Practically speaking, no amount of punishment for fascists will ensure that another set of fascists won't rise up again in the future. There's far too much to gain by taking over political power for any deterrent to work effectively.
The best solution is to improve education to help people see through the bullshit that got us here. In particular, teach people that campaigning through memes, emotional appeals, and demonization of minority groups are big neon signs that the campaigning group does not have your best interests in mind.
Be careful around powerful words with meaning (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism ). If we casually use these words to refer to people we simply disagree with - one day, when actual fascists start rising, we'll have taken all the meaning out of the language we rely on to identify them.
> when actual fascists start rising, we'll have taken all the meaning out of the language we rely on to identify them.
Isn't this a delightful Catch-22.
If you forewarn about a developing Fascist movement, you're simply taking away the meaning from the word until it's too late and the Fascists take power.
You cannot call anything Fascist, for there may be something more Fascist that may need the power of the word.
But ah! We couldn't call out their fledgling movement full of dog whistles and double speak so no one was aware enough to stop them as a fledgling movement!
We have lived in a period without significant fascism in power. Fascism doesn’t start with concentration camps and gas chambers, it builds up to them. It’s easy to dismiss because we were taught about just how bad it got but surely it’s not that bad _here_. The problem is, it’s only getting worse and ignoring it is how it got so bad in the past.
Fascists are continuing to rise right now. Googling “Hallmarks of fascism” gives us an AI overview:
Key hallmarks of fascism include fervent nationalism, authoritarian leadership, the suppression of opposition, and the use of violence to achieve national rejuvenation. …
We blatantly have all of those things from the current administration.
Also fascism doesn't require concentration camps and gas chambers, it just has little to prevent them. There have been fascists that also didn't involve gas champers etc. So to say only when we get concentration camps is there fascism is also just wrong
> We blatantly have all of those things from the current administration.
> fervent nationalism
I grant you, Trump supporters are heavily nationalist. Supporters of Winston Churchill in the UK were also fervently nationalist, when the UK was protecting Europe against actual fascists.
You cannot extrapolate fascism from nationalism.
> authoritarian leadership
An authoritarian regime grows the size of the state to cement its power. Trump is more of a libertarian, demonstrably reducing the scale and power of the state apparatus (DOGE)
> the suppression of opposition
Biden, and Biden-aligned judges weaponised the law against Trump, with spurious cases and fines. They tried to pin anything they could on Trump, in an attempt to prevent him becoming president.
Trump has not done anything similar against Harris, Clinton or Biden.
> the use of violence to achieve national rejuvenation
Nope.
Compare what happened in Democrat cities in the wake of George Floyd's death vs what's happening in Republican areas after Charlie Kirk's assasination. There was riots and looting, and Antifa intimidation of political opponents for Floyd. There are peaceful, respectful vigils for Kirk.
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> Fascism doesn’t start with concentration camps and gas chambers, it builds up to them.
Trying to extrapolate a "fascist" future version of the current Trump regime is an example of the "Slippery Slope" logical fallacy.
> An authoritarian regime grows the size of the state to cement its power
| The OBBBA adds $170 billion for immigration enforcement agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) [1]
> Biden, and Biden-aligned judges weaponised the law against Trump, with spurious cases and fines
Trump has weaponized the DOJ [2]
Trump was convicted of felonies and other crimes; They were not spurious. He claims that he was targeted and a victim but he is also a well-known scam artist. "Accusation in a mirror" [3] fits much of his rhetoric.
> Trump has not done anything similar against Harris, Clinton or Biden
> Compare what happened in Democrat cities in the wake of George Floyd's death vs what's happening in Republican areas after Charlie Kirk's assasination
It's telling that you say "death" vs "assassination" in the two cases; George Floyd was murdered. The "riots and looting" you speak of are contested as being a separate act unrelated to the original message through peaceful protest. Maybe choose a better example... and maybe one that isn't as recently charged ... and one that isn't being widely compared to Horst Wessel.
