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The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide

verfassungsblog.de

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Re: The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide

#101

Post by relaxing »

teekert wrote: post #95
relaxing wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You listened to Rogan and your takeaway was “kind human”?

For sure, yours wasn't? He has some weird takes on aliens, but I can see how conservatives see him as a good example for their children on topics like social media use, taking care of your body and mind through sports and socials gatherings, based a lot on traditional christian values. I think it is very easy to take what he says out of context and thus find it important to listen to his whole podcast from time to ti…

Out of curiosity, what are they afraid NATO will do? When Turkey has been there at their border for 75 years? I hear this but I never see anyone describe the threat behind it.

Re: The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide

#102

Post by teekert »

relaxing wrote: post #101
teekert wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure, yours wasn't? He has some weird takes on aliens, but I can see how conservatives see him as a good example for their children on topics like social media use, taking care of your body and mind through sports and socials gatherings, based a lot on traditional christian values. I think it is very easy to take what he says out of context and thus find it important to listen to his whole podcast from time to ti…

Out of curiosity, what are they afraid NATO will do? When Turkey has been there at their border for 75 years? I hear this but I never see anyone describe the threat behind it.

Well, why don’t you read RT for some time and find out? It’s very subtle. It will also help you spot patterns in our own press.

Re: The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide

#103

Post by jfengel »

Don’t let them divide you – remember you’re one People, one Nation, with one common good.

No, we aren't. We had a war about that.

In the wake of that war, we tried really hard to pretend otherwise. We made a "Pledge of Allegiance", which reminded us that we are "one nation indivisible".

And that lasted for a few decades. Then they literally divided that: "one nation, under God, indivisible". It deliberately excluded a lot of Americans who disagree about God, and obscured the meaning of the phrase.

The authoritarians are not an outside force, or a small minority. They are a huge fraction of the country who considers the rest of us Not Real Americans. We can't not be divided from them -- unless, perhaps, by joining them as authoritarians ourselves. If they'd even have us.

Re: The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide

#104

Post by mschuster91 »

skinkestek wrote: post #96
mschuster91 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Why do I have to choose between 1. people who deny that trans people exist and 2. people who think that it isn't a problem when one inmate gets another inmate pregnant in a women's only prison? And how often has the latter actually happened? That is part of the polarization issue: absolute nothingburgers are blown way out of proportion or outright manufactured as a "strawman" strategy. Besides, the threat for wom…

> And how often has the latter actually happened? Exact amount of times it happen doesn't matter as much as the fact that one side tries to pretend it isn't a problem. > there is no 100% foolproof system that allows for no cheating like the anti-migrant crowd tends to suggest. No matter what there will always be a certain percentage of fraud in any system. That is not what I am suggesting. And I think you are actuall…

> Exact amount of times it happen doesn't matter as much as the fact that one side tries to pretend it isn't a problem.

I'm not saying it is not a problem at all - I am simply saying that it is a nothingburger compared to the amount of "ordinary" rape and violence going on in prisons. Trying to blast on trans people while ignoring the much larger elephant in the room is dishonest and reminds me of a Bible quote: "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" [1]

[1] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%207%3A3...

Re: The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide

#105

Post by vaylian »

npteljes wrote: post #91
vaylian wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for sharing. I'm in particular interested in what happens to women and minorities in Hungary. Can you tell us what the situation is like?

My POV and experience: ongoing marginalization. According to propaganda, Orban is building a family-friendly place. This is proclaimed loudly in the media, and at points where you enter the country (like metal signs saying "Welcome to the family friendly Hungary"). These family values is the usual alt-right dogwhistle, however. Same as how it's used in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_values#Organizations…

Thanks for the extensive answer. I don't come across news from Hungary much which is why I really appreciate these insights.

Re: The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide

#106

Post by disqard »

hayst4ck wrote: post #27
evrimoztamur wrote: post #6

On the flipside of this: To understand how to establish, retain, and fail in running your authoritarian regime, I found The Dictator's Handbook by Alastair Smith and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita a very fun read. Although repetitive at times (as history often does so itself), it gives a systems-oriented framework of how power concentrates as it does, and various outcomes we get out of it. Definitely in line with the way of…

CGP Grey did a video on this that is very much worth watching for anyone interested in politics: https://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/rules-for-rulers On youtube there is also another video where he talks about making this video that I found more interesting than the video itself. One of the more interesting points he made is that in order to get into power you generally have to be given that power, but to be given that powe…

> to be given that power, you must show loyalty to the power structure.

This is a gem! Thank you for sharing it.

