Lol DHS is now listed in Wikipedia as a Secret Police Organization 🤣
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_secret_police_organizations
I love these editors, they speak the truth as it is.
It’s much worse than this
I too used to believe that Trump is getting some kind of kickback for his helping Russia, and maybe he still is
Until very recently I called Trump Putin’s puppet
After seeing Vlad Vexler’s video
I now understand the depths of Trump’s narcissistic psychopathy
Trump separates people into two categories: People who have value to him and those who do not.
Trump will freely give the US and the west to Putin just because he wants to be in Putin’s good graces because Trump requires validation from him.
To Trump, Putin belongs in the class of people that have value to him.
Post outlines quite possibly the worst-case scenario
HappySkullsplitter: it’s actually much worse.
I’m an eternal optimist
Or maybe American fascists and Russian fascists just (correctly) see each other as obvious allies. They’re both the product of the exact same neo-liberal politics Afterall. That way you don’t need to invoke Manchurian candidate conspiracy theories or Redditeur pseudo-psycology.
yes, thats what weve been saying. he just wants to pull a reverse kissinger with russia, so he can hurt china.
i doubt he will succeed, but he will throw all he can at it because he convinced himself capable of it.
We are not of value to Trump.
He does not have the mental capacity to have a conscience.
He does not care if we live or die.
To him, it is not Russia that he is helping, only Putin because he has a compulsive need for validation from him.
Ultimately, it’s not even about Putin. It’s just fulfillment of his personal need for validation, a constant quest for self-gratification through the validation of those he sees as being of value
We are not of value to Trump.
He does not have the mental capacity to have a conscience.
He does not care if we live or die.
This is true of literally every big capitalist and most small capitalists (actually the small capitalists are more likely to be pointlessly cruel, instead of simply not caring). Yall focus on individuals too much to understand the systems at work here.
It’s way more than that.
Watch the video
This is Great Man Theory nonsense, and frankly attributes too much of a mythical status to Trump.
It would be interesting to know how identifying and understanding a compromising and debilitating personality disorder made the jump to great man theory
Because that is certainly not what we are talking about here
The video is less than 12 minutes
he is a narcissist, but he also has political goals.
Like all mental health conditions there are grades to its severity
Trump isn’t a run of the mill narcissist, he has acute narcissistic personality disorder.
Any political goal he has isn’t his own. They are only there because he is seeking validation from someone else and is enacting their will to achieve that validation.
i think you are overanalyzing his likely condition. his goals aligns with his chosen allies, i don’t think this is very notable.
And I don’t think you’ve watched the video
I can accept that I am not doing the video justice
In the same vein, zionism is a far right philosophy of land theft and murder, and its not anti semitism when you object to it-- zionists are being antisemitic when they hide behind the entire jewish religion to commit their terrorism. Dont be afraid of pushing back on old school terrorism and war crimes. We’re better than that. – Or maybe we have been better than that in the past, and will be again.
Yes, I can’t believe I see dipshits that get angry and scream “antisemitism” even on Lemmy, in response to someone pointing out that massacring innocent civilians because you want their land is genocide. There’s no depth in the view of someone who got their feelings hurt when you pointed out the damage they’re causing.
You can also just call them all pedophiles because that is also what they are
Elon Musk also did a Nazi salute on the presidents stage.
I’m fucking sick of people acting like it was something else.
Litmus test of friendship.
Just ask them if that gesture was a nazi salute or not. If they say no, walk away, they aren’t worth being friends with.
It’s called a sieg heil. Salute makes it sound respectable.
I mean it is respectful but just to Hitler.
Not just one, but TWO!
Three. The camera wasn’t on him for the third Nazi salute.
No shit? Separate location/event or what?
Jesus christ 🤦🏻♀️
I don’t see this post on their bluesky. Can anyone post a link, please?
By all objective measures, HitlerPig us the most prolific traitor in American history, wirse than all other American traitors COMBINED.
And yet, I’ve never heard an elected official or media outlet ever call him a Traitor. Until the left starts tying these traitors to their crimes, and hammers on it every single day, the Dems will NEVER wrest the power from the MAGA Traitors.
HitlerPig is a proven traitor, and anyone who still supports him, is also a traitor, and none of them should be allowed to forget it.
“the left”
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generally doesn’t give a shit about ‘the united states’. we aren’t typically fans. for some reason. being a traitor is typically something we get accused of, and it has become a point of pride for many. we call them nazis though. we’ve been doing it for a while, and being called traitors for it.
