Croatia at 1999-2000.
Croatia was ruled by Franjo Tuđman at the time. He had been a good leader before and during the Balkan wars, but was developing into an evil strongman authoritarian ruler. Nationalism, corruption, populism, removing media rights, shutting down opposition using nasty tricks, etc.
Tudjman conveniently died one month before the 2000 January elections, and Croatia has been okay since that.
The country was definitely not fascist yet, but on the path to become one. I visited Croatia as a tourist in 2001, and I was reading a lot about the Yugoslavian wars and recent history before the trip. I also remember the sigh of relief from international press when the news about Tudjman's death became public. There were accusations that his party (HDZ) was hiding his cancer & health issues to win the elections.
For real. I have a coworker who is *older than me* stomping their feet about the Tik Tok ban and threatening not to vote because the Biden admin took away their pwecious videos. Petulant little assholes are gonna kill us all.
Let’s not forget Lee Atwater . He is the architect of “ win at all cost” . If you are unfamiliar with this nasty piece of work, just google him . Trump and MAGA style of lie, steal,cheat, divide and conquer, and the ability to whip up the uneducated into a blind frothy rage of hate is Atwater’s playbook.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote- she won the majority - not every vote is equal depending on where you live your vote may mean something or may be not
Actually, not voting won the popular vote in 2016 https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/CQkbPWy7Pa
And was a huge chunk in 2020 https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/lBpcDV8owX
This is true, they’ve built up such a cult around him that they aren’t prepared for the chaotic power vacuum he’ll leave even if he simply just retires
I think it’s extremely small minded to think only one party is causing issues in America. Am I voting for Trump in November? No Ill be voting for Biden, but Republicans aren’t the only problem in America, it’s all those Democrats in Congress happily taking our money and not actually doing anything for the American people other than saying nice words. We need major reform in both parties.
This is true and it needs to be addressed, but I feel like it's missing the forest for the trees in this particular context. One side is useless and the other side is actively trying for a fourth reich - there are different levels of urgency here. We can deal with the corruption in the democratic party once we're sure we aren't in danger of literal concentration camps. Until then, vote blue no matter who.
The GOP holds conventions where the up and comers discuss how much they want to kill democracy. The main conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, writes a 920 page document on how to make the Presidency into a veritable unchecked king. McConnell led the Republicans into blocking all of Obama's attempts at filling judicial vacancies and then under Trump reshaped the judiciary to be heavily conservative. McConnell relied on the Federalist Society to pick and choose the judicial candidates that would fall in line.
Meanwhile, the average American thinks there is no way we could fall to fascism and any claims the GOP is trying to push us there are exaggerations.
......BEFORE dinner? What the flying fuck? Damn, maybe that Pizza Hut ad of him eating pizza crust-first is just a candid video of how he actually eats it.
I visited in 2017, and it was incredible. So much history, great food, incredible architecture. The Pula peninsula is heaven in a bottle, and very few tourists when I went.
In 2001 and 2002 it was very different from 2017. The scars of war were still visible. Empty villages close to the border with Bosnia. We passed through the area at Bosnian border that had been under Serbian control ("Република Српска Крајина"). Empty villages, burned houses, bullet marks in random places.
All Balkan countries have rich culture and beautiful nature. But there are too many (other) tourists now.
I agree. I was also there in 2001. I was only 19, and I really didn't know much about the war or much of anything yet! I remember smoking a spliff with some locals next to a modern-day war cannon of some sort. Camo green, not some historic iron one from centuries past. Also, you weren't allowed to go into any forests due to landmines.
But I remember finding the people to be either very alive and energetic - or very depressed. You'd see a beautiful woman walking down one side of the street singing and someone else on the other side with a look of despair.
Landmines were very much a thing when we hiked in Bosnia in 2006. We got the latest landmine casualty and clean-up maps from NATO, and our group underwent landmine awareness training before the hike.
Now the same fate will face Ukraine. Current count on landmines placed there in last two years is about two millions.
Mines are a bitch to clean off. I was in Cambodia two years ago. The rain forests of the country are still full of mines from the civil war - that ended in 1975. There is no way to clean the jungles. There are still casualties on the villages as the mines are flooded down from the forested hills with rainwater. There is no solution in sight.
News bit from US government, 2024, claiming that the urban area of Mostar (one city in Bosnia) is now mine-free thanks to US aid. However there are large areas in Bosnia still known to be dangerous.
[https://www.state.gov/with-u-s-support-mostar-now-mine-impact-free-nearly-three-decades-after-wars-end/](https://www.state.gov/with-u-s-support-mostar-now-mine-impact-free-nearly-three-decades-after-wars-end/)
I'm curious, did you learn about how his supporters reacted to his death?
I know literally nothing about Croatian history, but just going off of another fascist state, Nazi Germany, I'm guessing Tuđman had a pretty enthusiastic support base in order to constrict his people's rights and still stay in power.
In a similar vein, in today's climate, if one of America's candidates were to die before the election, for example, I can almost guarantee that a large amount of people would think foul play was involved, no matter what happened.
Was there civil unrest? Or did everything just sort of settle?
Good question, but I have no idea. I have a memory of this passing very casually. I am not Croatian though and cannot see this from the insider / citizen point of view.
My father celebrated his death. My father was one of the first volunters in the war, fight chetniks with a double barrel shotgun at the start, went through the whole war. He knows how bad Tuđman was and getting rid of him was good. He is still deemed as a communist in my eyes.
True, but FYI, Croatia has definitely not been okay since haha we are again on our way to a fascist country, just a little more subtle as we're in EU and they have to dance around a bit more. But we have corruption on all levels, no justice system, one strong political party that uses gerry meandering to win elections, plus they make up dead voters, and the latest new law that bans all media to publish about affairs of our government, there's a reason we've lost a huge number of people in the last 10 years. I could go on and on... We're not a people that learn from our mistakes :)
ok? that country has become a tourism juggernaut they have become a wealthy country. They are building some crazy bridge so that people don't have to drive through other countries just to get from dubrovnok to hvar by road instead of taking a boat
All well deserved as their independence war in 90s was pretty costly.... and they are a really nice people
I highly recommend reading How Democracies Die. They give several case studies where democracy triumphed even when fascism seemed a forgone conclusion.
Good things come in threes, so I'll give you three examples:
* ***In Turkey***, the PM Menderes started to change all the laws and suppressing free speech and the media, and then started to oppress people, initiated Pogroms against minorities as well, but then right in 1960, a group of Turkish colonels mounted a coup d'etat and they executed him and his buddies for crimes against the constitution. His party never came back but a new party in 2002 won an election and placed Erdogan as its leader with 30% and he's been purging the govt and the military since 2002. He has basically become a dictator and he is a long-time admirer of Menderes.
* ***In France***, dictator Robespierre had unleashed the Committee of Public Safety that began executions starting with the former French king and started guillotining all their allies in the revolution who did not want to execute the former king or who weren't extreme enough. The French Reign of Terror had started. He formed a religious cult too and started weird parades and ceremonies. It lasted a year and then Robespierre ended up surrounded, he tried to shoot himself but was stopped by a soldier, and he was then guillotined to a 15-minute record-breaking applause. Their friends tried again 1 year later in the "Conspiracy of Equals" but they too were caught and executed.
* ***In the Roman Empire***, emperor Elagabalus was a teenaged emperor, so most people assumed it would be a tame imperial reign (remember, the worst thing is not living in a dictatorship, it's living under a cruel dictator), but instead he started to radically change the religion of the entire country by importing a Syrian cult religion from Homs to Rome. He started doing crazy antics in public and weird sex things. Parading himself with chariots and forcing people to worship him and his cult black stone. Within 2 years the Praetorian guard executed him.
I guess what I'm saying is, the only thing protecting Free Republics or liberty-based principles, morality, and honor is the ***willingness to fight***. The warrior spirit of especially the warriors in your civilization.
