I agree with the premise of the article wholeheartedly. Minor nitpick:
> The German dynasties behind Porsche, Volkswagen and BMW pretty much merged with the Nazi regeime.
Volkswagen was founded by the Nazi regime after they have already taken over. While support by car companies was relevant, there were far more important supporters of the war effort in the chemical and steel industry.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/28/who-likes...
Once you get that group control is when you have problems.
This is kind of an interesting deeper dive into why people support fascism. Maybe not surprising but highlights the two main reasons: something like "we need a strong leader to take control of the government away from corrupt elite and put it back into the hands of the people" and "the government needs to be in the hands of the real, true, competent people, and not the other, fake, lesser people".
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/political-science/artic...
Personally I'm past the point of "what does fascism look like" and want to have a realistic discussion about "how do you reestablish a democracy when you're in a fascist regime?" So far the historical examples at my fingertips are all basically some variant of "people get tired of it, the cult leader passes away and everyone kind of magically agrees that fascism isn't working".
But that's not yet a fascism.
Back home in Portugal, it is a similar trend, I belong to the first generation to grow in freedom after the revolution, and it is quite sad to see how right wing is taking over, as if people had forgotten all about PIDE/DGS, the kidnaping and killings, crossing to France over the mountains and Spain, Tarrafal prison, the colonial wars.
Reading the guidelines I can't see how this is off-topic or does _not_ "[gratify] one's intellectual curiosity."
Edit: spelling
The story was flagged by many users. The problem with articles like this is the discussions are repetitive and predictable. We rarely see anyone approaching them with genuine curiosity. The topic of whether this president and administration are befitting of particular labels and historical analogies has been continually discussed (in broader society and on HN) since about 2015. And in the discussions we generally just see people trying to justify why they believe what they already believed about the topic, sometimes quite belligerently.
This is why discussions about politics are generally bad on online forums (and considered to be best avoided at dinner parties); it’s a domain in which people’s belief about the topic is deeply entangled with their identity, and by definition, people get defensive and hostile when their identity is thrown into question. Thus, they work much harder to justify why they were already right about the topic, instead of seeking to learn anything new.
The kind of politics discussion that would be good to see much more of on HN would explore the question: if we were to agree that the state of politics globally is terrible (I certainly do), what actions can ordinary people like us working in technology do to make things better?
There is a reason there is no downvoting on submissions, right? And yet we've now gotten to a place where submission flags have become an effective downvote. I don't know if this particular post would have generated thoughtful discussion, but I do know that only seeing this submission by chance a day later all of the interest has passed it by.
I know its a healthy part of democracy but it is very draining.
The ball is rolling. Action against media organizations is already underway. You already couldn't publish this message via CBS, WSJ or the Post, for example. They likely wouldn't even interview the author.
But yeah, it takes time, censorship is hard in practice, and random substacks are fairly far down the list.
But pretending that this is a "healthy" democracy at this point is pretty strained reasoning.
... You know we have people getting thrown in camps and deported for saying maybe genocide is bad, right? And like, students and faculty in Ivy league schools getting beaten and/or fired for saying maybe we shouldn't be complicit in the mass murder of children?
Apologies if I've misread your remarks - deep and biting sarcasm doesn't always play well in text.
Did you know Germany has really fascist laws on regarding displaying Nazi symbols even more than the US? You can get deported for it!
In China you can disappear talking about Taiwan, In the UAE you can by saying something anti Islam. There is a long way to go until you reach real bad places...
You obviously do not like the USA, but just because you do not like it does not mean its fascist... its just clearly not perfect and free enough for you to be able to point it out.
The problems extend well beyond one party (see: Citizen United), but to me, the "fascism"-ish stuff is mostly concentrated on one end. It has been clear for a long time that the Republican Party has embraced the "illiberal democracy" model of Viktor Orbán. Orbán's government never got to the full-on violent oppression used in actual autocracies, but instead used many of the tools that the Republican party uses today to attempt to stay in power. That being: gerrymandering and other aggressive vote meddling; media manipulation (not full on censorship, but attempting to ensure that dominant media voices were party line); propaganda using social / culture war rhetoric; and government pressure on institutions (schools, businesses, etc.) to destroy independence, and force conformity to the party line.
There are differences between the two -- Orbán never attempted anything like ICE or the immigrant detention camps, but Orbán was able to capture the judiciary better than Republicans have so far. But it's the closet comparison I can think of.