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has zero large media outlets. because of the ways how we get murdered when we say stuff too loud.
there is no ‘left media’ in this country. really the whole anglosphere. maybe the closest you can get is a few podcasts. I dunno, if you want specifically americans look up the ‘cool zone media’ people.
All I meant by “the left” was EVERYBODY who is not MAGA.
And we can make them care about being called Traitors when we make it clear that it isn’t hyperbole, it isnt rhetoric, it isnt partisan gamesmanship, it means we think they are true criminal Traitors to America, and will be called to account for their Sedition. The leadership, anyone who is elected, should absolutely be charged for their crimes. So should many street level MAGAs, like the J6 traitors, and anyone who gets violent between now and then. The rest should feel so uncomfortable that they want to leave America, and they can go live in Russia.
by ‘the left’ I mean ‘everyone to the left of literal nazis’
so… I don’t even know where to start with all the problems with this. I’m just going to tell you that this is a very bad idea and you need to fucking stop immediately. you’re playing into their hands so hard.
traitors
traitors to what? why the fuck should I care?
it’s not hyperbole
yeah, nobody cares. they were saying that before I was born, during reagan’s attempted genocide of my people. nobody. fucking. cared. nobody has ever cared. nobody will ever care.
americans like to dismiss and not think about problems. it’s kind of their whole deal. ‘hyperbole’ is just an excuse. they don’t actually care whether it is. they care whether they can keep ignoring it. okay, so, they’re traitors. what now? why should the average american give a shit about whatever the fuck that means?
should feel so uncomfortable they want to leave america
oh honey. there’s two ways this ends: the nazis kill us, or we kill them. if they leave, we need to hunt them down. they know this. please catch the fuck up.
I’m not only caught up, I’ve been ahead of the curve for years. I’m a history grad, and I’ve been making the Nazi comparisons for years, because it was clear as day to me that they were following the Nazi playbook. Now it’s finally clear to everyone else, too.
I don’t understand what your issue is. We are actually on the same side, but your are somehow fixated on the word Left. Calm down.
ALL MAGAs are Traitors to America and the Constitution, and they should have that label tattooed on their foreheads.
The constitution has mostly allowed for this to happen unimpeded. We need something new, evidence based and up to date for this absolutely new paradigm we find ourselves in, that meets as many of the needs of every person who lives here as possible.
what’s the fascination with america and the constitution? why do those things matter? what is the emotional impact on the average american? why does anyone care?
the questions aren’t just criticism; I’m genuinely trying to work through a thing with you.
and please, stop calling everyone the left. maybe start calling land-reform democratic socialists ‘the mostly reasonable center right’. americans like to be in the middle. they’re cowards. they don’t actually like conflict they don’t know they’re gonna win.
What are you talking about? The entire thread is about America, and the new regime violating the Constitution. That’s what this thread is about, that’s why the “fascination.”
Americans care about the Constitution because its guided our nation since its founding, and it is considered sacrosanct. The new administration is simply ignoring it, and doing whatever they want, which is far too close to the Nazi playbook for comfort. Not only are Americans upset about it, the entire world should be upset about it.
And again, that focus on the word Left, which I seldom use, and almost didn’t in this case. All I meant by the word Left was anyone who isn’t MAGA, because that’s how MAGA sees the world. If you aren’t MAGA, you are on “The Left.”
There’s a special congressional election near me, and the candidates include a rare non-MAGA candidate. The opposition attack ads are painting him as a “Liberal” and “RINO,” when he is just as conservative as any Republican, he’s just anti-HitlerPig.
I understand that Left means something different in Europe, but this thread is about American politics, so I used the word Left in an American political context. It’s weird that there is so much focus on a single word, instead of my actual message.
HitlerPig
I have to ask, are you literally a child?
It’s weird that there is so much focus on a single word
I guarantee you that American leftists are not going to like the idea of being thrown in jail for treason because they don’t consider the constitution “sacrosanct”.
ALL MAGAs are Traitors to America and the Constitution, and they should have that label tattooed on their foreheads.
Least fascist blueMAGA cultist.
Yes, I’m sure you’ll have a not of luck defeating fascism by declaring “having the wrong politics” to be legally treasonous
Some political philosphies need to be destroyed. Nazism is one of them. Germany was able to purge Nazism from their nation, and survive as a productive nation of the world, with the help of the United States and the Nuremburg Trials, and we will have to be courageous enough as a nation to do the same thing.
