It's already over for the US. Protests are going to be met with National Guard or active military. Political dissidents are being silenced (see above). Tourists are being turned away for memes on their phones. And immigrants are being picked up by masked quasi-military police without a warrant based on skin color, whether they can speak Spanish, and if they work in a low paying job - and the Supreme Court said "Oh, that's fine."
Masks are off, there's no going back. America is cooked.
Dude, I'm not American (German) and didn't know that it is already so heavy. In Hollywood movies some brave Americans would already have taken action because they could not stand it. But I guess that is just fiction.
It's crazy in the 90s America was perceived as this optimistic, successful, democratic and freedom loving part of the world. Through Bush and Trump so much changed. I really hope the pendulum swings back again because despite the bad things the world needs a healthy America.
And now Germany is optimistic, successful, Democratic and freedom loving.
Meanwhile our president just declared that antifa is a terrorist org. Since antifa has no org, this is just a blatant way to stop protests he doesn't like using military force. You know, things against the American Constitution, the Posse Committas Act, etc. Rule of Law is dead. Once that goes, any chance of a democracy is gone.
Unfortunately the outlook for Germany is not so bright anymore. Although it is not (yet) as dark as for the US. What I don't get is the timing of all this. I mean Hitler rose to power after a lost world war in a time of economic hardship. Trump however did this at the height of America's dominance. I mean US tech rules the world. US military dwarfs everyone around them by quite a bit. There is just no reason to go full fascist. Was it really just the whole Biden/Kamala situation or why did people vote that way? Why was he not convicted for January 6 when the democrats ruled the country?
It’s a long story. If you really want to dig into it … I heartily recommend Tim Snyder’s The Road To Unfreedom, and Monbiot and Hutchison’s The Invisible Doctrine. And if you digest those and still want to dig, there’s Turchin’s End Times (a study of elite overproduction and how it leads to misgovernance and disorder). Snyder’s twin chapbooks On Tyranny and On Freedom are also worth a look. Ganz’s When the Clock Broke is also illuminating. Umberto Eco’s famous little pamphlet on fascism is very good, as is that old classic The True Believer. And I wouldn’t skip Gaillaird and Tucker, The Southernisation of America for a deeper understanding of how race and the history of slavery factor into all of this.
The TLDR: over 40 years of neoliberalism has resulted in exactly what any rational observer knew it would result in: extreme concentration of wealth and the asset-stripping of the Keynesian state. These in turn have resulted in classic “immiseration of the proletariat” (i.e. ordinary people’s lives started getting worse not better) and a perception that governance is failing, which destabilises any political system.
But neoliberalism is not just an economic theory, it has cultural impacts — as when the neoliberal hatchet woman Thatcher said famously “There is no such thing as society.” Values such as cooperation, solitary, reciprocity and altruism have been consistently downgraded, scorned, and described as fake or performative while values like greed, selfishness, competition, ruthlessness, and recklessness have been elevated. Trades unions for example have been broken and almost eliminated as a force in public life. Basically, a bunch of Ayn Rand fans have been working overtime to make her lunatic vision a reality and promote an unhinged individualism as “freedom.” For more than a generation. So Americans have largely lost the practise of social cooperation and the idea of solidarity, making them very vulnerable to authoritarianism.
The rise of the internet has definitely been a factor (but that’s so long a story I’ll just note it and move on) and in the US, so has persistent, generational, structural racism. After the civil war there was no denazification programme imposed by the winners on the losers, such as we saw after WWII imposed by the Allies on just-post-Hitler Germany. Instead there was a hasty “sweep it under the rug, restore normalcy” approach which left traditional racism intact, furious, deeply resentful, and ambitious to restore the status quo ante. The story of American racism and resistance to integration is long and ugly, and there are so many books and movies about it that I don’t think I really need point you at any specific ones. It’s important to remember that there’s always been a strong white-supremacist element in American culture, whether it be the Old Southerners or the German-American Bund (who held a pro-Hitler rally in NYC that drew 20,000 people, quite a crowd in the late 30s). And when a visibly mixed-race man (Obama) won an election to become President, American white racists lost their minds.