> Trying to extrapolate a "fascist" future version of the current Trump regime ...
I'm not; It's already fascist right here, right now.
* Dictatorial leader - Trump ceded power at the end of his last term, and the opposition had a term. That doesn't happen in a dictatorship.
* Centralised autocracy - Trump has maintained the US political system with its checks and balances.
* Militarism - As with his previous term, Trump is more interested in creating peace treaties (e.g. the Abraham Accords) than participating in wars.
* Forcible suppression of opposition - Democrats have not been suppressed
* Belief in a natural social hierarchy - Trump believes in meritocracy, not any other order.
* Subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy - Trump is the archetypal capitalist - he believes all people should strive to produce with free enterprise, and have an ownership stake in the means of production via the free market. Fascist regimes, on the other hand, have a top-down regimentation of the economy akin to socialism (which is no surprise, as Musollini and Hitler were both socialists before they developed fascism).
Trump took to social media to denounce political violence on that day, but a small bunch of unorganised Trump supporters entered the Capitol during a protest. One person was tragically killed (a Trump supporter). The political transition happened.
> Trump has used emergency powers to do almost everything since the start of this term. This includes tariffs.
He's made a number of executive orders to achieve the actions he promised in the manifesto that got him democratically elected. Few politicians have been as true to their word as Trump, in terms of delivering the change that the people voted for.
Trump has not changed the political system. He has merely used its existing executive powers.
> He has increased funding to DHS and renamed the DoD to DoW (Defense vs War)
So what? What wars has he started? How does his record compare to the Democrat presidents that preceeded him?
> Melissa and Mark Hortman were murdered by a right wing nut job.
You found one incident of a nut job. That does not mean the Democrat opposition has been suppressed by Trump. And what do you say about the multiple assasination attempts on Trump?
It's clear where the political violence is coming from.
> violence on that day, but a small bunch of unorganised Trump supporters entered the Capitol during a protest. One person was tragically killed (a Trump supporter). The political transition happened.
Why are you ignoring that Trump riled them up way before all that? Are you unaware of that fact?
> January 6th, 13:10
> Mr Trump ends his speech with the words: "We fight. We fight like hell and if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore. So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue."
> Shortly afterwards a Capitol police officer calls for backup.
Can you picture Clinton, Bush, Obama, or Biden doing a rally like this, completely aware that the Proud Boys were in the crowd, even invited by the administration to be there? Picture that and tell us again how peaceful all of it was.
You are not arguing from verifiable fact by this point. These are Fox (Faux?) News (Entertainment?) talking points at best. Anyway ...
> One person was tragically killed
A simple search of "Jan 6th fatalities" disproves this; more people died.
> The political transition happened
Trump made sure to make this as difficult as possible. [1]
Trump claimed he won despite not winning. (Search: the big lie)
The fact that it happened is not evidence of him resisting it.
> Few politicians have been as true to their word as Trump
There are so many counter-examples to this, I just don't know where to start. How about the price of eggs and gas? How about resolving wars "on day 1" that he precipitated during his first term?
He actively sides with Russian propaganda relating to Ukraine. Ukraine is not the aggressor. The fight is over Ukraine soil... and Putin wants mineral rights to Ukraine. He perpetuates the loss of life in Ukraine and literally rolls out the red carpet for Putin.
There are plenty more counter-examples in this space. Just search for them outside of the Fox Entertainment universe.
> So what? (re: Department of War)
It's clear what he wants the organization to be. Take a step back and ask yourself why he would want this name change? Why devote resources to the name change? What message is he sending with the change? Think critically here because you and I can still both see this change and agree it happened.
> You found one incident of a nut job
I also found oppression of political opponents which is what we were originally discussing. While there are other examples, I don't need to extrapolate more to prove the original point.
> And what do you say about ...
Whataboutism [2] isn't a winning strategy anymore.
> It's clear where the political violence is coming from
It's actually less clear because he has removed studies of that very thing. [3]
For both of our sakes, please back your claims with verifiable references.
