Why Does It Feel Different This Time

TITLE: Why does it feel Different this time? CHANNEL: Nicole Rudolph DATE: 2026-02-21 ---TRANSCRIPT--- I was asked the other day as I was getting coffee, you’re a historian, right? What do you think about all of this? Now, that’s not the first time I’ve been asked that. And I’ve been thinking about how to answer it a lot lately. In that brief few seconds at the register, I responded that I think I’m less worried than a lot of people. Because while I can see all of the connections that we all do, the history repeating itself, I also see that it’s all surface level at best. It’s the history that we learned when we were teenagers, not the real history, not the complex woven patterns of effort and sheer luck that have resulted in where we are today. So, uh, don’t get ready for one of my not so ranty rants. The more I study history, the more I realize it’s barely guidable and much more like a rock bouncing down a hill in its trajectory. Can you predict what happens? A little, but frankly, most of us are nowhere near having the knowledge of how to do that. And those that are trying to control the rock often have far less control than they believe. I think that’s why I find so much comfort in research and knowledge, knowing that certain tactics were only successful because of a strange situation that could never be replicated. Now, does that mean bad things won’t happen? No, they already have. But it won’t be the same events or results. And more importantly, the people attempting to guide things don’t seem to realize that. When politicians take lines or even ideas out of playbooks from a century or two ago, they genuinely don’t understand why it can’t repeat the same way or how to bring it up to date. They’re politicians, not historians, not economists, not psychologists or anthropologists or sociologists. They they don’t know. They’re just good at talking.

Now, fashion is weirdly a really great and accessible example of why we can’t manipulate history into being repeated. We love to attribute major moments in fashion to certain famous names, that they somehow invented a garment or set off a global trend. The reality is usually that they slapped their name on a product that was already around. And nearly all fashion trends are completely impossible to trace back to an origin. Sure, when high heels came back into fashion in the 1850s, Queen Victoria had just held a popular ball themed in the 17th century where the guests widely wore heels. But there were also German books about foot health published around that time that discussed the usefulness of heels and basically went internationally viral. And the great exhibition of 1851, where international shoemakers were showing off their skills and high heels are notoriously complex to make. Not one thing worked alone. There wasn’t a single influential person going, you know what I think would be cool?

The Great Depression of the 1930s is likewise a combination of so many things that caused it and perpetuated it. Yes, the stock market crash of 1929 was a big part of it, but that was because banks weren’t insured. There were no guard rails in place for the market. We were still on the gold standard. Years of risky lending left banks stretched thin. Mortgages were more like three-year loans rather than 30, and it ended up affecting everyone, no matter their class. Today, it’s the wealthy that are keeping our current economy afloat in numbers. And we shouldn’t have a situation where suddenly the banks have no money to pay out. Our job market is also far different with digital and global spread. A lot of what led to the 25% unemployment rate was that so many small businesses could not survive the economic fallout. I’m not saying giant business is always better, just that in circumstances like the 1930s, they were less likely to be totally wiped out and to take those jobs with them. Our market also had far more industry and agricultural jobs than it has now. The closure of a manufacturing plant often meant people had nothing else local to turn to and their working experience didn’t easily adapt to other fields. Hence the migrant workers of the 1930s who traveled constantly looking for any job. We are far closer in economy to eras where the rich were doing just fine if not expanding and there was limited power among the working class. Comparisons to the gilded age of the 1890s make a little more sense with that context. That was followed up by the formation of unions and an era where the most progress in terms of workers rights happened. 40-hour work week, safety and injury compensation, holidays and weekends, protected ability to strike. Was it a great time for most? No. But the discontent led to massive progress that we still benefit from today.

