I wonder how many people interpret this based on “the other side” rather than objectively?
The "other side" isn't great either. Would be great to have a sane alternative, I guess.
Authoritarianism is not a “one side” problem in the US and until we collectively figure that out each side will continue increasing it, all in the name of stopping the other sides’ extremists.
The equlibrium that is always reached in a first-past-the-post voting system is two parties that are mostly the same, and you vote for a party that's only slightly more of what you want (because those are the options) and your vote tells both parties which direction to move in, to chase more votes.
If the party that drone strikes its own citizens and imprisons Twitter users consistently gets more votes than the party that drone strikes its own citizens, imprisons Twitter users, and builds concentration camps, then the latter party will quickly figure out that the only way to win is to drone strike its own citizens, but not imprison Twitter users, or build concentration camps. And then the former party (now losing) figures out that doing none of the above is the way to win, but maybe they still tap all communications. And so on...
We got to the point we're at today step by step, with people voting for one new measure at a time, and parties taking notice of what measures people consistently vote for. The current parties did not spring fully-formed out of Zeus's forehead.
Assassinated Americans with drone strikes: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-were-the-4-us-citizens-kill...
Lied to the courts to imprison Twitter users: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca2.967...
Used intelligence agencies to spy on Congress: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/a-brief...
Expanded mass surveillance: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/obama-on-mass-gov...
EO declaring that some laws would not be enforced on favored demographics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DACA
Ordered social media companies to censor and ban users: https://twitterfiles.substack.com/p/1-thread-the-twitter-fil... https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/mark-zuckerbe...
Locked people down unless they were protesting for approved causes: referring to the BLM protests
> engaged in politically motivated prosecutions of their enemies. Another reference to the Mackey case and the novel legal theories required prosecute Trump in NY, and the now known to be false constructiion of the Russia narrative.
Look, many or all of these things may have been for a good cause, a good end. But the problem we're talking about is the means. Now people are using the same means for different ends. Everyone has to agree authoritarianism is bad even when it’s for really good ends or this will continue to escalate.
The real test is how any model handles corruption and expunges it because no matter the ideology, people are in charge and people are corruptible.
The only real model that can work is one that minimizes the power of those in charge.
By this I mean: it’s not as if the things we see playing out are lawful. Is there a structural difference that somehow prevents the same kind of lawlessness?
Put another way, what stops a movement that decides to ignore Germany’s constitution from ignoring it should they somehow gain power?
Also (though not an issue with the law itself) it's really dangerous only having two parties at the helm.
Separation between civilian leaders and military leaders is a big one, yeah. When the same person controls both the military directly and the executive branch of the civilian government directly you don't have any way to punish him without his subordinates overthrowing him since he controls all the power.
2. Trump knows the military will not participate in a coup.
3. Trump will not run for a third term. If he does, he will loose because Americans knows it's unconstitutional.
So Americans know that all the dirty laundry will come out when the next president takes office.
2. Likely true, but they don't really need the military as ICE which now employs all the armed racists they need, like Jan 6 people.
3. He's floating the idea, even talking about not having elections if they're in a war like Ukraine, even though its not in the constitution. Either way they're going all in on rigging elections so Vance will take over.
(Never mind, Trump never cared about little details like these...)
It’s not all new with Trump (governing by executive order, ignoring duly enacted laws, strong arming media companies, etc.). But while earlier administrations might have done those things on the margins, Trump takes them to 11 (in the spirit of the new Spinal Tap) and makes them the central and primary means of administration.
With the norms destroyed, we potentially lose our nation of laws, and become a plutocracy with different juntas every few years.
THEY are the authoritarians and they are seeking to destroy America. WE are its defenders, and in the face of existential threat, our methods are justified. THEY have been doing this to us for years, now this is our chance to fight back.
When you take a step back it becomes very clear that this escalating messaging is being push onto both sides of the political isle to create these feelings.
I remember in the span of two weeks seeing almost identical posts urging people to train because you are going to have to fight. The wording was almost identical only one post said “leftists” and the other “fascists”.
My only question who is pushing the messaging and who does it benefit?
Requiring face masks in a pandemic (which happened under the trump admin, in case anyone forgot) is not the same as masked goons throwing brown people into vans.
This makes the Democratic [establishment] bureaucratic authoritarians, while the current Republican [establishment] are autocratic authoritarians.
Obviously I would prefer anti-authoritarianism - a goal of reducing government control in our lives (including corporate de facto government). I think so would most people, but for being lured in by partisan messaging. Authoritarian singular-perspective narratives always sound so simplistically compelling.
But while the autocratic authoritarians weren't in power, it was all too easy to point to the bureaucratic authoritarians as a creeping problem. So now we have autocratic authoritarianism "good and hard". Between the two, I'd prefer bureaucratic authoritarianism as it at least keeps the worst impulses in check (eg the capricious tariff taxes, the naked corruption/bribes, politicizing departments to go after political enemies, wanton cruelty against immigrants for circenses, etc). The only real question is whether at least some of our institutions will hold out so that we can collectively decide to change course, or if it's just set now.
As far as the mask issue, I want to live in a world where they weren't mandated, but yet most everyone wears one out of enlightened self interest. The traditional Republican message would have been "wear a mask to protect yourself". The fact that it was self-harming contrarianism instead has more to do with edgelordism and foreign influence campaigns.
