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this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
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Hello. I'm from Germany and I have bad news for you. If our own history taught me anything, it's this: When there is a critical mass of citizens (including military personnel) who are willing to ignore common societal values and at the same time there is a corrupt justice system which can just bend the law to their will, there is very little in the way to full scale fascism. You guys have the groundwork for this right in front of your face. Your supreme court is only inches away from fulfilling that role and the last election showed that a majority of people are already blindsided enough to wholeheartedly believe the bullshit that they are being fed.
So please don't take this lightly. Democracy is not for granted and it can be taken away. It's a slow process up to a point where things fall in place and then it happens very quickly. In Germany the rise of the Nazis didn't happen over night. Warning signs were there from the first world war on, and the slow erosion of society along with economic factors was a key element. Hitler himself was widely regarded as a loud mouthed clown with little chance to actually accomplish anything.
The erosion part has been going on in the US for decades now. This time, most of the puzzle pieces needed are already in place.
And about the "they are incompetent, it won't be that bad" argument. They don't need competence to break things when they are in power. Breaking things is precisely what these people are looking for. Destruction of democratic values, economic instability, fear, poverty, chaos and social unrest are the key to more power. You just need to look at the designated cabinet positions. Those candidates were specifically chosen to fuck things up in the worst way imaginable. This is not a coincidence. This is a recipe taken right from the fascist's handbook.
The problem is this is the US. This is the world's most major superpower. This is the nation whose companies fed and propped up the Nazis. Because what little of democracy there was in the US is now certainly going to fall, it's going to drag the whole world with it. Too many shitheads in too many countries, including Germany, will be willing to follow suit, and all the major superpowers left will be all too willing to prop them up with little to no regard for what rules they won't break in the process. We might even see the US trying to strong-arm nations in the same way China has been trying to strong-arm Taiwan. At a time where the surveillance and control tools at their disposal are at a dystopian high. At a time ramping up for chaos due to major environment and resource collapses that we have been foreseeing for decades.
Absolutely. The tendencies are visible all over the world and there will be grave consequences for all of us. However, there are differences. In Germany for example after the horrors of WW2 the political system was specifically designed to prevent something like this from happening again (ironically the creation of the german constitution was heavily influenced by the US). Which sounds like a good thing at first, but what happened in the last decade was basically this: The right wing parties became stronger at every election and as a result there were coalitions forged between opposing parties to prevent right wing parties from taking over power. And this in term lead to years of standstill in political decision making, dragging down the country, because opposing parties tend to block each others ideas. Which in turn made the right wing even stronger, because they now had someone to blame for the resulting mess. Germany and by extension Europe as well have a lot of bureaucracy, which on one side gives a bit of a shield against hostile takeovers, but has a downside of inefficiency in acting to protect democracy too. It's not looking too good, but Trump's habit of pissing off his allies might have a net positive effect of uniting people against this bullying and encouraging them to get their shit together. But I think it's to early to tell. Could as well sway in the other direction and produce Trump bootlicking countries like you said.
About surveillance technologies, indeed the possibilities set our current situation apart from when Nazis came to power in the past. It's absolutely crazy to witness how a commercial surveillance industry disguised as ad services (Google/Meta/...) created a monster that makes Orwell's 1984 look like a children's book, and most people still don't even understand the implications in order to realize what they're up against. From a european perspective, there is an upside in that at least for now the EU is actively trying to limit the power of those mega corporations. These processes however are chugging along at snail pace due to the aforementioned bureaucracy. Slow, but steady. Which is at least something.
Sorry for the lengthy reply. It's such a broad topic and there are no easy answers.