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As bad as this is, I haven’t even gotten to the really depressing part. Most people assume that if fascism came to America, we would recognize it as individuals and refuse to go along with it. In reality, very few people are directly affected by living in an authoritarian country; life is mostly “boring and tolerable” for the majority. “Yes,” most people would say, “but if asked to do things I know were wrong, I would refuse to comply. Because I’m an American, and I know better.”
Except, we’re already testing this every day in red states, and failing miserably.
Everyone loves fascism until it’s used against them.
I’ve had my dad agree that something the Republicans are doing is extremely authoritarian and state that he is going to look past it because he wants lower taxes and likes guns in the same breath.
A thousand times this.
The core problem is “wrong” is not a self-evident concept. Christians think masturbation is wrong (and a host of other intrinsically human things). Not so terribly long ago, a disturbingly large number of Americans didn’t think it was wrong to own people.
“Minimizing harm,” on the other hand, is much easier to pin down.
‘When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag a carrying a cross.’
- Sinclair Lewis
The Republicans functionally made a pact with the devil in the 80s when they leaned heavily into the Evangelicals, betting they would be reliable voters and knowing they are laughably easy to manipulate.
And now this is what we get. Theocratic Fascism.
Even if Dear Leader goes to jail, even if he looses the election and there is not another coup attempt, these maniacal morons are not going away anytime soon.
Articles like these are the proof - Americans wouldn’t know fascism if it hit them in the face. And they need reminders that water is wet. After all that has happened and is going on, does anybody need to be told that the US is under serious threat from an exceptionally out-of-control domestic terrorism problem?
Best not to lump us all in the same boat. I, an American, saw this fascist bullshit from the beginning and have voted accordingly against. But the stacked courts and the lack of judges and justices growing a backbone, and doing what is objectively right, will be our downfall.
In time, the US will have a second civil war because of this. I just hope I’m long gone by then.
Best not to lump us all in the same boat.
Please don’t take it personally. That wasn’t meant to be a generalization. Honestly, I understand exactly what you mean - something extremely similar is going on around here. But realistically, the lack of either society to drop their egos and be honest about their futures is going to cause an unmitigated disaster, to put it mildly.
No offense taken! I completely agree the US is screwed. I wouldn’t trade having my child for anything, but there are times I feel sad at how the country will be when my child is older.
The Fascist party is okay with fascism, yeah, makes sense.
The same thing is happening globally, and it’s becoming clear that moderate conservatives are very much in the minority. It worries me to no end that fascism seems to be winning, and there doesn’t seem to be much we can do about it
Yeah, it’s this weird mixed bag thing. In the US, I’ve found myself being able to pull people who were originally registered Republican fairly far left. People who bought a lot of the conservative propaganda but couldn’t stomach Trump are now starting to wake up a bit, at least in my personal experience. But the ones who are still in the party are full of nothing but hate, and there are still plenty of them there.
We now live in a crazy backwards spacetime where literal socialists want
smallerless government than the main “conservative” party does.“Small government” was an euphemism for defunding public services in response to desegregation and wasn’t intended as anything more and still isn’t
Conservativism was always moderate fascism, and center / center left bought out parties aren’t attracting people to the polls anymore because they offer nothing
I’m afraid the traditional way to “deal with fascism”, has always been the same: war.
People seem to naturally tend towards siding with the “strong side”, and the only way to make them side with the “compassionate side” is to periodically turn their daily existence into living hell. We don’t seem to have yet found an effective way to educate and keep new generations on the “compassionate side”; hopefully we’re getting closer, but clearly we’re not there yet.
Fascism is a tool of the power hungry and vain that makes the unremarkable and mediocre feel special enough to hate their slightly different neighbors and embolden the worst aspects of humanity.
It’s wielded by non-believers cynically who either foolishly believe they can avoid the inevitable blood soaked ending or they don’t care. Either way, it doesn’t end well for anyone involved.
I hope “non-believers” doesn’t mean religious non-believers because fascism and authoritarianism has historically gone hand in hand with religion and religious dogma.
But I suspect I’m misunderstanding the context here. At least I hope I am.
By non-believers I mean people who don’t actually drink the Kool aid they’re serving.
Ah you’re saying people don’t necessarily believe in fascism, but are willing to use it to their advantage. Got it.
I suppose that’s true of most things. In short, evil people are evil. I’m just tired of half (or more) of the country being so deluded by this bullshit. I mean they really are that stupid. And it’s pretty sad, and shitty for the next generations.
As George Carlin once said, “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
Fascism and authoritarianism are religious dogma, they just not always align with an already existing religion, which gives raise to things like the English King’s religion, the Mao’s, USSR, NK… arguably the Catholic… or older ones like the god-pharaohs. All of which came into power by banning other religions.
PS: we’ve just witnessed another religious schism the other week, when the Ukrainian Orthodox church decided to celebrate Christmas on Dec 25, instead of with the Russian Orthodox church.
The problem is twofold; fascism sucks but combined with the fact that these dipshits are willing to let the earth die for profits… Note the billionaires starting to build bunkers for the coming apocalypse… times aren’t a changing, they’re ending.
That is so insane to me. Even if you were a rich mofo, you really okay living in a bunker? Like do they think their life will be just as cushy without the sun or nature? No matter how many swimming pools or tv screens underground with golden toilets or whatever the fuck they put in their bunkers - life without the planet will suck. Humans aren’t meant to live underground for an extended period. There’s a reason my therapists keep telling me to go outside and get some sun and fresh air.
They all think they’ll be the dude to stab you in the butt
I got news for ya
Water is wet
“But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.”
― Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45
Duh.
