One nazi less?

[Provost Harrison]

no. I think labelling the Trump regime as "fascist" is stupid. I actually have more respect for someone who mistakes an airplane for the moon to be honest.

Let's have a look at the textbook definition of a fascist state shall we?

• Authoritarian and nationalistic:
  Emphasizes a powerful, centralized government and strong, often extreme, nationalism.
• Right-wing:
  A core tenet of fascism, positioning it on the political right, in contrast to left-wing ideologies like communism.
• Hierarchical structure:
  Opposes liberalism and democracy, favoring a rigid, hierarchical social and political organization.
• Dictatorial leadership:
  Centers on a single, powerful leader who commands absolute obedience and is often seen as a charismatic figure.
• Suppression of opposition:
  Forcefully suppresses any dissent or opposition, with no allowance for disagreement.
• Belief in group supremacy:
  Often promotes the idea of the superiority of a particular national or ethnic group.

​At some level, you're on 6/6 and some of those points are intensifying every damn day. It's not hyperbole to describe what you have as fascism. Otherwise it is just a blind denial of the blatantly obvious.

[Geronimo]

What? It's not about guesswork, it's about identifying patterns. And when so many points match that line then the probability of that prediction becomes more and more certain. That is what happened. If you didn't have the foresight or understanding to see this, that's on you, not me. You were warned. And you're still being warned. The evidence stacks up, the datapoints are clearly defining that trajectory with historical precedent.

The only hindsight being used is looking into history. What is being said about your regime many of us have been saying for years. And you dismissed it. And now you have the audacity to tell us we have the "benefit of hindsight" to say our predictions were true. But we told you then, and we're telling you now, it is real and happening *right now*. Procrastinate at your peril.

I'm not truly dismissing you. I'm encouraged by your opposition to Trump. I'm dismissing your identification of the Trump administration as "fascist". I am also not procrastinating. I waste far more time and keystrokes trying to plant seeds of doubts in the minds of Maga supporters than I spend here. Just sometimes I have to lay low for a while until the pitchfork wielding virtual mobs forget that I'm lurking and that they need to drown me out.

[Geronimo]

Let's have a look at the textbook definition of a fascist state shall we?

• Authoritarian and nationalistic:
  Emphasizes a powerful, centralized government and strong, often extreme, nationalism.
• Right-wing:
  A core tenet of fascism, positioning it on the political right, in contrast to left-wing ideologies like communism.
• Hierarchical structure:
  Opposes liberalism and democracy, favoring a rigid, hierarchical social and political organization.
• Dictatorial leadership:
  Centers on a single, powerful leader who commands absolute obedience and is often seen as a charismatic figure.
• Suppression of opposition:
  Forcefully suppresses any dissent or opposition, with no allowance for disagreement.
• Belief in group supremacy:
  Often promotes the idea of the superiority of a particular national or ethnic group.

​At some level, you're on 6/6 and some of those points are intensifying every damn day. It's not hyperbole to describe what you have as fascism. Otherwise it is just a blind denial of the blatantly obvious.

this is like saying every european monarch until at least the end of the 18th century was a fascist.

[Provost Harrison]

I'm not truly dismissing you. I'm encouraged by your opposition to Trump. I'm dismissing your identification of the Trump administration as "fascist". I am also not procrastinating. I waste far more time and keystrokes trying to plant seeds of doubts in the minds of Maga supporters than I spend here. Just sometimes I have to lay low for a while until the pitchfork wielding virtual mobs forget that I'm lurking and that they need to drown me out.

A word from the wise in terms of trying to plant the seeds of doubt in their minds. I'm not sure it is worth the expenditure of effort. Trust me I have tried. They get angry because it is, in essence, a cult. No matter how well we craft our arguments it makes it clearer in the mind of the "MAGA cultist" that we are the enemy - intellectual, elitist, "woke" - because at its core it's tribalism and revelling in ignorance. We have the same problem here with Reform, arguably a MAGA proxy with Farage, like Dutton or Poilièvre before in other English-speaking countries. But slowly but surely my country seems to be learning how to turn the tables on these people before it is too late. However the issue you have is that you have allowed fascists to become so embedded that I don't even know how to fix your country. We know how it was resolved in Germany, and it wasn't pretty.

[Lorizael]

I still don't give a ****.

Up to 1,800 detainees from the now closed "Alligator Alcatraz" have vanished from official records and nobody seems to know where they are or what's happening to them.

We're murdering random brown people on boats in international waters.

Unaccountable masked government agents are ransacking and terrorizing whole apartment blocks.

Universities and academics are being culled.

The president is bullying the media into obsequiousness.

The government is taking ownership in and accepting outright bribes from corporations.

National guard units are being federalized to quash dissent in politically disfavored cities.

And somehow you think what's really important is that we're suuuuuuuper careful about the label we attach to all that. I mean this with all sincerity: get your head out of your ass. What are you even doing, man?

[Provost Harrison]

this is like saying every european monarch until at least the end of the 18th century was a fascist.

You're not an 18th century monarchy, you are supposedly a democratic republic. Context is key here.

