Mastodawn

RE: https://mas.to/@wifsten/116035756091298221

What a fascinating story. It suggests that there is a correlation between the closures of bars-tabac (coffee shop/tobacco shop) and the rise of right-wing party sentiment in rural communities, and that party support can be reversed by reopening bars-tabac.

This suggests that social/communal spaces reduce hateful programming. Maybe people who are lonely tend to feel disempowered and left behind, and thus are more susceptible to messages that blame some out-group for the way they feel.

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Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis 19h ago

@drahardja
>This suggests that social/communal spaces reduce hateful programming.

Possibly. But it seems more likely that the economic pressures that result in small hospitality industry businesses closing by, say, reducing customers' discretionary income and/or raising retail rents are the same ones that lead right-inclined people to be more open to radicalization.

Also, the people who operate such establishments are 1) small business owners and 2) voters. In the US, small business owners lean to the right for reasons Marx described. If a whole lot of people who own tabacs were already right-leaning due to being employers, nothing about them getting driven out of business is going to make them *less* right wing.

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Dave Rahardja

@siderea I don’t think the idea in the article and your idea are necessarily exclusive, right? I think it’s plausible that isolation can drive people into conspiracy spirals, which is often used by right-wing politicos to gain voters, and that economic pressures can lead to isolation.