Authoritarian Coups Are Gradual Then Sudden | Hacker News Reader

Authoritarian Coups Are Gradual Then Sudden

hartmannreport.com

66 pointsKluggy33 comments

>Infiltrating police departments and the enlisted ranks of the military

>Taking over school boards and local boards of elections

Just to play devil's advocate, is it possible that the far right has been under the impression that the far left has been doing the same thing?

If they do believe that, I'd have to wonder why. Having people that don't look like you or disagree with you on school boards and in military service doesn't mean you've been "infiltrated" by an adversary. Liberals certainly don't act that way towards conservative service members or even private schools.

What constitutes infiltration?

Conspiracy to infiltrate, arranged by an adversarial power. Gay people are not "infiltrating" the military on behalf of anyone. School boards are not being "infiltrated" by Democrats that pay the same taxes for public education that Republicans do.

These are basic tenants of political representation and personal liberty. They are, in principle, the most American things imaginable.

Yes of course they’ve been told this. But that is delusional since there has been no left-wing coup in the United States government.

No, they claim that the far left has been doing it as an excuse to do the same. It's lesson one from the authoritarian textbook: always accuse the enemy of your own misdeeds. Very similar to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO.

This is a bit too prescient. Unnerving, really.

"a bit"???

Note that this article is from 2021

All my Republican friends tell me this kind of talk is 'shrill' and would never happen. I certainly hope they're correct, but that story about Pinochet is terrifying.

I wonder if they’re secretly hoping it comes true.

The republic is dead. Long live The Democratic People’s Republic of the United States.

Right wing authoritarian states typically use the "Republic of" prefix. DPR is traditionally a Communist signifier.

I do actually appreciate the pedantic comment. However you make an implicit and false dichotomy between communist and authoritarian states. These two are much more similar, in some cases identical, than to a liberal democracy.

We currently have this problem in Germany. The right-wing party AfD is claiming to be constitutional and democratic, yet they have constantly shown through small actions that they are 1. extremists, 2. unconstitutional and 3. not democratic.

The most clear example happened last year, when they tried to take power of the parliament of the state Thuringia. They attempted to remove voting rights to parliament members during a transition in order to strengthen their position.

While this was clearly unconstitutional, they pretended it wasn't, until the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that they were in the wrong. Only then they were like "Of course we accept this ruling", just to pretend to be democratic.

Their current path is to attempt to gain power in the Federal Constitutional Court, in order also influence future rulings so that the they can succeed next time.

This now brings the problem, that while there are many who want to rule the AfD to be unconstitutional, that is, to forbid the party to exist, it is a risky move to bring this case to court, because if it fails just barely to succeed, it would strengthen that party.

So they are always walking on the edge of legality and democracy in order to stretch the bounds, to get away with shortly doing illegal things like saying banned slogans to show the right-wing extremists that they can rely on this party to work for their interests or saying things like "Real men are right-wing, then they will be capable of getting girlfriends" [0]

In the case of the US, I think they now crossed this line. Let's hope that democracy is strong enough, but I still believe it is. In both countries.

[0] https://www-br-de.translate.goog/nachrichten/netzwelt/wie-di...

How are they attempting to gain power in the constitutional court?

By voting for their people to become judges, just like it has been done in the US.

This is why the current democratic parties voted recently to change how this voting is weighted [0], in order to make it more resilient.

> Central guidelines on the structure and working methods of the court are now anchored in the Basic Law, meaning that they can only be changed with a two-thirds majority.

> In order to prevent a blocking minority and blockages in the election of judges in the event of a possible change in the majority situation in the future, the SPD, the Union, the Greens and the FDP have agreed on a replacement election mechanism. If there is no two-thirds majority, the right to vote can be transferred from the Bundestag to the Bundesrat and vice versa.

[0] https://www-deutschlandfunk-de.translate.goog/bundesverfassu...

there is banned slogan from hitler germany "Alles für Deutschland" (all for germany, similar to america first)

So they came with a bit adjustes slogan "Alice für Deutschland" (Alice Weidel Afd candidate)

Why don’t opposing parties promise to solving illegal immigration? Sounds like a slam dunk win.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com