If you are debating whether to read this article, read it. It’s comprehensive and precise, and although political in substance, not political in form — test-fitting an imprecise definition. The fact it also reaches a firm conclusion (spoiler alert right there in the title) is depoliticized by allowing for malleable application. A benchmark article I will now go share elsewhere.
What’s left to talk about? How to react. How it ends. Where we likely go from there. Where we should go.
People are dying on broad daylight and who knows what Anne Frank atrocities we're going to discover in the years, even decades, to come in this year alone. Yes it's political. No, this isn't really red vs. blue anymore.
If nothing else it's very clear we need to bring politics back to the dinner table. And not he afraid to talk about it in 'nonpartisan' spaces. You can ignore politics, but it never ignores you.
It's nice but also endlessly frustrating and very very late, because what he regards as overuse of the term is really just people who were applying the term correctly for the past 10 years as people like the author refused to call a spade a spade. If the nascent fascist were discarded, people would have stopped saying it so much.
The problem for people like the author is that other more astute individuals [1] correctly diagnosed the issue over a decade ago. All it took was for her to have grown up in Poland and to be a clinical psychologist who knows how to spot malignant narcissism. The rest fell into place because human nature is so... predictable.
So while it's welcome for the author to finally catch up to the rest of us, it's a little late at this point. Also If people like the author had listened to more sensible people when they had started using the F word instead of dismissing them as hyperbolic, then we wouldn't be here.
Also this bit:
> Although Trump is term-limited, we must not expect that he and his MAGA loyalists will voluntarily turn over the White House to a Democrat in 2029, regardless of what the voters say—and the second insurrection will be far better organized than the first.
shows the author is still a step behind. The correct framing is that the first insurrection succeeded. It continued after Jan 6 for 4 years, as Trump waged an information war contending he was the true winner of the election, and also a war on the judiciary to evade accountability. In that battle he evaded all accountability, nullified the impeachment clause of the Constitution, and also gained "Presidential Immunity" from his appointees on SCOTUS. He also nullified Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits anyone who has previously taken an oath to support the Constitution from holding state or federal office if they have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the US. Trump caused an insurrection, and yet somehow he was allowed to run and hold office again.
So the first insurrection was successful, the perpetrators got away with it, and they assumed total power over the government they attacked after evading judicial accountability and waging an information war on the population.
Anyway, next time there won't be a need for an insurrection, because the only reason there was one in 2021 was because plans A through G failed -- they couldn't get votes in Georgia, they couldn't overturn any state, they didn't win any court cases, they couldn't get people to go along with their "alternate electors" theory, and they couldn't get Pence to go along with the scheme. So they caused an insurrection as a last ditch effort to delay certification.
In 2029 every Republican will go along with plan A. They've already purged everyone who did the right thing in 2021 from the party. So they won't need an insurrection because any Democrat that wins in Georgia will just be erased, as they've made sure to take state control over county election boards after county election boards there went against Trump's wishes in 2020.
This is it. Trump doesn't really matter anymore, he will likely be dead by the next election. Why it doesn't matter is because its all project 2025 people now, they're using Trump to further their goals and those hove some overlap with Trumps wants. Their main goal is that there will be no transfer of power away from them again. Like the 2020 election they will try many different things, but will likely succeed as the party now is mostly loyalists, the entire white house cabinet as well, so does most of the government as a goal of project 2025 wasn't just RAGE, it was also to hire replacements. And now they have very well funded goons in training to deploy when needed.
Back in 2024 after reading project 2025 and about its authors and backers (federalist society, Thiel, Vance, other tech CEOs, Curtis Yarvin, etc) it was already clear that this was going to happen. I was already convinced that the only way out of this was a general strike and/or military coup, and it doesn't look any better now. I fear an Iran like crackdown is in the deck now.
> The correct framing is that the first insurrection succeeded
If you redefine success to whatever you want, then sure.
> In 2029 every Republican will go along with plan A
If you treat people as enemies, they’ll become one. The arrogance in the assumption that every Republican will allow Trump to get elected for a 3rd term might spite them into it.
> If you are debating whether to read this article, read it. It’s comprehensive and precise, and although political in substance […]
Also perhaps worth noting that David Frum, former speech writer to Dubya Bush, writes for The Atlantic (and has been against Trump from the start: see his book Trumpocracy):
The left / right split isn't really meaningful in the United States right now.
The split is currently between people who believe in and want a functional and equitable government, and those who are fine with a kleptocracy as long as they are personally the beneficiaries (or at least, the people they dislike suffer worse).
People like Frum were quick to notice this and get on the correct side of it. Unfortunately, there are not enough Republicans who feel the same way to make much of a difference.
I don't think accelerationists would mind - even if they believe that what's happening is wrong, going further in is the backbone of the whole ideology, so why would they be having second thoughts?
I think the real group behind this is people who are capable of sensing that this is wrong at least on some deeper level, but who are so complacent that they just want not to think about it too much. Maybe it's because they're in too deep, maybe they make too much money off of it to care, maybe their heels are too dug in on social issues for them to ever try to reconsider. Possibly a combination of any of the three.
Every thread about US politics has this comment, and the same response: this is not the right outlet, and some people feel like this content does not fit the topic of the website.
If you are not American, it’s rather tiring to have every website and news outlet talk about it ad nauseum, and have it take over every subreddit and conversation. Americans get all uppity when you tell them that you don’t want that, as if their news are so important that they transcend categorisation.
I care. It’s important. It’s just not the right website.
When your political reality becomes scary. Confronting reality is scary. Politics is scary but honestly living in facism is just about the worst thing for founder culture imaginable
I think it isn’t mod actions but rather the very likely fact that there is a small, but large enough group of flaggers who will act in unison to remove any such post from the front page. If you want an affirmation of the efficacy of the moderation system, what you should want is transparency into the voting behaviors of the population. If you see a heavy voting correlation between flagged posts and either a specific set of users, voting timing (these types of posts get flagged much earlier than those that lean the other way politically), or both, then there is cause for concern that the algorithm of HN’s self moderation tools is being gamed. My bet is that it’s not the mods doing anything, but rather that there is already a critical mass of flag happy users that are controlling what gets to stay on the front page. I think it would be very interesting to see a write up on this topic, but it’s highly unlikely because I think it would violate privacy and user expectations of anonymity.
Let me see if I can outline how we approach this in a way that might make sense to you...
People use the word "transparency" to mean different things. Here are the ways in which I think it's fair to say we're transparent about mod actions: (1) we explain the principles that we apply, frequently and at length; and (2) we're happy to answer questions, including about specific cases.
What we don't do is publish a complete moderation log. To understand why, it's probably easiest to look through my past answers about this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39234189.
In our experience, the current approach is a reasonable balance between the tradeoffs. It's true that we don't see all the comments like the ones you posted here, and we can't address what we don't see. It's also true that, as volume has grown, we've found it harder to reply to absolutely every question. But it's still eminently possible to get an answer if you want one—especially if you're asking in a way that signals good faith*.
(*I add the latter bit because some people use the format of "asking a question" as way of being aggressive and in such cases we may respond otherwise than by taking the question literally. That's pretty rare though.)
I think generally the mods like to avoid anything involving "politics" since it's likely to start a flame war.
The issue, of course, is that literally anything can be "political", and moreover by trying to actively avoid political discussions you sort of tacitly endorse the status quo.
It's a tough line to draw, and I'd be lying if I said where I knew where to draw it; HN is a fun forum specifically because the moderation is generally very good. They're not perfect but they do try and shut things down before they devolve into flame wars and personal insults. If there weren't aggressive modding, HN would devolve into 4chan or 8chan, and it wouldn't be appealing to me after the age of ~17.
Can we have a discussion that improves in quality if people dissent to the view of the article, agree with the article, or hold a view that is something in between?
If the answer is no then the risk that someone will flag the article increases dramatically. If the discussion environment isn't open and peaceful then how much more likely isn't it that people will just disengage, flag, and then move on.
Open and peaceful isn't the same as accepting an objectively incorrect viewpoint as equally valid. But I agree that what you describe as how some people read it is likely what is happening.
Considering how often I’ve been seeing people on HN ardently defending everything Trump and “owning the libs”, I somehow doubt “open and peaceful discussion environment” is the deciding factor in flagging submissions of this nature.
Is this common belief grounded in reality? We're well past the notion that the "old man" (and his VP, as well as most, if not all of his cabinet) believes in the law and he has stacked the deck in his favor.
To beat a dead horse, propaganda works. And it's so much more pervasive than an occasional misleading message.
Millions in the U.S. get "information" from a firehose of propaganda.
That defines the reality they see. Others perhaps just feel hopeless but... want to believe that our constitutional democracy somehow manages to hold on and rebound.
I am glad that atleast some journalists writes about this in the US+West. In India, there is little to no resistance, contemporary culture is flooded, institutions are tamed, media houses are strong armed or bought entirely and there is no one on the streets fighting the tyranny.
If anything, there's lots of writing on how Germany was ultimately inspired by socio-political events here in the USA on how to conduct their fascist behavior.
It's not just Trump. Look at how even the weak Republican pushback is framed. They have no moral objection to his actions, only for the risk of blowback.
See Ted Cruz's remarks on Jimmy Kimmel: "[W]hen it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it."
Or Brett Kavanaugh on Lisa Cook: that Trump shouldn't dismiss her because "what goes around comes around [...] if there's a Democrat president".
This is the moderate Republican position: no concern for the harm caused to people on the political left, only concern that they on the right might not get away with it. The MAGA position is, as this article shows, much worse.
I am so terribly disturbed by the ICE shootings (and killings). There is no justification for them. This is supposed to be a nation of laws and the rights of those shot (to say nothing of those abducted and harassed, beaten, or removed without due process) has been so grossly violated that it's hard to believe.
My heart aches for the countless victims of this band of fascists in the executive branch.
The killings are horrifying in their own right, but the most disturbing part to me is how quickly the Trump administration will just declare these people as "terrorists" before any kind of investigation has happened.
This suggests to me there is some level of systemic intent (or at least ambivalence) with this administration's use of ICE's use of lethal force. It is beyond concerning. This admin is now very literally murdering us and will immediately try to justify it.
It's appalling how they go straight to making things up to suit their narrative, as if video evidence doesn't exist. They know the MAGAs will believe them, and may shed doubt on interpretation for people who aren't that curious about truth. A lie can travel halfway around the world, as they say.
