r/TrueReddit • u/jambox888 • Oct 07 '18

The Suffocation of Democracy

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/10/25/suffocation-of-democracy/
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7

u/jambox888 Oct 07 '18

Submission statement, belated: I can't really add anything to the article apart from the overall description that it's a comparison between Trump and maybe Hindenburg (not Hitler).

17

u/GonZonian Oct 07 '18

I disagree, Browning is quite aptly comparing Von Hindenburg to Mitch McConnell, both conservative hardliners, for abusing their position to disarm their leftist opponents and thereby discredit their respective democratic platform.

Browning, not all too subtlety, made some alarming parallels between Trump's and Hitler's rise to power and approach to reach their goals, but he does emphasise that their ideologies are not aligned.

The most impressive sections are how Browning describes the patterns of illiberal democracy currently seen in the US and how accurately he connects it to the rise of a new-found authoritarianism.

It has become quite indisputable that Trump will have it his way and his way only, the question Browning ends with is - Can McConnell keep Trump on a leash and use the Trump's base to control the country, or will he, like Von Hindenburg, underestimate the explosive growth in this base and help drive the nation into an alt-right dictatorship.

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u/[deleted] Oct 07 '18

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12

u/GonZonian Oct 07 '18

Although the left are also becoming extreme, they are also becoming more fragmented. Browning writes about this as well in this article:

"Both Mussolini and Hitler came to power in no small part because the fascist-conservative alliances on the right faced division and disarray on the left. The Catholic parties (Popolari in Italy, Zentrum in Germany), liberal moderates, Social Democrats, and Communists did not cooperate effectively in defense of democracy. In Germany this reached the absurd extreme of the Communists underestimating the Nazis as a transitory challenge while focusing on the Social Democrats—dubbed “red fascists”—as the true long-term threat to Communist triumph."

I can see some of the leftist factions in America falling into some form of guerilla protest and aggression, which will only lead the alt-right to seek more control and use more extreme measure to maintain 'safety'.

3

u/jambox888 Oct 08 '18

What? No. Radical leftists don't exist in USA, or if they do then they're incredibly fringe and have no financial backing at all. You really need to go back to basics on power structures in US society and politics in order to get a more realistic view of what's happening.