Ok, but you’re not talking about purging Nazism, you’re talking about arresting your political enemies for “treason”.
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The only problem I have is with the whole “foreign backed” language. It’s technically not wrong, but please, as a reminder: It was not simply manipulation from Russia and others, putting Trump into power and creating MAGA. It is a homegrown problem, fascism has been smouldering in the US for a long time, and just as another reminder, it is also glimmering in the EU as well.
The country is “occupied” by its ruling class, and in this case, a specific clique of them benefitting themselves even against other capitalists, but overall, this is much more about class-, than it is about nation-dynamics.
Well said. I would even go so far as to say that facism is the bones of America.
American colonialism served as inspiration for Hitler, and the history of America is packed solid with violent othering of various groups. To pretend that any of these problems are new or came from elsewhere is an incredibly naive and whitewashed point of view.
No, Jim crow was the inspiration for Hitler, he wrote about it explicitly in mein kampf as the model that must be followed.
The Nuremberg Laws are actually, I shit you not, Jim crow but watered down as Germans wouldn’t tolerate the 1 drop rule.
The south was so impossibly evil even the nazis blanched, and we never did anything to solve their unimaginable inhumanity.
American colonialism served as inspiration for Hitler, and the history of America is packed solid with violent othering of various groups.
It’s not wrong, although I would stress, that fascism is not just that, and there is a reason why we only call those systems starting in the 20th century fascist.
It is also class collaborationism, and trying to somehow have the advantages of capitalism without its utter destruction of social norms and traditions. It is intertwining state and capital with the ideological aim to create a “strong nation” in the fight against other nations. It is imagining society as a body with people being its organs, who should serve their allotted place in society, and not rebel against it. America also had non-fascist tendencies woven within into history, and the settler-colonial era was still too early to be called “fascist”, lacking the kind of developed industrial capitalism and violent reaction to socialist class struggle 20th century fascism was born in.
Yeah, we’ve rarely been the good guys in history.
We (the USA) were smoldering fascists prior to WW2. Let’s not kid ourselves.
The human race is a bunch of smouldering fascists. Balkans, Rwanda, Chechnya, Iraq, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Darfur. Nigeria, Mali, Sudan, and other countries in the Sahel region. Take a look at this list of ethnic cleansings.
World history is rife with people trying to gain power so they can kill all the people who don’t look like them.
We (the USA) were smoldering fascists prior to WW2. Let’s not kid ourselves.
Eh, I actually disagree. The US did a social democratic turn after the Great Depression, I think it was one of the eras where the US was furthest from fascism. It ultimately still created and maintained the conditions of fascist tendencies later on and only very partially did the work analysing their own history of imperialism, but I really dislike overuse of the word fascist, because it blunts the analytical edge. The implicit neoliberal social contract was different than the implicit fascist one (which was different than the more social democratic one solidified under FDR, etc.) - and the system no longer having to wear the mask of humanity has real life consequences and creates its own dynamics.
World history is rife with people trying to gain power so they can kill all the people who don’t look like them.
Indeed, but I think it is a fallacy to use that as an ideological framing of inevitability (unsure if that was your aim here). Ingroup-Outgroup thinking is one of the few things, that I think is indeed fundamental to the human condition, but the way it materialises is dependent on the interaction of that tendency with material and historical conditions. Without colonialism, the specific framing of race, for example, would not have existed in the same way. And universalism as a current within modernity is not just a fluke or illusion, but a proper potential tendency within human behaviour as well, one that relies on cultural and material conditions of its own.
Cynicism is in its own right an ideological distortion, where it leaves analysis and tries to impose its interpretation on reality.
Well you do sound like a pretty smart person. I don’t think I can get on the intellectual playing field with you, but I think there was plenty of Nazi sympathizers prior to World war II in America. Here’s just one example from NPR.
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/02/20/695941323/when-nazis-took-manhattan
As to ethnic strife and tribal warfare, I’m not saying it’s inevitable, just that it’s the default mode. Sort of like entropy, it asserts itself unless we actively act against it.
That, I can agree with. There needs to be active work and conscious moulding of material dynamics, in order to allow for it to be overcome.
As to ethnic strife and tribal warfare, I’m not saying it’s inevitable, just that it’s the default mode
Funnily enough, there are huge parts of pre-historic mankind, where they were the exception instead of the rule (although, when it did happen, we have evidence it was often very genocidal and total).
