I am so terribly disturbed by the ICE shootings (and killings). There is no justification for them. This is supposed to be a nation of laws and the rights of those shot (to say nothing of those abducted and harassed, beaten, or removed without due process) has been so grossly violated that it's hard to believe.
My heart aches for the countless victims of this band of fascists in the executive branch.
I actually think that there is an amalgam of ideologies here (I know, so very fascist of them). Trump is more of a monarchist. A lot of the people supporting him are outright fascists. Some are plain idiots.
Them winning absolute control over the country would be a disaster for their movement though. They'd turn to internal fighting, the entropy of victory and all that. And they don't seem terribly competent with governance, it would probably turn off a lot of smart people, so the country would lose a lot of its capabilities.
EDIT: Also, there are funny things going on with the political submissions. I think there is active interference going on, they get flagged almost immediately. This got flagged and unflagged in the space of a couple minutes, so thanks to the mod team they are letting it up, I think there is important conversation to be had here.
To be honest, I found this essay a bit meandering and I lost interest in reading the whole thing (coming off the heels of re-reading Civil Disobedience, which by comparison is immediately forthright and to the point).
Skipping ahead to the 14 properties, however, points 5, 7, 11, and 12 are probably the most evident in the present moment.
If you are debating whether to read this article, read it. It’s comprehensive and precise, and although political in substance, not political in form — test-fitting an imprecise definition. The fact it also reaches a firm conclusion (spoiler alert right there in the title) is depoliticized by allowing for malleable application. A benchmark article I will now go share elsewhere.
What’s left to talk about? How to react. How it ends. Where we likely go from there. Where we should go.
It's nice but also endlessly frustrating and very very late, because what he regards as overuse of the term is really just people who were applying the term correctly for the past 10 years as people like the author refused to call a spade a spade. If the nascent fascist were discarded, people would have stopped saying it so much.
The problem for people like the author is that other more astute individuals [1] correctly diagnosed the issue over a decade ago. All it took was for her to have grown up in Poland and to be a clinical psychologist who knows how to spot malignant narcissism. The rest fell into place because human nature is so... predictable.
So while it's welcome for the author to finally catch up to the rest of us, it's a little late at this point. Also If people like the author had listened to more sensible people when they had started using the F word instead of dismissing them as hyperbolic, then we wouldn't be here.
Also this bit:
> Although Trump is term-limited, we must not expect that he and his MAGA loyalists will voluntarily turn over the White House to a Democrat in 2029, regardless of what the voters say—and the second insurrection will be far better organized than the first.
shows the author is still a step behind. The correct framing is that the first insurrection succeeded. It continued after Jan 6 for 4 years, as Trump waged an information war contending he was the true winner of the election, and also a war on the judiciary to evade accountability. In that battle he evaded all accountability, nullified the impeachment clause of the Constitution, and also gained "Presidential Immunity" from his appointees on SCOTUS. He also nullified Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits anyone who has previously taken an oath to support the Constitution from holding state or federal office if they have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the US. Trump caused an insurrection, and yet somehow he was allowed to run and hold office again.
So the first insurrection was successful, the perpetrators got away with it, and they assumed total power over the government they attacked after evading judicial accountability and waging an information war on the population.
Anyway, next time there won't be a need for an insurrection, because the only reason there was one in 2021 was because plans A through G failed -- they couldn't get votes in Georgia, they couldn't overturn any state, they didn't win any court cases, they couldn't get people to go along with their "alternate electors" theory, and they couldn't get Pence to go along with the scheme. So they caused an insurrection as a last ditch effort to delay certification.
In 2029 every Republican will go along with plan A. They've already purged everyone who did the right thing in 2021 from the party. So they won't need an insurrection because any Democrat that wins in Georgia will just be erased, as they've made sure to take state control over county election boards after county election boards there went against Trump's wishes in 2020.
> The correct framing is that the first insurrection succeeded
If you redefine success to whatever you want, then sure.
> In 2029 every Republican will go along with plan A
If you treat people as enemies, they’ll become one. The arrogance in the assumption that every Republican will allow Trump to get elected for a 3rd term might spite them into it.
People are dying on broad daylight and who knows what Anne Frank atrocities we're going to discover in the years, even decades, to come in this year alone. Yes it's political. No, this isn't really red vs. blue anymore.
If nothing else it's very clear we need to bring politics back to the dinner table. And not he afraid to talk about it in 'nonpartisan' spaces. You can ignore politics, but it never ignores you.
