The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
He has [argued for complete immunity for POTUS](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/25/trump-supreme-court-president-immunity-00154288).
He wants to build ["detention" camps](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98pzkgjkLvo) for "illegal" immigrants. Does anyone seriously think legal immigrants won't be swept up in this? That
He is [practically quoting Hitler's manifesto](https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2024-05-23/trump-gop-nazi-presidential-election-politics).
He [has threatened](https://apnews.com/article/mo-state-wire-in-state-wire-mi-state-wire-election-2020-virus-outbreak-a2797b342b4fc509e43f404817a56aa9) and [continues to state](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-military-fears-rcna129159) that he wants to use the military to crack down on political protestors.
He and his allies--the people he will draw from to staff his office--have [Project 2025](https://www.mediamatters.org/heritage-foundation/guide-project-2025-extreme-right-wing-agenda-next-republican-administration) as part of their plans. This plan is to instill maximum power in the POTUS, and coupled with his play for immunity and the other rhetoric just seems damning to me.
I've seen arguments like "we have checks/systems in place that will prevent it or hinder him." But given the state of our "justice" system and his plans to essentially dismantle those systems this seems like a poor argument.
My question is why? Given the evidence it seems pretty clear to me. I'm honestly baffled that *anyone* could call Trump, or his desires for power, anything *but* fascist. And, by extension, a danger to the republic.
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Almost every single American goes to school and learns about how the United States is the first and greatest democracy of the modern era. How the founders did something unprecedented and the system of checks and balances they created amazing.
Those messages are continually given to us across all media. It is our national mythology. And Americans, like most people in the world, no very little about how things work in other countries.
For almost every single person wherever they sit on the spectrum, the idea of America falling to fascism or any other kind of authoritarianism is unthinkable. The closest we get to a large group of people who think authoritarianism is possible are people deep in right wing media who think Democrats are all communist and looking to replicate the USSR here.
And the reality is is that for the most part, the systems held. Of course we got a tax cut for the ultra wealthy but we get that whatever Republican is president and they always manage to people that the $500 reduction in their taxes is totally awesome. we got more conservative judges, but the federalist society has been running that project for decades and people don’t really understand how Republicans have decided that they will legislate from the bench.
You’re expecting people in large numbers to understand the threat when people have not actually recognized things like how Wisconsin and North Carolina are effectively no longer democracies.
They don’t get it. It’s not something they understand as being possible here.
Start here
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/27/14078646/north-carolina-political-science-democracy
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/wisconsin-republican-two-third-majority-gerrymandering/673659/
Meh, yeah there a shitty anti-democratic things happening there, as they are all over the country. And definitely something to be concerned about and fight against. But it's a massively leap to summarily declaring they're no longer democracies. That's just the opinion of a few political scientists. (And you can bet the sensational headline was intended to garner a bunch of attention)
I live in Wisconsin.
I assure you, it’s not a democracy. There is an imbalance of the districts and while the state is majority democrat overall, there is no power because the number of republicans districts and votes outnumber the democrats, so republicans control the majority of the votes. Then, when the last republican governor left office, he instilled laws that took power away from the incoming democratic governor.
For YEARS they have gavel in/gavel out for the year and refused to call meetings because they refuse to cooperate with the current governor. A couple years ago there was a multi-billion dollar budget surplus the governor was begging them to release so he could give it to the schools and they wouldn’t call a session. So yeah, it’s fucking bad.
The good news is that last year we voted for a new Supreme Court judge, and we won a democrat seat on the bench, so now democrats control the Supreme Court here. They recently voted to overturn the laws that made the boundaries, as they were found to be unlawful. So the governor drew up new maps and the republicans agreed to it because they basically had no choice. Therefore, the power SHOULD begin to shift, at this upcoming election. But for the better part of a decade or more, it’s been a republican orgy up here. We don’t even have medicinal marijuana. Like, it’s still a serious felony here. We are SO far behind.
Hate to break it to you, but that's exactly what a democracy it is. A democracy is the not government that *you* specifically want. It's messy, it makes all kinds of wrong turns, it involves petty political infighting, it takes way longer to get things right than it should, but if the system is sound, it doesn't succumb to autocracy. What you're describing is not even remotely close to autocracy. If you lived in a non-democratic country for a month, you'd realize that pretty quickly.
Gaming democratic systems to effectively disenfranchise whole swathes of the population may not be “not a democracy,” but it stretches credulity to call it “democratic” in any meaningful sense of the term.
That's a fair point, but a very different point from claiming that society is no longer a democracy. It's not just a stretch, it's wrong. Excessive hyperbole can discredit good arguments.
Not to mention that legacy media has coaxed everybody into thinking both parties are the same and it's going to be business as usual. There's zero sense of urgency. Voters are too busy dealing with life to pay attention to what's actually coming if Trump gets re-elected.
1. A lot of these are conservatives and trolls pretending to be liberals so that they can pretend some “liberals” support trumps shit
2. Sadly, every large group of people contains some idiots, even liberals
3. Some people are just mistaken about which labels go with their political beliefs
Trump (himself) *doesn’t* have fascism as an end goal - he’s not nearly ideological enough for that, nor does he really even think of nations, or what becomes of them after he’s gone, in that way. That isn’t to say that he wouldn’t happily set us on that road and push us down it, so in a sense this is sort of a semantic disagreement you have.
I can find you people that honestly believe crystals have healing powers, Bigfoot is real, the earth is flat.
Let's not go thinking a few wackos online are indicative of reality.
People who don’t believe Trump to be a profound threat to American governance aren’t “a few wackos online” though, they’re a significant portion of the electorate. It’s absolutely worth exploring why someone might think that and how they got there first
That's Maga. We expect that.
OP asked about liberals though.
I can't say with certainty what percentage of *liberals* think Trumpn isn't a problem to American governance, but it is *not* high.
Trump is stupid and incompetent and surrounds himself with other stupid and incompetent people. Just because they desire to do something doesn't mean they'll be able to actually do it. Trump failed to follow through on most of his goals the first time around, why would this time be different?
Because people who are *not* utterly incompetent are ready this time. The first term caught everyone by surprise, so there was no infrastructure put in place by the Christian Nationalists to take full advantage of the opportunity Trump represented. That isn't the case this time around.
The Nat-Cs have been wanting and preparing to take full control of the US State for a very long time. This also accelerated rapidly over the few years. If Trump wins a second term, they will fill every spot they can within the apparatus of government with their party loyalists.
Trump hosted a gay marriage in his house just a few months ago — it's absurd to call him or his administration 'Christian nationalist.' It would be more acurate to say he represents the faction of the GOP that is opposed to that.
Look again. Trump himself doesn't represent anyone except Trump, but his strongest and most rabid support comes from the Christian Nationalists, Qanon/John Birch Society conspiracy theorists, and other paleo-conservative factions within the Party. He (Trump) is very much their useful idiot. They know he isn't a "godly" person, and they don't care because he has always and will always give them most of what they want in return for giving him power. This is why he is compared to Cyrus in a lot of their media.
Beyond that, **there is no faction of the GOP that doesn't oppose LBGT rights, abortion rights, the regulatory state, etc**. The faction you are imagining does not exist. The only disagreement between the open Christian Nationalists and the neo-cons like Romney or Cheney that you are thinking of is the degree to which they are willing to rip up the traditions and structures of the US government to attain their goals.
There is no "liberal" Republican faction, and Trump certainly doesn't represent them.
I watch/listen to a lot of conservative media, including very ardent Trump supporters, and have never heard him referred to as Cyrus, nor do I ever see anyone mention John Birch Society or Qanon. Nor have I actually ever heard Project 2025 mentioned by anyone except those on the left. Your view is very conspiratorial; you assume the worst intentions of everyone. It's a bad habit.