Some of the characteristics of the "Orbán style" do share some similarities with fascism... however the "Orbán style" lacks classic fascism (along with the more direct cousin of "the Vladimir Putin style")'s full on authoritarianism. But as the above demonstrates, there isn't a term right now that neatly encapsulates hybrid governments at the moment, so I guess that is why folks are running with the term everyone knows. Besides, there is always the danger of a hybrid regime backsliding into an authoritarian regime. Russia, who many do see as a modern flavor of authoritarian fascism at present, was rated as a "hybrid regime" in The Economist in 2006.
This. One of the characteristics of modern transitions into fascism seems to be intentionally avoiding and subverting the antibodies democratic states have developed to curb authoritarianism, to wit all of the actions you mentioned above.
Grey warfare against democracy is real.
Charitably, its practitioners probably think of it as "playing politics hard", but if the outcome of a course of action is eroding democratic norms then we (the people) need to be harsher in our appraisal of it. Anti-democratic forces know exactly what they're doing, even if they don't admit it publicly.
What's more worrisome is constituting a credibly alternative to MAGA+conservatism in the US that can:
1. Win elections
2. Avoid overly alienating the current MAGA+conservative supporters (to the extent they reject democracy)
3. Restore and reinforce democratic norms and laws
- Clarence Thomas 78
- Samuel Alito 76
- Sonia Sotomayor 72
- John G. Roberts Jr. 71
Who controls the presidency and senate is going to matter a lot, in terms of unfucking the unbalanced court that Ginsberg's egotistical refusal to retire created.
There is still hope for the US. The press is still critical, the opposition is not arrested, the courts are still giving push back, and it's not civil war level violence.
Trump’s response to that landslide will tell us whether there’s hope.
I don’t expect Civil War levels of violence because the country is mostly united in its hatred of how the GOP is running it. No large group of people will pick up arms to support Trump’s right to invade countries and ruin the economy.
SCOTUS just repelled the "voting rights" part of the civil rights acts, allowing states to gerrymander the black vote out. Which all red states immediately did. The midterms already won't be fair, and it can get worse until then.
> the country is mostly united in its hatred of how the GOP is running it.
It really isn't, 30% of the country is still diehard MAGA. They may be disappointed about the results (or lack thereof), but nothing will make them reconsider their support for Trump. And these people have disproportionately more firearms than the rest of the population.
> if allowed to run fairly.
> Trump’s response to that landslide will tell us whether there’s hope.
But that isn't even the most important part. Imagine the Dems win next round. What then? I have the impression that the Americans do not fully grasp the structural damage that has been done. The Dems won't be able to clean up the mess that the conservatives had left them as they have been doing traditionally. This time the US is highly isolated, the economy is under severe threat from the GOPs own doing; Iran, almost unlimited lawless access to European markets (contrary to popular belief) for the tech oligarchy, institutional knowledge gone, soft power gone.
Also imagine throwing the owners of fake news blasters like Fox News in jail, would you think that would be possible? When an outsized portion of the populace think this is Free Press, there is a cultural problem that prevents root causes to be dealt with. The commercial apparatus is necessary for "flooding the zone", but doesn't function as the Fourth Estate, a required function the general population would not even know about.
The Heritage Foundation at alii have a large time horizon, they have been working on overthrowing democracy for decades. The asymmetry of having no regards for the rule of the law versus having to follow it is another disadvantage for the Dems. It is a seduction to join the dark side, to let the Dems play the game the other party is good at.
The Dems are setup for failure; they need a bizarre effort to overcome the structural damage and the corporate occupation of culture. Notwithstanding the neoliberal factions inside, which are equivalent to the "GOP of older times sliding into autocracy but not there yet". The GOP is bad, but I don't want to portray the Dems as 100% good, on the contrary. The Democratic Party is a big tent, and should rather be broken up in different parties, so Americans have something to choose from actually.
In short: people should not hope that the other party will fix their problems; they should start to question themselves, the cultural beliefs they have been fed and most importantly, they need to understand their own and their peers role in this mess. The change should come from bottom up, grassroots style.
A critical but empathetic look at how fascism rises and spreads through, and alongside, ordinary people in ordinary society. Excellent book, incredibly relevant.
An excerpt, if you don't want to commit to the whole thing: https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
1. Germans back then were conformist people and following other Germans; especially authority figures. Americans are anything but.