There's nothing surprising about it given US history.
The US administration has always labeled any resistance against it as terrorism at least ever since 9/11. You might remember the justification of killing young Afghani males, who were posthumously labelled as terrorists. They drone strike an apartment complex and report 25 dead terrorists, conveniently omitting to report on dead children or women, because there were 25 males between the age of 15 - 25 among the dead. No evidence of terrorist activity required.
The only change is that the same justification is now being used within the US borders.
The dead are still, however, The Other, which is how it's being justified now as it was when the dead were foreigners in a war zone.
> the most disturbing part to me is how quickly the Trump administration will just declare these people as "terrorists" before any kind of investigation has happened
Imperial boomerang. After enabling Israel/IDF which routinely just shoots unarmed people and officials on all levels simply justify it with "Terrorists.", and also routinely denies ambulance access to victims shots, it was only a matter of time until such and similar tactics come back home. Because politicians back home saw that the world was okay with it, so why not do it home.
People are supposed to defend their rights from far away, so that they don't have to defend them uncomfortably close when it's too late to avoid many casualties.
It's not just declaring them terrorists before investigating - it's persisting after evidence is out that they are blatantly not. An unarmed mum and a male nurse assisting someone in recent cases.
> I am so terribly disturbed by the ICE shootings (and killings). There is no justification for them.
I think they are simply poorly trained people that are given free reign. The results are disastrous. They probably don't wake up thinking "Today I'm going to murder someone" but they just don't realize what they're doing. I'm not sure how it's at the destructiveness scale at this moment, but these organizations can and it probably will get much worse as their internal culture morphs into more directly aggressive stance.
The shootings were incredibly dumb, and it's pretty much what one would expect when they create this kind of situation. Listening to the "Revolutions" podcast I realized situations like these are incredibly common all along history, you have armed people with tense spirits, a gun goes off and tragedy ensues. The most terrible part of all of this is the reaction of the authorities that lie, gaslight and support these people, get them off the hook and this reaction will only generate more violence and more deaths as ICE realizes they _really can_ act with impunity.
They are also instructed illegally. They are told they don't need warrants signed by a judge in order to arrest someone.
The Stanford Prison Experiment is a good analogue to what we are seeing with ICE. People empowered to be cruel.
And they are given the message (from the president!) they have absolute immunity, and instructed to regard the law as a set of nonbinding guidelines.
The Supreme Court played a role in this too. They made it harder to stop by halting the long-established precedent of nationwide injunctions.
The people pulling the trigger are still not blameless. They are murderers no matter how badly misled. Your common murderer is misguided too. That doesn't mean they are absolved. I don't think that's what you were saying, but it bears mentioning.
> They probably don't wake up thinking "Today I'm going to murder someone" but they just don't realize what they're doing.
Jonathan Ross (the ICE agent who shot and killed Renée Good) is an Iraq war veteran who has served in military and paramilitary units (National Guard, CBP, ICE) for over two decades. He intentionally engaged in a behavior that has been documented as far back as 2014 [1] to manufacture a reason to shoot the person in front of him.
Did he premeditate killing someone while getting out of bed that morning? Probably not.
Did he make the decision to kill Ms. Good in advance? No reasonable doubt.
Yep, I also have been a bit alarmed how this is pattern matching to early phases of the many revolutions covered in the Revolutions podcast. A U.S. revolution is a frightening proposition, even if it’ll seem warranted at some future point.
There are absolutely people in this group who woke up hoping they got an excuse to murder someone. You interact with the entire gamut of human experience every day, but you never know which ones are the secret heroes and which ones are the secret concentration camp guards until they're presented with the right set of circumstances. It's as much a mistake to assume that everyone is relatively moral as it is to assume that everyone is relatively evil.
> They probably don't wake up thinking "Today I'm going to murder someone" but they just don't realize what they're doing.
Maybe not explicitly, but I do think there's a selection bias towards people who do want to do that. If you know you can get away with exerting violence towards a group of people you don't like, then that career is going to be very appealing towards people who want to do that.
It's the same thing with priests and their abuse of children. It's not like being a priest turns you into a child-abuser. It's just that priests are in a situation that they're constantly surrounded by kids unsupervised, can live alone unmarried without anyone questioning it, and when they do something horrible and abuse their power then they're often just moved to another parish. Of course a job like that is going to be attractive to people who want to abuse children.
I think ICE is similar. I do think there are people who join ICE with genuinely noble intentions, like getting rid of cartels and whatnot, but the Trump admin has made ICE something extremely appealing to people who have worse intentions.
They're basically jackboots, I have to imagine almost entirely composed of the republican far right. Just imagine the echo chamber that exists within their ranks.
They literally just murdered someone in cold blood. Textbook execution without trial. And have some of the most powerful people in the world saying how brave they are and how great of a job they did executing their duty.
Their entire recruiting process has the effect of self selecting for the exact kind of person who is significantly more likely to shoot an unarmed nonviolent protestor.
If I recall correctly they even have notably higher salary and signing bonuses compared to similar agencies, which could be (decent pessimistically) interpreted as a way to hoover up more recruits with questionable moral bases. "Oh I really don't think ICE is doing the right thing, but oh boy sign me up for that cash baby".
> So the United States, once the world’s exemplary liberal democracy, is now a hybrid state combining a fascist leader and a liberal Constitution; but no, it has not fallen to fascism. And it will not.
And once Trump feels secure enough, he will also behead Congress, or at least many of its members. Maybe he wants to keep it as a convenient puppet show. Remember that this is just 1 year into his 2nd term. There is still much time for making things worse.
To be honest, I found this essay a bit meandering and I lost interest in reading the whole thing (coming off the heels of re-reading Civil Disobedience, which by comparison is immediately forthright and to the point).
Skipping ahead to the 14 properties, however, points 5, 7, 11, and 12 are probably the most evident in the present moment.
I read through every comment in this thread and no one seems to be addressing that the people voted for this. They'll probably vote for it again in the midterms and/or 2028. You're despairing over a democratic outcome. What do you actually propose that would fix this? Disenfranchise half the country? Outlaw things people are voting for to happen? Any criticism needs to address how we democratically counter this regime, how this makes sense when this is the voted upon regime, or perhaps make an argument for why democracy has failed.
My perspective is that a scale has tipped, a critical mass of people decided they want this sort of thing, and they got it. It wasn't rigged, it wasn't fraudulent, it was a democratic election. Critique democracy itself, or the criticism is incoherent. Make an argument for why a government should be disallowed from doing things that the voters want it to do.
Way more than half the country was disenfranchised in the last election. Best case scenario (and very unlikely scenario): blue sweep in the next elections and then massive electoral reform.
Electoral reform is really hard for parties just voted in by that election system. Suddenly they see the good in that which they had previously seen as bad.
The USA has about 342 million people, and over 18% of them are age 14 or younger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...) and at least some of them are 15-17 (citation needed). So clearly, doing some arithmetic, there are fewer than 304 million adults.
Not only was "half the country" not "disenfranchised", literally a majority of adults actually voted (and this is not even considering that not all adults were statutorily allowed to vote in the first place).
Only republicans are actively destroying federal voter protections. Many red states already run elections with ridiculous voting restrictions. It's up to the federal government to discourage those practices, not encourage them. Luckily, they cannot mandate such changes.
You can't vote away the Constitutional rights of other people. ICE is regularly violating the Constitution and being encouraged to do so by those in power. Unless multiple amendments were removed from the Constitution without anybody noticing, your point about "the people voted for this" is an absurd and ridiculous attempt to justify real abuse of power and anti-democratic actions.
If we can't agree as a people that the Constitution applies to everyone equally then it isn't a problem with democracy, it's a problem with fascism and must dealt with as such.
There might be Gandhian/Nelson Mandela way of handling this.
Both fought to change system and didn't teach hatredness towards individual a Racist person.
Get arrested peacefully.
Others can work for immediate protest for release of the arrested.
Appeal to common values that they also have, and show how they are violating the religious values they profess.
Technically someone can make some app, that can easily help in getting the citizenship proof for an individual.
I think a lot of voters were fooled (or foolish) into thinking that Trump would limit himself to go after other people; he got a higher percentage of minority votes in 2024 then prior elections. That's not good but the mask is off and I think Trump has lost a lot of those voters.
It's also hard to quantify how much the pandemic and inflation moved some voters away from Biden/Harris.
I think Dems will win big in the next election. The question is how long this lesson will last with voters.
If your definition of Democracy is based on how we elect our leaders, then Hitler's Germany was a Democracy because Hitler was elected Chancellor by a majority. You need to define Democracy based on how we replace our leaders. In that case, Hitler's Germany was not a democracy since it was impossible for the people to replace the Fuhrer had they wished to. In Trump's case, we may still be a Democracy but there are worrysome indications ("Trump’s recent musing that there should be no 2026 election may or may not have been jocular").
I thought a lot of the rhetoric was around economic issues during the 2024 campaign season? I see this argument a lot, and while it's true that a sizable percentage voted for punishment of their political opponents, I don't think independents (in the immigration and "egg prices" camps) wanted this. Trump 2.0 voters should be ashamed because the signs were obvious, but the notion that we need to put kid gloves on for the vile, murderous fascists is asinine.
The next chapter of America needs to be punishing anyone who was apart of these death squads and the officials who allowed it to happen. That's it. There is no statute of limitations on murder or treason. We can't make the same mistakes as we did after the civil war (leniency towards confederates and various compromises)
The people voted for border control and law and order, shooting random protesters in cold blood was not part of Trumps platform. It was an obvious conclusion after some thought, but many didnt think that far ahead.
I actually think disenfranchisement is the only solution. Nazis didn't change their worldview after the war ended, they were shamed for them and learned to hide.
Republicans are now defending straight-up murder in broad daylight by federal forces. I doubt there's anything that could change their minds at this point, they're too far gone.
Yeah Americans don't want to face that their culture is the problem. Trump is still slightly more popular than he was at this point during his first term
They'd have to change the fundamental nature of business. Most US companies are run like tiny little fascist dictatorships, which is a great training ground for the real thing. The relationship between capital (owners/management) and labor is usually adversarial with "at-will" employment. Contrast in Norway, where businesses operate within a 3-way Agreement (Trepartssamarbeidet) - a formal cooperation between the government, employers' associations, and trade unions.
Americans would have to change capitalism too. The most reliable way to prevent the rise of the far right is to implement robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance.
But even in this thread they don't want to do that.