Everyone's paying a lot of attention to how bad Trump is, or the midterms. My question is, what happens in 2028? How much of current policy is something the majority of Republican voters (let alone the American people) or the political class actually want and would do without Trump to lead them? How much is only being implemented due to Trump's choices, political style and cult of personality? (Assuming Constitutional safeguards remain strong enough that Trump can't find a way to remain in power past his current term; if Trump is still President in 2029, the system's seriously broken down and all bets are off.)
Will the US say "Wait a minute, things went too far, now that he's gone we need more checks and balances before another President tries to repeat what just happened" like when they added term limits to the Constitution after FDR, or some of the post-Watergate limits imposed on the Presidency?
Or will Trump's redefinition of government power become normalized, like the redefinition of government power that happened with the Patriot Act, TSA security theater, NSA spying on US citizens, etc. after 9/11 that was justified as anti-terrorism? Those policies were never unwound even though the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are over, Osama bin Laden is dead, and there have been no more attacks on that scale.
> now that he's gone we need more checks and balances
I'm sure if a Democrat is elected in 2028, all of a sudden a lot of people are going to remember that they don't want a unitary executive. A lot of people who are currently cheering on the administration.
It's true. This kind of authoritarian state violence is pretty reminiscent of fascism. Especially what looks like a gangland execution of a man who could only ever be described as exercising his 2A rights by carrying a firearm undrawn legally under his CCW. However, the list of things that have been called fascism are so long that I have to admit that my eyes initially glazed over the headline because many things have been described as fascism.
And yet we had elections in 2020. So whatever, it was clearly not authoritarian fascism because we had free elections that the authoritarian fascist was ousted in. So what I think I experienced there was semantic satiation with the word fascism.
EDIT: To clarify position vis a vis reply, I am simply saying that I have heard the word 'fascism' so much I don't really react with any sense when someone says it. It's like hearing 'rape' or 'spying' on Hacker News. I assume it means "I was shown a banner ad for toothpaste after searching for toothpaste". In other contexts those words have negative valence of great significance. In this context, I just glaze over.
Likewise, the word 'fascism' from a left-leaning outlet could be anything from the end of medicare subsidies to a drone strike on an Islamic fundamentalist general to charging fares on a train.
Just sharing how I feel about it. It does not have that emotional strength that it originally felt.
> So the United States, once the world’s exemplary liberal democracy, is now a hybrid state combining a fascist leader and a liberal Constitution; but no, it has not fallen to fascism. And it will not.
And once Trump feels secure enough, he will also behead Congress, or at least many of its members. Maybe he wants to keep it as a convenient puppet show. Remember that this is just 1 year into his 2nd term. There is still much time for making things worse.
The Trump administration has gone so far down the path of fascism and crime that I'm convinced they don't simply want to be in power indefinitely -- they need it. Otherwise, the moment a law-abiding president gets elected, there will be criminal charges against all involved. And there's no statute of limitations for murder.
I believe this country will need massive investigations and criminal trials to heal. I am concerned with what happens in between, but this is reality as I see it.
No chance in hell Democrats do a single thing to these people when they're out of power. If anything it'll be a Democrat justifying more ICE shootings so as "not to look weak on immigration"
The most scaring and amazing thing is not Trump himself, but all the people (suddenly) supporting him and being silent (including too many Democrats) in order to keep their position or for for opportunistic purposes. And destroying democracy along the way. Just like all the secret police agents in Iran or the henchmen of Hitler. CEO's of bigtech. Crypto-libertarians. Too many people are sucking up to wannabe dictators when the moment is there
Can we have a discussion that improves in quality if people dissent to the view of the article, agree with the article, or hold a view that is something in between?
If the answer is no then the risk that someone will flag the article increases dramatically. If the discussion environment isn't open and peaceful then how much more likely isn't it that people will just disengage, flag, and then move on.
When your political reality becomes scary. Confronting reality is scary. Politics is scary but honestly living in facism is just about the worst thing for founder culture imaginable
It's not just Trump. Look at how even the weak Republican pushback is framed. They have no moral objection to his actions, only for the risk of blowback.
See Ted Cruz's remarks on Jimmy Kimmel: "[W]hen it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it."
Or Brett Kavanaugh on Lisa Cook: that Trump shouldn't dismiss her because "what goes around comes around [...] if there's a Democrat president".
This is the moderate Republican position: no concern for the harm caused to people on the political left, only concern that they on the right might not get away with it. The MAGA position is, as this article shows, much worse.