2. Germans did not know what was going on; today there is a ton of media.
3. Nazi party took care of the “good” Germans: Nazis gave Germans jobs (anyone else, Jews, Romas, communists had to fend for themselves). Trump and his goons openly shit on American people.
4. It took about 8 years from boycotting Jewish businesses to burning synagogues, then another 2 years to start implementing the Final solution. Trump’s goons shot and killed Americans less than 1 year since taking power.
(Also important is that Adolf Hitler became chancellor at 44 years old, Trump’s most consequential presidency started when he was 79.)
Similarities to today’s situation that I got from the book are charisma both Hitler and Trump have, and how people seem to identify themselves with Hitler and Trump (for ex: which other American president had people put his name on flags, tattoos, cars, houses?)
Freedom is fragile and needs constant support. Trump touched a raw nerve but he is too vain, greedy and old to follow through with a full blown dictatorship. The goons around him are dangerous but lack his charisma and connection to the average person (do you see JD Vance filling up stadiums while spouting non-sense?)
It only takes a small minority of violent thugs to make a bigger population of people who only want to stay out of trouble compliant.
As a non-American, the only thing I could probably argue against in good faith with enough context is Point 2.
I took from the 10 stories that everybody knew what was happening, and still nobody did anything (with one exception after-the-fact). The media today is certainly broadcasting what is happening, but I'm not sure it's actually solving the "let's do something about it" problem.
1. Mythic past and rebirth: dreaming of the lost socialist utopia of USSR etc. which was taken from us all by force and deception.
2. Victimhood and humiliation: working class is the victim of a rigged system, exploited by capital elite.
3. Hierarchy and dehumanization: world is split into oppressors (landlords, rich people, etc) and oppressed (workers).
4. Contempt for weakness: "liberals" let this happen due to their limp-wristedness.
5. Cult of action: revolts, strikes, protests, even violence against oppressors.
6. The leader as savior: Mamdani, Sanders, AOC? This admittedly doesn't quite work in the same way as in fascism.
7. Purification of institutions: Universities, media, and governments must be purged of "reactionaries" or "liberals" who resist the revolution.
8. Propaganda and assault on truth: dissent is violently suppressed. Various kinds of Big Lies (e.g. "the genocide") are spread as absolute truths and are repeated at every possible point.
9. Merger of state and corporate power: seizing both the corporations and state for the proletariat.
10. Violence and terror: glorifying murderers when they murder those "who deserve it".
The term is recently became heavily recycled by left wing activists to label everything they disagree with (and sometimes even used by more radical lefties aka tankies to label less radical ones).
You seem to be in the happy group of people who have never visited the Lemmy main site. Although you may be right about "significant numbers" even if that site seems to be full of them. They might literally all be there.
And what point are you trying to make?
And the main reason that stopped is that a bunch of his party members ran off and started a new party.
As a reaction voters became more extreme. The FvD (forum for democracy) is making big strides forward and they lack the (very few) positive qualities the PVV did have. PVV was anti-violence and pro-democracy. Oh, and FvD is anti-democracy in the sense of they're against "1 person 1 vote", and looking for ways to limit who can vote (and going to lengths that Trump and Republicans are not even daring to mention (yet?)
: Former prime minister Schoof was was not* a fascist, but basically just an independent bureaucrat hired to attempt to hold a very brittle coalition together. He failed at that miserably. Also, the 'main reason that stopped' was that the PVV party went from 23% of the votes to 17% of the votes in the next election, and none of the other parties was willing to work with them again in a coalition.
That's obviously a problem when your Führer is 80+ years old and overweight.
It means the Führer will try and fix everything as soon as possible.
But fight they will because he will fully become a chatbot. FIRST DECEASED LEADER.
The Hallucinating ChatGPT Presidency[0]
Tue, Apr 29th 2025 09:34am - Mike Masnick
> We generally understand how LLM hallucinations work. An AI model tries to generate what seems like a plausible response to whatever you ask it, drawing on its training data to construct something that sounds right. The actual truth of the response is, at best, a secondary consideration.
> But over the last few months, it has occurred to me that, for all the hype about generative AI systems “hallucinating,” we pay much less attention to the fact that the current President does the same thing, nearly every day. The more you look at the way Donald Trump spews utter nonsense answers to questions, the more you begin to recognize a clear pattern — he answers questions in a manner quite similar to early versions of ChatGPT. The facts don’t matter, the language choices are a mess, but they are all designed to present a plausible-sounding answer to the question, based on no actual knowledge, nor any concern for whether or not the underlying facts are accurate.