Seriously lol. MN had HUGE protests the last few days, as did LA when the DHS was there (and why they probably went to somewhere less hostile like MN and soon Maine).
Itis horrendous by any measure. But Fox and conservative media amplify and support it all. Trump voters by and large love the deportations; I know this from my in laws over the holidays. If a few eggs get broken they really don’t care. Notice red states have none of this because Trump focuses ICE on blue states.
Protests are what Trump wants. He would like nothing better than marshal law and cancelling the mid terms. He has said so many times.
I also wonder how politically weak the US could be if its rivals and adversaries see this level of internal violence as an opportunity to step up pressure or exploit divisions at home.
You can be pro-immigration enforcement, while also anti whatever-the-fuck-this-is.
It's called being pro-rule of law.
You're not allowed to just shoot people in the back that are very obviously not a threat, even if their idiotic lack of proper training makes them feel like they're in danger. It's literally South Parkian "they're coming right for us!!!" -- BANG -- as justification for lethal force of an unarmed person in custody.
The mainstream media is not covering the many daily protests I see in my area, and hear and see from friends and family elsewhere. However, I do think the majority of Americans do not have the luxury (or fear of losing their job, and thus their healthcare, etc) to just walk out on their jobs or responsibilities, and the social safety nets here are limited (and being further cut by this administration).
I do think a general strike is the last chance at a non-violent resistance, but the oligarchs and powerful can weather that storm much more easily than the average American.
> But there is still no state management of the economy here (as there was to a degree in Nazi Germany and fascist Italy). Trump is content to aid business by reducing government protections of the environment and of workers … and his economic policy is mainly just to let businessmen do what they want.
Well, we can check that one off the list with 2024 hindsight.
>He’s never actually done a Putin and tried to make himself a permanent president, let alone suggest any coherent plan for overthrowing the constitutional system. And I don’t even think that’s in his mind
And another one bites the dust.
Note that all the scholars who get very technical on what they want to call Fascist all compare him to Marcos, Erdogan, Milosovic. That's still not a good review.
“For another, the term has been overused to the point of meaninglessness, especially by left-leaning types who call you a fascist if you oppose abortion or affirmative action.”
The left was right too early. Whereas I, the enlightened centrist was right and just the right time.
The Trump administration has gone so far down the path of fascism and crime that I'm convinced they don't simply want to be in power indefinitely -- they need it. Otherwise, the moment a law-abiding president gets elected, there will be criminal charges against all involved. And there's no statute of limitations for murder.
I believe this country will need massive investigations and criminal trials to heal. I am concerned with what happens in between, but this is reality as I see it.
> I believe this country will need massive investigations and criminal trials to heal. I am concerned with what happens in between, but this is reality as I see it.
Trump learned his lesson and pardoned every Jan 6 terrorist. If he leaves office, he is going to pardon every single person in his administration for anything they did from 2025-2029. There will be no investigations and no criminal trials. They all know this to be true.
Unfortunately liberals seem to care far more about "unity" than justice in any sense. They have been letting conservatives get away with damaging our country repeatedly throughout the decades and always welcome them back with open bipartisan arms. Maybe we could have nipped this in the bud if the confederate states were forced to de-radicalize like Germany was. Instead literal traitors to our country were right back to running for national office again and have been sowing dissent literally ever since. How many Democrats just voted for even more ICE funding for fucks sake?
No chance in hell Democrats do a single thing to these people when they're out of power. If anything it'll be a Democrat justifying more ICE shootings so as "not to look weak on immigration"
The most scaring and amazing thing is not Trump himself, but all the people (suddenly) supporting him and being silent (including too many Democrats) in order to keep their position or for for opportunistic purposes. And destroying democracy along the way. Just like all the secret police agents in Iran or the henchmen of Hitler. CEO's of bigtech. Crypto-libertarians. Too many people are sucking up to wannabe dictators when the moment is there
Same pattern played out in Germany. The centrists were more concerned with leftists than Hitler. Big business thought they could cosy up to him and keep him under control. Opportunistic collaboration for self preservation or personal benefit.
Of course these all turned out to be grave miscalculations. I imagine that pattern will eventually play out this time too...
Is it possible their only miscalculation was not realizing how much of the world would fight back? Because if it hadn't, they would have continued enjoying the benefits.
Only somebody who isn't aware of whose "Congress speech received multiple standing ovations, touted 'most by any world leader'" would be surprised by that bipartisan support you mention. That happened in 2024, before Trump began his second term, but shows how the system works.
I actually think that there is an amalgam of ideologies here (I know, so very fascist of them). Trump is more of a monarchist. A lot of the people supporting him are outright fascists. Some are plain idiots.
Them winning absolute control over the country would be a disaster for their movement though. They'd turn to internal fighting, the entropy of victory and all that. And they don't seem terribly competent with governance, it would probably turn off a lot of smart people, so the country would lose a lot of its capabilities.
EDIT: Also, there are funny things going on with the political submissions. I think there is active interference going on, they get flagged almost immediately. This got flagged and unflagged in the space of a couple minutes, so thanks to the mod team they are letting it up, I think there is important conversation to be had here.
> Them winning absolute control over the country would be a disaster for their movement though. They'd turn to internal fighting, the entropy of victory and all that.
that would be after they've finished executing the undesirables?
I am quite amazed that the 2nd amendment people seem to be the ones that are cheering on the federal gestapo
Yes, this is literally the scenario every 2nd amendment fanatic justifies themselves with. But we already knew that made no sense; it doesn't change anything to have the hypocrisy demonstrated.
The flagging system has been systematically gamed for restricting content for years now. I don't think the mods deserve any praise for occasionally doing something about it. They are ultimately complicit in the state of things being hidden on this site. It's "working as expected".
And Germany would have been a much larger country economically if Hitler was executed after his first coup attempt. The Weimar government didn't choose that path though, and went for civility.
The brain drain was massive, both before the war, and even more so after. That didn't stop the peasant minded from supporting the Nazi regime though. They got to punish the people who they were told made them poor.
I live in FL, so I get to interact daily with people who are cheering for this crackdown, and have said the equivalent of "those rioters (protestors) should be put down in the street". I don't have much hope for where our country is headed.
The flags on any type of post like this are absolutely ridiculous. Glad the mods are at least for now letting this one stand.
Monarchs are in place without democratic support, so they have little incentive to be popular (though not unpopular either). Not being involved in politics often results in them having a distant concern for their subjects. They rarely instigate policy making. Doesn't sound like Trump.
Stephen Miller is a fascist, no doubt about it. Even if Trump is not a fascist, per se, he's following the advice of -- and delegating authority to -- the fascists that surround him.
After reading this piece I was wondering if there were any examples of a fascist state that were deposed by peace, or whether armed conflict is now inevitable.
There are few, Spain's King Juan Carlos I being crowned king after Francisco Franco's death, and Chile's Pinochet leaving power after the 1988 referendum for example.
I hate this quote with such a passion. It's treated as some enduring wisdom passed down through generations. When it's from a 2016 book you have probably never heard of.
It seems like it's already too late, I see Americans who I thought were down to earth unbothered by ICE killings, blaming victims and calling criticism as TDS aka Trump Derangement Syndrome. I was totally shocked the other day when this came from an open minded and seemingly 'cool' guy at work.
I think your point is true, better critique helps dismantling post-truth populism. I also think the article is correct in its assessment and is a good critique for a certain segment of the population. It might be true that it won't persuade any trumpers though. Not sure you can persuade them with articles.
The author wrote a book about how America needs to reembrace Christianity. A review of that book said it was unclear who the book was for, given that the author is a homosexual atheist Jew. I would say that applies to this article too. As you note, it won’t convince Trump voters of anything. Its only utility is for those who already think Trump is a fascist, a term that the author himself says is basically meaningless. It merely makes those who agree with its conclusion feel good and click links. Signal detection theory tells us more noise makes signals harder to detect. So the article is counterproductive. Ok, meets the authors definition of fascist; so what?
LEFT-CENTER BIAS
These media sources have a slight to moderate liberal bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by appeals to emotion or stereotypes) to favor liberal causes. These sources are generally trustworthy for information but may require further investigation
Everyone's paying a lot of attention to how bad Trump is, or the midterms. My question is, what happens in 2028? How much of current policy is something the majority of Republican voters (let alone the American people) or the political class actually want and would do without Trump to lead them? How much is only being implemented due to Trump's choices, political style and cult of personality? (Assuming Constitutional safeguards remain strong enough that Trump can't find a way to remain in power past his current term; if Trump is still President in 2029, the system's seriously broken down and all bets are off.)
Will the US say "Wait a minute, things went too far, now that he's gone we need more checks and balances before another President tries to repeat what just happened" like when they added term limits to the Constitution after FDR, or some of the post-Watergate limits imposed on the Presidency?
Or will Trump's redefinition of government power become normalized, like the redefinition of government power that happened with the Patriot Act, TSA security theater, NSA spying on US citizens, etc. after 9/11 that was justified as anti-terrorism? Those policies were never unwound even though the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are over, Osama bin Laden is dead, and there have been no more attacks on that scale.
> now that he's gone we need more checks and balances
I'm sure if a Democrat is elected in 2028, all of a sudden a lot of people are going to remember that they don't want a unitary executive. A lot of people who are currently cheering on the administration.
I don't think things are going back to how they were before Trump and will only continue in the same direction unless midterm elections don't get canceled/abused, and in that case Trump would get impeached. But that doesn't mean too much. There are fundamental problems that Democrats were unwilling to tackle and are likely to do nothing about.
First up, I don't think the republican party moderates in 2029. The Trump mentality is the new normal and I believe republicans are just going to keep trying to be as fascist as possible as long as possible. We've learned that there are basically no limits on a corrupt presidency and I really fear what that will mean for any future republican president.
But secondly, I'm afraid that Democrats aren't rising to the occasion. They aren't putting forward meaningful reforms or changes to address the fascism. In terms of ICE, a lot of them are trying to put forward meaningless reforms like "let's give them more training" or "let's put their names in a QR code". The entire agency needs nuremberg style trials at this point and some Dems want to give them a weekend meeting with HR.
These two facts scare the shit out of me. Because, my fear is we will see a repeat of 2024 in 2032. Assuming we have free and fair elections, I can see a Democrat becoming president in 2028, doing nothing to address the systemic problems exposed by trump, and ultimately a new republican will be voted in in 2032 because people are sick of nothing getting better under democrats. And that 2032 republican president will ultimately know they can do everything Trump did and they'll be cheered on by the base.