Organised warfare can be traced to the beginnings of class society, where societies started to have the surplus necessary, so that risking a large part of their population could be “worth it” to acquire labour power (slaves) and surplus (property) of other societies. At least, that is my current understanding of archaeological and anthropological evidence (e.g. tracing when weapons of war, explicitly not just as tools, or palisades around settlements appear in the archaeological record).
Not necessarily disagreeing, just adding that, to highlight that defining a “default” is basically impossible. Mankind has always acted within its historical and material context.
I was tracking pretty well with you until the last line
Mankind has always acted within its historical and material context.
I’m not sure what you mean by that. People have an aspect that is dictated by historical and material context. But there are also natural abilities, like speech, and propensities, like social organization, that are part of being human itself.
Surely, to my way a thinking, it’s the whole nature/nurture thing, and your last sentence seems to leave nature out of it.
Even if you view man as a machine it doesn’t change that. A windshield wiper doesn’t cook eggs.
Some things do what they do because of what they are, not their material and historical context.
Ah, I can see how that reads. So, short answer: I agree, but with the caveat that that simple truth can be misrepresented.
Of course, there are things that are inherent in “our nature”. You mention speech, which is a great example - the ability of language and being adapted to being born into a complex system of language is one of the main reasons why I think humanity is acting so much within a material and historical context - more so than more intuitively acting animals adapted to a biome.
It is indeed my thesis, that besides some smaller things, “human nature” is being adapted to “culture”, adapted to dialectically interacting with reality around us, and creating a new context that then influences us again. We aren’t specialised to one biome any more, for example, or one circumstance in climate, but naturally inclined to change ourselves and our surroundings. And I agree, that we are indeed specialised for complex social organisation, too.
My issue comes there, where very specific behaviours or systems are presented as human nature, where I would claim, they are better explained as “how something within human nature is filtered through its historical context.” Think of how people may say “private property” is human nature. Or “racism” is human nature. No, both are dynamics of something within human nature in a very specific context.
A windshield wiper doesn’t cook eggs.
True, but for humanity specifically, it can be damn hard to clearly define if we are a windshield wiper, an egg-cooker, or whatever. Because everything we study about our nature, will always appear to us filtered through the surrounding context. So it is only through hard work and building up theories to ever be falsified again, that we come closer to the essentials. (Like language, social organisation of high complexity, etc.)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-023-09464-0
This study, and others like it, would be to my mind the right way to go about finding out what the baseline is for humans.
Look to the great apes, see what great apes do - because we are great apes. Old World monkeys would provide clues as well. We’re absolutely going to be somewhat different, but that’s where research comes in.
We don’t have to guess.
PS. I know I was way out of my depth here. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me. It’s always nice to talk to somebody brainy.
Where does one draw the line between cynicism and experience?
As a categorical answer: Where it conflicts with reality more generally.
As a more specific answer: Good ways to double check are - how does my perspective gel with historians, anthropologists and philosophers, that study that field? Do they also agree on a cynical view there? When they dissent, what are the ways they do so?
Where did I get that cynical view? Is the cynical interpretation one, that benefits the status quo, so it has a higher likelihood of being ideological instead of a proper analysis? Is it backed up not only in contemporary empirical social sciences, but also when processing that data through interpretation. (e.g.: A group committing more crimes can be fact in studies, but racists will interpret that completely differently, than communists for example, concerning causes and solutions.)
In addition to that - personal experience is always valid, take for example someone with PTSD, it would be ludicrous to claim, their outlook on things concerning their trauma is “wrong”. However, when applied to larger reality, it may not describe it properly in the whole context. That does not take away the validity of their experience and how it shapes them, specifically.
It was not simply manipulation from Russia and others, putting Trump into power and creating MAGA.
Yes, it is that simple. Not only do we have Trump as a Russian assets, but I’d wager there are also other politicians and judges that are assets too. Not to mention all of the dark money that flooded our government (thanks to Citizens United), and the whole of social media misinformation campaigns across Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, etc.
There is nothing homegrown about this; we’ve been under attack for a long time. Ow, and we’re only starting to notice it because of the repercussions.
Not to mention all of the dark money that flooded our government (thanks to Citizens United)
Oh, yeah, sure, and that was Russia and not your own capitalists and corporations creating the financing structures of CU.
the whole of social media misinformation campaigns across Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, etc.