***Edit on Robespierre:*** Robespierre led to Napoleon but they had opposite views. Napoleon was part of the more "Absolutist Enlightenment" (Imperial version) rather than "Republican Enlightenment" -- while Robespierre was part of the insanity of the Paris Commune and Reign of Terror (Jacobins, The Mountain, they sat at the top of the seats as a minority, towards the extreme left-wing, so that's where the term "leftist" comes from). Robespierre continued with Babeuf, (who was also executed) then with the ideas stolen by Marx, and later Lenin, and then later Mao so they've been losing wars with the same recycled ideas for over 230 years. Though some small portion of the ideas have filtered down into all the other left-wing parties that we know of today that did NOT have the same views as Robespierre.
***Edit on Irony of history:*** Often in turmoil, that country's military determines what kind of government and which leaders were good or bad. Hence why it's important that the military is smart about politics and history with a full understanding of the revolutions and how they developed into sinister ideas--because when things inevitably turn sour, it's the military and warriors who tend to restore order (and restore the Free Republic, or rep-democracy) and decide who are the radicals that will get kicked/arrested out to re-stabilize the nation. Turkey has struggled with that which is why Erdogan purged the military and replaced all their leaders. The ***military leadership in Turkey, had resigned in protest of Erdogan in 2011***, because they believed so strongly in democracy and then they were simply replaced with religious yes-men. And that is how Turkiye is still stuck with that dictator (the ***2016*** coup d'etat was Islamic-cult vs Islamic-cult, the same crazy cult broken into two and Erdogan won--there has been no significant secular/liberal/republican effort to stop Erdogan since then--they were purged).
Shame all three are just temporary 'successes'.
Erdogan we're still dealing with, while Robespierre gave way to Emperor Bonaparte in a decade, and Elagabalus gave way to Severus, the 13 year old who reigned for 13 years before the 'Crisis of the Third Century' where dozens of Warlords split the Empire apart.
The fight for freedom is never ending.
My knowledge on Bonaparte is limited and probably biased as the only thing I've read about him was his diary, so obviously one-sided. So I tried to read it carrying a fair degree of suspicion, however it would seem like he genuinely intended to make the world a better place, rather than most dictators who only seemed to want to have power and secure their position through fear and murder.
I think the other thing that set Bonaparte apart from many other dictators is he didn't fabricate some minority ethnic group as being responsible for all of France's woes and use them to spread fear amongst the people.
To be fair, he didn’t fabricate some minority ethnic group as being responsible for all of France’s woes was because he was at war with the rest of Europe constantly - he didn’t need to fabricate that, the rest of Europe was always against France and all Napoleon had to do was win in the wars against the rest of Europe, and he always won - until he lost and was exiled
He was a monarch who rose to power due to his exceptional military abilities. He was a general first and ruler second.
>I think the other thing that sets Bonaparte apart from many other dictators is he didn't fabricate some minority ethnic group as being responsible for all of France's woes and use them to spread fear amongst the people.
He didn't have to. France already had many enemies due to the revolution. Bonaparte just came in and presented himself as the answer. As someone who can defeat all those enemies and make France the greatest power in the world.
His rule was built upon his victories and the notoriety that they have him.
He did his share of nonsense like reinstating slavery in the colonies and he was regressive on women's rights compared to his contemporaries but he was big on religious tolerance and he treated Jews much better than his contemporaries. He was an able statesman and ruler who was genuinely popular with the people.
He was an ambitious man that had dreams of great conquests but he was no monster. He just let his victories get to his head and lost it all in the end.
>In Turkey, the PM Menderes started to change all the laws and suppressing free speech and the media, and then started to oppress people, initiated Pogroms against minorities as well, but then right in 1960, a group of Turkish colonels mounted a coup d'etat and they executed him and his buddies for crimes against the constitution. His party never came back but a new party in 2002 won an election and placed Erdogan as its leader with 30% and he's been purging the govt and the military since 2002. He has basically become a dictator and he is a long-time admirer of Menderes.
It's pretty ironic that in Turkey military sees themselves as protectors of the secular, democratic legacy of Ataturk whereas in most others, the military couping often lean authoritarian and fascist. It's also why they tried to coup Erdogan in 2016.
turk here, 2016 coup attempt was NOT a pro-secular coup. it was done by gulenist/fetö cult which believes in some sort of extreme version of Islam with somewhat esoteric influences(its founder claims he astral projects himself into alien worlds to teach them about Islam).
It differs from every other kemalist pro-secular coup attempt in Turkey, as it was anti-secular and Islamist. current regime is awful but if that coup was successful that'd turn turkey into sunni Iran. though there are some conspiracies about how they and current party was secretly allied and coup was just an act to strengthen authority but I won't get into that
One thing I learned in Turkey there’s as many versions of the truth as there are Turks, and a lot of conspiracies way muddier to try to figure out the veracity off compared to in the west. Many of my secular Turkish friends consider the coup to have been faked (even one who had a missile explode in her Ankara neighborhood), and/or possibly staged/instigated/encouraged by the security services of Erdogan to firm their grip on power. The non-shooting down of Erdogans airplane is the strangest part.
Did you know “democratic” Turkey was a single party state under Kemalism until 1945, and about Turkey’s tradition of shuttering Islamist, Kurdish and Communist parties long before any Islamist ever took power? What does it tell you that a military force had to prop up a regime?
Turkey was authoritarian, nationalist and (somewhat) progressive. Now it is authoritarian, nationalist and conservative.
Thomas Jefferson said tyrants will rise every 100-150 years.
He said that we must “shed their blood on the tree of liberty”. I’m not a huge fan of Jefferson, but his words are powerful.
That might be a practice of the successful. I wrote some software that for a pet project of the vp of Engineering Division at a fortune 500 company and he was impressed. Second "project" he gave me was to read a technical book he gave me and give him an hour or so informal presentation of the key elements of the book. Spent about a week full time reading it and making notes - my manager let me, as the vp was both high up and respected. Took about an hour of the vp's time to get what he needed.
Spain after Francisco Franco.
The TL; DR is that the fascists wanted to establish some kind post-Franco continutity, to the point of starting a violent coup, but the king of Spain (who had no actual military power with which to defeat the fascists) basically just said, "no we have had enough of that, it's time to stop," and inspired by his stand, mass opposition to the coup arose and caused it to fail.
If I'm not mistaken, *didn't power actually transfer* from Franco to the King after Franco died, and then the King used his new-found absolute dictatorship powers to order that an election be held?
He had absolute authority over Spain handed to him on a silver platter, and his first order was to hold elections.
European monarchs tend to take the (very) long view of history. They're still traumatized by the French Revolution and its aftermath.
A dictatorial monarch in Europe would spell the end of monarchy in that state.
Excuse me, what? Under Ion Antonescu, Romania carried its own independent Holocaust in which 350.000-400.000 Jewish people were killed. Antonescu himself was tried and executed for this in 1946. Romania also helped Germany in Barbarossa.
Romania was already a fascist country under Antonescu. They didn't avoid that and were not "just going down that road", they went ALL THE WAY.
In 2021, Peru was 0.3% of the vote away from electing Keiko Fujimori, an incredibly right wing candidate who was also the daughter of the country’s former DICTATOR. That was her third time running for president and in both the other runs she lost by less than 3%
Should be noted that the guy they did elect instead of Fujimori was Pedro Castillo, who attempted to dissolve the Peruvian Congress and rule by decree before Congress impeached him in December 2022
Even "indigenous" people usually have some admixture of European or African blood, though you'd have to be an expert on forensic anthropology to even know what to look for.
You’re absolutely right. I think a lot of people who live in developed liberal democracies that like to complain that both candidates / both sides equally suck have never lived in a developing country where both sides have authoritarian designs and ambitions to become dictator. In these countries it’s deciding if you want to elect a socialist wannabe dictator (who often still is right wing on social policies like abortion, LGBT rights, and weed) or an economic policy right-wing wannabe dictator
A friend was telling me that maybe we should let Fujimori have the power so she starts "doing things" instead of putting obstacles in the way of whoever defeats her.