[Lorizael]

How is that different from "deplatforming" that has been strongly advocated for people like Charlie Kirk for years now? To the extent that Kirk was opposed to deplatforming he was a hypocrite. There is no way hypocrisy is a useful diagnostic for fascism.

Ah yes no different, no different at all.

https://newrepublic.com/post/201448/professor-flees-to-europe-turning-point-usa-antifa

[Lorizael]

Also, man, there are a lot of historians and political scientists with relevant expertise who are labeling the Trump regime fascist. So if your argument is that people are being sloppy with their definitions and throwing around words without care, I think you might kind of have the situation backwards...

[Elok]

There is a very significant difference. Hitler seized power because he wanted to exterminate Jews and Communists, breed a master race of Germanic supermen, and forge a worldwide German Empire that would last a thousand years. He lied about a lot of things, but he seemed to sincerely be aiming towards that, and all his actions point in that general direction. Trump, while perfectly happy to do any number of barbarous things, is doing them because, basically, he wants attention. Specifically respectful attention, with groveling, and opportunities to be cruel to people who did not respect him in the past, and of course plenty of chances to steal stuff and possibly engage in coitus with much younger women, assuming the relevant parts of his body still work. He will, to those ends, say he wants this, that, and the other thing, and possibly on some shallow level believe as much due to his own limited self-awareness, but he doesn't actually seem to be committed to anything, and in fact despises those who do commit to things. Plenty of people have said he rolls his eyes at soldiers' graves--people who get themselves killed for other people are suckers, plain and simple. At the same time, Trump is much more impressionable than your typical fascist. If you hacked Truth Social to have all his followers' accounts praise him and ask him to go after those filthy unamerican antique dealers next, he would promptly launch a ferocious crusade against antique shops (somebody I know argues that the deployment of troops to American cities is largely due to his base criticizing him for not being assertive enough in his first term, which seems entirely consistent with his character).

You can argue that it doesn't matter if he's being an authoritarian thug, but he's not really being a very competent or organized authoritarian thug. He can be cast as one, if you insist on pattern-matching and ignoring the things that don't fit, but really he's doing a pretty crap job of actually taking over stuff; fascists were often kind of bad at getting control, and at many other things, but once they actually got their hands on power they were enthusiastic and thorough about crushing dissent. Trump's ten months into his second term and people are still honestly and without fear telling pollsters that, by and large, they do not like him, and the pollsters are publishing those results. He got Colbert's show canceled and Kimmel's ... sort of briefly halted, I think? Plenty of media outlets are still criticizing him, as well as plenty of private citizens. His orders are getting tied up in courts and the hostile judges aren't getting hauled out of their beds and disappeared in the dead of night. No free helicopter rides, no murdered critics. He's such a big bad strong man that he's picking on Venezuela, a pathetic friendless basket case of a country. He doesn't have the nerve to blow up Mexican boats, as that would risk a real war. Which reminds me--he has yet to conquer a single square mile of foreign land.

Looking at Wikipedia's timeline of early Nazi history now; conveniently, Hitler also got power in late January (1933). He'd outlawed all rival political parties by mid-July. Not "had a flunky call them criminal conspiracies after one of his buddies got shot," effectively and permanently abolished. Within a year he'd reorganized the entire government--if I'm understanding this right, what he did is roughly equivalent to Trump, in January 2026, firing all fifty state governors and liquidating their legislatures. Anybody expecting Trump to do anything remotely that significant in the next few months?

He is awful and is doing substantial harm, but he is not a fascist. If Vance took over, I might worry more, since Vance is actually smart and has enough of a theory of mind to try to make his lies credible.

[Lorizael]

Why are we talking about Hitler? He was a Nazi, not a fascist. Mussolini was the fascist.

[Lorizael]

I am completely at a loss to understand why people keep making the argument "history is not literally repeating itself exactly as it did 90 years ago in every detail, therefore the very clear, broad trends we can all plainly see are not actually happening."

[Aeson]

Mussolini's timeline wasn't the same as Hitler's so I guess he wasn't a bad guy?

[Elok]

Why are we talking about Hitler? He was a Nazi, not a fascist. Mussolini was the fascist.

(looks up appropriate Wiki article) Mussolini marched on Rome in late October 1922 with thirty thousand men, was handed the government to avoid civil war. Got dictatorial powers, legally under the existing constitution. Changed the laws so the next election would allow him to take over parliament, held said election in an irregular manner in 1924 and murdered a dude who protested the irregularities. This led to ineffectual protests, a boycott of parliament, and the blackshirts demanding Mussolini be more vicious to quell opposition. January 1925 he abandoned the pretense of democracy, formally declared his immunity to parliament by the end of that year.