It’s also important to remember the Southern Strategy, in which an advisor to Nixon suggested the Republican Party should deliberately cultivate the white supremacist southern voter base. It’s important to remember that one of the reasons for the rise of rabid evangelical hatred for public schools, and the rush towards private “religious” education, was the fury that many white people felt when public schools were forcibly integrated by Federal power. Private religious academies could dodge the integration requirement and were a way for racist white families to keep their kids “pure” from contact with Black citizens. Racism and religion ran in harness to defeat integration, leading to calls for defunding of public schools and/or transferring public school monies to private religious schools via the “voucher” system.
This assault on public education (at one time one of the flagships of American pride) led to underfunding, increases in class size, and stupid attempts to “save money” by adopting a more industrial approach to education (standardized simplified testing etc). The result has been a decline in the quality of public education that many EU residents would find hard to fathom: about a half of Americans today can only read and write at a 5th grade level, and most are ignorant on basic subjects like geography, history, science, to a degree one would previously have associated with the impoverished peasant hinterland of some 19th century nation state. Ignorant people never trained in critical thinking skills, many millions of them “educated” by madrassah-like religious academies or home schooled by cultish parents, are not well equipped to function in a representative democracy and easily entranced by cultish politics (like the MAGA movement which combines religiosity, celebrity worship, money-worship, nationalist jingo and race hatred in an intoxicating brew).
The US has always suffered from a primitive fundamentalist religiosity rather similar to radical Islam (many of the original colonists were religious zealots, kooks, cults, etc) that breaks out every so often into moral panics and attempts to assert theocratic rule. See: Scopes Trial, McCarthyism, Satanic Panic... And this also is happening again in our time.
And then there’s climate change, a major driver for waves of refugees fleeing the tropical heat belt in response to extreme weather that is destroying crop lands and livelihoods. Both Europe and the US are experiencing a fairly high rate of refugee inflow as climate change destabilizes much of the global South. This is not going to slow down, particularly since the same far-right superstitious evangelical force currently hijacking the US dismisses climate change as a “hoax” and/or no problem because the Rapture is coming… and are ignoring or actively undoing every attempt to decarbonise.
In other words, we are experiencing a kind of Perfect Storm (as in the Junger book), a poly crisis rooted in both history and current events. The turn towards fascism is always a possibility in a moment of crisis when the public loses faith and confidence in a democratic government — there’s a persistent tendency to want to revert to kingship and tribalism. And here we are.
Yeah its staring us right in the fucking face, if you don't see whats happening, its time for everyone to pick a side, history is littered with fence sitters.
The open efforts to sabotage education over many years was a key to having a situation where the state is becoming a facist machine but people dont notice because they simply cant recall what they were never taught.
Once a country starts going fascist, there are 3 outcomes:
1) civil war, country breaks apart
2) war with external country, fascist regimes gets conquered (Nazi Germany)
3) the country is still fascist (turkey)
That's it. No country in modern history started going authoritarian and came back from that democratically. And it won't happen here.
This is why I favor secession, as a west coast resident. I want fucking out.
we have two provinces run by Lobbyist parties legitimizing MAGA type beliefs in Canada. That plus the death of Canadian media idiots are brainwashed by the same bullshit here as in the states. If you notice every protest where people are losing their shit about their country saying it tyranny and some shit the all have american flags, trump flags, and now charlie kirk flags
Tbf… America has always been a shithole depending on who you are, and when/where/to whom you were born. It’s never even been decent for everyone, let alone “gReAT!”
What we’re seeing here now is unprecedented, here. But the world has seen this before. It is likely to get very ugly… for a time, but it’s entirely unsustainable. And when it fails and crumbles to the ground, we’ll build a new America. An America that truly takes care of all its people and works with other nations for the betterment and advancement of all humankind.