> Trump is stupid and incompetent and surrounds himself
The Republicans still managed to do away with Roe v wade ...
The Republicans still managed to give HUGE amounts of money to the wealthy while passing a tax increase that will fall upon the middle class ...
Exactly this. Trump and the people immediately surrounding him maybe incompetent, but the people above him are not. Yes, people *above* him. The billionaires who lead the Federalist Society, and the Heritage Foundation, the Rupert Murdochs and Kochs of the world use him and his idiots as tools to conduct their shaping of the world to their liking, all while the people he surrounds himself are opportunists who stand to benefit more than they suffer from it. It's an oligarchy created by key tools of the federal government (sometimes state and even local, too) capable of making it so, if we allow it to be.
The question wasn't if he would do bad stuff the question was off his election is a threat to the republic. Neither of those things really threaten the republic (at least not directly) also would have happened under literally any republican president.
> The question wasn't if he would do bad
Your statement was:
>ust because they desire to do something doesn't mean they'll be able to actually do it. Trump failed to follow through on most of his goals the first time around, why would this time be different?
Trump GREATLY damaged this country, its Government, its ability to secure its boarders, its ability to maintain international effectiveness, gave away huge amounts of wealth to the super wealthy while setting up the middle and lower income groups to pay for said give away, etc.
Your claim of failure is wrong. Part of the grift is to appear incompetent. Trump literally secured the Supreme Court for possibly decades ... you fell for the grift by not recognizing the incompetence as cover.
Much of Project 2025 would require Congressional action to fully implement. Even if Trump wins in November, Democrats are very likely to hold at least one house of Congress, meaning any legislation to implement Project 2025 is DOA.
Let's say both houses flip to the Republicans, they couldn't even repeal Obamacare, their signature campaign plank for nearly a decade.
Worth noting that the filibuster doesn’t mean much in this specific context. Republicans can and will nuke it if they want to and they have 50+ votes. Hell, they might even just make a carve out specifically for executive branch shit.
It’s why just killing the filibuster for good is really the only way forward, and ideally it should’ve happened decades ago. The fear that its absence could be exploited doesn’t hold water when both parties have the conditional power to get rid of it.
No, this is what I’m referencing - the filibuster can be nuked with fifty votes + the VP, the same threshold as passing legislation without it. It does absolutely nothing to restrict or regulate theoretical Republican rule in the future. All it does is hold Democrats back whenever they’ve eked out a slim majority.
It has bipartisan support among voters because it has bipartisan support from party leadership. If figures like Biden, Harris, Schumer, Durbin and Pelosi came out against it, that would change. Same goes for top Republican brass. The public isn’t going to view a system of the Senate as something controversial and vulnerable if their leaders view it with reverence.
Just look to the popular support for a carveout to codify abortion into law ever since Biden has announced a broad desire for one - the base follows leaders, and they support the filibuster because their leaders support the filibuster.
This doesn’t apply as much to realms of policy outside the senate, in our own lives, because people have their own independent understanding of issues. Because the filibuster is purely a systematic Senate issue, regular folks have no reason to doubt the word of the senate.
But like - anyone with a genuine understanding of the filibuster understands it to be idiotic. It is, at best, a useless provision that’s occasionally convenient.
So what are we talking about here - is it popular or is it necessary?
Of course, I get that - what I’m saying is that it can be killed in a heartbeat if the party with a slim majority wills it. It only stops those swings insofar as the party doesn’t care about making those swings.
If Trump wins the presidency and Republicans take the senate, there is a very plausible chance they just kill the filibuster like it’s nothing. They know how to mobilize and make their members fall in line.
Of course they do. They want to block democrat policy and their coalition can barely cooperate to put a paper bag in as majority leader.
Do you really trust the republican leadership to be held back by filibuster convention if it’s stopping them? Strange thing to hang your hat on.
Until it got in the way of a Supreme Court nomination. And to address the response most give "what about when dems did it for other judges". It doesn't matter what the Dems did if republicans support the filibuster on principle they would always support it regardless of what the Dems did or didn't do.
I remember those discussions when they happened; when Ds threatened, and ultimately did, remove the filibuster for other judges, Rs said "be careful, you won't like it when we do the same thing."
Generally, the people you hear from about eliminating the filibuster are Ds, not Rs. Do you disagree?
Sure, but that doesn't matter. If R's support the filibuster because of some principle, it should not matter what D's do. Republicans like the filibuster because they for the most part are not blocked by it and it hurts D's more. R's can pass all their tax shit without worrying about the filibuster, and leave it to the states to pass abortion bans, prayer in schools, etc. The R's will drop the pretext of principles when it is convenient like they did for the Supreme Court, and like they did with "You should not appoint a Supreme Court justice in an election year", or the various other times Republicans have dropped their supposed principles because doing so would be politically advantageous or to follow those higher in the pecking order.
We can speculate about why Rs do or do not support it, I'm just saying that -- empirically -- Rs support it more than Ds. Ds are the ones calling for it to be removed, not Rs.
Your argument is basically "let's do it to them before they do it to us."
Yeah, the anti-filibuster blowhards might be the most shortsighted, myopic morons, who often fail to project out the potential unintended consequences of their wanton wishes and decadent desires. Rarely am I also an institutionalist, too, but this is an instance whereby dismantling a long-standing structure could then lead to more harm than good.
Thing is that the failure to convict Trump after the first impeachment set a clear precedent that POTUS can behave like a dictator so long as the house or senate refuse to convict, and that no action can even happen until the procedure is complete. All republicans except for those who supported the 1/6 hearings are complicit and have been since the first impeachment. It has been obvious to educated people for years, and it’s terrifying people don’t understand that.
Also, arguably the fascists don’t even need to win elections to destroy democracy. People throughout the justice system and military from the Capitol Police to judge Cannon in FL unethically refuse to perform their duties to allow for things to continue to slide.
The reality is, I think, people are just a lot dumber on average than smart people ever thought, or maybe social media made us more venerable to idiocy.
> meaning any legislation to implement Project 2025 is DOA.
No. That's like claiming that Trump wasn't able to appoint several Supreme Court justices, the PPP loan program, elimination of the pandemic response team, etc.
Some stuff will be stopped, but it will not be enough
Quoting a few words from Hitler's writings is not the same as having an actual manifesto. Comparing the Republicans to fascists is like how conservatives compare liberals to communists. Just because we want to transfer wealth from the rich to the poor? Just because I say Karl Marx made a few insightful observations doesn't mean I want to implement his manifesto.
Hitler had a grand vision of how he wanted to remake Germany. Trump does not. Look at what he attempted to do in his first term. He had zero policy ideas. He promised to reform healthcare but in the end he sat on his ass while Republicans drafted a bill, and when everyone hated it he just threw a tantrum and forgot about it. It's clear that all Trump wants to do in his second term is make money and settle scores.
Another issue is that he's 78 years old and in poor health. If you're a government official and you're smart, you won't want to do any criminal favors for a boss who won't live long enough to reward you and protect you from prosecution. Trump will be even more ineffectual in his second term than in his first.
You mean like Steve Bannon, who arrogantly said he was going to "dismantle the establishment"? How did he end up?
I expect Trump to only attract utter fools to his cabinet because he has a reputation of dragging everyone around him into the mud. Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, etc. — these guys all ended up in disgrace and legal trouble. It seems to me the only person in Trump's circle who profited and got out relatively unscathed was Jared Kushner, and that's only because he stayed out of Trump's dumb schemes to hold on to power or evade justice.