What about Trump is similar to this? He's sending soldiers into unfriendly cities in violation of the law, so they can ... sort of mill around being *******s in an indiscriminate way. This is very bad but does not seem to help Trump consolidate power. He is shooting up purported drug boats flying under the flag of a borderline failed state. This is very bad but does not seem to help Trump consolidate power. His FCC muppet is making broad public threats to de-license studios if they don't stop letting people be mean to the president. They have responded by dismissing Jimmy Kimmel, then reinstating him after complaints about their lack of a backbone. This is very bad but does not seem to help Trump consolidate power since it has evidently failed. He is throwing illegal immigrants into a poorly made prison camp, then disappearing them when they get out. This is very bad does not seem to help Trump consolidate power (unless illegal immigrants can vote now, which I'm pretty sure they don't on any significant scale). He has called all the generals in the country together for a big meeting so Hegseth could tell them to work out and shave. If there were any demands of loyalty oaths etc the media buried the lede in a major way. This is ... very stupid but does not seem to help Trump consolidate power.

The man is ten months into his second term. He has about three years left to dismantle the Constitution if he wants to stick around. SCOTUS has given him one significant victory to that general end that I can think of (immunity to prosecution for acts in office). Trump, egged on by his followers, is doing awful things in an essentially random fashion, in between meaningless posturing and wasting or stealing money. If you want to argue that this eroding norms for a future would-be dictator to take advantage, that's quite fair. If you want to argue that this could lead to escalating violence and civil war, I could see it but it doesn't seem super-likely in the near term. But Trump himself has only stuck around so long because he's been persistently thwarted. His actual ideas are consistently terrible, not just morally but as ways to run a government. If his tariffs tank the economy, R will lose Congress badly in the midterms, which could very easily lead to a third, successful impeachment. Failing that, he will run out the clock accomplishing nothing useful for anyone, which is basically what he has done so far. Because he's the kind of man who will tear-gas protestors so he can pose for some smarmy pictures with a Bible. His "March on Rome" was an undirected riot with no clear path to success. He doesn't even know how to use violence effectively.

And, as John Bolton of all people put it, he isn't thoughtful enough to be a fascist.

[N35t0r]

(looks up appropriate Wiki article) Mussolini marched on Rome in late October 1922 with thirty thousand men, was handed the government to avoid civil war. Got dictatorial powers, legally under the existing constitution. Changed the laws so the next election would allow him to take over parliament, held said election in an irregular manner in 1924 and murdered a dude who protested the irregularities. This led to ineffectual protests, a boycott of parliament, and the blackshirts demanding Mussolini be more vicious to quell opposition. January 1925 he abandoned the pretense of democracy, formally declared his immunity to parliament by the end of that year.

What about Trump is similar to this? He's sending soldiers into unfriendly cities in violation of the law, so they can ... sort of mill around being *******s in an indiscriminate way. This is very bad but does not seem to help Trump consolidate power. He is shooting up purported drug boats flying under the flag of a borderline failed state. This is very bad but does not seem to help Trump consolidate power. His FCC muppet is making broad public threats to de-license studios if they don't stop letting people be mean to the president. They have responded by dismissing Jimmy Kimmel, then reinstating him after complaints about their lack of a backbone. This is very bad but does not seem to help Trump consolidate power since it has evidently failed. He is throwing illegal immigrants into a poorly made prison camp, then disappearing them when they get out. This is very bad does not seem to help Trump consolidate power (unless illegal immigrants can vote now, which I'm pretty sure they don't on any significant scale). He has called all the generals in the country together for a big meeting so Hegseth could tell them to work out and shave. If there were any demands of loyalty oaths etc the media buried the lede in a major way. This is ... very stupid but does not seem to help Trump consolidate power.

The man is ten months into his second term. He has about three years left to dismantle the Constitution if he wants to stick around. SCOTUS has given him one significant victory to that general end that I can think of (immunity to prosecution for acts in office). Trump, egged on by his followers, is doing awful things in an essentially random fashion, in between meaningless posturing and wasting or stealing money. If you want to argue that this eroding norms for a future would-be dictator to take advantage, that's quite fair. If you want to argue that this could lead to escalating violence and civil war, I could see it but it doesn't seem super-likely in the near term. But Trump himself has only stuck around so long because he's been persistently thwarted. His actual ideas are consistently terrible, not just morally but as ways to run a government. If his tariffs tank the economy, R will lose Congress badly in the midterms, which could very easily lead to a third, successful impeachment. Failing that, he will run out the clock accomplishing nothing useful for anyone, which is basically what he has done so far. Because he's the kind of man who will tear-gas protestors so he can pose for some smarmy pictures with a Bible. His "March on Rome" was an undirected riot with no clear path to success. He doesn't even know how to use violence effectively.

And, as John Bolton of all people put it, he isn't thoughtful enough to be a fascist.

Good thing he's up there alone and doesn't have a whole party behind him then.

[Elok]

If you want to argue that there are strong fascist elements within MAGA, I won't dispute you. If you want to argue that MAGA post-Trump will be quite dangerous, agreed--in fact, it will be considerably more dangerous if it isn't discredited, because Trump's idiocy is holding it back! If you want to tell me with a straight face that Trump personally has a realistic road map to absolute power, or that his addled brain has a firm belief in any political ideology whatever, I'm just going to . He likes people praising him. He likes giving noogies to people who were mean to him. He doesn't like rules getting in his way. That's it.

[-Jrabbit]

Dude, he truly believes he's already holding absolute power. And he's acting like he does.
That's the problem.