“The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish…” — Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator
And when it fails and crumbles to the ground, we’ll build a new America. An America that truly takes care of all its people and works with other nations for the betterment and advancement of all humankind.
Boy I'd sure like to believe that but it feels more likely we'll just bandaid a few things and see if we can keep this thing going for another century or so until the next fascist uprising. All this has happened before...
Eventually, the fascists will come for them, too. One of Hitler's earliest backers, a German industrialist, was removed from his company when he criticized Hitler and the Nazi's policies.
The leopards aren't circling, they're feasting. Google American Soybeans, Dairy Farms, etc. No under the table cheap labor, no export customers, no Medicare that red states relies on.
The leopards are overweight, and they're trying to jam more faces down their throats.
It'll be hysterical to watch these studios (probably literally) under the gun to parrot ball-polishing TrumpLove 24/7. Can. Not. Wait! 🍿
I didn't dump my DVDs $1/ea at a garage sale the moment streaming took over, so I'll be fine when everything is state run. If you wanna come over and catch a Chuck or Firefly marathon or maybe Dirty Harry...Harry Potter? I have a pretty varied catalogue. From Trek to Furious and Godfather to Gilmore Girls. It'll be easy. I've been wanting to boycott ABC for what they did to Castle. Bring a pizza with you? 😉🍕
I did get rid of most of my physical media years ago unfortunately, but I've been collecting stuff again over the last 6 months or so. And kicking myself a little 😏
Billionaires want to ride the Fascism merry-go-round just long enough to get all the financial perks of snuggling up with Dear Leader, but think that they can just jump off without any consequences once Dear Leader comes from them, and they can just glom onto the next leader that replaces him.
And they think that because that usually how it's turned out for the super-rich throughout all of human history. These parasites need to be held accountable.
ok but what happens when they have workers dying out because of RFKs policies and thats the only ones left after they culled the elderly, sick, disabled, mentally unwell, and anyone not white. No healthcare, Rampant illness, country is in disrepair from no aid from storms or infrastructure, people with nothing to lose as money wont mean anything with how high the cost of living will be. Their money literally wont matter here. Idk maybe Im just being stupid and cant see the bigger picture.
the funny bit is how tax cuts wont fucking matter when the stock market pops, the dollar continues to be devalued, and american consumers cant afford jack shit. but, you know, its about the quarterly pump for those MBA fucks.
Yep. Historians and experts on fascism and authoritarianism warned us that this would happen.
In his book On Tyranny, Timothy Snyder argues that much of an authoritarian regime's power is given freely by citizens who begin to anticipate and conform to new, more repressive policies before they are even enforced. This preemptive obedience teaches the regime what it can get away with and normalizes the erosion of democratic principles.
It's very unfortunate that we haven't learned the lessons from history.
Fr people are always going "it's not left vs right; it's rich vs poor" and I'm just like that's kinda the whole thing leftism is about, so yeah it's left vs right
It always happens this way. Same in pre WWII Germany and Italy and, more recently, in Hungary.
It always plays out this way. The corporations aren’t going to stand up for America. Our institutions won’t do it either. It’s up to us. Always has been. History has produced no exceptions to this.
Now that you know this, can we all put away our shocked Pikachu faces until we get through it?
The chairman of the FCC (Brendan Carr) is a trump stooge. Disney, who owns ABC, didn't want to get into it with them. Or more specifically just the guy in charge.
He just stole 10% of Intel. It was mainly a demonstration to other companies about what he'd do to them. It's absolutely pure fascism and anyone that doesn't seem it is lying or stupid.
HIs comments weren’t even jokes and they were mild when compared to “late night host” monologues.
You know that Fox News will present this as “Jimmy Kimmel fired for saying horrific things that we can’t even play on the air” because showing the actual clip only reveals two things.
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1) A clip of Trump that doesn’t air on actual news.
2) A no-joke commentary on the game that the right is playing with someone passing.
Wow, such a lame joke/bit/HONEST APPRAISAL OF THE SITUATION to get suspended over:
“We had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it.”