I read through every comment in this thread and no one seems to be addressing that the people voted for this. They'll probably vote for it again in the midterms and/or 2028. You're despairing over a democratic outcome. What do you actually propose that would fix this? Disenfranchise half the country? Outlaw things people are voting for to happen? Any criticism needs to address how we democratically counter this regime, how this makes sense when this is the voted upon regime, or perhaps make an argument for why democracy has failed.
My perspective is that a scale has tipped, a critical mass of people decided they want this sort of thing, and they got it. It wasn't rigged, it wasn't fraudulent, it was a democratic election. Critique democracy itself, or the criticism is incoherent. Make an argument for why a government should be disallowed from doing things that the voters want it to do.
You can't vote away the Constitutional rights of other people. ICE is regularly violating the Constitution and being encouraged to do so by those in power. Unless multiple amendments were removed from the Constitution without anybody noticing, your point about "the people voted for this" is an absurd and ridiculous attempt to justify real abuse of power and anti-democratic actions.
If we can't agree as a people that the Constitution applies to everyone equally then it isn't a problem with democracy, it's a problem with fascism and must dealt with as such.
Yeah Americans don't want to face that their culture is the problem. Trump is still slightly more popular than he was at this point during his first term
They'd have to change the fundamental nature of business. Most US companies are run like tiny little fascist dictatorships, which is a great training ground for the real thing. The relationship between capital (owners/management) and labor is usually adversarial with "at-will" employment. Contrast in Norway, where businesses operate within a 3-way Agreement (Trepartssamarbeidet) - a formal cooperation between the government, employers' associations, and trade unions.
Americans would have to change capitalism too. The most reliable way to prevent the rise of the far right is to implement robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance.
But even in this thread they don't want to do that.
Only republicans are actively destroying federal voter protections. Many red states already run elections with ridiculous voting restrictions. It's up to the federal government to discourage those practices, not encourage them. Luckily, they cannot mandate such changes.
The people voted for border control and law and order, shooting random protesters in cold blood was not part of Trumps platform. It was an obvious conclusion after some thought, but many didnt think that far ahead.
56 comments
[ 0.37 ms ] story [ 75.3 ms ] threadThe only question now is will the people be able to stop the takeover before it’s too late.
My heart aches for the countless victims of this band of fascists in the executive branch.
Them winning absolute control over the country would be a disaster for their movement though. They'd turn to internal fighting, the entropy of victory and all that. And they don't seem terribly competent with governance, it would probably turn off a lot of smart people, so the country would lose a lot of its capabilities.
EDIT: Also, there are funny things going on with the political submissions. I think there is active interference going on, they get flagged almost immediately. This got flagged and unflagged in the space of a couple minutes, so thanks to the mod team they are letting it up, I think there is important conversation to be had here.
It's been translated in English as Ur-fascism and is available online for free at the anarchist library: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fasci....
Skipping ahead to the 14 properties, however, points 5, 7, 11, and 12 are probably the most evident in the present moment.
What’s left to talk about? How to react. How it ends. Where we likely go from there. Where we should go.
The problem for people like the author is that other more astute individuals [1] correctly diagnosed the issue over a decade ago. All it took was for her to have grown up in Poland and to be a clinical psychologist who knows how to spot malignant narcissism. The rest fell into place because human nature is so... predictable.
So while it's welcome for the author to finally catch up to the rest of us, it's a little late at this point. Also If people like the author had listened to more sensible people when they had started using the F word instead of dismissing them as hyperbolic, then we wouldn't be here.
Also this bit:
> Although Trump is term-limited, we must not expect that he and his MAGA loyalists will voluntarily turn over the White House to a Democrat in 2029, regardless of what the voters say—and the second insurrection will be far better organized than the first.
shows the author is still a step behind. The correct framing is that the first insurrection succeeded. It continued after Jan 6 for 4 years, as Trump waged an information war contending he was the true winner of the election, and also a war on the judiciary to evade accountability. In that battle he evaded all accountability, nullified the impeachment clause of the Constitution, and also gained "Presidential Immunity" from his appointees on SCOTUS. He also nullified Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits anyone who has previously taken an oath to support the Constitution from holding state or federal office if they have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the US. Trump caused an insurrection, and yet somehow he was allowed to run and hold office again.
So the first insurrection was successful, the perpetrators got away with it, and they assumed total power over the government they attacked after evading judicial accountability and waging an information war on the population.
Anyway, next time there won't be a need for an insurrection, because the only reason there was one in 2021 was because plans A through G failed -- they couldn't get votes in Georgia, they couldn't overturn any state, they didn't win any court cases, they couldn't get people to go along with their "alternate electors" theory, and they couldn't get Pence to go along with the scheme. So they caused an insurrection as a last ditch effort to delay certification.
