They Thought They Were Free (1955)

Yes. Note that what Mackey did, and the content of his posts, was entirely legal and his conviction was overturned unanimously on appeal. To convict him originally, the government had to lie about him participating in a conspiracy - the reason the conviction was overturned is because they lied about the evidence of the conspiracy. There was never any dispute that merely posting what he did was legal.

I also wasn’t claiming his memes were criticizing Clinton.

Edit because I have been rate limited: if you contend that it was criminal, why did the government charge him only with a crime that it didn’t have actual evidence for?

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 attempting to do their part to usher in the chaos. "They" are the ones who have the most resources who will rebuild and control after everything goes to shit, like how Europe and the US thrived after WW2 because they were the winners/rebuilders. Currently the right wants to skip the messy war part required to take control of a government and skip to the implementing changes part. Whether or not that actually happens, well right now they're trying to push the left into drawing the line.

I have no idea where our current "line" is but it's not the same as it was last time and who knows what it will look like if we have some kind of civil war out of this.

edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpWvz0dR3wc

The other day I watched this interview with Dan Carlin from 4 years ago and near the beginning the interviewer says something like "I don't think any of us want to draw any comprarisons to current nations and Nazi Germany"

that caught me, because why not? Of course no one wants to actually create parallels, but do we see any? maybe we didn't see as many then, and it was more of a worry in 2021 about even thinking about the possibility of tipping MAGA into that territory. but then again after January 6th we should have seen that they basically don't have a line and are just pushing it gradually. They don't really know what to do when they get the new power either, but the people who could stop it may not even realize it because they haven't had to deal with this kind of thing before. like invading Greenland? taking it from Denmark? how do you even create a response to a suggestion like that? so nothing happens and they see what else they can do.

another edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpWvz0dR3wc&t=570s

The really interesting part of the interview gets going around the 7:50 mark, but here Dan talks about the options if you're an average citizen trying to figure out what to do. A litany of poor options if you're trying to pick a side right now really resonates with me.

To help me take this argument seriously, could you give a specific examples of when the shoe was on the first foot?

Like

> a few years ago when people were being sentenced to prison for memes

are you talking about the guy whose memes tricked thousands of people (of one political party) into thinking they could vote by texting a number?

I just read the book last week. What you said is not true in any useful sense. “Germans were acutely aware…” tries to reduce an entire population and years into one statement. Reality has much more color.

For the germans interviewed in the book, it seems to be true that many had read or heard about the camps or other atrocities, but (1) not the “final solution” which was not in the press and (2) there seems to be heavy desensitization from 1933-1955 when the book was written.

Aside from the tailor that had started the fire at the synagogue, the other 9 interviewees had not directly witnessed atrocities being committed, and instead focused on their personal hardships during the war.

Even though they may have been literate, the people in Mayer’s book were ignorant of the specific realities. Perhaps willfully ignorant, yes, but the nazi regime really did not give any opportunities otherwise.

—

not an expert, just reporting my notes from the book.

i highly recommend all americans read it, its not a long book. it feels eerily familiar, even though many circumstances are drastically different.

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 executive departments doing the coercing.