The lesson is that it’s a lot easier to start a ground-based movement that can actually accomplish things when everyone but the rich are suffering. The main reason it’s not working as clearly right now is likely the temporarily embarrassed millionaire theory that basically many people believe that they’ll be rich someday and don’t want to take away from their future fortune which is more a symptom of the 1950s and 60s where that was a feasible concept where the wealth gap was much much smaller and upwards mobility was common for some of the people who either grew up in that era or who were raised at least my parents who had that experience. It’s a core belief, the idea of work hard and get ahead. Otherwise, why work so hard? Which is not a concept that can be dismantled easily. Elsewise, it requires reflecting on a difficult and sometimes questionably moral life to achieve that. When people are taught that the world works in a certain way with convenient rules, it’s painful to realize that isn’t true. And it gets worse the longer it takes to see that because that’s more wasted time, wasted life.

It’s the same reason we see a rise in conservative ideals. When the economy for the middle class gets tough, there’s an effort to fall back to safe and familiar concepts and rules. Communication through clothing, activities, language, and the home need to clearly show who is who. You may not be able to afford things right now, but if you dress and act like a middle class person, you’ll be treated like one. It’s the reason that people think swear words are degrading or lowly. The reason that we get taught as children to stand up straight and not scuff our feet when walking. Why certain drinks are considered more intellectual than others regardless of cost. Why Louis Vuitton high heels are classic and heels of the same height are considered trashy. These are all different ways to signal education, status, wealth, and therefore class. Something that you can’t take away from a person who was raised in that sphere. and something that theoretically means someone who grew up in the lower class would have a harder time passing for middle and middle for upper. A way to quickly rank someone’s life experience against your own and know whether you should treat them as equals, give them difference, or expect difference.

And that’s something we all do. If you’re watching one of my videos for the first time or nearly the first time and you’re sitting here going, “Yeah, she’s got some good points. She’s really well spoken.” Guess what? [laughter] We’re judging based off of perceived education level. Whether I have that or not, you probably don’t know, but I certainly sound like it.

So, here’s the thing. Our class system is falling apart. fast. And you can see that not only in economic numbers, but in the frantic attempts at conservative ideals which shore up the idea of class. We previously relied on the middle class having a large bulk of the money to spend on everyday needs and a range of wants to be aspirant and have the budget to match. What happens when even the middle class is pretty much paycheck to paycheck? I genuinely don’t know because that’s a new thing. Even when we had massive inflation back in the 19s during World War I, the wages kept pace. So since the development of the middle class in the 19th century, we’ve never had a functionally poor version due to the distribution of wealth being so top heavy. It’s why this isn’t like the Great Depression and why the government has done little to change it. The 1929 crash taught economists that if the rich fall, it’s a lot harder to stabilize everything. So that’s why we bailed out big companies and banks in both 2008 and 2020. It wasn’t just keep the job creators afloat. It was keep the economic numbers looking better so there’s more confidence in the current administration.

And honestly, most politicians today aren’t behaving like they’re trying to prevent another great depression or even prevent the dissolution of the middle class. I don’t think they realize how much of the political and economic playbook of the last 200 years relies on our class system. or at least they don’t see how fast it’s failing. I mean, we talk a lot about the middle class, but it’s just kind of been there. It didn’t need the focus or the work. And in many ways, that’s why there’s an opening for the fascist inspired politics we’re seeing. When the stability of the middle class crumbles, there is a desperation and fear which can be taken advantage of. While the US didn’t encounter this after either World War, many European nations struggled with it. Rations, inflation, unemployment, and economic instability were the reality for most, not the very rich who had connections. We did deal with it after the Civil War to some extent. You can see how the South reacted to those same problems with building a very distinctly segregated society. Define who gets respect on something that cannot be lost regardless of income on rules that can be defined by those who want to remain in their position and allow society to do the work to keep everyone in line. Sure, the government can set up some regulations, but just allowing civilian groups to take care of it is much easier. hearken back to one of my last videos where I talked about how areas that had really high rates of lynching didn’t have to have racial covenants to keep the neighborhood separated.

