The horrors of fascism

[Breathe]

It seems to me that the US is beyond saving. That's not even accurate, it's just that there's on-one coming to save us. The dems done fucked up by giving into greed and corruption. Anyone wondering why very few are speaking up? It's because they're not going to.

This is not an issue of left vs right, or dems vs conservative parties.

This is about corruption and what is born out of corruption.

Enter fascism.

According to Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt. Here are The 14 Characteristics of Fascism

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
4. Supremacy of the Military
5. Rampant Sexism
6. Controlled Mass Media
7. Obsession with National Security
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
9. Corporate Power is Protected
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
14. Fraudulent Elections
     

Layer that on top of what we've seen playing out over the last few years and it should start to click.

Now that we see social services being cut, protections gutted, becoming a country of isolation, cost of goods going up...

 

What is going to come of poor and other marginalized groups? Imprisonment? Starvation? Deportation? Concentration camps?

 

Wikipedia does a pretty good job in describing fascism with historical examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

Here's a couple of the more interesting excerpts that pertain to my question:

Quote

Fascists criticized egalitarianism as preserving the weak and instead promoted social Darwinist views and policies.[265][266] They were in principle opposed to the idea of social welfare, arguing that it "encouraged the preservation of the degenerate and the feeble."[267] The Nazi Party condemned the welfare system of the Weimar Republic, as well as private charity and philanthropy, for supporting people whom they regarded as racially inferior and weak and who should have been weeded out in the process of natural selection.[268] Nevertheless, faced with the mass unemployment and poverty of the Great Depression, the Nazis found it necessary to set up charitable institutions to help racially pure Germans in order to maintain popular support while arguing that this represented "racial self-help" and not indiscriminate charity or universal social welfare.[269] Thus, Nazi programs such as the Winter Relief of the German People and the broader National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV) were organized as quasi-private institutions, officially relying on private donations from Germans to help others of their race—although in practice those who refused to donate could face severe consequences.[270] Unlike the social welfare institutions of the Weimar Republic and the Christian charities, the NSV distributed assistance on explicitly racial grounds. It provided support only to those who were "racially sound, capable of and willing to work, politically reliable, and willing and able to reproduce." Non-Aryans were excluded, as well as the "work-shy", "asocials" and the "hereditarily ill".[271] Under these conditions, by 1939, over 17 million Germans had obtained assistance from the NSV, and the agency "projected a powerful image of caring and support" for "those who were judged to have got into difficulties through no fault of their own."[271] Yet the organization was "feared and disliked among society's poorest" because it resorted to intrusive questioning and monitoring to judge who was worthy of support.[272]

 

Quote

Fascism emphasizes direct action, including supporting the legitimacy of political violence, as a core part of its politics.[273] Fascism views violent action as a necessity in politics that fascism identifies as being an "endless struggle";[274] this emphasis on the use of political violence means that most fascist parties have also created their own private militias (e.g. the Nazi Party's Brown shirts and Fascist Italy's Blackshirts). The basis of fascism's support of violent action in politics is connected to social Darwinism.[274] Fascist movements have commonly held social Darwinist views of nations, races, and societies.[275] They say that nations and races must purge themselves of socially and biologically weak or degenerate people while simultaneously promoting the creation of strong people in order to survive in a world defined by perpetual national and racial conflict.[276]

 

Why in the fuck isn't everyone thinking about leaving the country?

[Leo Gura]

Again, be careful conflating what's happening today with the fascism of the 1930s. Today's fascism is very lite by comparison.

Trump is not ideological enough to be a proper fascist.

Remember, we've been through 4 years of Trump already. This 2nd time will be much worse, but it is not the fascism you're imagining.

Edited March 24 by Leo Gura

[Breakingthewall]

The term fascist is difficult to define, but the key is the elimination of democracy, whether it's a dictatorship like Pinochet, Franco, or Hitler. The question is what differentiates a fascist dictatorship from a non-fascist one, or whether all dictatorships are fascist, communist, or theocratic. Is Putin's Russia fascist? Certainly not communist.

Trump is not a dictator for now, i think Trump would resort to dirty tactics in a close election, but if he is rejected by a wide margin, he would leave.