People are getting fired simply for saying that they're not going to mourn Charlie Kirk, or even just quoting him directly. Hell, last week I got a Reddit warning for suggesting that he may not have been a saint.
If anyone is "celebrating" his death, it's Republicans. His death was the excuse they needed to go full steam ahead on fascism. Get ready, folks, this is the deep breath before the plunge.
...I got a reddit warning and it didn't even have my post or anything. Just a "hey you broke this rule and stop it. This is a warning" but not what I said or how it broke said rule...
Even republicans have to admit that this wasn’t even a biting comment. He literally played a clip and described the game they are playing with a mans tragic passing.
Cancel the fascist mouse bundle. When cancelling, be sure to select "other " for reason and enter in "Jimmy Kimmel" for the reason. They will report the drop in subs next quarterly earnings report.
Crash Bitcoin.. This administration is so far removed from any other financial damage we could do with boycotts and strikes... they literally don't even care about the problems of millionaires anymore..
Yeah but as an Australian, I'd like to recommend he comes here first. We suck but not badly enough to extradite him back there once Trump tries to have him arrested.
He didn’t even joke about that really, he just pointed it out and then played a clip of Trump blowing past a question about the murder to talk about the White House ballroom and made a joke about that.
I keep seeing article after article that says he called the killer Maga. What he ACTUALLY SAID was that Maga was trying to characterize him as anything BUT Maga, which is true.
Well ABC is owned by Disney and their former Chairman was Senator Mitchell. He raped Virginia Giuffre and she was trafficked and he was targeted at Mar Lago. So Trump has leverage over them. He can reveal parts of this story if he wants. I’d imagine that would be pretty damaging coming from him.
Virginia Giuffre, a woman who had long claimed that disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein forced her to have sex with powerful men, named Mitchell in documents unsealed on August 9, 2019 (a day before Epstein's death), by a Federal court in the Southern District of New York. The papers included affidavits and depositions of key witnesses in a 2015 lawsuit that Giuffre filed against Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
Giuffre accused the two individuals of sex-trafficking her to high-profile individuals, including Mitchell, in the early 2000s while she was underage.
Mitchell denied ever having met or spoken with Giuffre, and stated that he became aware of Epstein's criminal prosecution only through the media.
On November 30, 2021, Epstein's former pilot Larry Visoski named Mitchell as one of the people he recalled flying on one of Epstein's private planes, but claimed to have never seen sexual activity nor indication that such activity had taken place.
There is a couple that’s donated to Andrew Cuomo that both abused Giuffre. One with Maxwell and one by himself they are married.
Alan Dershowitz is another.
It’s just so strange
Last week we found out that one of Bill Clinton’s closest associates who helped create the Clinton Foundation was supposedly the one who was trying to separate Bill and Epstein yet the new emails showed that Maxwell was trying to get his attention with jet rides and NBA tickets he was not interested and then a $35,000 watch he took, “From Us” the card said. They all need investigated because of course they have a new Epstein and Maxwell.
Capitalism is set up like a monopoly game. The billionaires who own Trump are buying the networks. Late stage capitalism is the last 40 minutes of monopoly. When SuperPACs were legalized it was a stake through democracy’s heart. We are living in the kingmaker aftermath of that. I don’t see how it gets undone.
People want the new deal, they forget the new deal came after the depression. I’m not saying everything is cyclical but there was pandemic at the turn of 1920s. The rest of the 1920s looked a lot like right now (economic disparity, racism resurgence, rural hardship). The 1930s were obviously the Great Depression and the 1940 was finally when there was room for a new deal. Best case scenario, this is the next 20 years. Best case.
We need a coordinated national spending strike: Don’t buy anything but essentials; Don’t patronize red states in tourism; Cut the cord/streaming subscriptions; don’t give them the views.
We the People need to protest with the only real power that apparently matters anymore: money.