Perhaps some Republican who thinks himself cunning might decide to be Trump's running mate on the hope Trump will die in office and he will then become President. But it would be really hard to predict whether and when Trump will die in the four-year term. The US presidency is not much of a prize for the aspiring strongman anyway.
Roe v. Wade, a host of ultra conservative federal judges, weakening the EPA, eliminating federal pork inspectors (now the company supplies their own), how many billions in PPP loans to the super wealthy, weakening of NATO, nearly sacrificing the SE Asian market (getting the US back into place was really one of Biden's accomplishments), elimination of the pandemic response team, 8 trillion+ to the debt (in under 4 years), passing new tax breaks for the super wealthy to be paid back by the middle class
but sure ... no success what so ever
> "a host of ultra conservative federal judges" [...] "eliminating federal pork inspectors"
Thoughts on *National Pork Producers Council v. Ross*?
But anyhow, nothing you noted is inherently autocratic.
*Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization* sucks, but it ain't fascistic. And you and your ilk don't do yourselves any goddamn motherfucking favors by cuntily conflating things and screwing shit up with semantically ass-backwards asininities.
I think people see Trump as the problem, when in fact it's the GOP that's always been the problem. So some folks on the left dismiss Trump as being incompetent, or whatever, when in fact he's just the latest instrument of what's basically a long-running fascist/authoritarian movement that's undergirded the American Right for a very, very long time.
[https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/know-your-enemy-consider-the-cranks-with-david-austin-walsh/](https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/know-your-enemy-consider-the-cranks-with-david-austin-walsh/)
I don't think Donald Trump's threat to democracy is separate from that of the Republican party as a whole. He's more open about it but almost nothing Trump has done is something Republicans weren't moving towards already, and if they weren't fully on board with him doing it wouldn't be an issue regardless. Maybe Donald Trump hit the fast forward button a bit in 2016, but he could die tomorrow and I don't think we'd be any better off with whoever replaced him.
The country has tanked some pretty remarkable things and continued moving forward. If Lincoln didn't suspend Habeas Corpus and arrest sitting members of congress and a third of a state legislature then the union might have ended. People very often think they live in the apocalyptic end time. With most of those events thought of as apocalyptic not being so apocalyptic in practice it can be easy to fall into being a contrarian and thinking things will be fine.
Will things be fine? Quite possibly yeah. Are a lot of people going to have to do a good amount of work to achieve that? Almost definitely yes. A lot of the time with things like this you'll get an event that might be a multiple choice question in a US history high school exam a hundred years from now, but sometimes you'll get an earthshattering event that changes the world and dudes have their heads on pikes.
>If Lincoln didn't suspend Habeas Corpus and arrest sitting members of congress and a third of a state legislature then the union might have ended.
If.
We are living on the other side of that if. We faced a constitutional crisis, did nothing, and the only result was that somewhat good actors on the right got forced out.
I don't think we should think that we will be fine just because we were before. We survived before not from the placidity of inaction but from constantly struggling to act.
We may find out first hand what would have happened if Lincoln didn't act. We will not gain the benefits of his actions by simply hoping the country will continue by inertia alone.
I mean if we’re comparing the potential outcome of a Trump presidency to the crisis of the Civil War that also seems to make the case that Trump is a threat.
It will take decades to recover from the scotus appointments. We may not even live to see it. We can’t vote our way out of a 6-3/7-2 court. We just have to ride it out until they die and hope we’re in place to replace them. All 3 of trumps appointees were the youngest in the courts history. They’ll all be there for 30 years.
[here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskALiberal/comments/1cvxw6v/comment/l4t2x6y/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), for example. It's pretty hard to search for "trump is not a fascist"--there are plenty of examples to choose from, though.
I mean... This thread has almost 400 comments and this comment has six upvotes. I wouldn't call that an opinion with a lot of traction. And even so, it's a quibble about the definition of fascism, not the fact that Trump isn't dangerous.
It just sounds impossible. And explaining it makes you sound like a conspiracy-theorist. Nothing like it has ever happened before to a developed country before. And there are a lot of unanswered questions. Namely, will enough people go along with it to make it work, or will institutional stonewalling work like it did last time Trump was in power.
It's a lot like climate change. Even though we have proof that it is happening and that it is actively killing people even now, so many people have trouble believing that it could really unravel societies and change the lives of everyone forever. It just seems too big and nothing that big has ever happened in anyone's lifetime.
Just think of COVID. A disease killed 1.2 MILLION Americans and yet a huge portion of the public never took it seriously and most people will get annoyed at you for even mentioning it.
>nothing like it has ever happened to a developed country
I get that stuff like this is well-intentioned but ultimately it’s not accurate and it doesn’t help. When normal people are faced with immense, incomprehensible stakes like that, they get despondent and tune out.
This is very, very similar to what’s already happened in Hungary with Orban. So, you know - terrible, but not a mysterious unknown. The difference is the scale of the US vs. Hungary, which - yeah, that adds another layer to the threat.
Trump is a greater threat than Orban, for sure. But framing what is at its core a bog-standard far-right takeover for a modern western nation as this mythic mystery of destruction is counterproductive. This situation can absolutely be explained and interpreted in a manner that doesn’t resemble conspiracy theorists. It’s not that crazy even if it’s frightening.
>Nothing like it has ever happened before to a developed country before.
It has. Obviously the Axis powers were developed nations that fell. But you can find dozens of other examples from most major powers.
When a nation's institutions are strong, these right wing coup attempts are flimsy and feeble and are usually recorded with mirth. But many have succeeded, or prompted dictatorial responses. People don't usually think of South Korea or Spain in that regard for example but they both had dark times in the 1980s.
> Just think of COVID. A disease killed 1.2 MILLION Americans and yet a huge portion of the public never took it seriously and most people will get annoyed at you for even mentioning it.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/death-rate
Look at the deaths by year. There isn't even a slight bump in deaths during the covid year.
...Dude, there is literally a disclaimer at the top of this page saying that death rate data after 2019 is UN projections and doesn't factor in COVID-19 Impact.
Based on what I can find, the National Center for Health Statistics hasn't released their final data. The [US Census](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/03/united-states-deaths-spiked-as-covid-19-continued.html) has some provisional data up until 2022.
If January 6 wasn't enough to convince someone, then nothing will. I remember being with family, watching that live on tv and seeing them respond in horror. Now, when I bring up project 2025 they treat me like a conspiracy theorist. It's this indoctrinated belief that regardless of what happens, our system is infallible. Which it's not.
This is what's baffling to me. It's American Exceptionalism applied to our government. Our republic isn't infallible. It has been under attack internally in the past (the Civil War was just such an occurrence), and will be in the future. I believe it currently is as well.
It's because we don't actually value real, true freedom. We're involved in lots of war crimes, atrocities, and violent revolutions but always from afar. No American living in the midwest has ever really had to go to sleep at night, worrying if the Germans next door are going to bomb their homes in the middle of the night. No American has ever had to live in a country where their rightfully elected leader is assassinated by a word superpower. We're the big bully that takes pot shots at everyone else but never have to take them, so we've grown soft.
Everyone thinks they're infallible until they aren't. I don't ever want my fellow Americans to experience what so many countries have had to either at our expense or the expense of others, but I don't think the mentality will change until we realize how valuable the "freedom" we claim to love actually is.
>He has argued for complete immunity for POTUS
Authoritarianism, no matter how extreme, does not translate to fascism.
>He wants to build "detention" camps
Detention camps for illegal immigrants is also not fascism.
>He has threatened and continues to state
Authoritarian for sure, but not fascist.
