably not a big surprise, is it? And as said, even then women voted less for the SdP.

So please stop posting unsubstantiated claims.

The May 1938 elections were absolutely free. Where did you get that they weren't free?

> And even there, women voted less for SdP than the overall German community did.

80% minimum is "less than overall German community"?

> That a German minority would be largely in favor joining Germany is propably not a big surprise, is it?

"Of course they voted for Nazis" is the exact opposite of "but they didn't vote for Nazis".

> And as said, even then women voted less for the SdP. So please stop posting unsubstantiated claims.

You yourself admit it's not unsubstantiated.

Which elections were free? The once in Germany, which the SdP didn't participate in definitely were not.

The communal ebelctions in Sudetenland of 1938? Kind of free, but people bot supporting the Nazi allied SdP were already harassed and presured to vote SdP.

That under these circumstances women voted less for Nazis then men is kind of note-worthy.

But since I do not expect you to argue in good faith or to provide some facts, I'll stop it here. The Anschluss and the Munich Agreement, along with the history of the Sudetenland, is too conolex a topic to discuss in such a manner.

"Kind of free?" Are you kidding me?

The absolutely laughable claim above was that women were not to be blamed for the electoral victories of Nazis. The fact that at least 80% of German women in Czechoslovakia voted for Nazis in free elections demolishes that absurdity.

Ok, apparently I can't stop...

Source to the claim that elections in 1938, those we are talking about were not free:

https://web.archive.org/web/20111110054101/http://www.uni-du...

And yes, a difference of 20% is quite significant.

Also, German citizens enabled the Nazi, no doubt about that. The situation in Czechoslovakia in 1938 is different:

- the Sudetenland was dominated by a German minority, that German candidates fare better among German voters is not a big surprise

- joining Germany wasn't an unpopular policy, not in Austria nor in the Sudetenland, that a party favouring that policy does well during elections isn't a big surprise neither

- those elections envolved a lot of intimidation to vote for the SdP, that means better results for the SdP

Just one question, what is it with you trying to pin those Henlein election results on women?

The Czechoslovak Republic was pretty much the last democratic country in the region. To say that those elections were "not free" requires a massive amount of guts. They were as free as you get in that time and place. If 90% of a German minority votes for an openly Nazi politician with an openly Nazi agenda, then 90% of that German minority are openly Nazi. Case closed, period.

> the Sudetenland was dominated by a German minority, that German candidates fare better among German voters is not a big surprise

Ah, so they had to vote for the Nazi.

> joining Germany wasn't an unpopular policy, not in Austria nor in the Sudetenland, that a party favouring that policy does well during elections isn't a big surprise neither

Ah, I see. "That doesn't count because it was popular." I assume you must also be an apologist for illegal Russian annexation of parts of Ukraine as well?

> those elections envolved a lot of intimidation to vote for the SdP, that means better results for the SdP

Yes, so many years after comparably free German elections, Nazis got even more votes in a country with less previous Nazi influence, and that means that these vastly higher results (2x or so?) were due to "intimidation".

> Just one question, what is it with you trying to pin those Henlein election results on women?

I'm not "pinning the results on women". I'm pinning them on all Germans who voted that way, which does not exclude German women as some kind of a group repressed by some "male loserdom", as claimed above. They were complicit in it to pretty much same degree as the male part of the population.

You didn't even look at the source, did you? An election is not free if one party, the SdP, uses intimidation againstvall other candidates. Up to the point that in some districs the SdP list eas the only one available. The SdP, with help from the Nazis, build up pressure on families of DSAP (social democrats) candidates. Economically, not supporting the SdP was a death sentence. The list goes on. It was the SdP who made those elections not free, not Czech authorities.

And despite this climate of fear, women voted, again using your numbers, 20% less for the SdP than men.

Nitpick so, those Sudetendeutsche enabled the local Nazi allies to win a communal election and get to "go home to the Reich". They did not enable the Nazi's rise to power in Germany.

As far as losers go: The German minority was economically desperate in the 30s, unemployment was rampant, industry loosing contracts, self determination was deteriorating. So yes, in a sense those were losers. Men, apparently, felt more like losers than women. Or they lacked the courage to not fall in line. The election results clearly show that.

I say that as being a direct decendant from those losers, and I have no idea how my grandparents voted back then, or would have if they were old enough to vote in 1938 that is. I assume so, that they would have clearly favored Henlein, both of them.

extensive family policies and benefits during a time of extreme economic insecurity in Germany, rather than ideological or martial aspects of Nazism. Same reason the more conservative, less capitalist, more social and Christian wing of the Conservatives in Germany today (the CSU) is more popular with women than her larger sister party, the CDU.

...or the 90-ish percent of votes for Henlein in the Sudeten? That would mean that at least 80% of all women voted for Henlein.

As stated in a sibling comment, the elctions you mention are, I assuke, the last communal (!) elections in the region before the Sudetenland became part of Germany in 1938. Assuming a roughly 50/50 split between men and women, and a SdP result of 90%, including 80% of the women (curious on were you got those numbers from so...) means close to 100% of men voted SdP.

In elections that involved quite a lot of harassment of non SdP voters, communal elections in a region in Chekoslovakia dominated by a German minority.

Well, I have to brake it to you so: women are by no means easier to come by in radical political movements than elesewhere.

It's a lower bound estimate: Even if all "male losers" voted for the SdP, at least 80% of women would have to vote for the SdP, too, for SdP to get the results it did. So I assume you'd refer to them as "female losers", then...

Are you being serious? This is a pretty low grade comment.

So it seems. Same goes for islamic terrorists and extrimists, white power neo nazis and incels. Those guys have way more in common than they think, and like.