Democrats need to be messaging about real positive changes they'll make.
Everything even vaguely critical of trump is immediately flagged, tech or not. Christ, we've seen outright propaganda generated by this administration using AI, which is obviously something hackers care about, be flagged relentlessly.
It's very obvious this administration and it's supporters are trying to control the narrative of their crimes against the American people. It's evident with their doctoring of evidence, their outright deceit, and the suspicious censorship we see across the entire web. Including HN.
This comment betrays a misunderstanding of history and of what fascism is and doesn't even engage with the article's points. A totalitarian fascist state does not come into being all at once; it emerges in steps that tend towards that outcome, steps which the article discusses in detail. Furthermore, that nascent fascism can be defeated through electoral means does not preclude it from being fascism.
So the only point someone could conceivably write this article, in your mind, would be the moment after its writers and platforms would be subjected to state-sanctioned punishment for uttering it?
I'll accept a little front-running then, if you don't mind.
No they could write it in another state, anonymously, or on more underground/less mainstream established platforms than one of the oldest publications in the history of the republic.
More like what’s happening with regards to Iran.
Also, front-running also implies that there’s an order for fascism coming up. So the intent of establishing fascism is preceded by a bungled and visibly brutal and horribly implemented performative “operation” that this massacre by ICE is? That makes no sense. This is not an order for fascism that an article is sort of front-running protectively. The better analogy is a media entity predictably calling one extremely messed up thing another extremely messed up thing, and leaving a massive vulnerability for their side. Messed-up-thing-promoting folks will use articles like this a year from now after ICE ceases operations, effectively issuing a silent “apology” of sorts and curtailing the violence, to promote the next messed up thing they want to do (which may be less messed up than the ICE massacres but still would be quite messed up and avoidable).
Every pessimistic approximation isnt always good. We lose credibility when we keep doing it.
> True fascism would not allow the massive criticism and outrage (including by active lawmakers and heads of state & local governments) that recent events have reasonably led to.
It hasn't yet captured the whole country. The parts of criticism they have had the power to silence, they have already silenced. Who's in the White House press corps again?
When they will capture all the power they need, the criticism will be silenced.
I fear that we might not see a definitive Democratic win though at the midterms. I think your country is already past the point of no return and your population is just not getting it yet.
Thank you for your personal, individual wisdom that exceeds that of 230+ million eligible US voters in the 2026.
That about settles it, we are past the point of no return so we should do absolutely nothing. In fact any action would be irrational, a waste of effort and a misallocation of time and energy vs spending it with our families and/or on ourselves.
And somehow, I am the person who is defending the so-called fascists and ensuring a place “shining their jackboots” (your peer here used this expression to try to denigrate/attack me)?
It must really hurt to be so smart and to be able to see all of the future perfectly.
Ah yes, the “no true fascism” fallacy. Thanks for posting your half-thought out defense of the party that is murdering citizens in the street! I’m sure they appreciate your attempts to keep their jackboots shiny.
Can you point out how I was defending a party? I’m simply saying that the US isn’t a fascist state yet. We can engage, debate and discuss. People are actively out in the streets of MSP and watching and confronting these agents and the incidents are being documented, spread widely and analyzed. Calling it fascism isn’t productive nor is it even front running.
I am willing to bet against any of you that this insanity perpetrated by poorly trained or untrained agents running amok in the midwest will be old news by the end of the year and no not because it has been subsumed by some worse class of atrocities. It will have ended, ICE will have ceased these sort of unchecked “operarions” and largely due to public outrage and scrutiny. Actual outrage, scrutiny and genuine activism, not writing articles from an armchair that mischaracterize this as fascism or racism. That sort of thing only perpetuates and makes the rabid crazies who actually support these actions in light of the tragedies sink their jackboots in even harder and empowers them more despite them being in the minority.
It's true. This kind of authoritarian state violence is pretty reminiscent of fascism. Especially what looks like a gangland execution of a man who could only ever be described as exercising his 2A rights by carrying a firearm undrawn legally under his CCW. However, the list of things that have been called fascism are so long that I have to admit that my eyes initially glazed over the headline because many things have been described as fascism.
And yet we had elections in 2020. So whatever, it was clearly not authoritarian fascism because we had free elections that the authoritarian fascist was ousted in. So what I think I experienced there was semantic satiation with the word fascism.
EDIT: To clarify position vis a vis reply, I am simply saying that I have heard the word 'fascism' so much I don't really react with any sense when someone says it. It's like hearing 'rape' or 'spying' on Hacker News. I assume it means "I was shown a banner ad for toothpaste after searching for toothpaste". In other contexts those words have negative valence of great significance. In this context, I just glaze over.
Likewise, the word 'fascism' from a left-leaning outlet could be anything from the end of medicare subsidies to a drone strike on an Islamic fundamentalist general to charging fares on a train.
Just sharing how I feel about it. It does not have that emotional strength that it originally felt.
A careful reader will notice that both of those warnings are about the same person. The same person who tried to illegally and violently overturn that 2020 election result. Maybe they weren't crying wolf after all?
HN in a nutshell. Everyone wants to look measured and above it all. I feel like I've seen more posts about Dan Kahan's cultural cognition than about the actual killings themselves
you're saying that because as recently as 10 years ago, some people were warning about fascism taking hold in the United States, and even though they turned out to be right, they should have held off using that word until we reached this moment, where no sensible person would argue.
It's amazing that so many "leaders" (esp. in tech) seemed to not worry about or even tacitly/openly supported the Trump admin, when so many other folks could clearly see the disaster looming on the horizon.
And it isn't even like it was different people. Donald Trump has been the protagonist of the GOP for ten years. The people who were saying "this is creeping fascism" were saying it about the same guy who is doing it now.
HN has had numerous major frontpage threads that are critical of this administration. Not enough to satisfy those who want more, but that is a separate issue.
Hey, I think you're a superhero for making this place such wonderful forum for deep and interesting conversation, but isn't there some point where you might consider putting your finger on the scale to help stop the slide into authoritarianism? This seems like the moment, maybe?
Yes I know because I've read through several right before they are predictably taken down. But yes I will take your word and stop believing my eyes and ears...
fwiw it's been flagged and unflagged four times since I posted. I don't know the algorithm -- but it's been great to see whomever is unflagging understanding the importance and significance of this issue and relevance to hackers everywhere.
If you are debating whether to read this article, read it. It’s comprehensive and precise, and although political in substance, not political in form — test-fitting an imprecise definition. The fact it also reaches a firm conclusion (spoiler alert right there in the title) is depoliticized by allowing for malleable application. A benchmark article I will now go share elsewhere.
What’s left to talk about? How to react. How it ends. Where we likely go from there. Where we should go.
People are dying on broad daylight and who knows what Anne Frank atrocities we're going to discover in the years, even decades, to come in this year alone. Yes it's political. No, this isn't really red vs. blue anymore.
If nothing else it's very clear we need to bring politics back to the dinner table. And not he afraid to talk about it in 'nonpartisan' spaces. You can ignore politics, but it never ignores you.
If this interested you, here is another detailed and precise article by a historian, on the same topic:
https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-...
…and another one, much less academic in style and substance, but no less informative and relevant:
https://scribe.rip/@carmitage/i-researched-every-attempt-to-...
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> How it ends. Where we likely go from there.
I highly recommend Anniversary https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12583926/
It's nice but also endlessly frustrating and very very late, because what he regards as overuse of the term is really just people who were applying the term correctly for the past 10 years as people like the author refused to call a spade a spade. If the nascent fascist were discarded, people would have stopped saying it so much.
The problem for people like the author is that other more astute individuals [1] correctly diagnosed the issue over a decade ago. All it took was for her to have grown up in Poland and to be a clinical psychologist who knows how to spot malignant narcissism. The rest fell into place because human nature is so... predictable.
So while it's welcome for the author to finally catch up to the rest of us, it's a little late at this point. Also If people like the author had listened to more sensible people when they had started using the F word instead of dismissing them as hyperbolic, then we wouldn't be here.
Also this bit:
> Although Trump is term-limited, we must not expect that he and his MAGA loyalists will voluntarily turn over the White House to a Democrat in 2029, regardless of what the voters say—and the second insurrection will be far better organized than the first.
shows the author is still a step behind. The correct framing is that the first insurrection succeeded. It continued after Jan 6 for 4 years, as Trump waged an information war contending he was the true winner of the election, and also a war on the judiciary to evade accountability. In that battle he evaded all accountability, nullified the impeachment clause of the Constitution, and also gained "Presidential Immunity" from his appointees on SCOTUS. He also nullified Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits anyone who has previously taken an oath to support the Constitution from holding state or federal office if they have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the US. Trump caused an insurrection, and yet somehow he was allowed to run and hold office again.
So the first insurrection was successful, the perpetrators got away with it, and they assumed total power over the government they attacked after evading judicial accountability and waging an information war on the population.
Anyway, next time there won't be a need for an insurrection, because the only reason there was one in 2021 was because plans A through G failed -- they couldn't get votes in Georgia, they couldn't overturn any state, they didn't win any court cases, they couldn't get people to go along with their "alternate electors" theory, and they couldn't get Pence to go along with the scheme. So they caused an insurrection as a last ditch effort to delay certification.
In 2029 every Republican will go along with plan A. They've already purged everyone who did the right thing in 2021 from the party. So they won't need an insurrection because any Democrat that wins in Georgia will just be erased, as they've made sure to take state control over county election boards after county election boards there went against Trump's wishes in 2020.
[1] https://medium.com/@Elamika
This is it. Trump doesn't really matter anymore, he will likely be dead by the next election. Why it doesn't matter is because its all project 2025 people now, they're using Trump to further their goals and those hove some overlap with Trumps wants. Their main goal is that there will be no transfer of power away from them again. Like the 2020 election they will try many different things, but will likely succeed as the party now is mostly loyalists, the entire white house cabinet as well, so does most of the government as a goal of project 2025 wasn't just RAGE, it was also to hire replacements. And now they have very well funded goons in training to deploy when needed.
Back in 2024 after reading project 2025 and about its authors and backers (federalist society, Thiel, Vance, other tech CEOs, Curtis Yarvin, etc) it was already clear that this was going to happen. I was already convinced that the only way out of this was a general strike and/or military coup, and it doesn't look any better now. I fear an Iran like crackdown is in the deck now.