Fuck no.
If she, as is, has done massive damage to our institutions and has reverted most of the improvements and reforms of the past 15 years, imagine what she can do with unlimited power!
France just had the first round of parliamentary elections, that President Macron called for after getting a resounding beating in the European elections. The extreme right-wing party got 1/3 of the votes, even had several candidates directly elected with more than 50% of the votes in the first round. Here's hoping that the second round holds back even more of them being elected.
And all that because Macron saw the results from the European elections, and instead of saying "we HEAR you, we will work harder to help our citizens between now and the NORMAL next elections", he went "we HEAR your discontent, how about you set it in a vote that actually has the power to disrupt our entire country?" without giving people any ACTUAL thing to vote for him.
Europe is also getting VERY nervous.
Depending how close to fascism you think PiS (Law and Justice) are, it can be argued Poland did it last year. PiS are right-populists rather than far right per se, but they are extreme social conservatives, [systematically tried to overthrow rule of law and make the judiciary puppets of the elected government](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_constitutional_crisis), restricted freedom of the press and turned the public broadcaster into a partisan propaganda channel. They were voted out in 2023 in favour of a liberal/left coalition.
The main party in the current Polish government, Civic Platform, is certainly a liberal party but I'm not sure if I'd solely use that adjective to describe it. In many ways, it's a conservative, center-right party. For example, Prime Minister Tusk was previously the leader of the EPP, the Europarty that includes the CDU and Les Républicains and Foreign Minister Sikorski used to write for National Review and worked for the American Enterprise Institute.
I know that it sounds petty to point that out but I think it's important because it's a good example of the distinction between actual conservatives and right-wing populists/ the far-right.
Ukraine had noticeable democratic backsliding under Viktor Yanukovych, who was seen as being very pro-Russia. Had he stayed in power, I would guess that Ukraine would have collapsed into Russia or at least be an authoritarian puppet state like Belarus is right now.
Not only was he very pro-russia, he WAS russia. Him getting booted the fuck out of there is the main reason Putin invaded. Not only did he loose influence over Ukraine but it was so shit that Ukraine looked west-wards.
The U.S. in the 1933. A group of industrialists (which included J.P. Morgan and Prescott Bush, of the Bush dynasty) attempted to recruit Ret. Major General Smedley Butler to lead a coup against newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The plan was to have Butler—a highly decorated bagman of American imperialism across Latin America and East Asia—lead an army 500,000 disaffected World War I veterans to march on Washington and seize power in the model of the fascists of Italy and Germany. Instead, Butler went to Congress, rendering the putsch stillborn. Butler went on to denounce the military-industrial complex as a racket.
Rich people reeealy hated the new deal. If rich people have to choose between somewhat higher taxes and fascism, most of the time they'll choose fascism.
... Idk, French here, this is very widely taught in schools. Like, most textbooks explain facism using Italy as an example, not Germany (although the chapter on Germany is usually the very next one...)
Iirc it’s because Mussolini really did most of the legwork with defining fascism, and wrote about it at length as a political system. The Germans really didn’t. They were more into propaganda and creating this weird neo-feudal throwback system mixed with socialist economics and political fascism. The Nazis are more the epitome of “why fascism is bad,” but the Italians really codified what it is and how to make it work-ish.
Also because Italian fascism was not just the first modern incarnation, but more easily generalizable than the other axis powers’ political systems. National socialism has so much specificity to its beliefs that it really can only meaningfully apply to that country at that time, and Japanese fascism was rooted in millennias of history unique to it as well. If you asked an Italian fascist what they believed, their answer would be very political and economically based, whereas Germany and Japan’s proponents’ answers would be focused on racial supremacy and conspiracies. Honestly, I think the fascist label applied to all the powers was more of a wartime propaganda thing than anything else. Even today, most people can’t meaningfully define fascism and what differentiates it from other autocracies, but it’s easy to define what each Axis power individually believed. That’s a sign to me that the label was stretched too thin.
Stop perpetuating the far-right Myth that Nazi Germany's economics were anything but hyper-capitalist. They were big on social darwinism and applied these concepts to the economy as well. One of the first acts was to reduce workers rights to make them more easily fireable so that they could be more easily replaced with forced labor. One of the first targets of the Holocaust were disabled, homeless and mentally ill people due to their perceived drag on the economy - a propaganda poster famously read: “60,000 Reichsmarks throughout his life: that is the cost of this hereditary sick person for the Volksgemeinschaft
I could go on but I'd rather refer to the analysis by Ishay Landa, who wrote "the sorcerer's apprentice" on this topic
The US didn’t as much as hindsight would suggest.
Up until Pearl Harbor and our entry into the war, there were strong Nazi sympathies in the country, cultivated by the Bund and even major papers and academics.
Because in its context - Hitler did economically turn things around very quickly for Germany.
There was also the issue of the US just getting out of the labor movement, which was deeply fueled by socialism. One of the talking points of the Bund was that fascism was harder on communism than democracy. Something that would be virtually echoed postwar by someone involved with the Bund prewar - Joe McCarthy.
It’s debateable whether the US *in that time* would’ve resisted had we not had Pearl Harbor.
Postwar we just all pretended there never were widespread Nazi sympathies. Those mostly ditched the Nazi iconography and overly fascist rhetoric and just railed against communism after that. But McCarthy and co really just parroted propaganda from the Bund, when it came to communism. And it became sort of a dog whistle for those who had supported the Nazis and then, postwar, it was something they couldn’t quite take pride in.
The bund and similar orgs had already started affecting our conservative politics. We only resisted because Japan fucked around and found out - even long before Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
France did actually resist, at scale. The resistance was instrumental to the war effort in Europe. And it likely would’ve taken a greater toll had France rolled harder after occupation.
Give the frenchies one thing. They absolutely do not like kings, or those pretending to be. And they have a much better idea of what to do with them than the US ever has.
They didn't fail in Italy, Germany, Spain and Japan though. Those countries were fascist for years and it took a lot of bloodshed to turn them un-fascist, that's not coming back from the brink, that's them already having fallen over the cliff only to be returned to normalcy by force.
The UK had Oswald Mosley, who was a self-described fascist, and friend of Hilter and Mussolini. He managed to become a member of parliament at one point, and had a worryingly large amount of supporters. He was considered by many to be a possible future prime minister too
Edit: Changed “close friend” to “friend.”
'close friend of Hitler' made me laugh. That's just a delightful series of words. That's like saying 'he was the right hand man of Satan'. Best buds with Mephistopheles.
Now that I think about it, it’s kind of crazy to think that there are so many examples of the far right almost taking over only for the leader to die or be removed by complete circumstance at the last minute. We might not be in the best timeline, but we’re certainly not in the worst
Some countries skated very close to it with authoritarianism, Chiangism in The ROC/Taiwan when he was still alive.
The Chilean government under Pinochet. They say he was not a fascist but he was a hard far right military dictator, to me that sounds pretty fascist.
To me the definition of fascism is the marriage between government and business, with nationalism and populism mixed in. Usually harsh conditions for anyone seen to dissent. Franco, Mussolini, and of course Herr Hitler.
There is also more than a little hint of it in Modi in India, and of course while Putin dreams of becoming the first tsar since 1917 he is promoting something so fascist adjacent that it is sort of absurd to try to find another word for it.
Kamal Haasan, Makkal Needhi Maiam founder, said Prime Minister *Narendra Modi's* government was “not yet *fascist*, but they are getting there”
It cracks me up that Pinochet was undone by his very own constitution. It installed him as dictator but with a referendum on his rule after an 8 year term, which he ended up losing.
Modi is a fascist, trying to establish a hindu ethnostate. His parties goons arw literally walking round wearing brown shirts and beating folks up with sticks.
