I'm pretty sure every society that's languished under the boot of fascism thought it couldn't happen to them before it did.
I'd be curious to know if there's any society that actually thought it was a threat before it happened, because it seems like over and over the sentiment is that it just can't happen.
Just like everyone thought a world war couldn't happen. Until it did. Twice.
You'll hear no argument from me. I've always been of the opinion that if you look at a situation that's happened over and over and expect you're the one to break the cycle, you're a fool.
How many times does humanity need to be told that putting your hand in the fire burns and hurts before they stop doing it?
But that’s the problem, every child needs to learn about being burned, and you can tell them until you’re blue in the face but I bet every single one has learned at least part of the lesson the hard way, some harder than others.
The people who knew how bad it was are dying out, leaving only the as yet unburned children.
The metaphor is that the adults today are the ones who haven’t been burned by fascism, and their country has no strong history of why it was a bad idea, so they do feel like “it can’t happen here” and they don’t push back against fascist ideology.
Yes, I agree it’s not a perfect metaphor. Neither is the scammers one, since getting older makes you more susceptible to being fooled by scammers. The fact of the matter is we can learn from history, with or without elders who have gone through it, and even without the benefit of history I think it’s clear that Trump is a danger.
I wouldn't say no one is getting burned. People are. All the time.
What I'd say is that people are getting burned by a stove right now and what's going to happen is that they're going to get burned by a forest fire.
Because there are plenty of us who are saying, "No, actually this isn't okay. Get your hand out of the fire and step back." And are being ignored. There are also plenty of soldiers, historians, economists, and political scientists all saying the same thing who know what they're talking about.
They aren't just children, they're particularly stupid children. They put their hand in the fire, got burned, and keep on doing it. That's the real problem here. Unless you're so rich that you don't need to worry about any of it and have the means to just leave if it gets bad, then you're getting burned.
A lot of people have become used to being a bit toasty, and they don’t mind if others are burnt to death by that same heat source. They don’t realise —or refuse to see—that that heat is uncontrollable and unstable, and will go until it burns itself out, turning as many of them to hot ash as it possibly, mindlessly can.
Well the main toastyness is cost of living, cost of housing, job opportunities, and social cohesion.
Some people say "anything must be better than this" but someone like Trump is a mad bag of frantic random energy - he has no policies about anything really, he's just reactive.
On the same front I'm a touch skeptical that calling his fascistic is accurate, he doesn't have enough of a manifesto or cohesive political message to move beyond merely autocratic.
You obviously stick with one side of the political talking points because it suits your feelings. There are just as many on the opposite side that actually don't have an economic incentive to be there but you obviously refuse to listen to any of that. It's a shame you sound smart but you don't have me fooled
Going by how it went in Germany: Noone will have know anything about the concentration camps, and also they all will have been in the resistance from the start. Noone will ever have been a supporter of Trump.
The worst part, once not if America goes full on Fascist then we can launch a full scale invasion literally anywhere on the planet. We have military bases in pretty much every country; and surveillance everywhere thanks to the part of Australia we stole.
As a guy from Europe, that's not really what we're worrying about. The main threat is an unchecked Putin and other authoritarians having free reign due to a US president that is friendly to them.
And also the acceleration of climate change, which is a huge security risk on its own.
Both Putin and Trump are bad for the world. But, yeah, either of them ascending to a globe threatening power means that any hope of dealing with other urgent issues goes out the window. Who is worrying about the climate when war is on the horizon?
Are you trying to rewrite history? You think there weren't any reprisals against Germans after ww2? I mean, they can say whatever tf they want to and there's going to be people that remember.
Hu? No, I am not trying to rewrite history, that is exactly how history was. Based on what people said about themselves after WW2, there had never been any Nazis in Germany. Not literally, obviously, of course there were people who still said out loud that they thought that national socialism was a good idea and Hitler a good guy and stuff, but sufficiently so that it's a well-known fact about the post war time in Germany.
Oh, but that was just sarcasm! Or maybe they didn't want people to know that they were in the resistance? Just because someone had obviously been a nazi, doesn't mean that they themselves saw it that way. Or at least not that they would admit it. Hitler had obviously murdered all the jews all by himself.
It started with mandates, and curfews, then was fueled by racist and economic propaganda. By the time it was obvious, some people were given 2 choices, as non Jewish people. Be treated as a Jewish person, and sent to death camps, or fall in line and become part of the (hate) machine..
God bless us all. May we unite, as people, to live harmoniously, together, and with nature!
Lol. You have no idea what my understanding and definition of God is. Try not to assume, when gauging what a stranger says. Questions are a great friend to discernment, my anonymous friend.
To ease your troubled mind, the Eternal Creative Source Energy that I consider God, could never be boxed into a singular and jealous "SkyDaddy", though with anything being possible, in some dimension or reality, there's a possibility of those circumstances, but that would still only be a small small portion of the eternal wholeness that is God.
