Trump Crosses the Line, Embraces Nazi Ideology
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Trump Crosses the Line, Embraces Nazi Ideology
Removed by modAnother escalation against the proletariat, although I think that Biden's administration is sanctifying a lot of what Trump did in his previous term, which only gives more ideological unity to increasingly fascistic policies.
I know there's joking about this on hexbear but I am genuinely terrified of the US going full fascist or Nazi, although I know this process began way before Trump and would've gone to completion without him anyway, and I do believe it is now inevitably going to happen sooner than I expected. I do consider it a larger existential threat to me and those around me than climate change or neoliberalism. Anyway, hope I'm just am alarmist doomer that is proven wrong.
That being said, I genuinely do not believe the US is currently a democracy anyway nor will I vote to support a lesser evil party or candidate like George Biden.
My take is both that there is no rapid shift to fascism on the horizon, and that things are already much worse than anyone wants to admit. A lot of people seem to be of the mindset that things are still sort of okay right now, but eventually there will be an inflection point where everything accelerates to being really bad. But things are bad now. This is the shift. This is what the transition looks like. This isn't Germany in the 1930s, things aren't going to look or feel like they did then. There isn't going to be another Hitler or Nazi Party, because the system doesn't need one. Everyone in the power structure is already on board with the transition to some version of fascism, and it's most of the way there. Plenty of people are being disenfranchised or dispossessed or killed all the time, in greater and greater numbers, and it's going to keep happening slowly enough that we'll only recognize it in hindsight.
It would be great if there were something as distinct as a rapid, visible shift to overt fascism, if for no other reason than that there would be a clear enemy to rally against. We simply aren't going to be so fortunate. The reality will look more like a natural slide, seemingly inevitable, and occurring despite lots of people appearing to be doing their best to stop it. Eventually there will be some sort of movement to counter it and things will shift again, but given that there doesn't seem to be any such movement happening at the moment, things will continue to deteriorate unabated for the foreseeable future.
This is also my prediction. I just meant that instead of seeing the US transition to fascism when I am in my old age it will probably happen less than 15 years at best.
My point is more that the transition is both already here and also will never fully manifest. There won't be a moment where things are suddenly bad, just a constant process of bad things normalizing before the next round of bad things. It won't "happen" so much as the process itself is the event, and we are already in it. I bet during the fall of the Roman Empire people thought "things are bad, but at least the worst is yet to come" for longer than the US has been a country.
Gods don’t let the transition to the next stage of development take hundreds more years: nothing on earth will survive but cockroaches if we aren’t able to reverse this within the lifetime of people living on the planet today.
That said, you’re totally right. The shift is now, and has been for a while, and will be for longer. It won’t be the Nazi party, because, power is already consolidated in the hands of the fascists. The big question is which group takes control? The technocrats? The christofash? Or do they all keep fighting it out for decades, making everyone’s lives worse in the meantime unless we can unite and revolt?
I could caveat what I said with “until something changes”. As things get worse, and as the inherent contradictions become impossible to ignore, there will be more reason for people to directly engage, and less for them to lose by doing so.
Even in my lifetime, in a prosperous country, I’ve seen general sentiment go from “this isn’t perfect, but it’s getting better” to “this isn’t good and it’s getting worse”. As an old millennial, my cohort is probably the last to get a chance at an even somewhat decent life in exchange for buying into the system, and even then we know we're not getting a better life than our parents. Anyone younger knows that they’re not getting the same chance, and they’re going to be radicalized at a much higher rate.
20 years ago there wasn’t much hope of anything but incremental progress, if that, but now it’s becoming clear that progress simply isn’t going to happen on its own. There’s definitely potential for things to change in the not too distant future, if only because we’re quickly running out of room for things to get worse.
Thank you so much for taking the time to reply today. I fully agree with you on the current state of the system but I needed that hit of optimism at the end.
Haha, I don’t know if I’d call it optimism, but I think it’s not that difficult to look at history and see that our current trajectory is leading to instability, which allows for change to happen. It’s just not realistic to think that everything is going to get worse forever without any backlash.
Maybe you're right. I do expect it to get worse and fully manifest, but slowly and not necessarily immediately upon Trump's next inauguration or anything. I don't think believe the US will be special in its avoiding explicit fascism at the moment and I do think it'll accelerate and support similar fascism worldwide, as it already does anyway, but we'll inevitably see when it happens.
Yea libs love to act like we're 10% of the way there and gonna tip over the line if Trump wins. In reality we're 85% of the way there and Trump might bump that up to 90%.
And then it'll go to 95% the next time a dem wins and the chuds get equipped into a frothing rage that a lifelong neoliberal is doing a Marxist takeover of the country.
Thank you, that’s exactly what I’m getting at. We can debate about the proportions, but the point is that we’re so much closer to the worst case scenario than anyone thinks, but we’re also not going to all of a sudden jump to 100% overnight. The trajectory is steady, and maybe accelerating, but it’s still going to be incremental until something breaks. It’ll be like climate change, where we’ll only really notice the damage in hindsight.
i dunno.. i feel like we're constantly one more false flag terrorist attack away from full on fascist dictatorship and martial law that we never come back from.. look how quickly this escalated after 9/11 and we never recovered.. all it takes is a reason for these shitheads in power to feel a need for urgency
Again, my point is that there's no need for that kind of radical shift. What would the government be able to do under a "full fascist dictatorship" that they can't do now? Make abortion illegal? Commit genocide? Completely ignore public sentiment on every popular issue? Funnel all the power and wealth into the hands of a select few while the rest are treated as indentured servants? The current status quo is really, really bad, but in a way that keeps people in a perpetual state of thinking exactly along the lines that you're thinking, i.e. "things are bad, but thank goodness we aren't in a fascist dictatorship."
The powers that be literally just figured out that explicit fascism is a hard sell so they're doing soft fascism with a shiny coat of paint on it.
You get to chose which color tie the person doing the genocide wears.
You get to be performatively upset about things like the concentration camps when the wrong color tie is president.
You get to March with a million other people for a cause neither party gives a shit about, and they dont even shoot you in the head set your car on fire and rule it a suicide until you start actually taking meaningful steps towards those goals.
Exactly. They don’t even have to pretend to care. They can let people complain and march and write newsletters all they want, there’s no need to stop them because it doesn’t amount to anything. It’s like letting a toddler run around outside to get some energy out before you put them down for a nap. Why try to create some kind of draconian nightmare dystopia when you get basically the same result with a lax nightmare dystopia?
maybe at some point someone or some people decide peaceful protesting doesn't work and start incorporating violence in their demands?
things can't really continue as they have been forever.. people will get pissed enough sooner or later
Fascism is just liberalism under communist threat.
When there is no communism to threaten the bourgeois class, it manifests itself as liberalism.
They are one and the same. Don’t take it from me, take it from the arch liberal Winston Churchill.
The US is absolutely going down that path already. There's just no left to react to and the government is already so fascist that it has no need for brownshirts. As we build, as we begin to envision victory, you'll see that and worse. Despite this, we must organize.
If it makes you feel any better, I doubt the US would fall as easily to that as Germany did. That's not to say they won't try, but I think modern day US is just far too divided for any kind of easy power grab. I think a more likely scenario is that an attempt to bring full fascism would only destabilize the country. This might even be an opportunity for the left to gain ground, especially given the popularity of left ideas among young people. These Christian Nationalists are absolutely as delusional as you think they are and I'm not sure they have any clue what will actually come out when they open up that box.