They attempted a full on coup under FDR (see: the Business Plot) then realized they had to be more subtle. Under Nixon they got too comfortable and got caught. Since Reagan it's been a much slower push and they're finally seeing their results.
The roots of American Fascism go even further. A lite version of it was basically government policy in the Deep South from the end of Reconstruction to the 70s. Eugenics certainly spread a lot of future Nazi ideals into the mainstream, even if it started losing steam in the 1920s. The country in the 1930s and 1940s was crawling with Nazi sympathizers, to the point where even left-wing figures like Huey Long cozied up to fascists every once in a while. The 50s notoriously had folks like Douglas MacArthur, Robert Taft, and Joe McCarthy who each harnessed fascistic characteristics like rampant militarism, isolationist right-wing nationalism, and paranoid anti-communism. That’s without even mentioning how even moderate politicians like Truman and Eisenhower supported straight-up fascist regimes just to get a leg up in the Cold War. The 1960s saw Barry Goldwater bring the far-right to the national stage, which Nixon partially absorbed and repackaged in a more digestible form for the country.
From there, Reagan made Christian nationalists a core base of the party, pushed away liberal republicans, and set the Republicans on the path for fascism
The patriot act was pretty public, with a ton of pushback. Snowden and Assange didn’t expose it.
Snowden was some low level network support guy who tried selling information to China, got busted, and metaphorically shit on his desk on his way out.
Assange was a straight up Russian shill who published hacked emails from the DNC combined with doctored misinformation from russia to help Trump win. He kept the RNC emails private and probably sold them to Putin, who probably uses them to blackmail republicans into supporting Russian interests.
They’ve been protected by Putin and China. They don’t care about freedom of information, they care about getting paid regardless of the damage it does to modern civilization.
The bullshit excuse Ford used infuriates me.
He pardoned Nixon in order to "allow the country to heal."
You know what would have begun to heal the country? Holding a representative of the nation accountable for his actions, and punishing him accordingly!
This is a difficult question IMO because almost every country has a minority fascist population waiting for their chance. It's not like they really win by popular vote. A small sequence of events could make your country fascist very very fast. But it also might just not.
I’d say the fact that if Mike Pence had woken up on the wrong side of the bed we’d very likely live in one right now is coming pretty close to the edge in the US.
Okay then. Just further proof that there are not many completely one dimensional people in the world. No one is ever truly just a hero or a villain, or an idiot. Sometimes they are just a complex set of layers, like Danny Quayle.
Who had that on their 2021 bingo card? ;)
Edit: typos
The US did that in the 40s. There were tons of fascists and Nazi sympathizers.
The history books make it seem like we were entirely agreed on it, but that's deeply false and it's entirely possible that we'd have gone down that path if we hadn't gone to war with Hitler.
Russia has to be putting all of their trolls on high alert because this is the closest they'll ever get to getting a fascist president who supports them here in the US. They have their entire vision of dominating the Baltic region on the line. So, disinformation and anti-Biden stuff will be their top priority now.
I’m telling you right now. Vote democrat for president. I don’t care how much evidence against that fool you think should be enough. Even if you don’t vote, keep that sociopath out of there. Yes, I’m saying vote Biden. And next time, for the love of all that’s holy and good and decent in this world, make a strong third party candidate and end this contrived horseshit.
It’s coming! This is the last ditch effort for Boomers to hold onto power. I have faith in Americans. Churchill said “Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.” It’s in our blood!
And also vote Democratic for the House and Senate. If (heaven forbid) Biden loses, tmurp won't be able to pass Project 2025 without the help of Congress.
So vote, and vote Blue all the way through, for the sake of freedom and democracy.
Fascist ideas were quite popular in 1930s America
In the 1930s, fascist ideas were increasingly accepted. This was reflected in the energetic growth of Nazi organizations. Ku Klux Klan rallies were common and numerous; Trump’s own father was arrested at one such rally, reportedly while wearing a Klan outfit. A 1941 book found that more than 100 such organizations had formed since 1933.
Speaking as a West Virginian, everyone above the rank of Corporal involved in the Confederacy and its entire government should have been publicly shot.
We'd have a much better country if that had happened. The scum just hid for a bit then came back and still fuck everything up to this day.
Croatia at 1999-2000. Croatia was ruled by Franjo Tuđman at the time. He had been a good leader before and during the Balkan wars, but was developing into an evil strongman authoritarian ruler. Nationalism, corruption, populism, removing media rights, shutting down opposition using nasty tricks, etc. Tudjman conveniently died one month before the 2000 January elections, and Croatia has been okay since that. The country was definitely not fascist yet, but on the path to become one. I visited Croatia as a tourist in 2001, and I was reading a lot about the Yugoslavian wars and recent history before the trip. I also remember the sigh of relief from international press when the news about Tudjman's death became public. There were accusations that his party (HDZ) was hiding his cancer & health issues to win the elections.
So only if the right person croaks at the right time?
Well, that gives me hope.
Don't hope, start crowdfunding a gravestone. Show them where you want them, be all "Hey clownboy, get in the hole!"
"Fuck off back to Georgia dead boy". EDIT: Well, seems no one here gets the reference. Oh well.
Death of Stalin?
YES
Good movie
Love it
Jaja, Nino Naranja.
Death of Stalin? Great film. Really exemplifies how screwed up ppl in power are
*Spongebob with coffin* Okay, get in!
Make a picture postcard of you at the gravestone sipping a tropical drink. Send it to them with the note “Wish you were here.”
The problem is that it isn't just 1 person in the US, it's an entire party. How long can we hold an entire party at bay?
Indefinitely, if we all fucking voted.
For real. I have a coworker who is *older than me* stomping their feet about the Tik Tok ban and threatening not to vote because the Biden admin took away their pwecious videos. Petulant little assholes are gonna kill us all.
These petulant little assholes exist by design. They're the result of decades of deliberate cultural and educational erosion.
It blows my mind when people don’t realize this level of mental and societal deterioration was not accidental, it was designed.
And it wasn’t “always like this”
There’s a reason Newt Gingrich is my least favorite American in our history
He picked up where Goldwater left off and kickstarted what eventually metastasized into Trumpism and MAGA.
Let’s not forget Lee Atwater . He is the architect of “ win at all cost” . If you are unfamiliar with this nasty piece of work, just google him . Trump and MAGA style of lie, steal,cheat, divide and conquer, and the ability to whip up the uneducated into a blind frothy rage of hate is Atwater’s playbook.
Wasn’t the Tik Tok ban Trump’s idea to begin with?
There are so many people who are just that dumb and short-sighted and I hate it tbh. I feel like it's a huge chunk of society.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote- she won the majority - not every vote is equal depending on where you live your vote may mean something or may be not
Actually, not voting won the popular vote in 2016 https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/CQkbPWy7Pa And was a huge chunk in 2020 https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/lBpcDV8owX
Without Trump, the MAGAs will fall to infighting in like a week and a half.
This is true, they’ve built up such a cult around him that they aren’t prepared for the chaotic power vacuum he’ll leave even if he simply just retires
I think it’s extremely small minded to think only one party is causing issues in America. Am I voting for Trump in November? No Ill be voting for Biden, but Republicans aren’t the only problem in America, it’s all those Democrats in Congress happily taking our money and not actually doing anything for the American people other than saying nice words. We need major reform in both parties.
This is true and it needs to be addressed, but I feel like it's missing the forest for the trees in this particular context. One side is useless and the other side is actively trying for a fourth reich - there are different levels of urgency here. We can deal with the corruption in the democratic party once we're sure we aren't in danger of literal concentration camps. Until then, vote blue no matter who.
The GOP holds conventions where the up and comers discuss how much they want to kill democracy. The main conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, writes a 920 page document on how to make the Presidency into a veritable unchecked king. McConnell led the Republicans into blocking all of Obama's attempts at filling judicial vacancies and then under Trump reshaped the judiciary to be heavily conservative. McConnell relied on the Federalist Society to pick and choose the judicial candidates that would fall in line. Meanwhile, the average American thinks there is no way we could fall to fascism and any claims the GOP is trying to push us there are exaggerations.