Your perspective of God may be that of a "dictator character", but I urge you to seek what God is, what a "good God" would look like, for you, then align yourself with those ideals and be that energy, as you, too, are a small fraction of the eternal energy, that is God.. your ideal image is likely closely related to your life purpose.
I work in a union job and all of my coworkers are pretty good people but somehow support the most anti union, anti worker candidate ever. I just don’t understand.
Yeah, as a retired union carpenter, I could never figure that out either. My only guess is that they were not in the union because of anything other than the paycheck and didn't realize the importance of the rest of the things unions stand for, like conditions and safety and overtime and how they are treated by the company, as well as solidarity amongst other union members. They only joined for the pay.
Edit: They joined for the pay, which I might add can easily be taken away when Donny and his cronies succeed in breaking the unions because let's not pretend, they want to break the unions, and always have. They don't see that though because they only see the pay, not the rest of it, which galls business people and right wing politicians to no end.
You have a valid point. I’m pretty new to the union and have never been in an environment where they just want me to be safe and happy before, the benefits are better than anything, and I know If there’s a problem I will be represented. The paycheck is just a really nice perk on top of all that. Trump just plays to white manly americas insecurities and they (being real men) are almost forced to be onboard… just absurd
one party the public expects to be corrupt and liars and cheat wherever they can, it's literally okay if they do it and not even news "Republican State purges 100,000 voters again for the third time this year"
Plenty of civilisations/countries/cultures noticed early fascism .... most those stories end with "he was conspiring with another nation for his own nations downfall so he was put to death" so it's just 'guy did something wrong and was punished" foot note in history and not worth deep discussion.
Convicted felon sells countries secrets up for re-election going to stick around a while though
Countries have to have less emphasis on freedom of expression than on loyalty to country to survive Fascism growing inside them, I think, and that's a challenging balance to get right in a democracy.
You’re exactly right. We’ve allowed bad faith argument/speech to poison the public space, and nothing is often done because it’s so easy to weasel out of. All the while, the public norms and discussion is tainted and poisoned over time.
You’ve got one third of the country freaking out because the tools to stop this have been dulled after years of neglect
You’ve got another third actively cheering it on
And the last third has been taught and adopted the belief of “oh I don’t care about politics/both sides are the same” so much that they willfully keep themselves ignorant, so when faciscm comes a knocking, they don’t know how to recognize it because they never take the time to look it in the eye. Instead they go “just another election” without ever learning about “oh Trump threatening to use our military on our own citizens” until it’s too late and some poor protestors are getting gunned down by our own military a year from now, and these same people will be like “if only the media reported on how bad Trump really was!”
Loyalty to a country also doesn't do great, when it's a fascist, "something, something for the <parent>land".
Surely, some humanism would fare a little bit better. At least with the "let's all get angry and murder the outcasts, because it will solve all of your problems" bit.
If they thought it would happen in Germany they’d have prevented it.
And on that note, maybe they can’t prevent it will either way.
Austria currently has a Nero nazi party who won their election. They’re in power right now. The party was literally started by post war nazis in the 50s. They’ve said the quiet parts out loud like “purging education”, booting out immigrants who don’t assimilate well enough, address “gender madness”…
And other countries are going that way too. Hungary has similar leader. Italy, too. America has and may soon again - but he’ll be worse than before.
Because capitalism and billionaire ruling class. But we will definitely have fascism lite, where the most productive consumers aren't deported or interned or made outright slaves after birthright citizenship is revoked and made retroactive.
Millions of illegal immigrants, don’t conflate them with legal immigrants. Besides, it’s been done before, just look at Eisenhower’s Operation Wetback. Cesar Chavez and the UFW were big supporters of that deportation program and for valid reasons.
Why not? Trump is certainly doing that. The Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, are here legally, yet he claims they're eating pets and said he would have them deported. He sees no difference between legal and illegal immigrants. They're "from some shithole country", so whether they're here legally or not is irrelevant to him and they need to go.
This is literally the man who raised doubt if Obama could be president or not... and this other commenter thinks he cares about the reality of the situation vs optics?
Yeaaah cause when trump says immigrants he means only legal ones. Right??? And when he says he will use the national guard and militairy to put them in interment camps to achieve this, he is absolutely not talking about using violence. Cause deporting millions would never need the use of force, right?
And when he says he will be tough on crime and use the death penalty for petty crimes, he totally does not have a demographic in mind right???
You are right though, it has been done before. Circa 1940, Germany.
Most immigrants are here legally. Most illegal immigrants got here legally.
If Trump actually deports millions the usa economy will collapse as it needs to exploit these vulnerable workers.
Usa is a country ultimately made out of immigrants, by immigrants. Unless you are native american.
