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Ten Signs of Fascism. America has all of them

rutgerbregman.substack.com

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Re: Ten Signs of Fascism. America has all of them

#51

Post by derbOac »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #40
klamann wrote: post #23

As a German, I started wondering if every nation has to experience a fascist catastrophe on its own, before a majority agrees that a fascist takeover is possible at home (surely the peoples who failed to stop all the other fascist regimes were just dumb). Then again, 30% of German voters would vote for the fascist AfD party today, so there's that... I agree with the premise of the article wholeheartedly. Minor nitpic…

Its sad thing but in every society there appears to be a significant portion of people who support the tenants of fascism. The whole 'that minority group over there is wrecking things for you, we will punish them' vibe seems to really strike a chord time and time again.

There's a peer-reviewed study of this that appeared in the last couple of years that showed the percent support for authoritarian rule tends to hover around 20% worldwide regardless of country, plus or minus some fuzz amount. I can't find it now because I keep finding other papers but this is another report that's is pretty consistent with it:

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/28/who-likes...

Once you get that group control is when you have problems.

This is kind of an interesting deeper dive into why people support fascism. Maybe not surprising but highlights the two main reasons: something like "we need a strong leader to take control of the government away from corrupt elite and put it back into the hands of the people" and "the government needs to be in the hands of the real, true, competent people, and not the other, fake, lesser people".

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/political-science/artic...

Personally I'm past the point of "what does fascism look like" and want to have a realistic discussion about "how do you reestablish a democracy when you're in a fascist regime?" So far the historical examples at my fingertips are all basically some variant of "people get tired of it, the cult leader passes away and everyone kind of magically agrees that fascism isn't working".

Re: Ten Signs of Fascism. America has all of them

#52

Post by soco »

karmakurtisaani wrote: post #30
krapp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This, and the good old "The Torment Nexus is now complete and operational, check out the cool tech they used to muffle out the screaming!"

Given there's a lot of the audience here being actively involved in building said Torment Nexus, it's not a surprise that discussing it can generate friction. Like Upton Sinclair so nicely put it: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Re: Ten Signs of Fascism. America has all of them

#53

Post by vanviegen »

spwa4 wrote: post #36

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, ACTUAL facists (as in no serious discussion possible, nobody needing to be convinced) were in power from 2023 to 2025. The country of the author has had a fascist prime minister for 2 years ... And the main reason that stopped is that a bunch of his party members ran off and started a new party. As a reaction voters became more extreme. The FvD (forum for democracy) is making big stride…

While some* of that is true, does that matter to the argument being made by the author? And yes, that author also opposed fascist forces in the Netherlands.

: Former prime minister Schoof was was not* a fascist, but basically just an independent bureaucrat hired to attempt to hold a very brittle coalition together. He failed at that miserably. Also, the 'main reason that stopped' was that the PVV party went from 23% of the votes to 17% of the votes in the next election, and none of the other parties was willing to work with them again in a coalition.

Re: Ten Signs of Fascism. America has all of them

#54

Post by lostmsu »

peter-m80 wrote: post #48
lostmsu wrote: post #39

[flagged]

> support for a dictatorial leader Yes. Trump > centralized autocracy Totally. Wars without congress permission, illegal tariffs, etc > forcible suppression of opposition Yes. Rigging elections. Making difficult for oppositors to vote > belief in a natural social hierarchy Totally. White supremacism. Proud boys, ICE... > subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race Yes. ICE.…

[flagged]

Re: Ten Signs of Fascism. America has all of them

#56

Post by soco »

exceptione wrote: post #24
smt88 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The midterms will be a landslide if allowed to run fairly. Trump’s response to that landslide will tell us whether there’s hope. I don’t expect Civil War levels of violence because the country is mostly united in its hatred of how the GOP is running it. No large group of people will pick up arms to support Trump’s right to invade countries and ruin the economy.

Disclaimer: I don't want to make people despair nor do I want to install fatalism. People should take action, no matter the bad chances. > if allowed to run fairly. > Trump’s response to that landslide will tell us whether there’s hope. The fairly part is already out of the window, we have had the fake bomb threats at the polling stations. But as you have seen in Hungary, an autocrat has to fear a mass revolt. So an…

Please correct me if I'm wrong and I would hope to stand corrected, but my impression from across the pond is that the Dems in general would enjoy being in the same lead and would gladly use similar mechanisms - so they wouldn't change structurally that much even when they get to the levers. Many techbros and other personalities would also simply swear new allegiances, get celebrated for "their" win and continue to erode at everything because money is money in the end and the GOP lead demonstrated there's good money to be made this way. Of course there are and will be exceptions to this, but significantly many? Time will tell.

Re: Ten Signs of Fascism. America has all of them

#57

Post by vkou »

Rekindle8090 wrote: post #16
vkou wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pinochet didn't start by murdering thousands of people on day one. It takes time and work to dismantle every part of the system that will stop you from doing that. Less time in weak democracies, more time in stronger ones. The republican party is currently doing it's traitorous best to turn Trump into an above-the-law-king, and to turn the country into a place where nobody could stop him from doing that. Every one of…

No he literally did start murdering thousands of people on day one.

He murdered a few people on day one. The thousands happened over decades of his rule.

Re: Ten Signs of Fascism. America has all of them

#58

Post by Schmerika »

Henchman21 wrote: post #49
Schmerika wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America does have basically every characteristic of fascism on every important list of fascism characteristics ever made. That's actually kind of important to the tech community, considering we are wildly complicit in this . So, maybe consider that more than "politics junkies" might be interested in this, and that the tech billionaires might have a vested interest in making sure stories like this get flagged (very ea…

Complicit? How about “proximate cause of”?

Sure.

Re: Ten Signs of Fascism. America has all of them

#60

Post by klamann »

derbOac wrote: post #51
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its sad thing but in every society there appears to be a significant portion of people who support the tenants of fascism. The whole 'that minority group over there is wrecking things for you, we will punish them' vibe seems to really strike a chord time and time again.

There's a peer-reviewed study of this that appeared in the last couple of years that showed the percent support for authoritarian rule tends to hover around 20% worldwide regardless of country, plus or minus some fuzz amount. I can't find it now because I keep finding other papers but this is another report that's is pretty consistent with it: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/28/who-likes... Once you g…

don't forget about the historical examples of having your home destroyed by war (usually a war started by your leader) and the regime being forcefully replaced by a foreign power. Japan, Italy and Germany are democracies today.
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