Fascism does not require totalitarianism, nor does it require the abolishment of democracy. Fascism doesn't require a leader with any more power than the president, and it doesn't require a constitution which is any weaker than the one you currently have. The United States has practically zero defense against becoming fascist; indeed, it increasingly seems to be the natural state of things.

I'll put it this way. When your country gets to the state that your president has a shadow cabinet of elite CEOs, who get to meet behind closed doors and directly request specific beneficial legislation from the leader of the government, you have already crossed the line into fascism. Economically, at least. It's difficult to imagine an outcome for the United States that is worse than the one it is already pursuing.

Feels bad to say this after all of the time and effort you spent protesting nazis.

Y'all have to build a 'left' first.

"weaponized autism" was always simultaneously pathetic and scary.

But with Bannon out they strike me as defanged. It's like Kushner's Jewish background is kryptonite to them, so much that something so arbitrary and bizarre can grind their meming to a halt.

Then **** it, why not be straight up socialist? Sanders was and he's still the most popular politician in America.

Sanders is not a socialist. Sanders is social democratic, which is capitalist democracy with low impact interventions in order to achieve social justice goals.

They're not gonna do it (or maybe they will, and one can hope, right?), and this was my first impulse about what to do with the opportunity.

But... the Dems are just so damn weak at winning elections (we can argue that this is because they really did abandon their leftist roots and focus on dividing up the electorate into voting blocs based on identity politics), and since even before Reagan there has been just soooo much brainwashing against an _actual_ leftist agenda, that even with the golden opportunity Trump has handed them, it might actually be possible that enough centrist voters could actually be scared away by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, if he said stuff like, "You know guys, Trump was a huge mistake. White nationalism was also something we should shamed sooner. But, by God, I will not sit here and watch as the Democrats try to exploit this moment to turn our beloved nation into a communist gulag."

Hold up - I mean, I can see the contours of fascism, but, what is essential to fascism if not dictatorship?



I'm working on it. I've been talking with local DSA members - I'm thinking of joining.

I garuantee it, the Dems will run someone like Kamala Harris, Keith Ellison, or Gavin Newsom, and just crank up the rhetoric about how horrible and racist Trump was, and that all we need to do is go back to the way things were before the election and restore our dignity, etc.

I don't remember where I saw this, so I will paraphrase it: "Americans have a socialism-shaped hole in their heads".

I don't mean any offense when I say this - because this was done to you intentionally, and you are victims of it - but most Americans have a deeply flawed and limited understanding of economics, particularly from a leftist and progressive perspective. Generally when you say 'social' anything, Americans' minds drift off to thoughts of Marx and the Cold War. You need to get past that if you want to build any real or effective progressive movement.

What would be really interesting is if Trump pardoned Julian Assange. The dude has had a ****ing vendetta against the United States government ever since he holed up in that embassay, what, like five years now?

Well, yes, the point is he self-described as a socialist and it didn't wreck his popularity.



I see. I mean, I guess he was the only alt-right connection they had, now they probably feel no connection to Trump, so.. they have nothing. Which they never actually did, but they felt they had something, and now not even the feeling.

hahahahaha

nope, not happening

If you want me to help it go faster I can spam Richard Rorty's 1997 remarks on the cancer that is identity politics as a two decade early warning of Trump filling the vacuum, but what's the point.

Yes. I don't care much what the Democrats are going to do.



The Democrats are one of the most conservative parties around, so they run elections with literally no platform.. they aren't trying to change anything.

One of these days, Rush Limbaugh is going to get a viagra pill stuck in his throat and slowly suffocate butt naked on the bathroom tile, and a glorious new dawn will usher in a new era of radio silence.

Then maybe when his audience dies off we can get out of this cold war bunker mentality. By then millennials will be so ****ed that they will be more open to socialism.

Are liberals so blinded by their anger of Trump that they've completely forgotten just how utterly evil Hilary Clinton and the DNC were? They fully deserved to lose the election, and I'll bet they have the same fat cats running the show while everybody is distracted with Trump. And I am sure the billionaire class is thrilled.

I'm well aware of this, but short of leaving this dumpster fire of a country, I don't see what I can do but activism.



Last I checked the U.S. was ramping up a case against him?

Now, I don't want to get ahead of myself.

Unless Bannon's sithlord master, Robert Mercer instructs his disciple to wage an all out war against his former boss (which seems doubtful, but we don't know how amicable the breakup was between Bannon and Trump), I imagine a great deal of ****posters will continue to spread free propaganda for the Republicans for no other reason than the fact that they have nothing else to do with their time.

Millenials already prefer socialism

I didn't read past the headline of the piece I linked to, but honestly I think it would be a good thing if the United States buried the hatchet with him. The man is intelligent and dangerous, and this could be one possible good outcome of the 2016 election.

That said, given Assange's libertarian and contrarian views in general, I get the feeling he will perpetually be at war with any blue president, so I'm not totally sure that a pardon would be reason to celebrate (if that even were what was happening).

Good, but there are still a bunch of old farts voting who haven't died off yet.

I mean - the odds that anything will be successful are basically zero, but - what's the cost of not ever trying at something you believe in?

The odds are likely to drastically increase if we witness drastic uptakes in visible misery due to inequality, which should coincide nicely with the generation of old white men terrified of the USSR dying off.