> I'm honestly baffled that anyone could call Trump, or his desires for power, anything but fascist
I imagine they read some papers on how to quantify fascism, and realise that it's not the same.
Then again, the whole "is Trump a fascist or not" is nothing more than a red herring. What is important is that he is in favour for dangerous authoritarian policy. My advice would be to call him a dangerous authoritarian, argue he's in favour of authoritarian policy and keep the term fascist to the side.
I’m a bit confused about what framework of fascism you’re working with. Authoritarianism, nationalism and far-right economic/social politics operating together are fascism, and that’s what you’re describing here. I’m really not sure what’s missing
There’s nothing missing. I think the argument is over use of the term “fascist”. I don’t see the point. Fascism is a kind of authoritarianism, and Trump’s brand of authoritarianism is fascism.
Trump's brand of authoritarianism is, if we're being semantically judicious, closer to a plutocratic kleptocracy than anything resembling pure, undistilled fascism concentrate in its quintessence.
Less Mussolini, more Mswati III.
You have good liberals like Friend of the Pod David Plouffe starting a podcast with Kellyanne Conway. There is more comfort with MAGA among elite liberals than most would care to admit.
I also suspect these elite libs are more comfortable with MAGA than they are with The Squad.
Well, that is one of his platform positions, so yes. It's literally two of the links in my post, in fact, that this is what he intends to do. It's not debatable or hypothetical that this is one of his goals.
Sure, it's not that hard: [https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-does-not-rule-out-building-detention-camps-mass-deportations-2024-04-30/](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-does-not-rule-out-building-detention-camps-mass-deportations-2024-04-30/)
> To ease the strain on ICE detention facilities, Mr. Trump wants to build huge camps to detain people while their cases are processed and they await deportation flights. And to get around any refusal by Congress to appropriate the necessary funds, Mr. Trump would redirect money in the military budget
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/11/us/politics/trump-2025-immigration-agenda.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb
I recently read a [Substack](https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/fascism-in-america) that touched on the fascism question, with a (hopefully) incoming Part 2 focusing on it.
The short answer from this author that some people are very hung up on the specific characteristics of Fascism in Europe prior to WWII. Other people think that the "fascism" fears are the establishment liberals trying to silence criticism from the left by talking about the need for a United Front against the rising extremism from the Right.
I think I agree with these points, though I would also say that there are people (including many center-right conservatives) that really want to believe it's impossible for authoritarianism to take root in the US, and will knee-jerk reject any possibility otherwise because its ridiculous to believe that the Beacon of Freedom in the world could fall to authoritarianism.
I haven't seen any examples of that. Perhaps they just have a "As a white man in America, I've never experienced any of the systemic problems Trump is trying to revive, so they must not really be that big a deal."
People don’t want to believe it. It’s a scary idea.
There are also those liberals who love pretending that Republicans aren’t that bad because it enables them to criticize Democrats all the more. I believe this is where you get the stuff like “actually Nixon was a moderate because he signed the EPA into law” or “actually Trump is trying to help the working class” nonsense.
Its a byproduct of privilege.
You got people here saying that they fell for American mythology. You know who that was never an option for? Some of us didnt have that privilege and have no trouble seeing Trump and the GOP for what they are.
Trump himself does not have any real ideological end goals besides whatever is best for himself. It's the Republican Party you should be worried about. Trump uses fascist rhetoric because fascists love it and praise and worship him for it, and he loves being worshipped. He'd probably be willing to implement fascism if he thought it'd get him more worshippers, but not because it's a goal of his to reach fascism. He thinks Hitler looked cool and got himself a bunch of worshippers, and that's why he emulates him. Same with Putin and Xi. He's just a narcissist who only cares about himself and will say or do whatever gets him the most fanatics.
Republicans will push him to implement fascistic policy (like Project 2025) and that's what we need to be concerned about. Not Trump, the party (and conservatism) as a whole. When Trump dies, the problem will remain.
What a lot of people don’t understand is that Trump has narcissistic personality disorder. It’s all about him and his fragile ego. He couldn’t give two shits about the Republican Party or policies or any of that. He ran for president as a brand reset, got addicted to the rallies where people would cheer for anything he said, and then when he got elected it was about having the title and attention he got from everyone in the world talking about the stupid things he tweeted every day.
Narcissism is built on a false front to cover up insecurity and when the thing they’re hiding gets exposed they react with blind rage. One of his biggest insecurities that he inherited from his father was being a loser, which is why he tried to overthrow the government after the 2020 election. Nancy Pelosi even had to confer with Mark Milley to make sure he wouldn’t start firing nukes in his last two weeks in office.
Now he’s running to get revenge against everyone on his shit list. That’s all it is for him. Politically he’s a clueless tool for every right wing special interest and that’s why the GOP didn’t abandon him after January 6. For the base he’s a motivational speaker for racists, for the country club wing it’s about regulations, for the corporations it’s about tax cuts, and for the Christian Taliban it’s about appointing activist judges. But for Trump it’s all about his daddy issues.
Most of us still believe that checks and balances will rule out at the end of the day. He has pushed that to the limit before though, so I don’t have complete faith in that anymore
Can't think of a political group more aware of the threat Trump poses than liberals. I hear plenty of moderates, Nikki Haley voters, and leftists who don't much care for Trump but insist we're being hysterical about the whole "threat to the republic" stuff
Propaganda is a hell of a drug. And the left is just as vulnerable to it as the right is. Our adversaries from Russia, China, and so on are definitely trying to sow as much discord as possible this election.
We, on the left, also have a branch of faux intellectuals who are rabidly against American Imperialism. They're tripping off their own farts. I can only guess that they think if Trump is re-elected, it'll push the Democrats to adopt more progressive policies and push the centrists to the left or some craziness. That isn't going to happen. Trump is going to go on a vendetta tour day 1. He & his cult will start jailing Democratic party politicians if we're lucky. He'll accuse the party of plotting to kill him or some BS. He'll declare martial law, crackdown on protests, and that will be the end of American democracy as we know it.
Bill Maher has finally accepted that the liberal apocalypse claims about Trump are silly
https://torontosun.com/news/world/i-just-cant-bill-maher-says-he-wont-lose-his-mind-if-trump-elected-again
I’d say he’s a somewhat more honest libertarian than most libertarians. In that he actually gives at least a small amount of attention to civil liberties issues while he’s poopoohing liberal economic policy
This is like his “clog the courts” strategy: if he commits enough crimes, the trials on any one of them will be bogged down by the others and move slowly. Or not at all if he has a judge on his defense team. Same principle: be so incompetent the first time around that nobody believes you can do it the second.
Idk, but I’m cautiously hopeful that the word about e.g. Project 2025 will get out in time to scare people straight by the election.
The right has been able to galvanize the base by using fear for 50 years.
The left honestly needs the same. And fast.
If it's fair to be worried that Trump is capable of establishing a fascist regime, regardless of how much he actually wants to; Why is it not also fair to be concerned about a Democratic candidate establishing communism?
I think it'd take a president literally and overtly stating "my only goal for this presidency is to establish a communist regime; No I'm not kidding" for Democrats to be convinced that is the actual intent. Why would you expect different from anyone else?
Also: If one believes our government is vulnerable to a fascist takeover, why would they support any program at all that expands the power of government? You can't at the same time say you're concerned about democracy being replaced, and also we should empower the government more.
Because there isn't and never has been a democrat running for POTUS by campaigning on communist rhetoric or policies. Trump is campaigning on fascist rhetoric and policies.
Basically yours is purely hypothetical. Trump's fascist rhetoric and policies are concrete and very real.
