I was literally in shock while watching a reporter interview a woman from Arizona who plans to vote Republican down the line because the price of eggs is (in her opinion) too high. Our democracy is in peril, and this voter is more concerned about the price of groceries. 

Never since the Civil War has our country been so divided, and never in my lifetime have I witnessed the metastasis of ridiculous lies, and conspiracy theories that GOP pundits hurl at Democrats, liberals, immigrants, women, minorities, voter rights advocates, and LGBTQ+ citizens. Many of these individuals running for state and US seats are pushing anti-abortion, anti-gay, and anti-contraception legislation so popular with the Christo-fascist movement in the US, in addition to cutting medicare and social security.

So why would this woman not be worried about these issues? Is the cost of eggs more important than a gay couple’s ability to obtain a marriage license, a woman’s right to choose, and the guarantee of social security?

True, I pay more for gas and a loaf of bread than I did a year ago, but that doesn’t mean I’ll trade Democracy for cheaper necessities.

I got to thinking about how fascism seems to be so in vogue lately across the globe. Why did Italy elect its first fascist woman to the presidency? Why did the people of Turkey and Hungary elect autocratic leaders who will surely remain in power for life?

Does it really have to do with the economy and the price of eggs?

In his 1944 book The Great Transformation, anthropologist Karl Polyani argued that fascism arises as a reaction to a market economy. He writes, “Nineteenth Century civilization was not destroyed by the external or internal attack of barbarians; its vitality was not sapped by the devastations of World War I nor by the revolt of a socialist proletariat or a fascist lower middle class … It disintegrated as the result of … the measures which society adopted in order not to be, in its turn, annihilated by the action of the self-regulating market.”

An interesting idea, but let’s not forget that the German economy under the Weimar Republic was in dire straights, and the Nazi party rose to power on the promise of economic stability and nationalism. Erdogan, Orban, and Maduro all made the same promises, but as we see today, those promises have yet to be realized. For example, Turkey’s inflation rate is at 83%, Hungary is experiencing soaring inflation rates and a poor credit rating, and Venezuela has an extreme poverty rate of 76.6%.

Our own nation exhibits higher rates of income inequality than most developed nations, due largely to deregulated markets that emerged in the 1980s. Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and other world followed the course of deregulation, privatization, union-crushing, and neo-liberal trade policies that have resulted in the top 1% holding 20 times more of global wealth than the bottom 50%. 

Sadly, the Democratic Party under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama failed to fix the inequalities of an unregulated market economy. As a result, we have billionaires and oligarchs calling the shots on Capital Hill, oil companies posting record profits, and companies such as Amazon and Starbucks spending millions to suppress union efforts to organize for better pay and benefits. Income inequality in the U.S. is the highest of all the G7 nations, and the wealth gap between America’s richest and poorer families more than doubled from 1989 to 2016. Over the past 50 years, Middle-class incomes growing at a slower rate than upper-class incomes.

Perhaps poverty, inequality, and the rising price of gas and eggs do indeed set the stage for the rise in fascism. I don’t blame voters who have to work more than one job to make ends meet to want change in Washington. 

But voting for nationalistic autocrats is not the answer. 

The answer is to turn our attention to the majority of impoverished voters and to focus on reducing social and economic inequality.