Social media is a catalyst that only works because material conditions are bad. If everyone is happy, and social media tells them there's a Muslim invasion, they just laugh it off. If everyone is angry, and social media tells them there's a Muslim invasion, they burn down a mosque.

It's a pattern that's been repeated several times before in history, most famously in Germany: whenever capitalism creates bad times, society chooses one of two ways out: either socialism or fascism. Right now several countries are seeing surges in popularity of the far left and the far right, which is this exact pattern playing out in real time before our eyeballs. While the established capitalist politicians always promise nothing except more of the same decline, and thus become unpopular when everyone is feeling the decline and inequality, socialist candidates promise to directly fix the cause of the inequality, and fascism is propped up by the causes of the inequality to divert attention away from themselves. Again, this pattern has already played out many times and is pretty hard to refute at this point.