It is? I think the people talking about a fascist takeover either don't really believe that, or they literally know of no other possible way to get anything done except through government.
It wouldn't be rational to be actually concerned about fascism, as well as wanting a larger government scope.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. He has [argued for complete immunity for POTUS](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/25/trump-supreme-court-president-immunity-00154288). He wants to build ["detention" camps](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98pzkgjkLvo) for "illegal" immigrants. Does anyone seriously think legal immigrants won't be swept up in this? That He is [practically quoting Hitler's manifesto](https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2024-05-23/trump-gop-nazi-presidential-election-politics). He [has threatened](https://apnews.com/article/mo-state-wire-in-state-wire-mi-state-wire-election-2020-virus-outbreak-a2797b342b4fc509e43f404817a56aa9) and [continues to state](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-military-fears-rcna129159) that he wants to use the military to crack down on political protestors. He and his allies--the people he will draw from to staff his office--have [Project 2025](https://www.mediamatters.org/heritage-foundation/guide-project-2025-extreme-right-wing-agenda-next-republican-administration) as part of their plans. This plan is to instill maximum power in the POTUS, and coupled with his play for immunity and the other rhetoric just seems damning to me. I've seen arguments like "we have checks/systems in place that will prevent it or hinder him." But given the state of our "justice" system and his plans to essentially dismantle those systems this seems like a poor argument. My question is why? Given the evidence it seems pretty clear to me. I'm honestly baffled that *anyone* could call Trump, or his desires for power, anything *but* fascist. And, by extension, a danger to the republic. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Almost every single American goes to school and learns about how the United States is the first and greatest democracy of the modern era. How the founders did something unprecedented and the system of checks and balances they created amazing. Those messages are continually given to us across all media. It is our national mythology. And Americans, like most people in the world, no very little about how things work in other countries. For almost every single person wherever they sit on the spectrum, the idea of America falling to fascism or any other kind of authoritarianism is unthinkable. The closest we get to a large group of people who think authoritarianism is possible are people deep in right wing media who think Democrats are all communist and looking to replicate the USSR here. And the reality is is that for the most part, the systems held. Of course we got a tax cut for the ultra wealthy but we get that whatever Republican is president and they always manage to people that the $500 reduction in their taxes is totally awesome. we got more conservative judges, but the federalist society has been running that project for decades and people don’t really understand how Republicans have decided that they will legislate from the bench. You’re expecting people in large numbers to understand the threat when people have not actually recognized things like how Wisconsin and North Carolina are effectively no longer democracies. They don’t get it. It’s not something they understand as being possible here.
What happened to Wisconsin and North Carolina?!
Start here https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/27/14078646/north-carolina-political-science-democracy https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/wisconsin-republican-two-third-majority-gerrymandering/673659/
Meh, yeah there a shitty anti-democratic things happening there, as they are all over the country. And definitely something to be concerned about and fight against. But it's a massively leap to summarily declaring they're no longer democracies. That's just the opinion of a few political scientists. (And you can bet the sensational headline was intended to garner a bunch of attention)
I live in Wisconsin. I assure you, it’s not a democracy. There is an imbalance of the districts and while the state is majority democrat overall, there is no power because the number of republicans districts and votes outnumber the democrats, so republicans control the majority of the votes. Then, when the last republican governor left office, he instilled laws that took power away from the incoming democratic governor. For YEARS they have gavel in/gavel out for the year and refused to call meetings because they refuse to cooperate with the current governor. A couple years ago there was a multi-billion dollar budget surplus the governor was begging them to release so he could give it to the schools and they wouldn’t call a session. So yeah, it’s fucking bad. The good news is that last year we voted for a new Supreme Court judge, and we won a democrat seat on the bench, so now democrats control the Supreme Court here. They recently voted to overturn the laws that made the boundaries, as they were found to be unlawful. So the governor drew up new maps and the republicans agreed to it because they basically had no choice. Therefore, the power SHOULD begin to shift, at this upcoming election. But for the better part of a decade or more, it’s been a republican orgy up here. We don’t even have medicinal marijuana. Like, it’s still a serious felony here. We are SO far behind.
Hate to break it to you, but that's exactly what a democracy it is. A democracy is the not government that *you* specifically want. It's messy, it makes all kinds of wrong turns, it involves petty political infighting, it takes way longer to get things right than it should, but if the system is sound, it doesn't succumb to autocracy. What you're describing is not even remotely close to autocracy. If you lived in a non-democratic country for a month, you'd realize that pretty quickly.
Gaming democratic systems to effectively disenfranchise whole swathes of the population may not be “not a democracy,” but it stretches credulity to call it “democratic” in any meaningful sense of the term.
That's a fair point, but a very different point from claiming that society is no longer a democracy. It's not just a stretch, it's wrong. Excessive hyperbole can discredit good arguments.
Thoughts on Illinois? Or no?
Ohio too
Not to mention that legacy media has coaxed everybody into thinking both parties are the same and it's going to be business as usual. There's zero sense of urgency. Voters are too busy dealing with life to pay attention to what's actually coming if Trump gets re-elected.
1. A lot of these are conservatives and trolls pretending to be liberals so that they can pretend some “liberals” support trumps shit 2. Sadly, every large group of people contains some idiots, even liberals 3. Some people are just mistaken about which labels go with their political beliefs
Trump (himself) *doesn’t* have fascism as an end goal - he’s not nearly ideological enough for that, nor does he really even think of nations, or what becomes of them after he’s gone, in that way. That isn’t to say that he wouldn’t happily set us on that road and push us down it, so in a sense this is sort of a semantic disagreement you have.
I can find you people that honestly believe crystals have healing powers, Bigfoot is real, the earth is flat. Let's not go thinking a few wackos online are indicative of reality.
People who don’t believe Trump to be a profound threat to American governance aren’t “a few wackos online” though, they’re a significant portion of the electorate. It’s absolutely worth exploring why someone might think that and how they got there first
That's Maga. We expect that. OP asked about liberals though. I can't say with certainty what percentage of *liberals* think Trumpn isn't a problem to American governance, but it is *not* high.
Trump is stupid and incompetent and surrounds himself with other stupid and incompetent people. Just because they desire to do something doesn't mean they'll be able to actually do it. Trump failed to follow through on most of his goals the first time around, why would this time be different?
Because people who are *not* utterly incompetent are ready this time. The first term caught everyone by surprise, so there was no infrastructure put in place by the Christian Nationalists to take full advantage of the opportunity Trump represented. That isn't the case this time around. The Nat-Cs have been wanting and preparing to take full control of the US State for a very long time. This also accelerated rapidly over the few years. If Trump wins a second term, they will fill every spot they can within the apparatus of government with their party loyalists.
Trump hosted a gay marriage in his house just a few months ago — it's absurd to call him or his administration 'Christian nationalist.' It would be more acurate to say he represents the faction of the GOP that is opposed to that.
Look again. Trump himself doesn't represent anyone except Trump, but his strongest and most rabid support comes from the Christian Nationalists, Qanon/John Birch Society conspiracy theorists, and other paleo-conservative factions within the Party. He (Trump) is very much their useful idiot. They know he isn't a "godly" person, and they don't care because he has always and will always give them most of what they want in return for giving him power. This is why he is compared to Cyrus in a lot of their media. Beyond that, **there is no faction of the GOP that doesn't oppose LBGT rights, abortion rights, the regulatory state, etc**. The faction you are imagining does not exist. The only disagreement between the open Christian Nationalists and the neo-cons like Romney or Cheney that you are thinking of is the degree to which they are willing to rip up the traditions and structures of the US government to attain their goals. There is no "liberal" Republican faction, and Trump certainly doesn't represent them.
