Don’t really use reddit or discord, so can’t really comment on those 2 platforms.
Twitch is a sesspool of extremist leftwing propaganda and Clancy’s love obsession with Hasan Piker and failure to hold Piker to the same standards as other users is going to be Twitchs downfall
That sounds extremely unlikely.
The vibe I’m getting from far away is oppositional forces are still relying too much on rules and institutions, which is largely pointless when the people in power don’t care about rules and norms and are actively undermining or weaponising institutions.
Not sure what the right answers are for USA in 2025, but it’s probably out of the box and not necessarily pretty. Unfortunately that’s what you get with dictators, they drag you into the mud.
Well, as you know only too well, fascism is only defeated through violence. Either a foreign invasion, or an armed uprising. The middle ground will hold their noses and play along through fear and greed.
There may be a split in maga when Trump dies, but that will only be a bloody mess followed by an even more authoritarian regime.
The US as a democracy is gone, at least for our lifetimes. It was always a very flawed democracy, but it did have some positive effects, even if inadvertently.
Very true. It’s worthy remembering that many countries have lived or still live under hard dictatorships without a fuss. Dictatorships in which people are brutally assassinated, or ‘disappeared’. Political opponents, but also simple people who happen to be at the bad place at the bad time.
There have been countless examples of this in the 20th century. In Europe, South America, Asia, Africa. Have there been massive uprisings? Always never, for the reason you’ve outlined above. It’s quite depressing, but the Germans would have continued to live under the rule of the Nazis if the Allied hadn’t beaten them into total submission. Syria lived during more than half a century under a similarly inhuman regime, but it needed total deliquescence and also all kinds of foreign influence to finally bring the Assad regime to fall.
It seems that there is a current in the US which is perfectly happy with the idea of living under a dictatorship. If that current imposes itself, that’s what will happen I’m afraid.
I guess it’s easy forget that humans have mostly since the beginning of civilization lived under some sort of monarch or autocrat with very few exceptions. It’s democracy that’s out of the norm but has brought about more equity than any other form of government. Too bad too many Americans thought it’s wasn’t worth the minimal effort of going out and voting to protect.
Constructing parallel universes with different history and predicting the exact outcome with great confidence is kind of a thing of yours. But yeah, in an alternative reality where aggressive expansionism hadn’t been part of the Nazi ideology I think there’s a pretty good chance there also wouldn’t have been any kind of foreign intervention in German affairs.
On the positive side, maybe worth remembering 1989-1991, as an example.
But would the collapse of Communism have happened without external pressure?
Also, although there are many similarities between Stalinism and Fascism, the latter can work with capitalism and create wealth, at least in the short term. This means that enough of the population can be pacified into accepting, or even supporting, repressive measures against opponents and minorities.
I think they mostly collapsed because of their own self-doing/fuck ups.
As a side note, at least for the GDR, it’s kind of ironic that many of the most active oppositionals actually didn’t want capitalism, they just wanted a ‘better’ socialism. But yeah, I guess many others just wanted to travel and have better jeans and cars.
I’m wary of getting off topic with too detailed a history of the collapse of Communism, but as we’re using it as an example of how dictatorships can fall, and as the US is now a dictatorship, I’ll continue for now.
A large part of the collapse of the USSR was its crippling defence budget and its rigid economic policies. The former was caused by the cold war, and thus was a result of external factors.
The point being, Fascist Germany would have been able to continue unabated if Hitler hadn’t had such a disastrous foreign policy and Magafascism has every chance of success without any real external threat. Internal opposition is being systematically crushed.
They fucked themselves up with their imperialism, stuff like Afghanistan etc. If you want to call that external pressure, sure. I think that’s also largely own fuck ups, but’s that’s semantics.
The point about alternative universes in which expanionsm hadn’t been part of Nazi ideology, again, is fictional. Everything they did was geared towards war, including the economy. No one knows what would have happened in a fictional scenario, where they would have just stayed within their borders. Entirely possible there could have been an uprising at some point. Also entirely possible they’d still be in power. No one can know that.
I’m rather reminded of Ceaușescu getting his comeuppance in Romania. He clearly thought he simply had to order people around, long after they were sick of the sight of him. Ultimately, a lot more his enforcers turned against him. In fact, the expression on his face just before he was executed was priceless.
Autocrats do have to keep their populations on side. The reason they fail from within is that reality catches up with their bullshit.
Yeah, It is Trump has a way of giving people who oppose him no good options. The Dems and the broader establishment just haven’t come to terms with that and so are inclined to not act while doing stupid politics as usual bullshit waiting for the perfect opportunity to come along that isnt going to come. Approaching the last looming government shut down more concerned about the impact on the midterms if they get blamed for shutting down the government rather than the concerns of green lighting the extra funding for Trump’s extra judicial immigration enforcement operation is a textbook case.
Certainly makes me feel even better about cancelling Disney+ (along with the other US streaming services) a while ago. No Andor is worth supporting these people.
The one that was tough for me was Fubo. It is a testimony to the entrenched power of American cultural industry that I cannot legally purchase PL football without funneling money to the US.
I’ll repeat what I said last night, I think it is the wrong prism through which to view the Kimmel news as it being bending to government pressure. It’s actually worse than that.
Disney/ABC caved to commercial pressure put on them by a business partner (the local broadcasters who pulled Kimmel) not political/legal pressure from the government. But that commercial pressure is not just something that flowed downstream from the FTC through the broadcaster and to Disney, but was an act of an overtly political corporation who is as interested in ideological capture of the media as they are in earning money from it. Nexstar dont want to fight the FTC over this, they are completely aligned with what the FTC want broadcasters to do and say
Add this to the recent developments at Skydance - acquisition of CBS news and the ideological skewing, the moves to acquire WBD and with it CNN - and the Tik Tok news, we are incredibly close to full state alignment media
I know. I should have written political fiction novels. 
America obviously has some huge problems, and voter turnout should be better. What might not be known is that in the 2024 General Election, the UK had a 60% voter turnout. In the same year for the Presidential Election in America, there was a 64% voter turnout.
Certainly lots of room for improvement, but just like the UK, there are many millions of people who are disenfranchised and misinformed, and they don’t bother to vote.