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> The correct framing is that the first insurrection succeeded
If you redefine success to whatever you want, then sure.
> In 2029 every Republican will go along with plan A
If you treat people as enemies, they’ll become one. The arrogance in the assumption that every Republican will allow Trump to get elected for a 3rd term might spite them into it.
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> If you are debating whether to read this article, read it. It’s comprehensive and precise, and although political in substance […]
Also perhaps worth noting that David Frum, former speech writer to Dubya Bush, writes for The Atlantic (and has been against Trump from the start: see his book Trumpocracy):
* https://www.theatlantic.com/author/david-frum/
So we're not just talking about 'leftists' criticizing these actions and policies.
The left / right split isn't really meaningful in the United States right now.
The split is currently between people who believe in and want a functional and equitable government, and those who are fine with a kleptocracy as long as they are personally the beneficiaries (or at least, the people they dislike suffer worse).
People like Frum were quick to notice this and get on the correct side of it. Unfortunately, there are not enough Republicans who feel the same way to make much of a difference.
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And was a pretty rabid conservative until the Trump era. He only left the Republicans in 2024, he was around for the first term.
Maybe he's grown a spine.
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This should not have been flagged off the front page.
I really worry for the people in the US, but I'm hopeful it's hegemony is ending.
Techno accelerationists don't like to be reminded of their complicity.
I don't think accelerationists would mind - even if they believe that what's happening is wrong, going further in is the backbone of the whole ideology, so why would they be having second thoughts?
I think the real group behind this is people who are capable of sensing that this is wrong at least on some deeper level, but who are so complacent that they just want not to think about it too much. Maybe it's because they're in too deep, maybe they make too much money off of it to care, maybe their heels are too dug in on social issues for them to ever try to reconsider. Possibly a combination of any of the three.
Every thread about US politics has this comment, and the same response: this is not the right outlet, and some people feel like this content does not fit the topic of the website.
If you are not American, it’s rather tiring to have every website and news outlet talk about it ad nauseum, and have it take over every subreddit and conversation. Americans get all uppity when you tell them that you don’t want that, as if their news are so important that they transcend categorisation.
I care. It’s important. It’s just not the right website.
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When your political reality becomes scary. Confronting reality is scary. Politics is scary but honestly living in facism is just about the worst thing for founder culture imaginable
I really wish there was more transparency around mod actions
I think it isn’t mod actions but rather the very likely fact that there is a small, but large enough group of flaggers who will act in unison to remove any such post from the front page. If you want an affirmation of the efficacy of the moderation system, what you should want is transparency into the voting behaviors of the population. If you see a heavy voting correlation between flagged posts and either a specific set of users, voting timing (these types of posts get flagged much earlier than those that lean the other way politically), or both, then there is cause for concern that the algorithm of HN’s self moderation tools is being gamed. My bet is that it’s not the mods doing anything, but rather that there is already a critical mass of flag happy users that are controlling what gets to stay on the front page. I think it would be very interesting to see a write up on this topic, but it’s highly unlikely because I think it would violate privacy and user expectations of anonymity.
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The mods (dang and tomhow) have written probably 50,000 words on the subject. I've also emailed the mods and promptly received personal replies.
Transparent as you could ever hope for: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang
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Let me see if I can outline how we approach this in a way that might make sense to you...
People use the word "transparency" to mean different things. Here are the ways in which I think it's fair to say we're transparent about mod actions: (1) we explain the principles that we apply, frequently and at length; and (2) we're happy to answer questions, including about specific cases.
What we don't do is publish a complete moderation log. To understand why, it's probably easiest to look through my past answers about this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39234189.
In our experience, the current approach is a reasonable balance between the tradeoffs. It's true that we don't see all the comments like the ones you posted here, and we can't address what we don't see. It's also true that, as volume has grown, we've found it harder to reply to absolutely every question. But it's still eminently possible to get an answer if you want one—especially if you're asking in a way that signals good faith*.
(*I add the latter bit because some people use the format of "asking a question" as way of being aggressive and in such cases we may respond otherwise than by taking the question literally. That's pretty rare though.)
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I think generally the mods like to avoid anything involving "politics" since it's likely to start a flame war.
The issue, of course, is that literally anything can be "political", and moreover by trying to actively avoid political discussions you sort of tacitly endorse the status quo.
It's a tough line to draw, and I'd be lying if I said where I knew where to draw it; HN is a fun forum specifically because the moderation is generally very good. They're not perfect but they do try and shut things down before they devolve into flame wars and personal insults. If there weren't aggressive modding, HN would devolve into 4chan or 8chan, and it wouldn't be appealing to me after the age of ~17.
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Does this help?
https://news.ycombinator.com/flagged
Can we have a discussion that improves in quality if people dissent to the view of the article, agree with the article, or hold a view that is something in between?
If the answer is no then the risk that someone will flag the article increases dramatically. If the discussion environment isn't open and peaceful then how much more likely isn't it that people will just disengage, flag, and then move on.
Open and peaceful isn't the same as accepting an objectively incorrect viewpoint as equally valid. But I agree that what you describe as how some people read it is likely what is happening.
Considering how often I’ve been seeing people on HN ardently defending everything Trump and “owning the libs”, I somehow doubt “open and peaceful discussion environment” is the deciding factor in flagging submissions of this nature.
Everyone having doubts, just wait until it’s time for the new presidential election, and see if power will be given up willingly.
Hopefully old man won’t be around that long
Is this common belief grounded in reality? We're well past the notion that the "old man" (and his VP, as well as most, if not all of his cabinet) believes in the law and he has stacked the deck in his favor.
To beat a dead horse, propaganda works. And it's so much more pervasive than an occasional misleading message.
Millions in the U.S. get "information" from a firehose of propaganda.
That defines the reality they see. Others perhaps just feel hopeless but... want to believe that our constitutional democracy somehow manages to hold on and rebound.
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https://archive.is/pbT6z
If someone is able to access this, would it be possible to copy-paste the article content somewhere else? I'm stuck in a broken captcha loop.
https://pastebin.com/4xSdnRvq
That happens with that site if you're using Cloudflare's DNS. Here's a gift link to the original:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/america-fascism-tr...
this gift link work? https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/america-fascism-tr...
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Everyone is Cloudflare anti-DDoS protected these days. Even pastebin. But perhaps it works https://pastebin.com/fHXz3eHG
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I am glad that atleast some journalists writes about this in the US+West. In India, there is little to no resistance, contemporary culture is flooded, institutions are tamed, media houses are strong armed or bought entirely and there is no one on the streets fighting the tyranny.
People are kind of missing the fact that you can draw a line from slave catchers and slave patrols to ICE. You don't have to go through Germany.
If anything, there's lots of writing on how Germany was ultimately inspired by socio-political events here in the USA on how to conduct their fascist behavior.
Read "Hitler's American Model". He loved what the American South was doing; the Nuremberg Race Laws were directly inspired by Jim Crow.
[flagged]
Not really.
Slaves were brought here against their will.
Illegal immigrants snuck in against ours.
So what? Are you're saying what ICE is doing is justified somehow?
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It's not just Trump. Look at how even the weak Republican pushback is framed. They have no moral objection to his actions, only for the risk of blowback.
See Ted Cruz's remarks on Jimmy Kimmel: "[W]hen it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it."
Or Brett Kavanaugh on Lisa Cook: that Trump shouldn't dismiss her because "what goes around comes around [...] if there's a Democrat president".
This is the moderate Republican position: no concern for the harm caused to people on the political left, only concern that they on the right might not get away with it. The MAGA position is, as this article shows, much worse.
Imagine voting for a party that wants to build more housing to solve the housing problem.
Now imagine the people who don't want more housing (for some reason) end up burning all new houses being built in a state.
Now imagine crying about how the people who want the houses to be built to solve the problem are still wanting more houses to be built.
Turns out it's harder to solve a housing problem when the houses keep getting burnt down. Who'd have thunk?
I am so terribly disturbed by the ICE shootings (and killings). There is no justification for them. This is supposed to be a nation of laws and the rights of those shot (to say nothing of those abducted and harassed, beaten, or removed without due process) has been so grossly violated that it's hard to believe.
My heart aches for the countless victims of this band of fascists in the executive branch.
The killings are horrifying in their own right, but the most disturbing part to me is how quickly the Trump administration will just declare these people as "terrorists" before any kind of investigation has happened.
This suggests to me there is some level of systemic intent (or at least ambivalence) with this administration's use of ICE's use of lethal force. It is beyond concerning. This admin is now very literally murdering us and will immediately try to justify it.
It's appalling how they go straight to making things up to suit their narrative, as if video evidence doesn't exist. They know the MAGAs will believe them, and may shed doubt on interpretation for people who aren't that curious about truth. A lie can travel halfway around the world, as they say.
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There's nothing surprising about it given US history.
The US administration has always labeled any resistance against it as terrorism at least ever since 9/11. You might remember the justification of killing young Afghani males, who were posthumously labelled as terrorists. They drone strike an apartment complex and report 25 dead terrorists, conveniently omitting to report on dead children or women, because there were 25 males between the age of 15 - 25 among the dead. No evidence of terrorist activity required.
The only change is that the same justification is now being used within the US borders.
The dead are still, however, The Other, which is how it's being justified now as it was when the dead were foreigners in a war zone.
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>some level of systemic intent
It's 100% the intent of this admin to use their secret police to drive fear and terror
> the most disturbing part to me is how quickly the Trump administration will just declare these people as "terrorists" before any kind of investigation has happened
Imperial boomerang. After enabling Israel/IDF which routinely just shoots unarmed people and officials on all levels simply justify it with "Terrorists.", and also routinely denies ambulance access to victims shots, it was only a matter of time until such and similar tactics come back home. Because politicians back home saw that the world was okay with it, so why not do it home.
People are supposed to defend their rights from far away, so that they don't have to defend them uncomfortably close when it's too late to avoid many casualties.
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It's not just declaring them terrorists before investigating - it's persisting after evidence is out that they are blatantly not. An unarmed mum and a male nurse assisting someone in recent cases.
> I am so terribly disturbed by the ICE shootings (and killings). There is no justification for them.
I think they are simply poorly trained people that are given free reign. The results are disastrous. They probably don't wake up thinking "Today I'm going to murder someone" but they just don't realize what they're doing. I'm not sure how it's at the destructiveness scale at this moment, but these organizations can and it probably will get much worse as their internal culture morphs into more directly aggressive stance.