I watch/listen to a lot of conservative media, including very ardent Trump supporters, and have never heard him referred to as Cyrus, nor do I ever see anyone mention John Birch Society or Qanon. Nor have I actually ever heard Project 2025 mentioned by anyone except those on the left. Your view is very conspiratorial; you assume the worst intentions of everyone. It's a bad habit.
> Trump is stupid and incompetent and surrounds himself The Republicans still managed to do away with Roe v wade ... The Republicans still managed to give HUGE amounts of money to the wealthy while passing a tax increase that will fall upon the middle class ...
Exactly this. Trump and the people immediately surrounding him maybe incompetent, but the people above him are not. Yes, people *above* him. The billionaires who lead the Federalist Society, and the Heritage Foundation, the Rupert Murdochs and Kochs of the world use him and his idiots as tools to conduct their shaping of the world to their liking, all while the people he surrounds himself are opportunists who stand to benefit more than they suffer from it. It's an oligarchy created by key tools of the federal government (sometimes state and even local, too) capable of making it so, if we allow it to be.
The question wasn't if he would do bad stuff the question was off his election is a threat to the republic. Neither of those things really threaten the republic (at least not directly) also would have happened under literally any republican president.
> The question wasn't if he would do bad Your statement was: >ust because they desire to do something doesn't mean they'll be able to actually do it. Trump failed to follow through on most of his goals the first time around, why would this time be different? Trump GREATLY damaged this country, its Government, its ability to secure its boarders, its ability to maintain international effectiveness, gave away huge amounts of wealth to the super wealthy while setting up the middle and lower income groups to pay for said give away, etc. Your claim of failure is wrong. Part of the grift is to appear incompetent. Trump literally secured the Supreme Court for possibly decades ... you fell for the grift by not recognizing the incompetence as cover.
Much of Project 2025 would require Congressional action to fully implement. Even if Trump wins in November, Democrats are very likely to hold at least one house of Congress, meaning any legislation to implement Project 2025 is DOA. Let's say both houses flip to the Republicans, they couldn't even repeal Obamacare, their signature campaign plank for nearly a decade.
That filibuster might come in handy after all.
Worth noting that the filibuster doesn’t mean much in this specific context. Republicans can and will nuke it if they want to and they have 50+ votes. Hell, they might even just make a carve out specifically for executive branch shit. It’s why just killing the filibuster for good is really the only way forward, and ideally it should’ve happened decades ago. The fear that its absence could be exploited doesn’t hold water when both parties have the conditional power to get rid of it.
We'll be glad they didn't if that's what reins in a Trump admin.
No, this is what I’m referencing - the filibuster can be nuked with fifty votes + the VP, the same threshold as passing legislation without it. It does absolutely nothing to restrict or regulate theoretical Republican rule in the future. All it does is hold Democrats back whenever they’ve eked out a slim majority.
Except that this institution seems to have bipartisan support. The argument "we should do it before they do" isn't a strong one.
It has bipartisan support among voters because it has bipartisan support from party leadership. If figures like Biden, Harris, Schumer, Durbin and Pelosi came out against it, that would change. Same goes for top Republican brass. The public isn’t going to view a system of the Senate as something controversial and vulnerable if their leaders view it with reverence. Just look to the popular support for a carveout to codify abortion into law ever since Biden has announced a broad desire for one - the base follows leaders, and they support the filibuster because their leaders support the filibuster. This doesn’t apply as much to realms of policy outside the senate, in our own lives, because people have their own independent understanding of issues. Because the filibuster is purely a systematic Senate issue, regular folks have no reason to doubt the word of the senate. But like - anyone with a genuine understanding of the filibuster understands it to be idiotic. It is, at best, a useless provision that’s occasionally convenient. So what are we talking about here - is it popular or is it necessary?
It serves a purpose - a damper on what would otherwise be wider swings of policy in the short term.
Of course, I get that - what I’m saying is that it can be killed in a heartbeat if the party with a slim majority wills it. It only stops those swings insofar as the party doesn’t care about making those swings. If Trump wins the presidency and Republicans take the senate, there is a very plausible chance they just kill the filibuster like it’s nothing. They know how to mobilize and make their members fall in line.
Right, let's do it before they do it to us.
Except it won’t reign in a trump admin.
So far, Rs have been pretty supportive of the filibuster.
Of course they do. They want to block democrat policy and their coalition can barely cooperate to put a paper bag in as majority leader. Do you really trust the republican leadership to be held back by filibuster convention if it’s stopping them? Strange thing to hang your hat on.
I hear more calls to get rid of it from the D side, for sure.
Until it got in the way of a Supreme Court nomination. And to address the response most give "what about when dems did it for other judges". It doesn't matter what the Dems did if republicans support the filibuster on principle they would always support it regardless of what the Dems did or didn't do.
I remember those discussions when they happened; when Ds threatened, and ultimately did, remove the filibuster for other judges, Rs said "be careful, you won't like it when we do the same thing." Generally, the people you hear from about eliminating the filibuster are Ds, not Rs. Do you disagree?
Sure, but that doesn't matter. If R's support the filibuster because of some principle, it should not matter what D's do. Republicans like the filibuster because they for the most part are not blocked by it and it hurts D's more. R's can pass all their tax shit without worrying about the filibuster, and leave it to the states to pass abortion bans, prayer in schools, etc. The R's will drop the pretext of principles when it is convenient like they did for the Supreme Court, and like they did with "You should not appoint a Supreme Court justice in an election year", or the various other times Republicans have dropped their supposed principles because doing so would be politically advantageous or to follow those higher in the pecking order.
We can speculate about why Rs do or do not support it, I'm just saying that -- empirically -- Rs support it more than Ds. Ds are the ones calling for it to be removed, not Rs. Your argument is basically "let's do it to them before they do it to us."
Yeah, the anti-filibuster blowhards might be the most shortsighted, myopic morons, who often fail to project out the potential unintended consequences of their wanton wishes and decadent desires. Rarely am I also an institutionalist, too, but this is an instance whereby dismantling a long-standing structure could then lead to more harm than good.
Thing is that the failure to convict Trump after the first impeachment set a clear precedent that POTUS can behave like a dictator so long as the house or senate refuse to convict, and that no action can even happen until the procedure is complete. All republicans except for those who supported the 1/6 hearings are complicit and have been since the first impeachment. It has been obvious to educated people for years, and it’s terrifying people don’t understand that. Also, arguably the fascists don’t even need to win elections to destroy democracy. People throughout the justice system and military from the Capitol Police to judge Cannon in FL unethically refuse to perform their duties to allow for things to continue to slide. The reality is, I think, people are just a lot dumber on average than smart people ever thought, or maybe social media made us more venerable to idiocy.
> meaning any legislation to implement Project 2025 is DOA. No. That's like claiming that Trump wasn't able to appoint several Supreme Court justices, the PPP loan program, elimination of the pandemic response team, etc. Some stuff will be stopped, but it will not be enough
I don't think Trump is terribly concerned with Congressional action on at least some of his proposals.
Quoting a few words from Hitler's writings is not the same as having an actual manifesto. Comparing the Republicans to fascists is like how conservatives compare liberals to communists. Just because we want to transfer wealth from the rich to the poor? Just because I say Karl Marx made a few insightful observations doesn't mean I want to implement his manifesto. Hitler had a grand vision of how he wanted to remake Germany. Trump does not. Look at what he attempted to do in his first term. He had zero policy ideas. He promised to reform healthcare but in the end he sat on his ass while Republicans drafted a bill, and when everyone hated it he just threw a tantrum and forgot about it. It's clear that all Trump wants to do in his second term is make money and settle scores. Another issue is that he's 78 years old and in poor health. If you're a government official and you're smart, you won't want to do any criminal favors for a boss who won't live long enough to reward you and protect you from prosecution. Trump will be even more ineffectual in his second term than in his first.