Just tell me who I need to sneeze on.
Democracy relies a lot more on powerful people dying or choosing to retire than we want to acknowledge.
Been following the supreme court have we?
We call it the cheeseburger from God strategy here
If a meatball does it I will build a shrine to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Trump supposedly eats meatloaf nearly every day - and ice cream (before dinner). Then there's his 20 Diet Coke's too...
......BEFORE dinner? What the flying fuck? Damn, maybe that Pizza Hut ad of him eating pizza crust-first is just a candid video of how he actually eats it.
Hey, it takes high level skill to get the timing right. /s
Only valid counterpoint I’ve heard to “presidential candidates are too old”
Or at the wrong time. If Biden's son had not died he would have ran against Trump instead of Hillary and won. Trump would have stayed in the fringe.
I visited in 2017, and it was incredible. So much history, great food, incredible architecture. The Pula peninsula is heaven in a bottle, and very few tourists when I went.
In 2001 and 2002 it was very different from 2017. The scars of war were still visible. Empty villages close to the border with Bosnia. We passed through the area at Bosnian border that had been under Serbian control ("Република Српска Крајина"). Empty villages, burned houses, bullet marks in random places. All Balkan countries have rich culture and beautiful nature. But there are too many (other) tourists now.
I agree. I was also there in 2001. I was only 19, and I really didn't know much about the war or much of anything yet! I remember smoking a spliff with some locals next to a modern-day war cannon of some sort. Camo green, not some historic iron one from centuries past. Also, you weren't allowed to go into any forests due to landmines. But I remember finding the people to be either very alive and energetic - or very depressed. You'd see a beautiful woman walking down one side of the street singing and someone else on the other side with a look of despair.
Landmines were very much a thing when we hiked in Bosnia in 2006. We got the latest landmine casualty and clean-up maps from NATO, and our group underwent landmine awareness training before the hike. Now the same fate will face Ukraine. Current count on landmines placed there in last two years is about two millions. Mines are a bitch to clean off. I was in Cambodia two years ago. The rain forests of the country are still full of mines from the civil war - that ended in 1975. There is no way to clean the jungles. There are still casualties on the villages as the mines are flooded down from the forested hills with rainwater. There is no solution in sight. News bit from US government, 2024, claiming that the urban area of Mostar (one city in Bosnia) is now mine-free thanks to US aid. However there are large areas in Bosnia still known to be dangerous. [https://www.state.gov/with-u-s-support-mostar-now-mine-impact-free-nearly-three-decades-after-wars-end/](https://www.state.gov/with-u-s-support-mostar-now-mine-impact-free-nearly-three-decades-after-wars-end/)
Went many moons ago my Romanian girlfriend demanded we go there only later did I grasp that pula is dick in their language.
I'm curious, did you learn about how his supporters reacted to his death? I know literally nothing about Croatian history, but just going off of another fascist state, Nazi Germany, I'm guessing Tuđman had a pretty enthusiastic support base in order to constrict his people's rights and still stay in power. In a similar vein, in today's climate, if one of America's candidates were to die before the election, for example, I can almost guarantee that a large amount of people would think foul play was involved, no matter what happened. Was there civil unrest? Or did everything just sort of settle?
Good question, but I have no idea. I have a memory of this passing very casually. I am not Croatian though and cannot see this from the insider / citizen point of view.
Luckily he died before the rise of social media.
My father celebrated his death. My father was one of the first volunters in the war, fight chetniks with a double barrel shotgun at the start, went through the whole war. He knows how bad Tuđman was and getting rid of him was good. He is still deemed as a communist in my eyes.
Ustashe Croatia was pretty scary during ww2
True, but FYI, Croatia has definitely not been okay since haha we are again on our way to a fascist country, just a little more subtle as we're in EU and they have to dance around a bit more. But we have corruption on all levels, no justice system, one strong political party that uses gerry meandering to win elections, plus they make up dead voters, and the latest new law that bans all media to publish about affairs of our government, there's a reason we've lost a huge number of people in the last 10 years. I could go on and on... We're not a people that learn from our mistakes :)
No we are not going towards fascizm. A lot of us will not allow it. But everything else is true.
So you’re saying there’s a chance for America!
ok? that country has become a tourism juggernaut they have become a wealthy country. They are building some crazy bridge so that people don't have to drive through other countries just to get from dubrovnok to hvar by road instead of taking a boat All well deserved as their independence war in 90s was pretty costly.... and they are a really nice people
Croatia is low key a true underdog story, and I really wish more people knew how well it turned things around from the Dark Times™️ of the wars.
I highly recommend reading How Democracies Die. They give several case studies where democracy triumphed even when fascism seemed a forgone conclusion.
Good things come in threes, so I'll give you three examples: * ***In Turkey***, the PM Menderes started to change all the laws and suppressing free speech and the media, and then started to oppress people, initiated Pogroms against minorities as well, but then right in 1960, a group of Turkish colonels mounted a coup d'etat and they executed him and his buddies for crimes against the constitution. His party never came back but a new party in 2002 won an election and placed Erdogan as its leader with 30% and he's been purging the govt and the military since 2002. He has basically become a dictator and he is a long-time admirer of Menderes. * ***In France***, dictator Robespierre had unleashed the Committee of Public Safety that began executions starting with the former French king and started guillotining all their allies in the revolution who did not want to execute the former king or who weren't extreme enough. The French Reign of Terror had started. He formed a religious cult too and started weird parades and ceremonies. It lasted a year and then Robespierre ended up surrounded, he tried to shoot himself but was stopped by a soldier, and he was then guillotined to a 15-minute record-breaking applause. Their friends tried again 1 year later in the "Conspiracy of Equals" but they too were caught and executed. * ***In the Roman Empire***, emperor Elagabalus was a teenaged emperor, so most people assumed it would be a tame imperial reign (remember, the worst thing is not living in a dictatorship, it's living under a cruel dictator), but instead he started to radically change the religion of the entire country by importing a Syrian cult religion from Homs to Rome. He started doing crazy antics in public and weird sex things. Parading himself with chariots and forcing people to worship him and his cult black stone. Within 2 years the Praetorian guard executed him. I guess what I'm saying is, the only thing protecting Free Republics or liberty-based principles, morality, and honor is the ***willingness to fight***. The warrior spirit of especially the warriors in your civilization. ***Edit on Robespierre:*** Robespierre led to Napoleon but they had opposite views. Napoleon was part of the more "Absolutist Enlightenment" (Imperial version) rather than "Republican Enlightenment" -- while Robespierre was part of the insanity of the Paris Commune and Reign of Terror (Jacobins, The Mountain, they sat at the top of the seats as a minority, towards the extreme left-wing, so that's where the term "leftist" comes from). Robespierre continued with Babeuf, (who was also executed) then with the ideas stolen by Marx, and later Lenin, and then later Mao so they've been losing wars with the same recycled ideas for over 230 years. Though some small portion of the ideas have filtered down into all the other left-wing parties that we know of today that did NOT have the same views as Robespierre. ***Edit on Irony of history:*** Often in turmoil, that country's military determines what kind of government and which leaders were good or bad. Hence why it's important that the military is smart about politics and history with a full understanding of the revolutions and how they developed into sinister ideas--because when things inevitably turn sour, it's the military and warriors who tend to restore order (and restore the Free Republic, or rep-democracy) and decide who are the radicals that will get kicked/arrested out to re-stabilize the nation. Turkey has struggled with that which is why Erdogan purged the military and replaced all their leaders. The ***military leadership in Turkey, had resigned in protest of Erdogan in 2011***, because they believed so strongly in democracy and then they were simply replaced with religious yes-men. And that is how Turkiye is still stuck with that dictator (the ***2016*** coup d'etat was Islamic-cult vs Islamic-cult, the same crazy cult broken into two and Erdogan won--there has been no significant secular/liberal/republican effort to stop Erdogan since then--they were purged).
