@2a70c54d  have you read Citibank's Plutonomy Memos that were supposed to be private and only for their ultra-rich clients? this has been planned since those memos (2005). they even had a SXSW-like conference on the whole thing. and what did they stress? the need to depress wages, stifle labor laws, kill unions and grow the police state if they wanted to protect their kind. 

 @2a70c54d the two are not disconnected. Low wages for the many with riches beyond reason for the few is a recipe for civil discontent. A soup in which extremism of all kinds flourishes. 

 @2a70c54d
connected trends! when capitalism is in crisis, it is more threatened by class struggle. fascism is capitalisms tool against class struggle at a time such as this one. 

the whole point is, the capitalists want to raise paramilitaries so they can go and crack the heads of striking workers without having to send to police or army in; provoke war and draft as many people as possible into it, to wreak massive destruction (clearing the ground for the post-war "recovery"); and maintain a powerful sense of "national unity" so that all people are more paranoid of their radical peers than of their reactionary bosses.

adding:
"Generally though in times of excess for the rich the population movements are geared toward greater social responsibility,  not fascism."
actually, both kinds of movements grow in these circumstances. this was also true of the 1920s and 1930s, when masses of workers flocked to support communism, fascism, and social democracy more than ever before.