> A simple search of "Jan 6th fatalities" disproves this; more people died.
Only if you include drug overdoses and deaths due to natural causes, which happened after Jan 6th. Let's not clutch at straws.
> Trump claimed he won despite not winning
If he did, it wouldn't be the first time an election loser did this in recent history:
"Clinton repeatedly voiced her skepticism about Trump winning the 2016 election. She specifically said, "Trump knows he's an illegitimate president." She told The Atlantic "the election 'was not on the level,' and again ... she called Trump’s win illegitimate. She piled on to this by saying, 'You can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you,' clearly referring to how she saw her 2016 campaign."
> How about resolving wars "on day 1" that he precipitated during his first term? He actively sides with Russian propaganda relating to Ukraine. Ukraine is not the aggressor. The fight is over Ukraine soil... and Putin wants mineral rights to Ukraine. He perpetuates the loss of life in Ukraine and literally rolls out the red carpet for Putin.
Trump cannot win, can he? If he ratchets up pressure on Russia, he's an aggressive warmonger about to start WW3. If he tries to negotiate and arbitrate with Russia (which will mean concessions, because that's how negotiations work) he's "siding with Russian propaganda" and "rolling out the red carpet for Putin
> RE Department of War: It's clear what he wants the organization to be. Take a step back and ask yourself why he would want this name change? Why devote resources to the name change? What message is he sending with the change? Think critically here because you and I can still both see this change and agree it happened.
Honestly who cares about the naming of a govt department? It might have had a more innocuous name prior to Trump, but previous presidents started more wars.
Actions matter more than words. I hope we can agree on that.
> Whataboutism isn't a winning strategy anymore ... For both of our sakes, please back your claims with verifiable references.
You raised the subject of political violence and insinuating that the Trump regime has specifically presided over violence. I explained that if you compare it to the actions of the Dems and their supporters, there is actually less violence from the Right than the Left. We must put patterns into context for an objective analysis.
Asking ChatGPT:
"Given the data I was able to locate, the number of well-documented assassination or attempted assassination cases against prominent figures in the U.S. over the past 20 years is relatively small (probably on the order of a dozen or fewer for high-profile figures). Among those, significantly more appear to have targeted right-wing figures (e.g. the Trump attempts, Charlie Kirk) than left-wing ones — though that does not mean left-wing figures were never targeted."
You are talking about not starting wars abroad but then dismissing death in our capital directly caused by Trump's actions. Please make this make sense. The people who died are in direct connection to Jan 6th.
eg: Brian Sicknick: The U.S. Capitol Police officer died the day after the riot, having suffered two strokes. While the medical examiner ruled his death from natural causes, they noted that "all that transpired played a role in his condition"
That's not straw clutching. That's two strokes from severe stress (physical and otherwise) because of the actions of Jan 6th rioters/looters/seditionists.
>> Trump claimed he won despite not winning
> If he did, ...
Stop moving the goalposts. Trump resisted letting go of power despite clear information that he lost. He also intentionally set things up to fail during Biden's administration. Yet another example: Afghanistan.
> It soared to 9.1% under Biden
Let's look at the shape of the graph, shall we? Notice how there is a steep climb driven by a global economic meltdown from Covid? Notice how it turns around? Let's compare to the global inflation rate [1]. Interesting how the global economy shows the same curve. It's also interesting how the US inflation rate ends up doing better than the global inflation rate.
Speaking of Covid, Mr "Covid is a hoax but let's inject bleach to fix it" set policies and rhetoric that resulting in 1.2 million Americans dying from Covid.
> Trump cannot win, can he?
It seems that we agree on this point. However, the position he chose to take was that of alienating our allies and embracing our enemies. Most people arguing from your position are unaware that Ukraine gave up its nuclear program under the express promise that Russia and the US would defend Ukraine against aggression eventually solidified by the trilateral statement. By doing so, he broke long-standing promises that have serious repercussions for other allies on the public stage.