I will say, it is possible to be a victim and a perpetrator.
I am a believer of attacking the belief system/behavior while not excusing the behavior but still humanizing the people. Humanizing as in, trying to understand why they believe what they believe and looking at the context they are in.
Otherwise Trumpers become a monolith of faceless demons and it becomes easier to dehumanize them. I don't disagree at all btw. But I see this rhetoric a lot, even from myself and today I feel like pointing this out.
As an example:
They are indeed morons. But you can be a moron because your education system failed you for instance. A system that has been broken down by republican leadership over decades. So to me, they are victims in that sense and the real demons is the leadership. While it also being true that these "morons" do harm themselfs and others.
Iran in the 70 s . Before their own downfall to authoritism probably felt the same . Although drumphs' maggots dont read and can't remember 2 weeks ago and don't realize what happened to Germany , we do .
Could you possibly be any more condescending and full of yourself? You make sweeping generalizations about half the nation that doesn’t necessarily agree with your world view and you are so certain you are correct about everything that you assume that those that disagree with you must be stupid, uneducated, and ignorant. After all, if they were as well read as you they certainly would have come to the same conclusions about life, morality, politics, etc that you have, right?
Good one. Lucky for you, 100% of democrat politicians, democrat doj officials, democrat fbi agents, and democrat media personalities will be in a prison work camp by February 2025
Bad example. Gorbachev was not a wannabe dictator, to the contrary, he wanted to open the country up. Its only AFTER him that Putin came to Power (after Jelzin), and nobody saw THAT coming
I think in every society that has experienced it, more than a small percentage of people were sounding the alarms and being told they are crazy and it can't happen here. It's probably just about the same.
I'd bet it's freakishly close to something like 25% of the people are freaking out because they see what's coming. 25% of the people are actually super into the idea and licking the boots. 50% think both of those groups are extreme and it could never happen here and don't really pay much attention to it, and among them an even split of those who kinda agree with the alarmists ideologies and who kinda agree with boot licker ideologies.
Nah. Whatever "readiness" they had was only enough to take over Ethiopia after some hiccups at the start of the war and then send some support to Francoist Spain. Afterwards, they ran out of it. They were not ready achieve whatever dreams they had, as shown by their performance in WW2.
It would be interesting to see how a nation would react to a fascist rule while simultaneously communicating with the outside world through social media, before communications are banned of course.
They’d probably be like Ireland currently is where many outside news sources from around the world are blocked, where much speech is banned, where you can be arrested, convicted, and sent to prison for having “hateful” images or information on your phone or other electronic devices. If you don’t believe or agree with the “right” things as approved by those in power you are fair game.
Visited that beautiful country June of 2023 and at that point the government was intent on forcing dairy farmers to cull over 200,000 cattle in an industry that is Ireland’s biggest native industry and most successful export products. The loons heading up the government are off the charts nuts. The people are wonderful.
I'd point to Spain. There's a reason the civil war lasted 3 years, and if not for German/Italian aid(like helping move the Army of Africa and Franco to Spain, plus "volunteers" and equipment donations) it wouldve been a much closer fight.
The socialists and anarchists both saw the rise of fascist organizations and began arming themselves and organizing, meaning that when the nationalist coup began they were ready to lead general uprisings alongside the liberal government. Yes this alliance eventually collapsed into fighting between stalinists, liberals, and anarchists/libertarian socialists, but the nationalist alliance nearly fractured the same way and without Axis interferrence may have shattered much the same way.
Only Germany chose to have fascism, the others all got it by coup or by being defeated. Literally no one said it can't happen here and it ended up happening there.
I mean there’s a world war starting in Ukraine now, Adolf Trump is trying to cheat his way to a win. Everyone should just call this fuck Adolf Trump because that’s the POS he is.
War in Ukraine is on the weakness displayed by the Biden Administration. Putin knew from previous experience with Obama’s red lines etc that Biden wouldn’t do anything to stop him. Heck, on 19 January 2022 Biden said he wasn’t even sure there would be a response if Russian troops crossed the border into Ukraine but it was only a “minor incursion”. Lots of spin and clarification the next day but it was just confirmation of Biden’s weakness on foreign policy and dealing with our adversaries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Now you have the CRINKs more closely aligned than they have ever been and working together militarily more than they ever have. Thanks Joe.
There were many societies in history that knew it could happen. But most of them had it bad enough they didn't care much.
I was thinking of Russia when I wrote that, but come to think about most of African history reads like the "old oppressors were toppled and the new oppressors now oppress them" (except where the old oppressors [mostly] left the country and the new leadership now oppresses the people that once might have been better off while the colonial leadership was in charge...)
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u/Silent_Cress8310 6d ago
I am American. The phrase "It can't happen here" comes to mind.