In 2029 every Republican will go along with plan A. They've already purged everyone who did the right thing in 2021 from the party. So they won't need an insurrection because any Democrat that wins in Georgia will just be erased, as they've made sure to take state control over county election boards after county election boards there went against Trump's wishes in 2020.
[1] https://medium.com/@Elamika
If you redefine success to whatever you want, then sure.
> In 2029 every Republican will go along with plan A
If you treat people as enemies, they’ll become one. The arrogance in the assumption that every Republican will allow Trump to get elected for a 3rd term might spite them into it.
If nothing else it's very clear we need to bring politics back to the dinner table. And not he afraid to talk about it in 'nonpartisan' spaces. You can ignore politics, but it never ignores you.
Will the US say "Wait a minute, things went too far, now that he's gone we need more checks and balances before another President tries to repeat what just happened" like when they added term limits to the Constitution after FDR, or some of the post-Watergate limits imposed on the Presidency?
Or will Trump's redefinition of government power become normalized, like the redefinition of government power that happened with the Patriot Act, TSA security theater, NSA spying on US citizens, etc. after 9/11 that was justified as anti-terrorism? Those policies were never unwound even though the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are over, Osama bin Laden is dead, and there have been no more attacks on that scale.
I'm sure if a Democrat is elected in 2028, all of a sudden a lot of people are going to remember that they don't want a unitary executive. A lot of people who are currently cheering on the administration.
The US was supposedly ruled by a fascist in 2018: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/books/review/jason-stanle...
There was also supposedly fascism coming in 2016: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/this-is-how-fascism-comes...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09626...
And yet we had elections in 2020. So whatever, it was clearly not authoritarian fascism because we had free elections that the authoritarian fascist was ousted in. So what I think I experienced there was semantic satiation with the word fascism.
EDIT: To clarify position vis a vis reply, I am simply saying that I have heard the word 'fascism' so much I don't really react with any sense when someone says it. It's like hearing 'rape' or 'spying' on Hacker News. I assume it means "I was shown a banner ad for toothpaste after searching for toothpaste". In other contexts those words have negative valence of great significance. In this context, I just glaze over.
Likewise, the word 'fascism' from a left-leaning outlet could be anything from the end of medicare subsidies to a drone strike on an Islamic fundamentalist general to charging fares on a train.
Just sharing how I feel about it. It does not have that emotional strength that it originally felt.
Slaves were brought here against their will.
Illegal immigrants snuck in against ours.
That's some optimism right there.
I believe this country will need massive investigations and criminal trials to heal. I am concerned with what happens in between, but this is reality as I see it.
I really worry for the people in the US, but I'm hopeful it's hegemony is ending.
If the answer is no then the risk that someone will flag the article increases dramatically. If the discussion environment isn't open and peaceful then how much more likely isn't it that people will just disengage, flag, and then move on.
See Ted Cruz's remarks on Jimmy Kimmel: "[W]hen it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it."
Or Brett Kavanaugh on Lisa Cook: that Trump shouldn't dismiss her because "what goes around comes around [...] if there's a Democrat president".
This is the moderate Republican position: no concern for the harm caused to people on the political left, only concern that they on the right might not get away with it. The MAGA position is, as this article shows, much worse.
Now imagine the people who don't want more housing (for some reason) end up burning all new houses being built in a state.
Now imagine crying about how the people who want the houses to be built to solve the problem are still wanting more houses to be built.
Turns out it's harder to solve a housing problem when the houses keep getting burnt down. Who'd have thunk?
My perspective is that a scale has tipped, a critical mass of people decided they want this sort of thing, and they got it. It wasn't rigged, it wasn't fraudulent, it was a democratic election. Critique democracy itself, or the criticism is incoherent. Make an argument for why a government should be disallowed from doing things that the voters want it to do.
If we can't agree as a people that the Constitution applies to everyone equally then it isn't a problem with democracy, it's a problem with fascism and must dealt with as such.
https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-sil...
They'd have to change the fundamental nature of business. Most US companies are run like tiny little fascist dictatorships, which is a great training ground for the real thing. The relationship between capital (owners/management) and labor is usually adversarial with "at-will" employment. Contrast in Norway, where businesses operate within a 3-way Agreement (Trepartssamarbeidet) - a formal cooperation between the government, employers' associations, and trade unions.
Americans would have to change capitalism too. The most reliable way to prevent the rise of the far right is to implement robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance.
But even in this thread they don't want to do that.