Edited March 24 by Breakingthewall

[Breathe]

11 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Again, be careful conflating what's happening today with the fascism of the 1930s. Today's fascism is very lite by comparison.

You could be right. I'll consider that.

11 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Remember, we've been through 4 years of Trump already. This 2nd time will be much worse, but it is not the fascism you're imagining.

I think it's going to be worse than you think it's going to be. Partially because of because of where you're at in life but maybe something else.

The sick, the elderly, the poor, and non-whites are really at risk.

We now have to contend with AI, we're isolating as a nation, and threatening war with allies.

Jobs are being lost, services are being cut, prices are going up.

This may not be the fascism of old, but this is way worse than anything we've seen in the last 50 years.

[Leo Gura]

It's hard to say how bad it will get. We maybe overestimating it or underestimating it. But sitting there worrying about it is useless at this point. Go build your life.

[enchanted]

The US has always been a hypocritical quasi fascist shit show... It started with the native genocide and then quickly moved on to slavery. For example consider this disturbing hypocrisy that while being a beacon of freedom, liberty, and on the cutting edge of liberal Western values, the US enslaved and then segregated is own population based on physical appearance. The irony was not lost on Europeans at the time.

The CIA toppled democratically elected officials in Iran Guatemala and Chile. 

Supported authoritarian regimes in Saudi, Egypt, Indonesia. 

Illegal torture campaigns in Guantanamo Bay. 

Disastrous wars in Vietnam and Iraq. 

Caused serious financial harm worldwide during 2008. 

While the US has done many good things it is only due to clever marketing and brainwashing that anyone would believe that the US is a force for good in the world. 

Trump is merely a continuation and manifestation of inherent disorders of the ethos in the USA. Or aka "the best country in the world" as the American propaganda machine likes to claim.

 

 

Edited Monday at 11:22 PM by enchanted

[Breathe]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

We maybe overestimating it or underestimating it.

Agreed

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

But sitting there worrying about it is useless at this point

I'm educating myself. Fear may continue to come up or not.

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Go build your life.

My life is full as it is.

As for everyone else, I think people need to be somewhat more strategic about the bigger decisions they make right now.

[Breathe]

For anyone else, my anti-fascist friend recommended the book: How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley. It's about modern day fascism.

I just picked up my copy today.

[Leo Gura]

45 minutes ago, Breathe said:

My life is full as it is.

Yeah, but if you were serious and focused you could help 1000 people improve their lives by the time Trump leaves office.

Or you can sit around worrying about what Trump will do.

Trump is a distraction. Go build a business, create art, help people.

You could in fact build a business that will help more people than Trump hurts in the next 4 years. But your mind is distracted with lower priorities and no vision. That is the trap here.

Edited Tuesday at 03:29 AM by Leo Gura

[Breathe]

20 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Yeah, but if you were serious and focused you could help 1000 people improve their lives by the time Trump leaves office.

I suspect this is something you project onto everyone.

Maybe you haven't been paying attention, but most of my free time is dedicated to health practices right now.

This is a time of rest for me. It's not what I want, but it has to be done.

[Leo Gura]

@Breathe Of course if your health doesn't allow it that's another matter.

[Lyubov]

People always go to the worst case scenarios. It’s a component of that human side which I call the inner child, many call it the ego here, subconscious mind, etc. it goes straight to worst case situations and makes oneself miserable but have you noticed it never owns up to this when it turns out to be wrong? Why aren’t we talking about the best case scenarios and all the good that could come from a reordering in the world? It looks so minor in hindsight but people were freaking out this much in 2016. They were saying Trump would contest the elections which he did in 2020 and they said he would try a half assed coup, which he did and failed and we got a dem president that faced a lot of gridlock, but Trump is facing that as well. USA democracy by design is very hard for one guy to take over. You will see lots of unprecedented in democratic things happening and I wouldn’t be surprised if this leads to some big changes, maybe a revolution and all the scary stuff constantly brought up here, it’s a possibility but also a lot of other things are possibilities as well. We survived Trump 1 and this country will survive Trump 2 and I would bet my money there will be elections held in 2028 and a very strong democratic resistance and opposition built up to face whatever republicans conjure up next elections. We will need to vote for people who will get wealth back to the middle class and reign in the corruption. 