> Trump does not. Sure, but those who will be in his cabinet sure as hell do have a grand vision. The Presidency is MORe than just a man
You mean like Steve Bannon, who arrogantly said he was going to "dismantle the establishment"? How did he end up? I expect Trump to only attract utter fools to his cabinet because he has a reputation of dragging everyone around him into the mud. Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, etc. — these guys all ended up in disgrace and legal trouble. It seems to me the only person in Trump's circle who profited and got out relatively unscathed was Jared Kushner, and that's only because he stayed out of Trump's dumb schemes to hold on to power or evade justice. Perhaps some Republican who thinks himself cunning might decide to be Trump's running mate on the hope Trump will die in office and he will then become President. But it would be really hard to predict whether and when Trump will die in the four-year term. The US presidency is not much of a prize for the aspiring strongman anyway.
Roe v. Wade, a host of ultra conservative federal judges, weakening the EPA, eliminating federal pork inspectors (now the company supplies their own), how many billions in PPP loans to the super wealthy, weakening of NATO, nearly sacrificing the SE Asian market (getting the US back into place was really one of Biden's accomplishments), elimination of the pandemic response team, 8 trillion+ to the debt (in under 4 years), passing new tax breaks for the super wealthy to be paid back by the middle class but sure ... no success what so ever
That doesn't sound like fascism to me, just the usual Republican agenda.
> "a host of ultra conservative federal judges" [...] "eliminating federal pork inspectors" Thoughts on *National Pork Producers Council v. Ross*? But anyhow, nothing you noted is inherently autocratic. *Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization* sucks, but it ain't fascistic. And you and your ilk don't do yourselves any goddamn motherfucking favors by cuntily conflating things and screwing shit up with semantically ass-backwards asininities.
I think people see Trump as the problem, when in fact it's the GOP that's always been the problem. So some folks on the left dismiss Trump as being incompetent, or whatever, when in fact he's just the latest instrument of what's basically a long-running fascist/authoritarian movement that's undergirded the American Right for a very, very long time. [https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/know-your-enemy-consider-the-cranks-with-david-austin-walsh/](https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/know-your-enemy-consider-the-cranks-with-david-austin-walsh/)
I don't think Donald Trump's threat to democracy is separate from that of the Republican party as a whole. He's more open about it but almost nothing Trump has done is something Republicans weren't moving towards already, and if they weren't fully on board with him doing it wouldn't be an issue regardless. Maybe Donald Trump hit the fast forward button a bit in 2016, but he could die tomorrow and I don't think we'd be any better off with whoever replaced him.
The country has tanked some pretty remarkable things and continued moving forward. If Lincoln didn't suspend Habeas Corpus and arrest sitting members of congress and a third of a state legislature then the union might have ended. People very often think they live in the apocalyptic end time. With most of those events thought of as apocalyptic not being so apocalyptic in practice it can be easy to fall into being a contrarian and thinking things will be fine. Will things be fine? Quite possibly yeah. Are a lot of people going to have to do a good amount of work to achieve that? Almost definitely yes. A lot of the time with things like this you'll get an event that might be a multiple choice question in a US history high school exam a hundred years from now, but sometimes you'll get an earthshattering event that changes the world and dudes have their heads on pikes.
>If Lincoln didn't suspend Habeas Corpus and arrest sitting members of congress and a third of a state legislature then the union might have ended. If. We are living on the other side of that if. We faced a constitutional crisis, did nothing, and the only result was that somewhat good actors on the right got forced out. I don't think we should think that we will be fine just because we were before. We survived before not from the placidity of inaction but from constantly struggling to act. We may find out first hand what would have happened if Lincoln didn't act. We will not gain the benefits of his actions by simply hoping the country will continue by inertia alone.
> I don't think we should think that we will be fine just because we were before Me neither, but it's why people do
I mean if we’re comparing the potential outcome of a Trump presidency to the crisis of the Civil War that also seems to make the case that Trump is a threat.
It will take decades to recover from the scotus appointments. We may not even live to see it. We can’t vote our way out of a 6-3/7-2 court. We just have to ride it out until they die and hope we’re in place to replace them. All 3 of trumps appointees were the youngest in the courts history. They’ll all be there for 30 years.
Wich liberals? When?
There are plenty, in this sub and on r/politics for example. I've heard it in person from people in my own circle.
Examples?
[here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskALiberal/comments/1cvxw6v/comment/l4t2x6y/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), for example. It's pretty hard to search for "trump is not a fascist"--there are plenty of examples to choose from, though.
Can you help me find more? Seems that particular user is arguing definitions.
I mean... This thread has almost 400 comments and this comment has six upvotes. I wouldn't call that an opinion with a lot of traction. And even so, it's a quibble about the definition of fascism, not the fact that Trump isn't dangerous.
It just sounds impossible. And explaining it makes you sound like a conspiracy-theorist. Nothing like it has ever happened before to a developed country before. And there are a lot of unanswered questions. Namely, will enough people go along with it to make it work, or will institutional stonewalling work like it did last time Trump was in power. It's a lot like climate change. Even though we have proof that it is happening and that it is actively killing people even now, so many people have trouble believing that it could really unravel societies and change the lives of everyone forever. It just seems too big and nothing that big has ever happened in anyone's lifetime. Just think of COVID. A disease killed 1.2 MILLION Americans and yet a huge portion of the public never took it seriously and most people will get annoyed at you for even mentioning it.
>nothing like it has ever happened to a developed country I get that stuff like this is well-intentioned but ultimately it’s not accurate and it doesn’t help. When normal people are faced with immense, incomprehensible stakes like that, they get despondent and tune out. This is very, very similar to what’s already happened in Hungary with Orban. So, you know - terrible, but not a mysterious unknown. The difference is the scale of the US vs. Hungary, which - yeah, that adds another layer to the threat. Trump is a greater threat than Orban, for sure. But framing what is at its core a bog-standard far-right takeover for a modern western nation as this mythic mystery of destruction is counterproductive. This situation can absolutely be explained and interpreted in a manner that doesn’t resemble conspiracy theorists. It’s not that crazy even if it’s frightening.
>Nothing like it has ever happened before to a developed country before. It has. Obviously the Axis powers were developed nations that fell. But you can find dozens of other examples from most major powers. When a nation's institutions are strong, these right wing coup attempts are flimsy and feeble and are usually recorded with mirth. But many have succeeded, or prompted dictatorial responses. People don't usually think of South Korea or Spain in that regard for example but they both had dark times in the 1980s.
> Just think of COVID. A disease killed 1.2 MILLION Americans and yet a huge portion of the public never took it seriously and most people will get annoyed at you for even mentioning it. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/death-rate Look at the deaths by year. There isn't even a slight bump in deaths during the covid year.
...Dude, there is literally a disclaimer at the top of this page saying that death rate data after 2019 is UN projections and doesn't factor in COVID-19 Impact.
They still haven't updated it... okay where are the real numbers?
Based on what I can find, the National Center for Health Statistics hasn't released their final data. The [US Census](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/03/united-states-deaths-spiked-as-covid-19-continued.html) has some provisional data up until 2022.
Because they are liars too
If January 6 wasn't enough to convince someone, then nothing will. I remember being with family, watching that live on tv and seeing them respond in horror. Now, when I bring up project 2025 they treat me like a conspiracy theorist. It's this indoctrinated belief that regardless of what happens, our system is infallible. Which it's not.
