The N-Word and the F-Word
Or how nostalgia-fueled TikTok videos mask the spectre of lurking fascism by appealing to a past that ever existed
“... Bennie had looked into his idol’s famous face and thought You’re finished. Nostalgia was the end – everyone knew that.” - Jennifer Egan, A Visit From the Goon Squad
There’s a TikTok channel called NostalgicContent1 that’s been making the rounds lately. From the few videos I’ve seen it’s just AI slop where someone - usually white, usually cishet coded - speaks to the viewer directly from the vantage point of some unspecified point in the past. Sometimes it’s a vague point in the 1980s, others it’s from a Wal-Mart in the early 2000s.
But they’re all generally the same. The narrator walks around and tries to stir up memories of the past: “Remember when Wal-Mart had fish tanks?” or “Remember when nobody had a cell phone?” And they all end with the same kind of question: they ask the viewer if they miss living back then and if they’d trade their current life to return to it.
It all looks innocent enough. It’s AI slop like those Facebook pages that post pictures of six-thumbed soldiers asking for a birthday wish or a Jesus crying next to a flag. But it’s more insidious than them. As simple as these videos seem they are hinting at something darker, something potentially dangerous, and something we should be on our guard against: fascism.
Yes, the dreaded F-word. It’s one that gets thrown around a lot these days and only sometimes is used correctly. It’s a word with a specific meaning and has a set of hallmarks. Authoritarianism is fascist; getting served a latte in a red, holiday themed Starbucks cup is not.
One of its hallmarks is a longing for a past golden age that never existed in reality. Case in point: the way the third reich hailed back to an Aryan age of the ubermensch, a past that existed only in propaganda. Or the way some now want to return the US to a Christian state where gender roles were rigidly defined and had its borders patrolled by society - this past was invented by a writer. The 1950s had Fonzie and Potsie, but it also had Jack Kerouac and Christine Jorgensen.
And so with these videos. The 1980s was not a quiet, idyllic time for many people. There was the Iran-Contra scandal, CIA-backed death squads in Central America, the Cold War in Europe and the spectre of nuclear war and Mutually Assured Destruction.
Same with the early 2000s. Maybe Wal-Mart had lobster tanks but it also had warrantless wiretapping, international paranoia after the attacks in 9/11 and 7/7/2005. People were far from apolitical: thousands marched in the street against the war in Iraq. Life 20 years ago was not much cooler than it is now.
But these AI-slop videos would have you think otherwise. How? By appealing to your sense of nostalgia, to a time when you didn’t feel overwhelmed by social media. When you weren’t politically engaged or following the news as closely as you do now. To a time when you didn’t have to worry about paying student debt, medical bills, or rent. A time when your parents took care of you.
This is how it gets darker. By appealing to these memories and emotions it wants the viewer to try and recreate these feelings in their own lives by recreating the situation around them. The news has you down? Well don’t pay attention to what’s happening. Does being politically engaged stress you out? Then don’t worry about politics at all. It wants you to disengage from your surroundings and instead rely on companies and the state to take charge of the things that stress you out: let a strongman-style of government act as your parents and bring back the feeling that you’re being taken care of and free from worry. When it asks you if you’d trade your 2025 for a return to 2002 or 1985, it isn’t saying culture was better back then, it’s asking if you’re willing to hand over your agency.
By appealing to these ideas fascism can seep in through the cracks. You relinquish your grip on the here-and-now and wish for a time when life was simpler. But to make life simpler you have to hand over the complex, tricky things that give you power: the ability to pay attention to what’s happening and to protest against it, even if only at the ballot box. Remember, kids don’t vote. And coupled with this return to a simpler time is to roll back all the progress and reforms made in the intervening time. 2002 had those fish tanks but it didn’t have gay marraige.
But the most insidious part is the way this sort of nostalgia invites despair: a despair of the present, a feeling that we’ve somehow lost our way and the only way to go is to move backwards and try and find it. There is no forward progress here, no optimism. Things can never get better in the future, they can only get worse.
This kind of giving up is the worst kind of giving up. When a population succumbs to the idea that yesterday was better than today, then there’s no imperative to make tomorrow a better place. There’s no forward momentum, no drive to change things. Might as well stay home on election day and watch Stranger Things.
The nostalgia trap is that it keeps you in a loop. Because the past was better you can’t move forward, but you can’t move backwards in time so you try and recreate the conditions of yesterday but the yesterday you’re nostalgic for only existed in the minds of marketing people so you can’t ever find it. And eventually you go in a circle and give up. And people who give up are not people who notice, let alone march in the street, when governments start to roll back hard-earned rights and liberties: gay marrage, the right for trans people to self-determine their gender, the civil rights gains of the 1960s, the ability for a woman to hold her own credit cards and bank accounts.
Remember: there is no returning to yesterday but there is always a tomorrow which can be better than today. Do not give in to nostalgia and don’t succumb to despair. And most of all: never give up hope.