“When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labelled ‘made in Germany’; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, ‘Americanism‘“ - NY Times (1938)
See the thing is, it's often still marked with a swastika. Why? Because a load of these dipshits couldn't imagination their way out of a wet paper bag.
If you really want to stop fascism, you have to stop it from taking root. The problem is that people think the root is "random bad guy appears out of nowhere and brings about fascism". To truly prevent fascism from taking root, you need to starve it of supporters. Those supporters start with the obscenely wealthy afraid of losing their wealth who fund fascists who then promise the desperate masses relief from whatever ails them. A huge component of that is inequity, largely driven by economic warfare waged by the obscenely wealthy.
This right here is a message that often gets lost in the culture war. It's a mistake to assume that people, especially rural white southerners, support Trump because they sat down one day and thought logically about it and reasoned themselves into supporting Trump. No, if they had done that, they would have ultimately come to the conclusion that Trump is one of the people responsible for the massive inequality that is the root cause of all the problems that American society is facing today.
The wealthy do not care about the man himself, or his ideology, only that he is a convenient puppet who can be controlled with campaign funds to protect their own wealth in the long term. To them, Trump is the most convenient and effective scapegoat ever - he takes all the heat, and they reap the benefits of having regulations peeled away, workers rights erode, and wages stagnate. To that end, they must convince the public that Trump is Jesus and Joe Biden is the Devil
The common folk who are suffering get tricked into supporting him when the propaganda machine funded by the wealthy paints the fascist hero as an everyman who you'd love to share a beer with. Someone who is an simultaneously an underdog whose struggle one might find endearing and relatable, but also a shrewd tactician and a threat to the ephemeral "other" keeping the little man down. Then Trump gets up on stage and says, "These people are your enemies, they are the cause of all of your woes and suffering, and only I can stop them!".
When put into perspective, it's not hard to see why people flocked to him in droves. The only message they were ever allowed to hear, by design, was "Trump's the man, he'll fix everything.".
Hate to tell you, with our military in their hands, it would be a fascist reign of darkness only guerilla insurgency could address over a long course of time if at all. We spend more on our military industrial death machine than the next 9 nations combined. It would be slaughter. As an example, there are 12 nuclear powered aircraft carriers on Earth, 11 of which are ours.
The rest of the world vs. Fascist US would be the end of civilization, because fascists would have no qualms using every apocalyptic tool in our arsenal, preferring the world end to losing control of it.
An empire, if you will.
Precisely, and being sold on the same fascist terms of promising safety and security for the right people against their imagined enemy scapegoats.
Hate to tell you, with our military in their hands, it would be a fascist reign of darkness only guerilla insurgency could address over a long course of time if at all. We spend more on our military industrial death machine than the next 9 nations combined. It would be slaughter. As an example, there are 12 nuclear powered aircraft carriers on Earth, 11 of which are ours.
The rest of the world vs. Fascist US would be the end of civilization, because fascists would have no qualms using every apocalyptic tool in our arsenal, preferring the world end to losing control of it.
Nuclear weapons are the only relevant one. The reason for our massive military (or, at least, one of the reasons) is the presupposition that it might be necessary to fight wars on two fronts at some point (Pacific/European Theatre in WW2 style). Our conventional military is overwhelmingly powerful compared to other countries, but the process of an invasion, of taking and holding ground, is generally difficult unless the opposition is completely devoid of reason to resist.
The rest of the world could kick our ass in a protracted conflict, if they all unanimously agreed that the US had gone insane and had to be taken down as a matter of existential survival.
Problem is, authoritarian forces are on the rise in Europe and India already, and already in power in Russia and China. If the US goes, that could be a tipping point for global politics.
Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.
Fascism is our One Ring, we can destroy it. Nothing says ideals are immortal. Nothing says fascism is a hydra and can only be abated. It knows that this is its last chance, people are beginning to change their democratic systems to better reflect the majority beliefs. That's why misinformation is rampant and yet people still produce tech that makes it easier to create and spread. Worldwide, one election at a time, we can all topple fascism this year, but only together.
To kick Hitler in the ball.
Hitler has only got one ball!
Goering has two but they're real small!
Himler is somewhat simlar,
But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all.
(To the tune of "Colonel Bogey March")
Hitler has only got one ball!
The other is in the Albert hall,
His mother, the dirty bugger,
Cut it off when he was small.
I don't look forward to storming the beach of Omaha, along the Missouri river
I do
Fuck Missouri
Fuck Missouri, but you'll be a few miles away if you're storming Omaha, Nebraska.
This, among other reasons, is why Missouri can't be trusted.
Unfortunately I don't think we'll ever learn from history in this way ESPECIALLY when propaganda is so rampant. There not only is no consensus on what our reality actually is, there's no extreme moment where people are compelled to take action until after it's too late. Everything else is just viewed as "politics as usual."
Everything has a veneer of legitimacy, there's just enough wiggle room to paint anything as "not worth rioting over" and so we'll all be agitated until the moment comes when we can use hindsight to say "yep, we were on the road to fascism and now it's actually here." There weren't any bodies before they took over, but there sure as hell will be after.
If we can all sit here while "Judge" Cannon literally acts as a member of Trumps legal defense team, then there isn't anything else short of actually murdering people that will get us off our seats. We all watched Jan 6th happen and as far as I know NO ONE from the general public went to go try to stop it or fight them. We had plenty of warnings as they were all talking about it on Facebook and whatever. That's them literally trying to take over the government and we (me included) just sat here.
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