Gotta play the long game here.

The legitimacy of identity politics has already taken a massive blow on both ends of the political spectrum, so we have a decent start.

That all said, there is a good chance we are all ****ed anyway, on account of the electoral mathematics of the two party system.

By asking this question, I think you are under the impression that 'fascism' is an actual well-defined thing, a work of scholarship, rather than the god awful stinking dumpster of stupid halfwittery that it really is. There has been a hundred year long debate about how to identify and distinguish fascism, with no useful result. It's really just a grab bag of random bull**** that in aggregate benefits whoever the upper class likes and exterminates whoever the upper class hates.

Fascism is, thus, anti-democratic, because the public might vote against the will of the upper class. It's anti-science, because science provides evidence that the upper class is wrong. It's anti-tolerance, because the upper class wants us at odds with each other. It's anti-competition, because the upper class can tolerate none. It's anti-socialist, because the upper class is selfish and fearful.

Every time a state gets gerrymandered, the US inches closer to fascism. Every time a politician lionizes job creators, the US inches closer to fascism. Every time a big business commits a crime and prosecutors ignore it, the US inches closer to fascism. Every time a police officer murders an innocent civilian and gets away with it, the US inches closer to fascism. When will it get there? I don't know, and nobody else knows either. But squint your eyes, and if the country around you starts to look fascist, it probably is.



Fair enough. I didn't realize he'd been specifically calling himself a democratic socialist - I'd only heard that his views aligned with social democracy, which, again, is a very different thing. I wonder if Sanders even knows that he's not socialist.

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You absolutely should try. I'm simply offering my advice about the correct place to start. When the people in your country (your politicians, even) cannot distinguish between democratic socialism and social democracy, you need to ask whether poll results like "millennials prefer socialism" are really saying they prefer socialism, or whether they prefer anything but what you've currently got, a result that could just as easily end in fascism or libertarianism as socialism.

I honestly think that Sanders' use of the monicker is likely a marketing term.

I am sure he means well and might understand the economics in a nuanced way (or not), but in a big I think he is just tapping into sentiment of young voters by having the balls to be unapologetic about accepting what is effectively a slur in American politics.

"You say I am socialist because I advocate for free college? Then fine, I am a socialist!"

Sanders wears the term "socialist" as a badge of honor, just like black folks affectionately call each other by the N-word.

It's noble, but has hip hop at all corrected for the original oppression or increased clarity of the real power dynamics going on here?

I used to support Assange, but now I'm agnostic. If the recent reports that he refused to publish on Russia are true - it suggests he's either too sympathetic or Russia is pressuring him somehow, both of which do tinge his trustworthiness.

Should he be prosecuted? For leaking U.S. cables? IMO no.



The problem is - will there even be a decent country left after they have?

Perhaps not, if I am happy enough working remote, and there don't exist caps on American refugees.

Have they? How would you say that is - from my perspective it just looks like things are worse.

Things are rather murky right now. There was a backlash against it, but it appears to be reversing course into a frontlash.

Let me put it this way. If /pol becomes the face of the backlash against political correctness, and Trump goes down in flames with the white supremecists, then there is no limit to the corruption of the DNC that people won't endure.

That is the impression I gathered earlier reading about Hitler's Germany. He basically eschewed actual economic planning, basically said the will of the German people something something it will work out.

And it seems you're right - I felt stupid for not "getting" fascism after reading for hours, and I even suspected myself that it didn't actually mean much outside of a few specific historical circumstances, other than a bourgeoise class struggle.



In that case we're ****ed, because, Trump's complete incoherent ideology, and his ties to crime and backdoor dealings make it pretty clear that he's just like previous fascist rulers. He lacks the overbearing nationalist rhetoric of Nazi Germany, but I guess getting Tweets from the Drudge report isn't much crazier than the Bolshevik Jewish conspiracy.



I think he said it so he could avoid people accusing him of socialist - and then having to deal with explaining yourself while a hostile interlocutor throws **** and distracts with inane bull**** while he stammers around the point. If he owns the title, people can't pull that crap.

'owning' the word is literally how people talk about black people taking back the N-word.

The S-word is a slur in America

Which makes sense and is why I quoted myself about how the 'left' is a meaningless catch-all used as a slur here.

That's true. I've felt internally that pamphleteering - in other words, education - is the step people are missing out on, and I think the left has an allergic reaction to sensible propagandizing, and if anything is to be accomplished, we need to fight this image.

I mean, demonstrations are fine, too, except they are a bad platform for educating and you'll get tear gassed pretty quickly too.

Just don't punch anybody partaking in Nazi cosplay.

What's stupid is when people like Bill Maher (who I admit a soft spot for, but man is he smug) rant about how the Right has it all figured out in terms of propaganda, and that all we need to do is copy their nastiness and sink as low as they do.

The trouble is, that will only work on people dumb enough to only vote Republican anyway.

I still think this entire election was rigged.

Rigged, in the sense that Trump signed a backroom media deal to increase ratings. I am certain that when this is all over he will go on national television to stand on the stage with CNN and take bows as he thanks the nation for being party to an enormous ruse.

(Oh, and a few of his friends outside the media also got rich(er))

Other possible ending to the story: Trump winds up serving in a federal prison.