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They Thought They Were Free (1955)

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Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#281

Post by ForHackernews »

jackstraw42 wrote: post #255
nosianu wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and who knows what it will look like if we have some kind of civil war out of this. I don't understand mentions of "civil war" in the public lately (there's even a Hollywood movie about it). There is only one party controlling the armed forces. I also doubt that any high-ranking officers would take the troops they command out of the command structure and then even order them to attack the government and other troop…

Well, I think you did a pretty good job of describing the resources that they are consolidating into that one party that controls the military. For now it's just the National Guard going into cities, but didn't they float the idea of sending Marines to LA? There's so much it's impossible to keep track of what's actually going on. I've always been of the idea that 100 guys with guns gets wiped out with 1 bomb nowadays…

He already sent active duty marines to Los Angeles, and it was ruled illegal by a judge (after the fact) but it doesn't matter because no one with any real power cares what laws or judges say: https://time.com/7313929/trump-national-guard-la-los-angeles...

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#282

Post by ycombigators »

bboygravity wrote: post #118
jackstraw42 wrote: post #24

Earlier 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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Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#283

Post by overfeed »

api wrote: post #136
themgt wrote: post #109

Earlier 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…

> Why did everyone across the entire political spectrum abandon individualism in the 20-teens?”

You mean in the aftermath of the great recession where most people were struggling economically and saw that the rules are only for little people? The 20-teens were the time of Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party - I don't see how it can be

I think individualism increased, after the teens, in a "don't trust the experts, do your own 'research'" way. Regardless of one's politics, its hard not to be a conspiracy theorist when you see a conspiracy play out in front of your eyes, at your expense. You could draw a straight line between the GFC and the growth of the "burn it all down" contingents on the left and right - indeed, a lot of "Bernie bros" became Trumpers whole remaining true to that ethos.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#284

Post by Waterluvian »

jjani wrote: post #131
Waterluvian wrote: post #34

> "Your ‘little men,’ your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better.[...]" I read this book a few years ago and I can't stop thinking about this line of discourse (there's more of this subject in the book). I've felt this exceptional frustration and disgust t…

> I was expecting to see protests and riots and fires and further uncelebrated but deemed necessary violence in response to the slow ablation of freedom and liberty. To what % are you confident thst you would be one of the first participants in these, were the same to happen to your own country?

I’m not sure that’s all that relevant other than thematically. And I’m not sure anyone can have confidence in that. I suspect most people are very overconfident. But I’ve been to pretty much all the major protests of my life (I’m only 6 hours from Ottawa and 2 from Toronto) (except Québec referendum rally: I was 9), and I’ve given an average of 1% of my income to Ukraine these past 3 years. So I’d like to hope I would be one of the first. But nobody can be sure how they’d actually respond, right?

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#285

Post by gopher_space »

nosianu wrote: post #234
jackstraw42 wrote: post #24

Earlier 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…

> and who knows what it will look like if we have some kind of civil war out of this. I don't understand mentions of "civil war" in the public lately (there's even a Hollywood movie about it). There is only one party controlling the armed forces. I also doubt that any high-ranking officers would take the troops they command out of the command structure and then even order them to attack the government and other troop…

Law enforcement and security aren’t really set up for scenarios where random members of the general public want to attack you.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#286

Post by analog8374 »

UncleMeat wrote: post #110
roenxi wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, key difference, the people pushing green sky or flat earth narrative don't get deplatformed, fired, yelled at or called Nazis. I still haven't seen anyone attempt to do a cost-benefit on whether the COVID lockdowns were a net good. I do note we had a big social and economic disjunction and since then it has been pretty much nothing but war and trouble. The part where they were shutting up people with PhDs on You…

Professors have been publishing papers advocating for legal bans of gender affirming care for ages. They've been publishing papers on gender dysphoria and the medical impact of transition for ages. Heck, there are law professors on topics like "against civil rights." For covid, there are not only oodles of papers on the topic you describe here, but entire books written by academics on the topic. These people remain e…

Entire books you say.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#287

Post by motoboi »

padjo wrote: post #266
ants_everywhere wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And well, criticizing democracy is fashionable again. Yup. I've see it a few times a week on HN at this point

By all means criticise the implementation but definitely don’t criticise the idea! America’s democracy would be greatly improved by being made more representative through electoral reform.

Yeah, but this is not what they are saying. They are saying that debate stiffle innovation. They are saying that we should get rid of all this mess and let the wise man govern.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#288

Post by iterance »

ethical_source wrote: post #108
zetanor wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free societies are not ruled through masses.

Who gets to rule, then, and why? Your position that the masses shouldn't rule is at odds with a government legitimized by the consent of the government. Why should I or anyone else obey a government I don't consider legitimate?

Five essential questions of democracy (Tony Benn):

    “What power have you got?”

    “Where did you get it from?”

    “In whose interests do you use it?”

    “To whom are you accountable?”

    “How do we get rid of you?”
His observation is that the last question fundamentally defines a democracy - not the ability for the people to give someone power, but to dispose of that power via accepted protocols. It is also the reason people with power so commonly hate democracy: properly answered, these questions limit their use of that power, and threaten to remove their access to it completely.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#289

Post by username332211 »

mindslight wrote: post #250
microtonal wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. If you read Reddit, a whole lot of comments go from Nazi parallels (which is partly justified, but as another comment points out there are also a lot of parallels with Orban's Hungary, Erdogan's Turkey, Putin's Russia, etc.) to 'Luigi'. There are so many non-violent approaches that would be effective. First, there is the 3.5% rule [1]. Second, if 10%-20% of the general population would go on a general strike, p…

> Reddit, a whole lot of comments go from Nazi parallels to 'Luigi'. oof. I certainly understand where Luigi came from, but I'd also say that Luigi represents an escalation that empowers the Trump regime. The general population's latent desire to see some "justice" metered out on the "elites" pushes those elites into cozying up to Trump. Because those elites know that if Trump chooses to go after them, even the masse…

I have nagging the suspicion that the knowledge that a good portion of the population wants them dead is a slightly more significant factor in pushing elites to the Republican side compared to the Trump administration's threats.
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