Now, this would be a great place to talk at length about Germany and its economy and politics of the 1920s and 30s and how that led to the social allowances for the Nazi party to come into power. But I admit that’s not my area of expertise. I’ve been reading a lot about it lately, though. And while none of this comes from a place of actual authority, aside from just general historian, what I found is that I genuinely was taught not just next to nothing, but it was framed completely wrong. The version I learned in school was that a discontented and drained populace was looking for an active and supportive government after the defeat in World War I. Hitler was charismatic and figured out how to take advantage of that demand, eliminate his competition, silence those who protested, and bring about a new era of fervent nationalism that allowed him to do whatever he wanted. At most, you get some movies that show a little bit of the midwar resistance as an example that not everyone supported him blindly distinct. But I’m midway through my third book on more niche topics about this and some Wikipedia articles and I already don’t feel like that is an accurate portrayal at all, which makes me less scared, if that makes sense. The history that I was taught portrayed a competent government, a cruel and terrible one, but one that had plans and had extensively worked on how to keep control, had a massive web of people and support to do so. The current book I’m reading is called The Wages of Destruction, and it’s all about the German economy during that time. And turns out it was a mess, which is just one aspect of it. He was barely kept afloat by massive wartime industry and literally conscripting people to work. And it was not [clears throat] sustainable. And that sham of an economy, that unstable economy is something that the author notes at the beginning of the book is often ignored by historians and makes the Nazi party look way more put together than it was. Which made me wonder why, as history is written by the victors, the Nazi government is still portrayed in our history books and classes as a nationalist success up until the very end. Yes, there might be some nefarious aspects to it, but I genuinely think it’s because it makes the American forces look better that they swept in and managed to defeat such a big enemy. No wonder there’s a weird neo-Nazi support in the US growing between the inspiration from slavery and racism in 19th century America that was brought into the Nazi party and is still impacting our culture today and the weird way that we teach that history in schools as some sort of super villain. It’s just setting it up for that situation.

But the real world isn’t made up of superheroes and villains. It’s a jumble of complex influences that can never be replicated. Now, there will still be adjusted versions that can work within a smaller bubble. The disenfranchisement of the German people post World War I was possibly related to one of the prevailing theories on the loss that a breakdown of nationalism was to blame. and that allowed for a political party that favored insular economic systems rather than building up international ones. In the 1920s, the German people understandably didn’t trust the US and the manufacturing and economic strength it was quickly growing into. Nor did they trust the UK or France, who they owed reparations to and weren’t on the best terms with. The same feeling of disenfranchisement cannot be found in the current broad US population, but it can be found in smaller groups like young white men. Will it work the same way? Theoretically, no. But it can be disruptive enough if ignored.

On the other side of things, the more leftist or liberal movements are largely unorganized by comparison. There are idolized figureheads within the extreme conservative groups, not the same on the other end. Hence the constant joke about Antifa not having any headquarters or leaders despite the way the name is treated as a fully setup terrorist organization. Weirdly, I’ve seen some theories that the lack of clear public leadership may have been what doomed international leading German politics of the 1920s, essentially what helped Hitler win things over. Not that I want a single person held up to that level of importance, but a small group working together to actually represent those ideals might be nice.

And that’s essentially what I’m finding over and over. Yes, there are similar ideas and systems being employed, but that’s as much a matter of the basics of divide and conquer, distrust, fear, and a focus on basic survival all help to maintain a certain type of power. Because genuinely neither the US government in the 1930s effort to pull us out of the depression nor the Nazi government had complete control over what they were doing or how things turned out. Not to say that we should underestimate the ability to heavily damage things even when someone in power is an absolute idiot, but more that they highly overestimate their own skills and knowledge. And a little bit of research goes a long way to countering that.