[Breathe]

29 minutes ago, Lyubov said:

USA democracy by design is very hard for one guy to take over

It's not one guy

[Staples]

22 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Today's fascism is very lite by comparison.

Until proven otherwise.

If the precedent for what happens to fascists wasn't set 90 years ago, today's fascism would blow WW2 fascism out of the water. Imagine Hitler in a world with 90 years of hydrogen bomb development.

Modern day fascists have to be sneaky and discreet by comparison. Same dynamic with the mob. Mobsters used to wear suits and be quasi-celebrities, now mobsters are totally off-the-grid because they can't survive the old way anymore.

[carterfelder]

On 3/23/2025 at 11:43 PM, Breathe said:

It seems to me that the US is beyond saving. That's not even accurate, it's just that there's on-one coming to save us. The dems done fucked up by giving into greed and corruption. Anyone wondering why very few are speaking up? It's because they're not going to.

This is not an issue of left vs right, or dems vs conservative parties.

This is about corruption and what is born out of corruption.

Enter fascism.

According to Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt. Here are The 14 Characteristics of Fascism

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
4. Supremacy of the Military
5. Rampant Sexism
6. Controlled Mass Media
7. Obsession with National Security
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
9. Corporate Power is Protected
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
14. Fraudulent Elections
     

Layer that on top of what we've seen playing out over the last few years and it should start to click.

Now that we see social services being cut, protections gutted, becoming a country of isolation, cost of goods going up...

 

What is going to come of poor and other marginalized groups? Imprisonment? Starvation? Deportation? Concentration camps?

 

Wikipedia does a pretty good job in describing fascism with historical examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

Here's a couple of the more interesting excerpts that pertain to my question:

 

 

Why in the fuck isn't everyone thinking about leaving the country?

The problem is a lot of these terms need to be defined because they are not objective enough. What exactly is "rampant sexism?" What is "powerful nationalism?" When is national security "obsessive?"

[enchanted]

20 hours ago, Lyubov said:

People always go to the worst case scenarios. It’s a component of that human side which I call the inner child, many call it the ego here, subconscious mind, etc. it goes straight to worst case situations and makes oneself miserable but have you noticed it never owns up to this when it turns out to be wrong? Why aren’t we talking about the best case scenarios and all the good that could come from a reordering in the world? It looks so minor in hindsight but people were freaking out this much in 2016. They were saying Trump would contest the elections which he did in 2020 and they said he would try a half assed coup, which he did and failed and we got a dem president that faced a lot of gridlock, but Trump is facing that as well. USA democracy by design is very hard for one guy to take over. You will see lots of unprecedented in democratic things happening and I wouldn’t be surprised if this leads to some big changes, maybe a revolution and all the scary stuff constantly brought up here, it’s a possibility but also a lot of other things are possibilities as well. We survived Trump 1 and this country will survive Trump 2 and I would bet my money there will be elections held in 2028 and a very strong democratic resistance and opposition built up to face whatever republicans conjure up next elections. We will need to vote for people who will get wealth back to the middle class and reign in the corruption. 

I agree we need to look at the positives, even if just to stay sane. Trump hopefully wakes up the Dems and forces them to create a platform that US citizens actually want. 

[Socrates]

On 3/24/2025 at 10:51 AM, Leo Gura said:

Again, be careful conflating what's happening today with the fascism of the 1930s. Today's fascism is very lite by comparison.

@Leo Gura 

This is either wishful thinking or just ahistorical. You have taken the development of America up to this point for granted.

Why didn't you build actualized.org in Russia? Do you think you would be able to post about substances and even, God forbid, talk against Putin? Of course not. 

I don’t understand how you aren't alarmed enough by how fast things can go to actual full-blown fascism. Fascism isn't a thousand years away; it is fifty, if not less, for some countries. Some of our parents lived through it, and experienced it, it is not far away. 

Not to mention that the system doesn't self-regulate to make it impossible for bad actors to do real damage to the democratic process.

Yes, people will continue to do their jobs and strive to build businesses. Still, the most fertile ground to do so is a democracy with the least corruption possible, not an idiocratic authoritarian regime.

Trump keeps pushing the pedal to authoritarianism as hard as he can, if everyone postpones action until things are irremediable, then we have made an enormous strategic flaw.