It also ties in with Venkatesh's "Gervais Principle", where, as we ascend the corporate hierarchy, we see "losers" --> "clueless" --> "sociopaths".

The highest echelons of corporate structure are indeed occupied by the kinds of people who are comfortable swearing allegiance to the corporation itself, not to its customers, its employees, its founding values, or some "greater good for society". Thus do we arrive at a world where these corps are headed by people who truly believe in "maximizing shareholder value".

Re: The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide

#107

Post by mostlysimilar »

atoav wrote: post #70

Serious question: Why on earth is this flagged? I thought sharing strategies against authoritarianism would be as free speech, open discourse as it gets. Open discourse as promoted here on this site is among the first targets in any authoritarian society. We tech people should be merit based — vuess which form of society prevents exactly this? Suddenly instead of appointing the manager of a nuclear plant based on mer…

For starters: I agree with you.

The guidelines for Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) state that they don't want "political" topics posted here, and prefer topics that "good hackers find interesting" and that foster constructive discourse.

These topics do tend to create a lot of low-signal posts and I think there's a certain contingent of HN users who flag for that reason. I think there are also a contingent of users who flag these topics because they are, to put it bluntly, trying to censor them for ideological reasons.

The latter group is beyond help. The former I think would do well to wake up to the state of the world and use the considerable reach of HN to wake others up.

"Good hackers" will be having considerably less interesting conversations under an authoritarian regime, and by that point it'll be too late.

Re: The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide

#108

Post by fmnxl »

g-b-r wrote: post #29
fmnxl wrote: post #17

This worldview where one side is evil/authoritarian and the other is good/free/liberal is the root of a lot of suffering in the world. It's a flawed worldview that made Americans end up with dysfunctional politicians, because you reward ideological rhetoric more than real, pragmatic long-term planing.

Uhm yeah everyone is authoritarian so let's embrace dictators right? :facepalm:

No, my point is Trump isn't bad because he's "authoritarian". He's bad because he's completely mismanaging the country, and putting oligarchs in charge of the government.

Even for "authoritarian regime", that'd be a horrible way to run a country.

It's not like the democrats aren't full of oligarchs themselves, like the likes of Pelosi.

Re: The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide

#109

Post by dragonwriter »

fmnxl wrote: post #108
g-b-r wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhm yeah everyone is authoritarian so let's embrace dictators right? :facepalm:

No, my point is Trump isn't bad because he's "authoritarian". He's bad because he's completely mismanaging the country, and putting oligarchs in charge of the government. Even for "authoritarian regime", that'd be a horrible way to run a country. It's not like the democrats aren't full of oligarchs themselves, like the likes of Pelosi.

> No, my point is Trump isn't bad because he's "authoritarian".

But, you're wrong, he is wrong for that reason.

> He's bad because he's completely mismanaging the country

He's also wrong for that reason, which is also not completely unrelated to the former reason.

> and putting oligarchs in charge of the government.

And for thet reason, which is mostly a rephrasing and slightly more specific form of the first reason.

> Even for "authoritarian regime", that'd be a horrible way to run a country.

Actually, its pretty typical of authoritarian regimes to (1) have a narrow elite (oligarchs) making decisions with no effective accountability for their own benefit, and (2) for this to, from any other perspective but the immediate perceived self-interest of those decision-makers to be complete mismanagement. (It’s also pretty typical for it to be mismanagement from any reasonable view of the elites actual interests, and paranoia driven by fear of being displaced either by outsiders or other members of the elite leads to suboptimal elite decision-making, because authoritarianism does not support conflict resolution processes that enable trust, and makes losing intra-elite disputes very high stakes.)

Re: The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide

#110

Post by skinkestek »

mschuster91 wrote: post #104
skinkestek wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And how often has the latter actually happened? Exact amount of times it happen doesn't matter as much as the fact that one side tries to pretend it isn't a problem. > there is no 100% foolproof system that allows for no cheating like the anti-migrant crowd tends to suggest. No matter what there will always be a certain percentage of fraud in any system. That is not what I am suggesting. And I think you are actuall…

> Exact amount of times it happen doesn't matter as much as the fact that one side tries to pretend it isn't a problem. I'm not saying it is not a problem at all - I am simply saying that it is a nothingburger compared to the amount of "ordinary" rape and violence going on in prisons. Trying to blast on trans people while ignoring the much larger elephant in the room is dishonest and reminds me of a Bible quote: "Why…

I guess this is what is called the strawman argument?

Pretending I only care about one thing and then pointing out that it is stupid to only care about one thing?

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