The point of all of this is that the version of Nazis and fascism that we most fear and that we see reflected in the rhetoric or actions of many in power today is sort of the flashy movie version. If you spend some time looking into each part, the records and research are usually fairly extensive as to all of the elements that went into making that happen to work or not. Honestly, just wandering through Wikipedia articles sets up a more nuanced history than most of us were taught. And I genuinely took classes on the Holocaust in college, so it’s not like I had bare minimum here. But if you look at the playbook that’s being used by extremists, it also has all of the defensive options listed out.

Great example, pre-war resistance. I wondered if there were any similar protests or movements in Germany to the range that we’re currently seeing. Turns out there wasn’t a ton. One of the suggestions is that that sentiment left over of anti-inism lost the war and caused us these problems did feed into social pressure. Strikes and protests did happen, but often weren’t directed at political issues. Raising wages or social issues, yes, those that were political, they worked to other and frame as damaging from outside sources. sort of like the response to the BLM protest where participants were framed as violent and high American. Not only did they apply that to black protesters, but this also resulted in the liberal stereotype of a blue-haired woman with a septum piercing being something that is actively shamed as an attempt to social control. The MeToo movement was made up of a lot of typical middleclass white women, but that could easily be excused as non-political, even if it wasn’t seen that way by the participants. But examples like the current massive protests against ICE and the government in general are not something that happened historically. And it’s not because the government put a stop to them. It was because people felt shamed about saying those things out loud. Because people felt shamed about not being a good participant and supporter of essentially their community.

Which brings me back around to the topic area I have spent extensive time in class structure, social pressure, and maintaining the norm. They don’t want uncontrolled chaos in a creative way. They just want typical violence that they can easily point to as bad, something that can excuse their actions. That’s what led up to the Knight of the Long Knives. The political threat wasn’t so much a rival group, but the paramilitary that had been employed by the Nazis to enact violence. When they no longer aligned with the heads of the Nazi party and there were murmurs of a coup, it gave the Nazi party an easy excuse to just go in, take them all out, execute them overnight, and they used that opportunity to take out a bunch of other people that didn’t agree with them. Not going to lie, I had completely forgotten the general context of what happened that night until researching for this. And it’s more than a little reflective of having an entire paramilitary group running around our country enacting violence that is also totally disposable so far as the current administration views them. Maybe there’s foreshadowing in that.

Now, obviously, I’m I’m not saying that nonviolence is the only way to protest safely or fight back, more that they understand classic violence and how to counter it. After all, they employ it. It’s harder when the protesters are dressing up in silly frog costumes and throwing dildos at them. But that’s where they rely on social policing. The cultural ideas of how you should dress and act, which are maintained through shaming. Those silly protest activities are discounted, maybe even by those that support protesting as making light of a serious subject or by those that don’t, failing to respect others, especially those that they should respect like law enforcement.

And being really straightforward on this. This is where you can cause a lot of stress and upheaval with barely any effort. If it is safe for you to do so, be weird. Be unpredictable. Encourage others to follow what they want to be. Compliment a fun outfit or a weird garden. Don’t go around telling people that speaking with slang. A pitched voice or vocal fry. This is just where my voice sits. I I can’t help you with that. or even saying swearing is lowly and bad. Don’t hold yourself to societal standards of success that you don’t want. And definitely don’t hold others to them. If the middle class is going to crumble, let’s take down the entire framework with it. Maybe some of that supportive framework is also helping support the extremely wealthy. self-expression and the community joy of that is the worst thing for anyone on the fascist track or even those who would sit back and avoid conflict in order to uphold the system that keeps them comfortable. Be uncomfortable to others and learn to explore being uncomfortable yourself.

Also read a ton of history books because damn, [laughter] they are full of fascinating ideas and deep concepts of how we got here and how to leverage that. I’ve got a list in the description of ones that I’ve particularly liked recently. I’m not going to lie and say they’ll change your life. They shouldn’t. It It’s a book. But they should encourage curiosity, which is definitely the most impactful way to fight the status quo right now.