The shootings were incredibly dumb, and it's pretty much what one would expect when they create this kind of situation. Listening to the "Revolutions" podcast I realized situations like these are incredibly common all along history, you have armed people with tense spirits, a gun goes off and tragedy ensues. The most terrible part of all of this is the reaction of the authorities that lie, gaslight and support these people, get them off the hook and this reaction will only generate more violence and more deaths as ICE realizes they _really can_ act with impunity.
They are also instructed illegally. They are told they don't need warrants signed by a judge in order to arrest someone.
The Stanford Prison Experiment is a good analogue to what we are seeing with ICE. People empowered to be cruel.
And they are given the message (from the president!) they have absolute immunity, and instructed to regard the law as a set of nonbinding guidelines.
The Supreme Court played a role in this too. They made it harder to stop by halting the long-established precedent of nationwide injunctions.
The people pulling the trigger are still not blameless. They are murderers no matter how badly misled. Your common murderer is misguided too. That doesn't mean they are absolved. I don't think that's what you were saying, but it bears mentioning.
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> They probably don't wake up thinking "Today I'm going to murder someone" but they just don't realize what they're doing.
Jonathan Ross (the ICE agent who shot and killed Renée Good) is an Iraq war veteran who has served in military and paramilitary units (National Guard, CBP, ICE) for over two decades. He intentionally engaged in a behavior that has been documented as far back as 2014 [1] to manufacture a reason to shoot the person in front of him.
Did he premeditate killing someone while getting out of bed that morning? Probably not.
Did he make the decision to kill Ms. Good in advance? No reasonable doubt.
[1] Even by CBP internal reviews, no less: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/us-border-agents-i...
>They probably don't wake up thinking "Today I'm going to murder someone" but they just don't realize what they're doing
They absolutely woke up thinking that. This is the happiest these monsters have been in their lives
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I think it's more than just poorly trained agents. Also framing it as "a gun goes off" doesn't track with the video footage I saw.
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Yep, I also have been a bit alarmed how this is pattern matching to early phases of the many revolutions covered in the Revolutions podcast. A U.S. revolution is a frightening proposition, even if it’ll seem warranted at some future point.
There are absolutely people in this group who woke up hoping they got an excuse to murder someone. You interact with the entire gamut of human experience every day, but you never know which ones are the secret heroes and which ones are the secret concentration camp guards until they're presented with the right set of circumstances. It's as much a mistake to assume that everyone is relatively moral as it is to assume that everyone is relatively evil.
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> They probably don't wake up thinking "Today I'm going to murder someone" but they just don't realize what they're doing.
Maybe not explicitly, but I do think there's a selection bias towards people who do want to do that. If you know you can get away with exerting violence towards a group of people you don't like, then that career is going to be very appealing towards people who want to do that.
It's the same thing with priests and their abuse of children. It's not like being a priest turns you into a child-abuser. It's just that priests are in a situation that they're constantly surrounded by kids unsupervised, can live alone unmarried without anyone questioning it, and when they do something horrible and abuse their power then they're often just moved to another parish. Of course a job like that is going to be attractive to people who want to abuse children.
I think ICE is similar. I do think there are people who join ICE with genuinely noble intentions, like getting rid of cartels and whatnot, but the Trump admin has made ICE something extremely appealing to people who have worse intentions.
> They probably don't wake up thinking "Today I'm going to murder someone"
Oh they absolutely fucking do
These Nazis know what they’re doing.
No doubt with that, ICE seems to be able to kill when and whomever they want. ICE looks close to the brown shirts in Germany in the 30s.
They're basically jackboots, I have to imagine almost entirely composed of the republican far right. Just imagine the echo chamber that exists within their ranks.
They literally just murdered someone in cold blood. Textbook execution without trial. And have some of the most powerful people in the world saying how brave they are and how great of a job they did executing their duty.
Their entire recruiting process has the effect of self selecting for the exact kind of person who is significantly more likely to shoot an unarmed nonviolent protestor.
If I recall correctly they even have notably higher salary and signing bonuses compared to similar agencies, which could be (decent pessimistically) interpreted as a way to hoover up more recruits with questionable moral bases. "Oh I really don't think ICE is doing the right thing, but oh boy sign me up for that cash baby".
ICE being the highest funded U.S. law enforcement agency is so sad, and so fucked
https://www.kuow.org/stories/how-ice-grew-to-be-the-highest-...
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> So the United States, once the world’s exemplary liberal democracy, is now a hybrid state combining a fascist leader and a liberal Constitution; but no, it has not fallen to fascism. And it will not.
That's some optimism right there.
> world’s exemplary liberal democracy
this has never been the case either, unless you're listening to USian television/movies
European, not accidentally, also mostly deliver the same, misleading, narrative.
And once Trump feels secure enough, he will also behead Congress, or at least many of its members. Maybe he wants to keep it as a convenient puppet show. Remember that this is just 1 year into his 2nd term. There is still much time for making things worse.
An additional short read which is really worth it: Il fascismo eterno by Umberto Eco, in which the author describes 14 properties of fascists regimes.
It's been translated in English as Ur-fascism and is available online for free at the anarchist library: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fasci....
To be honest, I found this essay a bit meandering and I lost interest in reading the whole thing (coming off the heels of re-reading Civil Disobedience, which by comparison is immediately forthright and to the point).
Skipping ahead to the 14 properties, however, points 5, 7, 11, and 12 are probably the most evident in the present moment.
Bret Deveraux, the American historian, did an analysis in 2024 of Eco's essay with focus on Trump and found all 14 were already a check: https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-...
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I read through every comment in this thread and no one seems to be addressing that the people voted for this. They'll probably vote for it again in the midterms and/or 2028. You're despairing over a democratic outcome. What do you actually propose that would fix this? Disenfranchise half the country? Outlaw things people are voting for to happen? Any criticism needs to address how we democratically counter this regime, how this makes sense when this is the voted upon regime, or perhaps make an argument for why democracy has failed.
My perspective is that a scale has tipped, a critical mass of people decided they want this sort of thing, and they got it. It wasn't rigged, it wasn't fraudulent, it was a democratic election. Critique democracy itself, or the criticism is incoherent. Make an argument for why a government should be disallowed from doing things that the voters want it to do.
> Disenfranchise half the country?
Way more than half the country was disenfranchised in the last election. Best case scenario (and very unlikely scenario): blue sweep in the next elections and then massive electoral reform.
Electoral reform is really hard for parties just voted in by that election system. Suddenly they see the good in that which they had previously seen as bad.
> Way more than half the country was disenfranchised in the last election.
Over 152 million votes were cast, representing more than 64% turnout among those eligible to vote (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia...).
The USA has about 342 million people, and over 18% of them are age 14 or younger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...) and at least some of them are 15-17 (citation needed). So clearly, doing some arithmetic, there are fewer than 304 million adults.
Not only was "half the country" not "disenfranchised", literally a majority of adults actually voted (and this is not even considering that not all adults were statutorily allowed to vote in the first place).
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Only republicans are actively destroying federal voter protections. Many red states already run elections with ridiculous voting restrictions. It's up to the federal government to discourage those practices, not encourage them. Luckily, they cannot mandate such changes.
You can't vote away the Constitutional rights of other people. ICE is regularly violating the Constitution and being encouraged to do so by those in power. Unless multiple amendments were removed from the Constitution without anybody noticing, your point about "the people voted for this" is an absurd and ridiculous attempt to justify real abuse of power and anti-democratic actions.
If we can't agree as a people that the Constitution applies to everyone equally then it isn't a problem with democracy, it's a problem with fascism and must dealt with as such.
There might be Gandhian/Nelson Mandela way of handling this. Both fought to change system and didn't teach hatredness towards individual a Racist person. Get arrested peacefully.
Others can work for immediate protest for release of the arrested.
Appeal to common values that they also have, and show how they are violating the religious values they profess.
Technically someone can make some app, that can easily help in getting the citizenship proof for an individual.
I am not from USA.
I think a lot of voters were fooled (or foolish) into thinking that Trump would limit himself to go after other people; he got a higher percentage of minority votes in 2024 then prior elections. That's not good but the mask is off and I think Trump has lost a lot of those voters.
It's also hard to quantify how much the pandemic and inflation moved some voters away from Biden/Harris.
I think Dems will win big in the next election. The question is how long this lesson will last with voters.
If your definition of Democracy is based on how we elect our leaders, then Hitler's Germany was a Democracy because Hitler was elected Chancellor by a majority. You need to define Democracy based on how we replace our leaders. In that case, Hitler's Germany was not a democracy since it was impossible for the people to replace the Fuhrer had they wished to. In Trump's case, we may still be a Democracy but there are worrysome indications ("Trump’s recent musing that there should be no 2026 election may or may not have been jocular").
I thought a lot of the rhetoric was around economic issues during the 2024 campaign season? I see this argument a lot, and while it's true that a sizable percentage voted for punishment of their political opponents, I don't think independents (in the immigration and "egg prices" camps) wanted this. Trump 2.0 voters should be ashamed because the signs were obvious, but the notion that we need to put kid gloves on for the vile, murderous fascists is asinine.
The next chapter of America needs to be punishing anyone who was apart of these death squads and the officials who allowed it to happen. That's it. There is no statute of limitations on murder or treason. We can't make the same mistakes as we did after the civil war (leniency towards confederates and various compromises)
The people voted for border control and law and order, shooting random protesters in cold blood was not part of Trumps platform. It was an obvious conclusion after some thought, but many didnt think that far ahead.
I actually think disenfranchisement is the only solution. Nazis didn't change their worldview after the war ended, they were shamed for them and learned to hide.
Republicans are now defending straight-up murder in broad daylight by federal forces. I doubt there's anything that could change their minds at this point, they're too far gone.
Yeah Americans don't want to face that their culture is the problem. Trump is still slightly more popular than he was at this point during his first term
https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-sil...
They'd have to change the fundamental nature of business. Most US companies are run like tiny little fascist dictatorships, which is a great training ground for the real thing. The relationship between capital (owners/management) and labor is usually adversarial with "at-will" employment. Contrast in Norway, where businesses operate within a 3-way Agreement (Trepartssamarbeidet) - a formal cooperation between the government, employers' associations, and trade unions.
Americans would have to change capitalism too. The most reliable way to prevent the rise of the far right is to implement robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance.
But even in this thread they don't want to do that.
