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Comment by tobias3 | Hacker News Reader

As a German outside observer I can tell you there is only one side going down the facist path.

The "other side" isn't great either. Would be great to have a sane alternative, I guess.

I think the sane alternative has long been modeled by the US Constitution.

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.

The US constitution is outdated and vulnerable. Modern constitutions like Germany’s basic law are a lot more resilient. We are watching the US constitution fail right now, it didn’t even take smart men to start dismantling it. I hope I’ll be proven wrong, but what indications do you see right now that the US constitution is performing as intended?

I’m unfamiliar with German basic law, but considering the lawlessness we’re seeing play out in the US right now, I’m curious how/why modern constitutions are less vulnerable?

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?

For starters, Germany does not give a single person the right to be king with decrees and military leadership.

Also (though not an issue with the law itself) it's really dangerous only having two parties at the helm.

> For starters, Germany does not give a single person the right to be king with decrees and military leadership.

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.

Constitution is just a social contract, it’s not a law of physics. Without people wanting to preserve it, it’s just words on a piece of paper with no real power. With a majority in the Supreme Court, the Constitution can be interpreted however one wants.

1. When Trump lost to Biden, many Republicans including Mike Pence certified Biden's win as prescribed by the constitution.

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.

1. There's barely any normal republicans left, its all MAGA now that would hang Pence like they wanted to in 2021.

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.

Which foreign country is going to invade one third of USA ?

(Never mind, Trump never cared about little details like these...)

The problem is norms are being destroyed.

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.

The US Constitutional government is meant to be slow, methodical and gridlocked. It is supposed to take enormous compromise to get any decision created into law.

This line of reason is actually becoming more frequently used to justify things. For years, the right wing propaganda machine has been establishing the concept that conservatism and America as a whole is besieged by authoritarian leftists and their smug out-of-outch enablers the liberals.

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.

Yes, and then they call this openly a Reichstag fire moment and people still don't get the parallels.

And back then there was a proper systems conflict. People like Krupp actually had to fear being disowned by communists.

The elevation of Charlie Kirk to sainthood rhymes with Horst Wessel’s death being used to make legitimate targets of all enemies of the German state.

Similar to calling everyone Nazi’s and fascists who has an opposing point of view?

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?

In what way are democrats (or, “leftists,” if you must) authoritarian?

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.

As a libertarian, I see authoritarianism as the imposition of top-down control, often fine-grained, onto individuals' lives. The reflexive reaching for government/law to solve problems. The war on drugs. Mass surveillance, regardless of its goals or who is in charge. The crushing weight and lack of justice in the criminal justice system. The draconian copyright regime.

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.

What you wrote can be even an anarchist view. What’s the difference in your point of view? How should a government solve problems without laws? What other options are there? Besides ignoring, obviously. I’m absolutely not familiar with the tools of an imagined truly libertarian government (AFAIK this never happened).

You can run down the policies of either major party and find topics where they advocate against government intervention, or at least a light touch. So the idea that we could have less government intervention isn't really a unique or rare one.

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.

> Similar to calling everyone Nazi’s and fascists who has an opposing point of view?

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...

You must separate actions from words, and government actors from private citizens, and powerful monied interests from powerless randos. If you don't do this your brain will remain cooked.

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?

> My only question who is pushing the messaging and who does it benefit?

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?

>who is pushing the horrible left wing messaging that racism is bad?

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!

Are you just going to ignore the 2016-2024 state-directed viewpoint censorship on social media?

I think the appropriate response to a lack of due consideration to the bill of rights should be doubling down on the bill of rights. not setting it on fire as show of oneupmanship

Now we have 2025-? stare censored social media. Of all the hypocrisies, people screaming "but what about THEM" while ignoring what people in power NOW are doing is the most insufferable

Perhaps you are not aware that the “other side” declared Constitutional amendments by fiat, assassinated American citizens with drone strikes, lied to the courts to imprison influential Twitter users, used intelligence agencies to spy on Congress, dramatically expanded the surveillance state, declared by EO they simply wouldn’t enforce some laws on favored demographics, ordered social media companies to censor and ban users, locked people down unless they were protesting for approved causes, and engaged in politically motivated prosecutions of their enemies.

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 "same side" does all of that but also a bunch more bad stuff.

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.

Got sources for any of that?

Constitutional amendments by fiat: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/17/biden-dec...

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.

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