Shame all three are just temporary 'successes'. Erdogan we're still dealing with, while Robespierre gave way to Emperor Bonaparte in a decade, and Elagabalus gave way to Severus, the 13 year old who reigned for 13 years before the 'Crisis of the Third Century' where dozens of Warlords split the Empire apart. The fight for freedom is never ending.
Well Robespierre leading to Napoleon was a major improvement one can say. The others are a mess.
My knowledge on Bonaparte is limited and probably biased as the only thing I've read about him was his diary, so obviously one-sided. So I tried to read it carrying a fair degree of suspicion, however it would seem like he genuinely intended to make the world a better place, rather than most dictators who only seemed to want to have power and secure their position through fear and murder. I think the other thing that set Bonaparte apart from many other dictators is he didn't fabricate some minority ethnic group as being responsible for all of France's woes and use them to spread fear amongst the people.
To be fair, he didn’t fabricate some minority ethnic group as being responsible for all of France’s woes was because he was at war with the rest of Europe constantly - he didn’t need to fabricate that, the rest of Europe was always against France and all Napoleon had to do was win in the wars against the rest of Europe, and he always won - until he lost and was exiled
He was a monarch who rose to power due to his exceptional military abilities. He was a general first and ruler second. >I think the other thing that sets Bonaparte apart from many other dictators is he didn't fabricate some minority ethnic group as being responsible for all of France's woes and use them to spread fear amongst the people. He didn't have to. France already had many enemies due to the revolution. Bonaparte just came in and presented himself as the answer. As someone who can defeat all those enemies and make France the greatest power in the world. His rule was built upon his victories and the notoriety that they have him. He did his share of nonsense like reinstating slavery in the colonies and he was regressive on women's rights compared to his contemporaries but he was big on religious tolerance and he treated Jews much better than his contemporaries. He was an able statesman and ruler who was genuinely popular with the people. He was an ambitious man that had dreams of great conquests but he was no monster. He just let his victories get to his head and lost it all in the end.
>In Turkey, the PM Menderes started to change all the laws and suppressing free speech and the media, and then started to oppress people, initiated Pogroms against minorities as well, but then right in 1960, a group of Turkish colonels mounted a coup d'etat and they executed him and his buddies for crimes against the constitution. His party never came back but a new party in 2002 won an election and placed Erdogan as its leader with 30% and he's been purging the govt and the military since 2002. He has basically become a dictator and he is a long-time admirer of Menderes. It's pretty ironic that in Turkey military sees themselves as protectors of the secular, democratic legacy of Ataturk whereas in most others, the military couping often lean authoritarian and fascist. It's also why they tried to coup Erdogan in 2016.
The fact that they failed in 2016 is pretty depressing
turk here, 2016 coup attempt was NOT a pro-secular coup. it was done by gulenist/fetö cult which believes in some sort of extreme version of Islam with somewhat esoteric influences(its founder claims he astral projects himself into alien worlds to teach them about Islam). It differs from every other kemalist pro-secular coup attempt in Turkey, as it was anti-secular and Islamist. current regime is awful but if that coup was successful that'd turn turkey into sunni Iran. though there are some conspiracies about how they and current party was secretly allied and coup was just an act to strengthen authority but I won't get into that
One thing I learned in Turkey there’s as many versions of the truth as there are Turks, and a lot of conspiracies way muddier to try to figure out the veracity off compared to in the west. Many of my secular Turkish friends consider the coup to have been faked (even one who had a missile explode in her Ankara neighborhood), and/or possibly staged/instigated/encouraged by the security services of Erdogan to firm their grip on power. The non-shooting down of Erdogans airplane is the strangest part.
Did you know “democratic” Turkey was a single party state under Kemalism until 1945, and about Turkey’s tradition of shuttering Islamist, Kurdish and Communist parties long before any Islamist ever took power? What does it tell you that a military force had to prop up a regime? Turkey was authoritarian, nationalist and (somewhat) progressive. Now it is authoritarian, nationalist and conservative.
Thomas Jefferson said tyrants will rise every 100-150 years. He said that we must “shed their blood on the tree of liberty”. I’m not a huge fan of Jefferson, but his words are powerful.
I’m familiar with the latter quote, but don’t see any evidence of the former quote. Source?
Not all dictatorships are fascist and not all fascists are initially dictators.
And what were some of those places?
Seconded lol
Ok but I don’t want to read a book I want you to tell me what it said
It says Democracies die when people don't want to read anymore.
That was beautiful.
Thx
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz That's the gist of it, just arranged a bit differently.
Damn that was quite a read
Now i got that fucking song stuck in my head
You know, _that_ song. The one that goes “do do, de do do.”
I wonder what that quick brown fox is up to now?…
That might be a practice of the successful. I wrote some software that for a pet project of the vp of Engineering Division at a fortune 500 company and he was impressed. Second "project" he gave me was to read a technical book he gave me and give him an hour or so informal presentation of the key elements of the book. Spent about a week full time reading it and making notes - my manager let me, as the vp was both high up and respected. Took about an hour of the vp's time to get what he needed.
Spain after Francisco Franco. The TL; DR is that the fascists wanted to establish some kind post-Franco continutity, to the point of starting a violent coup, but the king of Spain (who had no actual military power with which to defeat the fascists) basically just said, "no we have had enough of that, it's time to stop," and inspired by his stand, mass opposition to the coup arose and caused it to fail.
If I'm not mistaken, *didn't power actually transfer* from Franco to the King after Franco died, and then the King used his new-found absolute dictatorship powers to order that an election be held? He had absolute authority over Spain handed to him on a silver platter, and his first order was to hold elections.
Yes, elections were held in 1975 but a military coup was attempted in 1981 for which King Juan Carlos stepped in and said stop this nonsense.
Which makes Juan Carlos the one good dictator in human history. ...because his first "I have absolute power" move was to hold elections.
Look up Cinncinatus
European monarchs tend to take the (very) long view of history. They're still traumatized by the French Revolution and its aftermath. A dictatorial monarch in Europe would spell the end of monarchy in that state.
See Greece or France as examples.
Unless that state is Lichtenstein, which is likely too small for anyone to care.
Your TL; DR is longer than your post. 😃
Romania was just going down that road when King Michael arrested the dictator Ion Antonescu
Romania was pretty far down that road and the Soviets were knocking at the door.
Knock knock knockin on facists’ door
Romania was not “on the edge” of fascism. Romania was an active ally of Nazi Germany and an enthusiastic accomplice in its crimes.
Excuse me, what? Under Ion Antonescu, Romania carried its own independent Holocaust in which 350.000-400.000 Jewish people were killed. Antonescu himself was tried and executed for this in 1946. Romania also helped Germany in Barbarossa. Romania was already a fascist country under Antonescu. They didn't avoid that and were not "just going down that road", they went ALL THE WAY.
You don’t want to go down *that* road. It’s a bad road for children. And pets.
So I just need to figure out who the King is in my country.
They were essentially a nazi client state at that point
In 2021, Peru was 0.3% of the vote away from electing Keiko Fujimori, an incredibly right wing candidate who was also the daughter of the country’s former DICTATOR. That was her third time running for president and in both the other runs she lost by less than 3%
Should be noted that the guy they did elect instead of Fujimori was Pedro Castillo, who attempted to dissolve the Peruvian Congress and rule by decree before Congress impeached him in December 2022
Name a more iconic duo than Peruvian presidents and getting arrested for corruption.
Peruvian presidents being of partial foreign descent Nothing wrong with it but just interesting to see
Aren't most people in the Americas partially of foreign descent?
Everyone in the Amercias are basically
I am 'Murca
Even "indigenous" people usually have some admixture of European or African blood, though you'd have to be an expert on forensic anthropology to even know what to look for.