I don’t understand how there aren’t demonstrations happening almost everywhere in the US by now.
There are though. Regularly.
Seriously lol. MN had HUGE protests the last few days, as did LA when the DHS was there (and why they probably went to somewhere less hostile like MN and soon Maine).
Could you point please to several of them? I am aware of the Minnesota ones but there are 50 states in the US.
Yea let me go protest the government on behalf of foreigners illegally crossing the border!
Because most people don't care enough to protest
Itis horrendous by any measure. But Fox and conservative media amplify and support it all. Trump voters by and large love the deportations; I know this from my in laws over the holidays. If a few eggs get broken they really don’t care. Notice red states have none of this because Trump focuses ICE on blue states.
Protests are what Trump wants. He would like nothing better than marshal law and cancelling the mid terms. He has said so many times.
You are not wrong. But history also somewhat shows that appeasement is even worse.
I also wonder how politically weak the US could be if its rivals and adversaries see this level of internal violence as an opportunity to step up pressure or exploit divisions at home.
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Because most people are happy to see immigration laws enforced.
Then why isn’t ICE in the states with the most immigrants?
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You can be pro-immigration enforcement, while also anti whatever-the-fuck-this-is.
It's called being pro-rule of law.
You're not allowed to just shoot people in the back that are very obviously not a threat, even if their idiotic lack of proper training makes them feel like they're in danger. It's literally South Parkian "they're coming right for us!!!" -- BANG -- as justification for lethal force of an unarmed person in custody.
source?
The mainstream media is not covering the many daily protests I see in my area, and hear and see from friends and family elsewhere. However, I do think the majority of Americans do not have the luxury (or fear of losing their job, and thus their healthcare, etc) to just walk out on their jobs or responsibilities, and the social safety nets here are limited (and being further cut by this administration).
I do think a general strike is the last chance at a non-violent resistance, but the oligarchs and powerful can weather that storm much more easily than the average American.
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I think flagging thresholds might need to raised. It's way too easy to supress anything controversial nowadays.
It's useful to rewind and see the tests people put in place before the thing happened.
Like this VOX article surveying experts on fascism in 2015 and then revisiting in 2020:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21521958/what-is-fas...
> But there is still no state management of the economy here (as there was to a degree in Nazi Germany and fascist Italy). Trump is content to aid business by reducing government protections of the environment and of workers … and his economic policy is mainly just to let businessmen do what they want.
Well, we can check that one off the list with 2024 hindsight.
>He’s never actually done a Putin and tried to make himself a permanent president, let alone suggest any coherent plan for overthrowing the constitutional system. And I don’t even think that’s in his mind
And another one bites the dust.
Note that all the scholars who get very technical on what they want to call Fascist all compare him to Marcos, Erdogan, Milosovic. That's still not a good review.
Link for once flagged: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/america-fascism-tr...
You can also view flagged posts through https://news.ycombinator.com/active
“For another, the term has been overused to the point of meaninglessness, especially by left-leaning types who call you a fascist if you oppose abortion or affirmative action.”
The left was right too early. Whereas I, the enlightened centrist was right and just the right time.
The Trump administration has gone so far down the path of fascism and crime that I'm convinced they don't simply want to be in power indefinitely -- they need it. Otherwise, the moment a law-abiding president gets elected, there will be criminal charges against all involved. And there's no statute of limitations for murder.
I believe this country will need massive investigations and criminal trials to heal. I am concerned with what happens in between, but this is reality as I see it.
> I believe this country will need massive investigations and criminal trials to heal. I am concerned with what happens in between, but this is reality as I see it.
Trump learned his lesson and pardoned every Jan 6 terrorist. If he leaves office, he is going to pardon every single person in his administration for anything they did from 2025-2029. There will be no investigations and no criminal trials. They all know this to be true.
Murder can easily be brought up as a state charge, which cannot be pardoned by the president. Only governors can pardon state charges.
Biden did the pre-emptive pardon thing. Trump will take that precedent and run with it.
Unfortunately liberals seem to care far more about "unity" than justice in any sense. They have been letting conservatives get away with damaging our country repeatedly throughout the decades and always welcome them back with open bipartisan arms. Maybe we could have nipped this in the bud if the confederate states were forced to de-radicalize like Germany was. Instead literal traitors to our country were right back to running for national office again and have been sowing dissent literally ever since. How many Democrats just voted for even more ICE funding for fucks sake?
No chance in hell Democrats do a single thing to these people when they're out of power. If anything it'll be a Democrat justifying more ICE shootings so as "not to look weak on immigration"
Didn't the same happen after Biden was elected? And see, it achieved nothing, regrettably...
No, it didn't. Order was not restored, criminals were encouraged, and here we are.
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The most scaring and amazing thing is not Trump himself, but all the people (suddenly) supporting him and being silent (including too many Democrats) in order to keep their position or for for opportunistic purposes. And destroying democracy along the way. Just like all the secret police agents in Iran or the henchmen of Hitler. CEO's of bigtech. Crypto-libertarians. Too many people are sucking up to wannabe dictators when the moment is there
Same pattern played out in Germany. The centrists were more concerned with leftists than Hitler. Big business thought they could cosy up to him and keep him under control. Opportunistic collaboration for self preservation or personal benefit.
Of course these all turned out to be grave miscalculations. I imagine that pattern will eventually play out this time too...
Is it possible their only miscalculation was not realizing how much of the world would fight back? Because if it hadn't, they would have continued enjoying the benefits.
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Only somebody who isn't aware of whose "Congress speech received multiple standing ovations, touted 'most by any world leader'" would be surprised by that bipartisan support you mention. That happened in 2024, before Trump began his second term, but shows how the system works.
I actually think that there is an amalgam of ideologies here (I know, so very fascist of them). Trump is more of a monarchist. A lot of the people supporting him are outright fascists. Some are plain idiots.
Them winning absolute control over the country would be a disaster for their movement though. They'd turn to internal fighting, the entropy of victory and all that. And they don't seem terribly competent with governance, it would probably turn off a lot of smart people, so the country would lose a lot of its capabilities.
EDIT: Also, there are funny things going on with the political submissions. I think there is active interference going on, they get flagged almost immediately. This got flagged and unflagged in the space of a couple minutes, so thanks to the mod team they are letting it up, I think there is important conversation to be had here.
> Them winning absolute control over the country would be a disaster for their movement though. They'd turn to internal fighting, the entropy of victory and all that.
that would be after they've finished executing the undesirables?
I am quite amazed that the 2nd amendment people seem to be the ones that are cheering on the federal gestapo
Yes, this is literally the scenario every 2nd amendment fanatic justifies themselves with. But we already knew that made no sense; it doesn't change anything to have the hypocrisy demonstrated.
Not surprised at all, we're dealing with post-truth people here, policy is driven by feeling and perception, not coherency and reality.
>I am quite amazed that the 2nd amendment people seem to be the ones that are cheering on the federal gestapo
"Rights for me, not for thee"
The flagging system has been systematically gamed for restricting content for years now. I don't think the mods deserve any praise for occasionally doing something about it. They are ultimately complicit in the state of things being hidden on this site. It's "working as expected".
And Germany would have been a much larger country economically if Hitler was executed after his first coup attempt. The Weimar government didn't choose that path though, and went for civility.
The brain drain was massive, both before the war, and even more so after. That didn't stop the peasant minded from supporting the Nazi regime though. They got to punish the people who they were told made them poor.
I live in FL, so I get to interact daily with people who are cheering for this crackdown, and have said the equivalent of "those rioters (protestors) should be put down in the street". I don't have much hope for where our country is headed.
The flags on any type of post like this are absolutely ridiculous. Glad the mods are at least for now letting this one stand.
It's sad that these posts are now seemingly disappearing from /active in addition to the home page
They are very relevant to the current state of affairs in America, with respect to tech, immigration, startups, and the hacker ethos
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> Trump is more of a monarchist
Monarchs are in place without democratic support, so they have little incentive to be popular (though not unpopular either). Not being involved in politics often results in them having a distant concern for their subjects. They rarely instigate policy making. Doesn't sound like Trump.
Stephen Miller is a fascist, no doubt about it. Even if Trump is not a fascist, per se, he's following the advice of -- and delegating authority to -- the fascists that surround him.
This should not be flagged.
Flagging this: that’s fascism.
HN has always had topics that aren't permitted to be discussed; no matter how relevant or how popular, or how polite the discussions are.
However, this past year has been extreme. Seeing how everything related to Musk and DOGE was removed, for example, was extraordinary.
Anyone who thinks this forum lives up to its rhetoric is simply flat wrong. This place is now a testament to the effectiveness of clever censorship.
It's more tech not politics.
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> This should not be flagged. > > Flagging this: that’s fascism.
Telling people what should or shouldn't be done: that's fascism.
The parallels it dark times in history are too strong to ignore.
The only question now is will the people be able to stop the takeover before it’s too late.
After reading this piece I was wondering if there were any examples of a fascist state that were deposed by peace, or whether armed conflict is now inevitable.
There are few, Spain's King Juan Carlos I being crowned king after Francisco Franco's death, and Chile's Pinochet leaving power after the 1988 referendum for example.
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Portugal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnation_Revolution
I think Spain transitioned from fascist dictatorship to democracy relatively peacefully.
“weak men create hard times” never fails
Who are the “weak men” in your interpretation of today’s scenario? I have my own ideas but I wonder about others.
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I hate this quote with such a passion. It's treated as some enduring wisdom passed down through generations. When it's from a 2016 book you have probably never heard of.
And there is no weaker, frailer man than trump.
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It seems like it's already too late, I see Americans who I thought were down to earth unbothered by ICE killings, blaming victims and calling criticism as TDS aka Trump Derangement Syndrome. I was totally shocked the other day when this came from an open minded and seemingly 'cool' guy at work.
Trump needs we better critics. Heck, we all need better Trump critics. This unfortunately is more of the same; doing more harm than good.
I think your point is true, better critique helps dismantling post-truth populism. I also think the article is correct in its assessment and is a good critique for a certain segment of the population. It might be true that it won't persuade any trumpers though. Not sure you can persuade them with articles.
The author wrote a book about how America needs to reembrace Christianity. A review of that book said it was unclear who the book was for, given that the author is a homosexual atheist Jew. I would say that applies to this article too. As you note, it won’t convince Trump voters of anything. Its only utility is for those who already think Trump is a fascist, a term that the author himself says is basically meaningless. It merely makes those who agree with its conclusion feel good and click links. Signal detection theory tells us more noise makes signals harder to detect. So the article is counterproductive. Ok, meets the authors definition of fascist; so what?