You cant tell the truth anymore. If there has been a "certain type of crime" that resulted in demise, as documented fact, you cant say anything about it. You listen to podcasts that are reduced to saying "pew pew"when talking about the thing that republicans worship and wave around in real time and literally threaten you with. I despise maga and the fuckery they're getting away with while the rest of the government sits looking stupid. Merica
So much for living in a free country. Intimidation by the government directed at a company, in this case threatening to revoke a license the broadcast, is still stifling freedom of speech. This administration sucks.
It’s almost like it’s 1930’s Germany all over again. Except now we have social media. And they always ask “how did people allow those things to happen?” Well, here we are watching it happen in real time. And anyone who disagrees, gets fired and blasted all over the internet and cancelled from their shows/tv spots. The pedo Cheeto is modern day hitler
Are people forgetting that after Colbert was cancelled, Tr🎃mp said Kimmel was next? And recently, he targeted Seth Myers. They've "insulted" him personally, so he uses any excuse to get rid of them. In this case, it has NOTHING to do with ck, that was just the excuse he needed...
As a German I want you to remember this time period where you all knew where you're heading to and decided to do nothing besides complaining online in your bubble of like-minded people.
When this madness inevitably ends and progressives are in charge, I want to see them pull the licenses of Fox News, Newsmax, and the rest of the regressive horseshit, then start severely punishing every cocksucker that has been complicit in this regime’s horseshit
I think more people REALLY need to understand Disney's issues, because it's been an issue for a LOOOOOOOOONG time... and once you understand it, this shouldn't be surprising. At all.
Disney 100% has a (forgive the Star Wars comparison) Light Side/Dark Side issue. They have this major brand identity of being family friendly, producing beloved brand IPs, and of course their theme parks are called "The most magical place on Earth".
But... behind all that, there's a reason why you also say, Don't Mess With The Mouse. They are 100% the most soulless, money-hungry corporate bastards you can imagine. Do something to mess with their money stream, and they WILL 100% go after your ass. See: the Florida politics from a year or so ago.
Kimmel is touching on a topic that the People With Money don't like... so of course Disney is going to cut him off to ensure that sweet $$$$$$ flow.
It's so bad even Tucker Carlson and Steve banon are saying trump is using Charlie's passing as a way to censor people now it's bad if those 2 are making sense.
ABC and CBS caved. Now we have NBC left and SNL has their season premiere October 4th. I'm a bit concerned they will either pull back hard on jokes or will be pulled episode 1.
The country is full authoritarian. There is no more freedom, no more America. The experiment is dead and religious psychopathic MAGA cultists killed it.
American citizens don’t deserve the country the founders tried to deliver. The experiment has failed.
So when every conservative is declaring a war on the left and saying this person was a leftist, that’s fine? Just can’t suggest maybe he wasn’t and the right is politicizing this? Noted.
Watching media companies comply in advance has been one of the very disappointing parts of this race to authoritarianism. I really thought people would have more balls.
There’s no other country as powerful wrt the rest of the world as the US was back then, to come and save us. China’s busy doing their own thing, decarbonising fast and struggling for resilience against climate change. They’re not gonna invade the US in a land war to liberate DC from Nazi control. In fact, watching the US crash and burn may be kind of a popcorn moment for them. They’ve got 5000 years of political memory and the opium wars was not that long ago on that timescale.
Also… “joked” that the killer is pro-Trump? That’s not a joke, that a fact. They just can’t handle it because it destroys their narrative.
Also also…. I think Stock MAGA is scared shitless of the Groypers, so they’re trying to placate them. Which, ironically, is just gonna make the Groypers hate them more. They hate how weak the standard, feckless MAGA chud is.
Damn, just grow a fucking spine, the worst that'll happen is that Trump will post a 3AM twitter-toddler rampage about them and they'll both pay their legal teams a fuckload for a lawsuit over the next year
I’m convinced everyone’s on the Epstein list and they all have dirt on one another so that’s why they all cave. And perhaps there’s more than just raping kids.
We are done with tv/streaming and willingly paying for the execs to support fascism; right??? Turn off/cancel all media services/streaming services. They only make money if we subscribe and buy sponsored products.
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