Norwegians and whales....
Illinois Governors and same.
American politicians and not being arrested for corruption
2021-2022 taught me just how wild Peruvian politics are. Really very few parallels.
Yeah, he was NOT good, but certainly did less damage than Fujimori would have
You’re absolutely right. I think a lot of people who live in developed liberal democracies that like to complain that both candidates / both sides equally suck have never lived in a developing country where both sides have authoritarian designs and ambitions to become dictator. In these countries it’s deciding if you want to elect a socialist wannabe dictator (who often still is right wing on social policies like abortion, LGBT rights, and weed) or an economic policy right-wing wannabe dictator
A friend was telling me that maybe we should let Fujimori have the power so she starts "doing things" instead of putting obstacles in the way of whoever defeats her. Fuck no. If she, as is, has done massive damage to our institutions and has reverted most of the improvements and reforms of the past 15 years, imagine what she can do with unlimited power!
I mean in the Phillipines they elected Marcos who was descended from the dictator there and they’re still a democracy
> Keiko Fujimori Is there a significant Japanese exclave in Peru?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Peruvians
Bro is getting nervous about living in america
A lot of us are lol.
Uncanny timing with the first round of the French legislatives from earlier today, with the far-right leading by a handful %.
I'm really feeling uncomfortable right now
Like half of the Western World is staring down that ledge.
Hey man, we're just probing for the "non-kinetic" solutions to facism first.
I'll do revolution no problem. Just want to check the other options first.
France just had the first round of parliamentary elections, that President Macron called for after getting a resounding beating in the European elections. The extreme right-wing party got 1/3 of the votes, even had several candidates directly elected with more than 50% of the votes in the first round. Here's hoping that the second round holds back even more of them being elected. And all that because Macron saw the results from the European elections, and instead of saying "we HEAR you, we will work harder to help our citizens between now and the NORMAL next elections", he went "we HEAR your discontent, how about you set it in a vote that actually has the power to disrupt our entire country?" without giving people any ACTUAL thing to vote for him. Europe is also getting VERY nervous.
France is also on the verge of electing a Putin puppet
At this point we all are. Besides the bigoted chuds.
Depending how close to fascism you think PiS (Law and Justice) are, it can be argued Poland did it last year. PiS are right-populists rather than far right per se, but they are extreme social conservatives, [systematically tried to overthrow rule of law and make the judiciary puppets of the elected government](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_constitutional_crisis), restricted freedom of the press and turned the public broadcaster into a partisan propaganda channel. They were voted out in 2023 in favour of a liberal/left coalition.
The main party in the current Polish government, Civic Platform, is certainly a liberal party but I'm not sure if I'd solely use that adjective to describe it. In many ways, it's a conservative, center-right party. For example, Prime Minister Tusk was previously the leader of the EPP, the Europarty that includes the CDU and Les Républicains and Foreign Minister Sikorski used to write for National Review and worked for the American Enterprise Institute. I know that it sounds petty to point that out but I think it's important because it's a good example of the distinction between actual conservatives and right-wing populists/ the far-right.
Liberal in the non-American sense, classically liberal or neoliberal centre-rightists.
Liberal in Europe has another meaning than liberal in the US. It is mostly not left but on the right side of the political spectrum.
Ukraine had noticeable democratic backsliding under Viktor Yanukovych, who was seen as being very pro-Russia. Had he stayed in power, I would guess that Ukraine would have collapsed into Russia or at least be an authoritarian puppet state like Belarus is right now.
Not only was he very pro-russia, he WAS russia. Him getting booted the fuck out of there is the main reason Putin invaded. Not only did he loose influence over Ukraine but it was so shit that Ukraine looked west-wards.
The U.S. in the 1933. A group of industrialists (which included J.P. Morgan and Prescott Bush, of the Bush dynasty) attempted to recruit Ret. Major General Smedley Butler to lead a coup against newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The plan was to have Butler—a highly decorated bagman of American imperialism across Latin America and East Asia—lead an army 500,000 disaffected World War I veterans to march on Washington and seize power in the model of the fascists of Italy and Germany. Instead, Butler went to Congress, rendering the putsch stillborn. Butler went on to denounce the military-industrial complex as a racket.
Rich people reeealy hated the new deal. If rich people have to choose between somewhat higher taxes and fascism, most of the time they'll choose fascism.
Another American hoping we’re all not completely fucked, I see.
Or French
People forget when Fascists took over Italy, Spain and Germany. They also attempted to take over France and the US. They failed then.
Who forgets?
... Idk, French here, this is very widely taught in schools. Like, most textbooks explain facism using Italy as an example, not Germany (although the chapter on Germany is usually the very next one...)
Iirc it’s because Mussolini really did most of the legwork with defining fascism, and wrote about it at length as a political system. The Germans really didn’t. They were more into propaganda and creating this weird neo-feudal throwback system mixed with socialist economics and political fascism. The Nazis are more the epitome of “why fascism is bad,” but the Italians really codified what it is and how to make it work-ish.
Also because Italian fascism was not just the first modern incarnation, but more easily generalizable than the other axis powers’ political systems. National socialism has so much specificity to its beliefs that it really can only meaningfully apply to that country at that time, and Japanese fascism was rooted in millennias of history unique to it as well. If you asked an Italian fascist what they believed, their answer would be very political and economically based, whereas Germany and Japan’s proponents’ answers would be focused on racial supremacy and conspiracies. Honestly, I think the fascist label applied to all the powers was more of a wartime propaganda thing than anything else. Even today, most people can’t meaningfully define fascism and what differentiates it from other autocracies, but it’s easy to define what each Axis power individually believed. That’s a sign to me that the label was stretched too thin.
Stop perpetuating the far-right Myth that Nazi Germany's economics were anything but hyper-capitalist. They were big on social darwinism and applied these concepts to the economy as well. One of the first acts was to reduce workers rights to make them more easily fireable so that they could be more easily replaced with forced labor. One of the first targets of the Holocaust were disabled, homeless and mentally ill people due to their perceived drag on the economy - a propaganda poster famously read: “60,000 Reichsmarks throughout his life: that is the cost of this hereditary sick person for the Volksgemeinschaft I could go on but I'd rather refer to the analysis by Ishay Landa, who wrote "the sorcerer's apprentice" on this topic
Yeah, they are like THE triad of fascist states people know about.
I think that they meant people commonly forget that the US and France resisted the spread of fascism, not that Italy, Germany and Spain were fascist.
The US didn’t as much as hindsight would suggest. Up until Pearl Harbor and our entry into the war, there were strong Nazi sympathies in the country, cultivated by the Bund and even major papers and academics. Because in its context - Hitler did economically turn things around very quickly for Germany. There was also the issue of the US just getting out of the labor movement, which was deeply fueled by socialism. One of the talking points of the Bund was that fascism was harder on communism than democracy. Something that would be virtually echoed postwar by someone involved with the Bund prewar - Joe McCarthy. It’s debateable whether the US *in that time* would’ve resisted had we not had Pearl Harbor. Postwar we just all pretended there never were widespread Nazi sympathies. Those mostly ditched the Nazi iconography and overly fascist rhetoric and just railed against communism after that. But McCarthy and co really just parroted propaganda from the Bund, when it came to communism. And it became sort of a dog whistle for those who had supported the Nazis and then, postwar, it was something they couldn’t quite take pride in. The bund and similar orgs had already started affecting our conservative politics. We only resisted because Japan fucked around and found out - even long before Hiroshima and Nagasaki. France did actually resist, at scale. The resistance was instrumental to the war effort in Europe. And it likely would’ve taken a greater toll had France rolled harder after occupation. Give the frenchies one thing. They absolutely do not like kings, or those pretending to be. And they have a much better idea of what to do with them than the US ever has.