> This is not the response of someone working from actual knowledge or policy understanding. Instead, it’s precisely how an LLM operates: taking a prompt (the question about job losses) and generating text based on some core parameters (the “system prompt” that requires deflecting blame and asserting greatness).
> The hallmarks of AI generation are all here
• Confident assertions without factual backing
• Meandering diversions that maintain loose semantic connection to the topic
• Pattern-matching to previous responses (“ripped off,” “billions of dollars”)
• Optimization for what sounds good rather than what’s true
But then again, most of politics is corrupt.
You really are voting for the lesser of two evils, in that, the choices you're given are all actually evil, no matter what party, platform, or side of the aisle you're dealing with.
I think Donald Trump is especially popular though because of bad handling of immigration in the USA, and any politician that is serious about dealing with waves of immigration in the same way in Western countries has the ability to take advantage of a similar trend.
In other words...
...90% of illegal immigrants are probably genuinely seeking a better life or even desperate for it, but then you have demographics such as devout Islamist populations, criminals / bad actors who take advantage of, and the fact that if people can flood across borders, it seems that they will.
And then border towns in whatever country will bear the brunt of the issues that causes, or you will have literal replacement and a huge uptick in violent crime like what's happening in the UK...
...not to mention local citizens and legal immigrants tend to notice that illegal denizens get a fast track toward government benefits and legal protections they themselves have not and do not receive.
Now, are Donald Trump and those like him bad? At best they are a step backward due to real and serious policy failures by more "Left" politicians, and at worst they are just as awful, but a realistic backlash, according to Horseshoe theory, that extremes on different ends of a spectrum wind up being functionally the same, for example, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union during World War II and the Cold War, despite having arguably antithetical ideological beliefs.
In the USA too, its worth pointing out that our Democrat party is heavily influenced by hardcore leftists, that is, not reasonable people who want high tech trains, better healthcare, and a strong social safety net, but rather people who literally are alright with items like transgender "medicine" and pornography for young children, rioting, and think terrorists are justified openly calling for rape and murder.
I think its worth pointing out too that actual historical fascism is openly violent, xenophobic, war-positive, genocidal, and eugenic.
I really don't like Donald Trump, but I would describe him as a moderately right populist that isn't a complete idiot when it comes to dealing with real problems, which is perhaps what makes him dangerous, is that he actually is correct on certain prominent issues, and again, just as antichrist as most politicians, which generates a fair amount of detached cynicism within me.
I'm one of those people too that sort of thinks that a lot of differences between Left-and-Right or Conservative vs. Liberal actually collapse into nothing on a lot of simple problems, for example, gun rights, healthcare, border security, and that a lot of it is just meant to divide us.
For example, why shouldn't we trust private, law-abiding citizens with guns after they take a one-day or two-day class in safety, have laws that prevent someone from buying weapons during a day long random bi-polar episode, and have police officers or security guards in schools?
Why not have quality government provided healthcare and a welfare state, as well as private alternatives in healthcare and an understanding that opportunity and attitude is the biggest factor in persons lifting themselves out of poverty?
Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFcf5RQqVEM -- Elephants in Rooms discusses these very issues, even the Texas governor in the US getting mad and bussing illegal immigrants to liberal cities like New York who then said they couldn't handle the influx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJNTnA2UvWw -- A discussion on the harms on Islamism as it pertains to the fact that the ideology of a reasonable amount of persons who claim to follow Islam is not compatible with Western societies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrM78ZigyPE -- A Republican senator in the US makes the argument that for the same reason you lock the front door of your house at night, a nation should have a secure border and properly vet anyone entering into the country
I would suggest doing your own research into what's happening in the UK for example, don't just take my word for it obviously.
I'm a libertarian who was both sidesing up to 2020 or so, but at this point I'd be a fool to continue. My only real question for people who still support Trump is which of your positive-constructive ideals has he actually succeeded in furthering? Not intermediate steps that are promised to bear fruit any day now, nor goals framed in the negative-destructive like remove illegals, start wars, or owning libs - but actual constructive-positive ideals? Because I've been unable to get a clear answer and I haven't been able to come up with anything myself besides destruction.
Also, don't get the [flagged]. For what it's worth: Rutger Bregman is a historian and best-selling writer from the Netherlands. While you don't have to agree with everything he says most is thought provoking at least.
"These paramilitary squads didn’t just protect the movement, they were the movement."
It's not just X, it's definitely Y.