It's not a matter of imagining some "truly libertarian" government, as that is an artifact of US "Libertarianism" which is itself fallacious (it mostly just renames "government" to "corporations"). It's a matter of which ideals to strive towards.
Well, the actual neo-Nazis do support one particular party (and it's not the Democrats); see (e.g.) Charlottesville, 2017:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally
And it was (is?) official Republican strategy to court racists:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
As The Simpsons once joked “Fox News: Not Racist, But #1 With Racists”:
* https://www.nydailynews.com/2017/07/24/simpsons-creator-matt...
There are no "Leftists" in government. No, Bernie and AOC do not count. Soc Dems are nice, don't get me wrong, but the vanguard they are not.
There is no "Leftist" billionaire funding propaganda, no the boogyman 'Soros' doesn't count. He's very much a 'liberal' capitalist, just ask the UK.
There is no major US media outlet or platform owned by a "Leftist". If you insist that actually Biden, Obama, Clinton, Schumer, or Pelosi are leftists, please please just stop talking about politics.
Again, I'm begging you to separate "things pseudonymous people say online" from "things government officials say and do"
Let's try an example: "Fascists are sending the US military and an unaccountable masked federal police force into cities to quell dissent and hunt down their ideological enemies" or "Leftists are sending the US military and an unaccountable masked federal police force into cities to quell dissent and hunt down their ideological enemies"
Which of these statements is true?
You get 0 "both sides gotcha" points for this one because there is a clear answer when it comes to right wing messaging, and it has been the same since the 19th century, long before modern conservatism existed. It's big business owners and anyone else who stands to gain from an oligopoly economy backed by an authoritarian state that punishes and suppresses anything that could destabilize said oligopoly. There's no conspiracy theory here.
Meanwhile who is pushing the horrible left wing messaging that racism is bad? A bunch of professors and kids on social media?
It's those triple-damned Demonrats! In between molesting and eating babies, they go on and on about "multiculturalism" and "systemic racism" and all kinds of other ridiculous crap.
Yes. The darkies are inferior and need to be firmly controlled and/or exterminated. No sane person thinks any different. Those people aren't really people, are they?
They're subhuman animals who need to be dealt with. The fact that they can touch our women should be an immediate death sentence.
Hell, I'm not really sure why we're even bothering with these "deportations." Just shoot on sight for heaven's sake. Just the way Jesus says we should!
And back then there was a proper systems conflict. People like Krupp actually had to fear being disowned by communists.
"The 14 Characteristics of Fascism" https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html
...and I recall people reading it and saying they don't see how Donald Trump ticks the boxes.
It's all very tedious to complain about when half the electorate supports it. It makes one feel like a nag and a broken record.
> Fascism became an all-purpose term because one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more features, and it will still be recognizable as fascist. Take away imperialism from fascism and you still have Franco and Salazar. Take away colonialism and you still have the Balkan fascism of the Ustashes. Add to the Italian fascism a radical anti-capitalism (which never much fascinated Mussolini) and you have Ezra Pound. Add a cult of Celtic mythology and the Grail mysticism (completely alien to official fascism) and you have one of the most respected fascist gurus, Julius Evola.
> But in spite of this fuzziness, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.
[0] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fasci...
At the root, there’s either principled freedom or control.
But the psychology behind fascism stems from deep human quirks and is something eternal.
All those nations, except perhaps China, share the DNA. If we didn't already have names for their systems, we probably would describe them as fascistic.
What Trump has turned the American government into is closer to Fascism than to Liberal Democracy, no?
In future highschool textbooks Trump Fascism will have its own name ("Trashism" perhaps?) but it will be placed in the same chapter as the others.
The Trump presidency is the culmination of a roughly 45 year campaign to return the United States to the Gilded Age, and to ensure it stays that way until it's bled dry and nothing remains of its corpse. The political and social problems that led to his second election have been a long time coming.
What's interesting is that the gaps in our political system that allow him to do so many illegal and distasteful things have always been there. The framers of the constitution never anticipated all three branches of government colluding together in alignment and bad faith, with the vociferous support of roughly half the voting population.
If I blame anyone it's the American electorate.
It's tempting to continue and discuss which phenomena I blame for the poor judgment of the average American, but that would triple the length of my comment.
Either way, it's beside the point: if there is one lesson to remember from the 20th Century it is 'never support an authoritarian'.
Some parts of the country never really recovered from 2008. Obama took the smug liberal approach of telling people it was all over when it clearly was not all over. The country was primed for the Tea Party to step in and offer the promise of a remedy. You and I both know that the remedy was bunk, and it was just a rebranding of the same old far right, who saw that the Evangelical Christian movement that they were previously allied with had lost influence. And so into the propaganda brainwashing funnel went millions and millions of people.
Right wing media was already powerful and influential long before Trump started his own social media company and Zuckerberg switched sides. Blaming social media doesn't make sense either, because if it wasn't for social media, it would've been something else.
Social media became a major force after 2010, and indiscriminately affects nations around the world.
Since the nations with rising authoritarian movements have little else in common, social media clearly is the cause.
The public, before social media, was better informed about the world. They have access to much more information now, but that means little when the information they consume first has been sharted out the asshole of some idiot podcaster.
For various reasons, social media incentivizes knee-jerk antiestablishment takes: "Get angry! The MSM is hiding the horrible truth we are about to share with you! Like and subscribe or be kept under their control!" That is why any nation with social media, and a sufficient number of gullible citizens, tends towards violent revolution and pugilistic leadership.