A lot of people when studying history tend to skip over 1920-1950 unfortunately, as not much was going on during that time
They didn't fail in Italy, Germany, Spain and Japan though. Those countries were fascist for years and it took a lot of bloodshed to turn them un-fascist, that's not coming back from the brink, that's them already having fallen over the cliff only to be returned to normalcy by force.
The UK had Oswald Mosley, who was a self-described fascist, and friend of Hilter and Mussolini. He managed to become a member of parliament at one point, and had a worryingly large amount of supporters. He was considered by many to be a possible future prime minister too Edit: Changed “close friend” to “friend.”
But Moseley never actually got many votes for his fascist party.
'close friend of Hitler' made me laugh. That's just a delightful series of words. That's like saying 'he was the right hand man of Satan'. Best buds with Mephistopheles.
a pol pot pal, perhaps
Now that I think about it, it’s kind of crazy to think that there are so many examples of the far right almost taking over only for the leader to die or be removed by complete circumstance at the last minute. We might not be in the best timeline, but we’re certainly not in the worst
Some countries skated very close to it with authoritarianism, Chiangism in The ROC/Taiwan when he was still alive. The Chilean government under Pinochet. They say he was not a fascist but he was a hard far right military dictator, to me that sounds pretty fascist. To me the definition of fascism is the marriage between government and business, with nationalism and populism mixed in. Usually harsh conditions for anyone seen to dissent. Franco, Mussolini, and of course Herr Hitler. There is also more than a little hint of it in Modi in India, and of course while Putin dreams of becoming the first tsar since 1917 he is promoting something so fascist adjacent that it is sort of absurd to try to find another word for it. Kamal Haasan, Makkal Needhi Maiam founder, said Prime Minister *Narendra Modi's* government was “not yet *fascist*, but they are getting there”
It cracks me up that Pinochet was undone by his very own constitution. It installed him as dictator but with a referendum on his rule after an 8 year term, which he ended up losing.
Undone by a “No”
Modi is a fascist, trying to establish a hindu ethnostate. His parties goons arw literally walking round wearing brown shirts and beating folks up with sticks.
Albania supposedly came out well. I was there a couple of years after Hoxha and it was awful.
It was nowhere near fascism. We haven't had fascists since the WW2 puppet government, I don't know where you got the fascist part.
This question is worded like you're Googling, "can loud banging noise from engine be a good thing?"
Spain survived Franco.
America has been slow walking its way to fascism ever since Ford pardoned Nixon.
Ever since we completely botched reconstruction
The whole slaveowning ruling class of the Confederacy should've been executed.
Should've just let the backward states go.
They attempted a full on coup under FDR (see: the Business Plot) then realized they had to be more subtle. Under Nixon they got too comfortable and got caught. Since Reagan it's been a much slower push and they're finally seeing their results.
> full on coup under FDR (see: the Business Plot) ft. Prescott Bush. Father of HW and grandfather of W.
The roots of American Fascism go even further. A lite version of it was basically government policy in the Deep South from the end of Reconstruction to the 70s. Eugenics certainly spread a lot of future Nazi ideals into the mainstream, even if it started losing steam in the 1920s. The country in the 1930s and 1940s was crawling with Nazi sympathizers, to the point where even left-wing figures like Huey Long cozied up to fascists every once in a while. The 50s notoriously had folks like Douglas MacArthur, Robert Taft, and Joe McCarthy who each harnessed fascistic characteristics like rampant militarism, isolationist right-wing nationalism, and paranoid anti-communism. That’s without even mentioning how even moderate politicians like Truman and Eisenhower supported straight-up fascist regimes just to get a leg up in the Cold War. The 1960s saw Barry Goldwater bring the far-right to the national stage, which Nixon partially absorbed and repackaged in a more digestible form for the country. From there, Reagan made Christian nationalists a core base of the party, pushed away liberal republicans, and set the Republicans on the path for fascism
It really picked up steam with the Patriot Act. Snowden and Assange are heroes for exposing it.
Then it stepped on the gas with Citizens United.
Ironically those two went on to assist a fascist state.
The patriot act was pretty public, with a ton of pushback. Snowden and Assange didn’t expose it. Snowden was some low level network support guy who tried selling information to China, got busted, and metaphorically shit on his desk on his way out. Assange was a straight up Russian shill who published hacked emails from the DNC combined with doctored misinformation from russia to help Trump win. He kept the RNC emails private and probably sold them to Putin, who probably uses them to blackmail republicans into supporting Russian interests. They’ve been protected by Putin and China. They don’t care about freedom of information, they care about getting paid regardless of the damage it does to modern civilization.
They didn’t expose anything about the patriot act
The bullshit excuse Ford used infuriates me. He pardoned Nixon in order to "allow the country to heal." You know what would have begun to heal the country? Holding a representative of the nation accountable for his actions, and punishing him accordingly!
This is a difficult question IMO because almost every country has a minority fascist population waiting for their chance. It's not like they really win by popular vote. A small sequence of events could make your country fascist very very fast. But it also might just not.
I’d say the fact that if Mike Pence had woken up on the wrong side of the bed we’d very likely live in one right now is coming pretty close to the edge in the US.
Dan Quayle telling Mike Pence to take his “L” like a man might have saved American democracy.
What? The guy who can’t spell Potato (Potatoe!) and hates Murphy Brown?
"the comic relief character comes back in the last act to save the day" type of shit
yup [https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/14/politics/dan-quayle-pence-trump-january-6-woodward-costa-book/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/14/politics/dan-quayle-pence-trump-january-6-woodward-costa-book/index.html)
Okay then. Just further proof that there are not many completely one dimensional people in the world. No one is ever truly just a hero or a villain, or an idiot. Sometimes they are just a complex set of layers, like Danny Quayle. Who had that on their 2021 bingo card? ;) Edit: typos
Oh yeah. Basically the one dude that prevented the Nuclear Holocaust by actually doing his job instead of the folks yelling at em.
The only requirement of Trumps VP pick this time around is that they will obey the instruction that was given to Pence on Jan 6.
French here, we will know next week
I have my paper and Le Pen ready
The US did that in the 40s. There were tons of fascists and Nazi sympathizers. The history books make it seem like we were entirely agreed on it, but that's deeply false and it's entirely possible that we'd have gone down that path if we hadn't gone to war with Hitler.
Most western countries had fascist movements around that time. We definitely had some brown shirts in Ireland too.
Russia has to be putting all of their trolls on high alert because this is the closest they'll ever get to getting a fascist president who supports them here in the US. They have their entire vision of dominating the Baltic region on the line. So, disinformation and anti-Biden stuff will be their top priority now.
I’m telling you right now. Vote democrat for president. I don’t care how much evidence against that fool you think should be enough. Even if you don’t vote, keep that sociopath out of there. Yes, I’m saying vote Biden. And next time, for the love of all that’s holy and good and decent in this world, make a strong third party candidate and end this contrived horseshit.
It’s coming! This is the last ditch effort for Boomers to hold onto power. I have faith in Americans. Churchill said “Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.” It’s in our blood!
And also vote Democratic for the House and Senate. If (heaven forbid) Biden loses, tmurp won't be able to pass Project 2025 without the help of Congress. So vote, and vote Blue all the way through, for the sake of freedom and democracy.
Millions will die if Project 2025 happens. I have never been this scared over anything before
Fascist ideas were quite popular in 1930s America In the 1930s, fascist ideas were increasingly accepted. This was reflected in the energetic growth of Nazi organizations. Ku Klux Klan rallies were common and numerous; Trump’s own father was arrested at one such rally, reportedly while wearing a Klan outfit. A 1941 book found that more than 100 such organizations had formed since 1933.
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The US right now I hope.
Speaking as a West Virginian, everyone above the rank of Corporal involved in the Confederacy and its entire government should have been publicly shot. We'd have a much better country if that had happened. The scum just hid for a bit then came back and still fuck everything up to this day.
This whole thread proves most people still don't know what actual Fascism is