Those promises were broken along with other destabilizing actions as part of DOGE.
> Honestly who cares about the naming of a govt department?
Again, then why do it? Why devote resources to making this change? What purpose does it serve? I know you don't want to think about it because it hasn't been digested under the reality inversion layer of Fox and friends. ... but actually why?
In politics, words can have as drastic effects as direct actions. If they don't matter then why utter them? Why pay teams of people to draft a speech? Why create technology at great expense that allows words to flow from one side of the planet to the other less than a second? Words definitely matter. Flipping a word in a department name from one meaning to its antonym not only sends a message to the world, but also to everyone in that department. Making that change to the department with the most funding in the US government and the largest funded military in the world ... is not a triviality.
> ... Among those, significantly more appear to have targeted right-wing figures ...
I don't care who was targeted, I care about who did the targeting. Being in a mosh-pit means you are more likely to get injured; Being injured/killed and being right-wing does not equate to the left instigating that violence.
Given that you can make ChatGPT say anything you want, please include the prompt.
Eg: Thomas Crook (the Pennsylvania Trump assassination attempt) was a registered Republican.
Looking at Trump's dialogue vs any other modern president, he speaks in incendiary language with other violent rhetoric to try and portray himself as a strong man. With recent advances in image/video generation, he has extended it to sharing imaginary videos of himself.
Be careful with this type of argument. It can be easily employed by “both sides” since the information each side is working from supports their own view and simply polarizes each side further.
I can see how you got there since I did use the term "both sides." My argument is that anyone can make the same claim towards any stance with the exact same passion. Making that claim simply polarizes the opposing viewpoint further. The discourse doesn't provide constructive feedback nor a reason outside of a bandwagon style pressure to conform to a different opinion. Arguably, a cult of personality is part of the problem in the first place.
HN tends to value academic discourse rather than emotional triggers. While both do exist here, academic discourse is generally the goal.
The discourse between people on HN is seen by many so the effects are more varied than just the active participants. As such, I’m loath to leave certain comments completely unchecked.
1: Police unions: Police in this country hold a monopoly on violence granted by the state. Police unions in turn have created a political bubble around the holders of this monopoly. By politicizing what should essentially be a public servant, we have made any accountability for these public servants very difficult to perform.
2: Breech of public trust can never be punished with a slap on the wrist. There cannot be "get out of jail free" sentencing for people of note. That deconstructs any trust anyone can have in the system, if there exists a class who cannot have the law applied to them.
3: A bill of Human rights, designed to encompass attempts to remove rights from certain people. A focus on positive rights, ie "the right to live", rather than negative rights "the right to cause damage to others via an existing right(property rights)".
4: Overturning of citizens united or the ability to punish corporations in an equivalent measure to how an individual can be punished. The fines must always be greater than what can be saved by exploitation via crime.
That's more or less a start. I'm no political scientist but to me these are big points of gridlock.
You mean the 'adults in the room' that pushed an unproven Covid vaccine from those same corrupt companies?
The Democrats wouldn't take the Covid vaccine when it first came out and called it the 'Trump vaccine' on CNN...until they came into power. Then they made a 180.
During the Covid era, you most likely lost your job and were censored from all major platforms if you had an opinion about the Covid vaccine that didn't match exactly what the government told us.
What would you think about getting this same treatment for this?
Please inform yourself. Both approved vaccines were rigorously tested. Unlike other vaccines, multiple phases of those tests were done concurrently, which is why it shipped in 6 months, instead of 3 * 6 months.
> The Democrats wouldn't take the Covid vaccine when it first came out
This begins to cast doubt that you will inform yourself, but from day 1, vaccine uptake was much higher, and continues to be much higher in blue states.
The only person who flip-flopped on vaccines was Trump, because he realized that his base is far too stupid to appreciate what Operation Warp Speed did for them.
“The Democrats wouldn't take the Covid vaccine when it first came out and called it the 'Trump vaccine' on CNN...until they came into power. Then they made a 180.”