Which was indeed fueled by Russia, but also dependent on the basic problem, that journalism is structured around the profit motive, in the hands of a few oligarchs and the attention economy, and gleefully embraced by platforms like meta and twitter, because it just so happened to be also in the class interest of the owners.
Russia is taking advantage of it and has been doing destabilising actions in Europe and the US for decades - but no, you have home-grown your culture of corporate America and we all share the culture of international capital on top of that.
Don’t act like it would be the land of the free and the brave without Russia, they did not invent Citizens United, they did not create the structures that allowed 3-digit billionaires to exist, they did not buy out Rupert Murdoch or Elon Musk (seriously, they could not afford them, even with Kompromat - after all, people are easy to pretend like Trump didn’t have connections to Epstein, too. No Kompromat couldn’t be pushed to the sidelines considering the media and social media is controlled by those people, not Russia directly.) The vast majority of cooperation of people like that with Russia is because of self-interest within the economic dynamics aligning with Russian interests - Russia only fanned the flames and took the opportunities that were there.
Russia is an imperialist shithouse with oligarchic capitalism, but the US is, too, and has been for a long time. Closing the eyes to that is allowing yourself to live in ideology-driven ignorance, which is also why my answer is so hostile, because sometimes that is necessary in debating things like this.
I’m not going to argue with you, because you are not my enemy nor my adversary. But I did want to point out that just because I focused on Russia in my previous comments does not mean that I’ve ignored all of the other problems that America currently has working against it.
I do wholeheartedly agree with you that capitalism is a malignant stage 4 cancer that is killing my country (assuming you’re not American). In this particular circumstance I was focusing on what I feel the more immediate threat.
As for your tone; I get it - I’m angry as Hell too. America failing affects many more than us Americans. It’s a shit situation for everyone.
You didn’t “focus on Russia”, you declared that they were the sole and entire problem, and that fascism in America is entirely the result of the ruskies corrupting your precious bodily fluids.
Not taking a position because my perspective is different sort of but pointing out that they actually didn’t say “only Russia”, their comment (at least the 2 I see) could be interpreted as implicating any number of external influences.
I do think this is not just foreign influence but a natural extension of the world the USA and related groups and various influences throughout history with overlapping goals sometimes have created, and it must be undone in what I can pretty much only imagine as a global shift towards people centered policies that actually get needs met as effectively as possible and without motivation to impede progress built into the system.
Yes, they did say only Russia, I’m not sure how you’re managing not to see that.
It was not simply manipulation from Russia and others, putting Trump into power and creating MAGA.
Yes, it is that simple. Not only do we have Trump as a Russian assets, but I’d wager there are also other politicians and judges that are assets too. Not to mention all of the dark money that flooded our government (thanks to Citizens United), and the whole of social media misinformation campaigns across Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, etc.
There is nothing homegrown about this; we’ve been under attack for a long time. Ow, and we’re only starting to notice it because of the repercussions.
This comment? I’m seriously not trying to be nitpicky, if that is what they meant I’m not like defending their position necessarily, but if I understand this comment correctly, it didn’t exclude money from American oligarchs, other countries, etc. Which is consistent with my understanding (the money comes from all over). That’s all I meant to point out, if I’m wrong no offense intended. I understood to mean that it’s not what a majority of people actually want. More of a semantic disagreement.
What actual proof do you have he’s with Russia?
Maybe we shouldn’t be encouraging another crazy person without some kind of actual proof, this is some pizza gate level of insanity.
Elections aren’t rigged, the bad economy decided Trumps election, blame the first past the post system. We got two years of this and the world won’t end.
It’s a foundational tenet of the American Civil Religion that America is, at it’s heart, ontologically good and exceptional. Therefore, any large scale problems can’t be the result of internal issues, they have to be the product of an outside evil corrupting the American Eden.
It’s very much like the Christian doctrine that it descends from: all evil ultimately flowing from a single source, be it Satan or Putin.
There is so much mental illness in America. You cant reason with them, they are trapped in a full on delusion and that delusion defines who they are. The scary part is that they used to be on the fringes of each party but now they are in the drivers seat and their numbers are growing. I worry for the future of America.
Wise words
Doesn’t sound fair to me. Musk is an oligrach, but he’s also, at least, a nazi transphobe who disowned his own daughter. Donald is, at least again, a convicted felon and rapist who was best friend with the the most notorious pedophile of the past 50 years, and also tried to overthrow the government while being backed by a foreign country. Let get our facts straight.
“don’t be afraid to speak truth to power … that said we’ll stick with the public identity of anonymous”
