Free societies are not ruled by decree.
Free societies are not ruled through masses.
Switzerland is obviously ruled by the masses, and that is freedom for those masses, so I think what you say here is quite false.
They Thought They Were Free (1955)
151–160 of 545 posts
Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
The number of different national and international situations that get compared to Nazi Germany seems to reflect a paucity of historical imagination and desire to collapse every conflict into an manichaean analogy with modern civilization's foundational battle of good vs. evil. It might make at least as much sense to compare to Erdoğan's Turkey, Orban's Hungary, Syria's Assad and al-Julani, Chile with Allende and Pin…
Some of it reminds me of the CCP, which I think is openly considered a model by some neo-authoritarians. Ubiquitous mass surveillance, social credit, and state capitalism with heavy control though regulatory pressure. I assume we will eventually see party men installed on boards of major companies, especially in media, tech, and entertainment. The “tech right” is a major player here and a lot of those folks idolize C…
I would also remind the short of memory that during covid, the states with the most draconian restrictions were mostly left-leaning, and many were loathe to give up that control.
Control of the people comes from all sides. The end result is the same, but the methods are different, intended to make people happy to be controlled.
Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)
#153https://youtu.be/Sfekgjfh1Rk?feature=shared
Bonhoeffer got a lot of things right.
Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)
#154Reading this, you can see how the political ideology of trumps supporters was so easily manipulated, and how effective the radicalisation of the right has been.
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Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)
#155I have it on my shelf. Fascinating to read the perspective of regular citizens who organized themselves to do something terrible. Likely to remain relevant for as long as people can read it.
Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Excerpts from this have popped up in Reddit comments quite a bit the last few years. At first it did feel out of place, but now I'm going going back and listening to Dan Carlin talk about the headspace of society before something like Nazi Germany happens. With all the Executive Orders and lawlessness from the Executive Branch and throughout our federal government with this new regime, it's pretty clear they're attem…
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I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you saying this is obvious and nothing needs to be done, or that I'm totally wrong or what? Or saying that I'm being a conspiracy theorist by seeing parallels?
Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't recall the government using FCC to fire someone. I'd rather wish the previous governments had closed down Fox News, though. PS: not an USA citizen.
That’s the problem. Everyone makes tendentious arguments about how their exact reasoning and mechanism is justified, while the other sides’ is not justified. The outcome is the same. Edit: I have been rate limited so I cannot reply, but note I was referring to prior administrations coercing media companies to censor and deplatform people, so yes, it is functionally the same whether it’s the FCC or Congress or other e…
The outcome is not the same: allegedly repressive liberal administrations, internet businesses, and tv networks allowed openly authoritarian media to continually build momentum for a decade until that media delivered an authoritarian regime willing to actively dismantle the open system that allowed it to come to power. Contrast that with less than one year of the authoritarian regime, where the full force of the government apparatus is being used to crush political opponents by: defunding educational institutions, ending international soft-power programs, militarizing cities, threatening to de-license broadcasters, and classifying rights-based activist organizations as terrorists.
The liberal era was marked largely by criticism without consequence, where "deplatforming" was a social phenomenon that meant hopping to one of many other open networks, not the dogged federal punishment of institutions and individuals promoting inconvenient narratives. I'll join you in criticizing the liberal order any day, but it's beyond bad-faith to pretend the current administration is just more of the same.
Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)
#158I wonder how many people interpret this based on “the other side” rather than objectively?
I have come to conclude that there are both reasonable and unbalanced individuals on the extreme ends of both sides. When Obama was elected I had paranoid relatives telling me he was going to pilfer their 401k and bankrupt the country. Well, that never happened. When Trump was re-elected it was, “He is going to tear down democracy! He’s going to put gay people in concentration camps!” Last I checked we still have free elections, and nobody cares whether you’re gay. And we see political violence targeting both major parties. This also is not new. So I think this isn’t a result of anyone’s politics, but rather individual temperance; the voices we choose to amplify and listen to.
Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)
#159Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)
#160> They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer, published by the University of Chicago Press. ©1955, 1966, 2017 by the University of Chicago. Such books will no longer be published if universities are not free. And if freedom begins to disappear, even those who believe themselves safely conformist are not safe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came
Universities will not be safe from government meddling until they comprehensively stop taking money from the government first. Until such a point, they run the real risk of censorship and becoming the agents of the very thing that they are warning about.