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The loose application of "fascism" to disliked ideas reflects a culture of perpetual outrage and victimhood, diluting the term's historical weight.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-atlantic/ The Atlantic – Bias and Credibility
LEFT-CENTER BIAS These media sources have a slight to moderate liberal bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by appeals to emotion or stereotypes) to favor liberal causes. These sources are generally trustworthy for information but may require further investigation
https://profrjstarr.com/the-psychology-of-us/the-need-to-be-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outrage_porn
https://www.npr.org/2019/10/09/768489375/how-outrage-is-hija...
https://theconversation.com/outrage-culture-is-a-big-toxic-p...
Everyone's paying a lot of attention to how bad Trump is, or the midterms. My question is, what happens in 2028? How much of current policy is something the majority of Republican voters (let alone the American people) or the political class actually want and would do without Trump to lead them? How much is only being implemented due to Trump's choices, political style and cult of personality? (Assuming Constitutional safeguards remain strong enough that Trump can't find a way to remain in power past his current term; if Trump is still President in 2029, the system's seriously broken down and all bets are off.)
Will the US say "Wait a minute, things went too far, now that he's gone we need more checks and balances before another President tries to repeat what just happened" like when they added term limits to the Constitution after FDR, or some of the post-Watergate limits imposed on the Presidency?
Or will Trump's redefinition of government power become normalized, like the redefinition of government power that happened with the Patriot Act, TSA security theater, NSA spying on US citizens, etc. after 9/11 that was justified as anti-terrorism? Those policies were never unwound even though the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are over, Osama bin Laden is dead, and there have been no more attacks on that scale.
> now that he's gone we need more checks and balances
I'm sure if a Democrat is elected in 2028, all of a sudden a lot of people are going to remember that they don't want a unitary executive. A lot of people who are currently cheering on the administration.
I don't think things are going back to how they were before Trump and will only continue in the same direction unless midterm elections don't get canceled/abused, and in that case Trump would get impeached. But that doesn't mean too much. There are fundamental problems that Democrats were unwilling to tackle and are likely to do nothing about.
I'm, frankly, terrified for 2 reasons.
First up, I don't think the republican party moderates in 2029. The Trump mentality is the new normal and I believe republicans are just going to keep trying to be as fascist as possible as long as possible. We've learned that there are basically no limits on a corrupt presidency and I really fear what that will mean for any future republican president.
But secondly, I'm afraid that Democrats aren't rising to the occasion. They aren't putting forward meaningful reforms or changes to address the fascism. In terms of ICE, a lot of them are trying to put forward meaningless reforms like "let's give them more training" or "let's put their names in a QR code". The entire agency needs nuremberg style trials at this point and some Dems want to give them a weekend meeting with HR.
These two facts scare the shit out of me. Because, my fear is we will see a repeat of 2024 in 2032. Assuming we have free and fair elections, I can see a Democrat becoming president in 2028, doing nothing to address the systemic problems exposed by trump, and ultimately a new republican will be voted in in 2032 because people are sick of nothing getting better under democrats. And that 2032 republican president will ultimately know they can do everything Trump did and they'll be cheered on by the base.
Democrats need to be messaging about real positive changes they'll make.
Shooting people for speaking is also fascism but they won't say that.
Who was shot for speaking?
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Everything even vaguely critical of trump is immediately flagged, tech or not. Christ, we've seen outright propaganda generated by this administration using AI, which is obviously something hackers care about, be flagged relentlessly.
It's very obvious this administration and it's supporters are trying to control the narrative of their crimes against the American people. It's evident with their doctoring of evidence, their outright deceit, and the suspicious censorship we see across the entire web. Including HN.
Is it against the rules to call fascism fascism? That's pretty disturbing.
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> It is against the rules to call anything fascism
If that's true then this site and pg can go ahead and fuck themselves with a rusty knife.
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This comment betrays a misunderstanding of history and of what fascism is and doesn't even engage with the article's points. A totalitarian fascist state does not come into being all at once; it emerges in steps that tend towards that outcome, steps which the article discusses in detail. Furthermore, that nascent fascism can be defeated through electoral means does not preclude it from being fascism.
So the only point someone could conceivably write this article, in your mind, would be the moment after its writers and platforms would be subjected to state-sanctioned punishment for uttering it?
I'll accept a little front-running then, if you don't mind.
No they could write it in another state, anonymously, or on more underground/less mainstream established platforms than one of the oldest publications in the history of the republic. More like what’s happening with regards to Iran. Also, front-running also implies that there’s an order for fascism coming up. So the intent of establishing fascism is preceded by a bungled and visibly brutal and horribly implemented performative “operation” that this massacre by ICE is? That makes no sense. This is not an order for fascism that an article is sort of front-running protectively. The better analogy is a media entity predictably calling one extremely messed up thing another extremely messed up thing, and leaving a massive vulnerability for their side. Messed-up-thing-promoting folks will use articles like this a year from now after ICE ceases operations, effectively issuing a silent “apology” of sorts and curtailing the violence, to promote the next messed up thing they want to do (which may be less messed up than the ICE massacres but still would be quite messed up and avoidable).
Every pessimistic approximation isnt always good. We lose credibility when we keep doing it.
> True fascism would not allow the massive criticism and outrage (including by active lawmakers and heads of state & local governments) that recent events have reasonably led to.
It hasn't yet captured the whole country. The parts of criticism they have had the power to silence, they have already silenced. Who's in the White House press corps again?
When they will capture all the power they need, the criticism will be silenced.
I fear that we might not see a definitive Democratic win though at the midterms. I think your country is already past the point of no return and your population is just not getting it yet.
Thank you for your personal, individual wisdom that exceeds that of 230+ million eligible US voters in the 2026. That about settles it, we are past the point of no return so we should do absolutely nothing. In fact any action would be irrational, a waste of effort and a misallocation of time and energy vs spending it with our families and/or on ourselves. And somehow, I am the person who is defending the so-called fascists and ensuring a place “shining their jackboots” (your peer here used this expression to try to denigrate/attack me)? It must really hurt to be so smart and to be able to see all of the future perfectly.
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Ah yes, the “no true fascism” fallacy. Thanks for posting your half-thought out defense of the party that is murdering citizens in the street! I’m sure they appreciate your attempts to keep their jackboots shiny.
Can you point out how I was defending a party? I’m simply saying that the US isn’t a fascist state yet. We can engage, debate and discuss. People are actively out in the streets of MSP and watching and confronting these agents and the incidents are being documented, spread widely and analyzed. Calling it fascism isn’t productive nor is it even front running. I am willing to bet against any of you that this insanity perpetrated by poorly trained or untrained agents running amok in the midwest will be old news by the end of the year and no not because it has been subsumed by some worse class of atrocities. It will have ended, ICE will have ceased these sort of unchecked “operarions” and largely due to public outrage and scrutiny. Actual outrage, scrutiny and genuine activism, not writing articles from an armchair that mischaracterize this as fascism or racism. That sort of thing only perpetuates and makes the rabid crazies who actually support these actions in light of the tragedies sink their jackboots in even harder and empowers them more despite them being in the minority.
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It's true. This kind of authoritarian state violence is pretty reminiscent of fascism. Especially what looks like a gangland execution of a man who could only ever be described as exercising his 2A rights by carrying a firearm undrawn legally under his CCW. However, the list of things that have been called fascism are so long that I have to admit that my eyes initially glazed over the headline because many things have been described as fascism.
The US was supposedly ruled by a fascist in 2018: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/books/review/jason-stanle...
There was also supposedly fascism coming in 2016: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/this-is-how-fascism-comes...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09626...
And yet we had elections in 2020. So whatever, it was clearly not authoritarian fascism because we had free elections that the authoritarian fascist was ousted in. So what I think I experienced there was semantic satiation with the word fascism.
EDIT: To clarify position vis a vis reply, I am simply saying that I have heard the word 'fascism' so much I don't really react with any sense when someone says it. It's like hearing 'rape' or 'spying' on Hacker News. I assume it means "I was shown a banner ad for toothpaste after searching for toothpaste". In other contexts those words have negative valence of great significance. In this context, I just glaze over.
Likewise, the word 'fascism' from a left-leaning outlet could be anything from the end of medicare subsidies to a drone strike on an Islamic fundamentalist general to charging fares on a train.
Just sharing how I feel about it. It does not have that emotional strength that it originally felt.
A careful reader will notice that both of those warnings are about the same person. The same person who tried to illegally and violently overturn that 2020 election result. Maybe they weren't crying wolf after all?
Found another one of them...
2015: You're overreacting!
2016: You're overreacting!
2017: You're overreacting!
2018: You're overreacting!
2019: You're overreacting!
2020: You're overreacting!
2021: You're overreacting!
2022: You're overreacting!
2023: You're overreacting!
2024: You're overreacting!
2025: How could we possibly have known things would have gone this way?!
HN in a nutshell. Everyone wants to look measured and above it all. I feel like I've seen more posts about Dan Kahan's cultural cognition than about the actual killings themselves
you're saying that because as recently as 10 years ago, some people were warning about fascism taking hold in the United States, and even though they turned out to be right, they should have held off using that word until we reached this moment, where no sensible person would argue.
It's amazing that so many "leaders" (esp. in tech) seemed to not worry about or even tacitly/openly supported the Trump admin, when so many other folks could clearly see the disaster looming on the horizon.
And it isn't even like it was different people. Donald Trump has been the protagonist of the GOP for ten years. The people who were saying "this is creeping fascism" were saying it about the same guy who is doing it now.
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HN has had numerous major frontpage threads that are critical of this administration. Not enough to satisfy those who want more, but that is a separate issue.
Hey, I think you're a superhero for making this place such wonderful forum for deep and interesting conversation, but isn't there some point where you might consider putting your finger on the scale to help stop the slide into authoritarianism? This seems like the moment, maybe?
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Yes I know because I've read through several right before they are predictably taken down. But yes I will take your word and stop believing my eyes and ears...
Be nice to Dang, he is just following orders.
fwiw it's been flagged and unflagged four times since I posted. I don't know the algorithm -- but it's been great to see whomever is unflagging understanding the importance and significance of this issue and relevance to hackers everywhere.
And here it remains flagged... I wonder why?