All in all, this sucks. Like, this this is not normal. This is not okay. No one should feel ashamed for not feeling okay, for being overwhelmed. This has never happened before. We’re in a whole new era. Despite the fact that people are trying to repeat things, it’s both better and worse. It’s which makes it very unsure because it it’s not even like people in power know what they’re doing and you can at least get a sense of where they’re going. I don’t know. This this is I don’t know. It’s kind of like a horse that gets spooked by the most nonsense things. You could be riding this horse every single day and think you know everything it’s scared of and then a crow lands on a branch or I don’t know the guy who refills the coke machine shows up and turns out the horse you’re riding is really terrified of the coke machine guy and just bucks you off head first. I I don’t know. Yes, that is a personal experience. No one knows. And that’s what’s terrifying. It’s not that these people have a grand plan and they are doing a really good job of executing it. It’s the fact that there is so much disorganization and no one knows where to go, what to do, how to fix it. Because no one knows what’s happening or like not even the people that are doing these things know what they’re doing. It’s just a series of them going, “Oh, I would like to do this thing, but what happens if it backfires? Let me set up a bunch of other people to be the falls for it.” And it’s just a whole this in the future, we’re going to look back at this like watching real TV, like watching those those MTV shows back in the early 2000s where we crammed a bunch of crazy people into a house together that probably weren’t actually that crazy, but acted way more crazy on television and just let them go. No one knew what was going to happen. No one knew. And that’s how I feel right now. Except that house is deciding everything for the rest of us. That’s what makes this feel so scary. I can tell you the thousand and 1 reasons why what they’re doing won’t work the way they want it to, but I don’t know how it will turn out because everything is nonsense. Everything is the upside down. I I don’t This is the bad place. whatever you want to say about it. It’s just it’s just absolutely crazy. And all I can do, all any of us can do is try to be prepared with the most weaponry we can be, which is knowledge. Not not act I’m not I don’t really speak to actual weaponry. That’s your own decision in life. Knowledge. I I want to know whether it’s some random person. Maybe I can get to think about a few things as they talk to me in the airport because why that keeps happening to me, I don’t know. I get so many conversations in the airport and I didn’t ask [gasps] for [sighs] whether it’s a conversation in airport with somebody that doesn’t agree with you or a conversation with someone in a local coffee shop that does agree with you. Maybe maybe there’s an answer for someone in something and you’ll have the right answer at the right time. And that’s all I am trying to do with this entire channel. So, if you haven’t noticed, that is all I’m trying to do at this point. Just [gasps] keep going. Okay. Well, that reminds me of this thing that I read about history, and I’m going to go spend a bunch of time researching enough to talk about this for like half an hour and and then I’m going to sit down and try and come up with a way to make this not depressing and scary. like HOAs are horrible, but what if we use that to our advantage? I that’s all I got. That’s that’s the best that I can do right now aside from my own personal impacts. Also, just being there to support others. I mean, community honestly, we all understand that community is the most important thing right now. How we formulate that and leverage it is the complex thing because every day is a new experience. This is why I just keep reading hoping some point something will be helpful. We need to bring back like free personal pan pizzas for however many books read. [laughter] We do that again for adults. That’d be great. Government’s definitely not doing that. Genuinely, I wonder if that would help with the uneducated populace. It’s not a bad idea. [laughter] And this is why this is I talk things out. [laughter] Okay, so enough of that. It’s like 8:00 at night. I’m filming this late because my house uh is full of hammers, crashing um jackhammers, saws, and uh tomorrow my plumbing starts coming out. And if you’re still watching, congratulations. Uh that’s the the next video. It’s just [laughter] Welcome to the inside of my very naked house. It’s [snorts] I’m not going to say it’s going to be fun. Uh it’s a little more terrifying than fun, but there I learned things. We’re all going to learn things. It’ll be great. I’m just You know what? Genuinely genuinely I’m going to Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. I should have filmed the whole video this way. I need to go take a shower and go to bed. I have to teach tomorrow.