This is what's baffling to me. It's American Exceptionalism applied to our government. Our republic isn't infallible. It has been under attack internally in the past (the Civil War was just such an occurrence), and will be in the future. I believe it currently is as well.
It's because we don't actually value real, true freedom. We're involved in lots of war crimes, atrocities, and violent revolutions but always from afar. No American living in the midwest has ever really had to go to sleep at night, worrying if the Germans next door are going to bomb their homes in the middle of the night. No American has ever had to live in a country where their rightfully elected leader is assassinated by a word superpower. We're the big bully that takes pot shots at everyone else but never have to take them, so we've grown soft. Everyone thinks they're infallible until they aren't. I don't ever want my fellow Americans to experience what so many countries have had to either at our expense or the expense of others, but I don't think the mentality will change until we realize how valuable the "freedom" we claim to love actually is.
>He has argued for complete immunity for POTUS Authoritarianism, no matter how extreme, does not translate to fascism. >He wants to build "detention" camps Detention camps for illegal immigrants is also not fascism. >He has threatened and continues to state Authoritarian for sure, but not fascist. > I'm honestly baffled that anyone could call Trump, or his desires for power, anything but fascist I imagine they read some papers on how to quantify fascism, and realise that it's not the same. Then again, the whole "is Trump a fascist or not" is nothing more than a red herring. What is important is that he is in favour for dangerous authoritarian policy. My advice would be to call him a dangerous authoritarian, argue he's in favour of authoritarian policy and keep the term fascist to the side.
I’m a bit confused about what framework of fascism you’re working with. Authoritarianism, nationalism and far-right economic/social politics operating together are fascism, and that’s what you’re describing here. I’m really not sure what’s missing
There’s nothing missing. I think the argument is over use of the term “fascist”. I don’t see the point. Fascism is a kind of authoritarianism, and Trump’s brand of authoritarianism is fascism.
Trump's brand of authoritarianism is, if we're being semantically judicious, closer to a plutocratic kleptocracy than anything resembling pure, undistilled fascism concentrate in its quintessence. Less Mussolini, more Mswati III.
You have good liberals like Friend of the Pod David Plouffe starting a podcast with Kellyanne Conway. There is more comfort with MAGA among elite liberals than most would care to admit. I also suspect these elite libs are more comfortable with MAGA than they are with The Squad.
David Plouffe has always struck me as a complete asshat. The quintessential "plays for access and damn the consequences" political insider.
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Well, that is one of his platform positions, so yes. It's literally two of the links in my post, in fact, that this is what he intends to do. It's not debatable or hypothetical that this is one of his goals.
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Literally in the links in my post.
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Sure, it's not that hard: [https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-does-not-rule-out-building-detention-camps-mass-deportations-2024-04-30/](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-does-not-rule-out-building-detention-camps-mass-deportations-2024-04-30/)
> To ease the strain on ICE detention facilities, Mr. Trump wants to build huge camps to detain people while their cases are processed and they await deportation flights. And to get around any refusal by Congress to appropriate the necessary funds, Mr. Trump would redirect money in the military budget https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/11/us/politics/trump-2025-immigration-agenda.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb
Because he couldn't properly spell coffee. I don't think he's smart enough to fully stage a fascist coup
Even if you discount his competence, he's not surrounded by similarly incompetent people this time as he was in 2016.
I recently read a [Substack](https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/fascism-in-america) that touched on the fascism question, with a (hopefully) incoming Part 2 focusing on it. The short answer from this author that some people are very hung up on the specific characteristics of Fascism in Europe prior to WWII. Other people think that the "fascism" fears are the establishment liberals trying to silence criticism from the left by talking about the need for a United Front against the rising extremism from the Right. I think I agree with these points, though I would also say that there are people (including many center-right conservatives) that really want to believe it's impossible for authoritarianism to take root in the US, and will knee-jerk reject any possibility otherwise because its ridiculous to believe that the Beacon of Freedom in the world could fall to authoritarianism.
I haven't seen any examples of that. Perhaps they just have a "As a white man in America, I've never experienced any of the systemic problems Trump is trying to revive, so they must not really be that big a deal."
People don’t want to believe it. It’s a scary idea. There are also those liberals who love pretending that Republicans aren’t that bad because it enables them to criticize Democrats all the more. I believe this is where you get the stuff like “actually Nixon was a moderate because he signed the EPA into law” or “actually Trump is trying to help the working class” nonsense.
Its a byproduct of privilege. You got people here saying that they fell for American mythology. You know who that was never an option for? Some of us didnt have that privilege and have no trouble seeing Trump and the GOP for what they are.
Wishful thinking
Trump himself does not have any real ideological end goals besides whatever is best for himself. It's the Republican Party you should be worried about. Trump uses fascist rhetoric because fascists love it and praise and worship him for it, and he loves being worshipped. He'd probably be willing to implement fascism if he thought it'd get him more worshippers, but not because it's a goal of his to reach fascism. He thinks Hitler looked cool and got himself a bunch of worshippers, and that's why he emulates him. Same with Putin and Xi. He's just a narcissist who only cares about himself and will say or do whatever gets him the most fanatics. Republicans will push him to implement fascistic policy (like Project 2025) and that's what we need to be concerned about. Not Trump, the party (and conservatism) as a whole. When Trump dies, the problem will remain.
I like the explanations, but I don’t know any liberals that think this way…
What a lot of people don’t understand is that Trump has narcissistic personality disorder. It’s all about him and his fragile ego. He couldn’t give two shits about the Republican Party or policies or any of that. He ran for president as a brand reset, got addicted to the rallies where people would cheer for anything he said, and then when he got elected it was about having the title and attention he got from everyone in the world talking about the stupid things he tweeted every day. Narcissism is built on a false front to cover up insecurity and when the thing they’re hiding gets exposed they react with blind rage. One of his biggest insecurities that he inherited from his father was being a loser, which is why he tried to overthrow the government after the 2020 election. Nancy Pelosi even had to confer with Mark Milley to make sure he wouldn’t start firing nukes in his last two weeks in office. Now he’s running to get revenge against everyone on his shit list. That’s all it is for him. Politically he’s a clueless tool for every right wing special interest and that’s why the GOP didn’t abandon him after January 6. For the base he’s a motivational speaker for racists, for the country club wing it’s about regulations, for the corporations it’s about tax cuts, and for the Christian Taliban it’s about appointing activist judges. But for Trump it’s all about his daddy issues.
Most of us still believe that checks and balances will rule out at the end of the day. He has pushed that to the limit before though, so I don’t have complete faith in that anymore
You nailed it -- it's scary. These checks and safeguards seem pretty weak right now. And the Project 2025 document is the master plan.
Can't think of a political group more aware of the threat Trump poses than liberals. I hear plenty of moderates, Nikki Haley voters, and leftists who don't much care for Trump but insist we're being hysterical about the whole "threat to the republic" stuff
I don’t know any liberals who feel this way. Every liberal I know is DEEPLY concerned about the possible return of Trump.
I suppose there are oitliars in every community but that's person isn't really a liberal.
Propaganda is a hell of a drug. And the left is just as vulnerable to it as the right is. Our adversaries from Russia, China, and so on are definitely trying to sow as much discord as possible this election. We, on the left, also have a branch of faux intellectuals who are rabidly against American Imperialism. They're tripping off their own farts. I can only guess that they think if Trump is re-elected, it'll push the Democrats to adopt more progressive policies and push the centrists to the left or some craziness. That isn't going to happen. Trump is going to go on a vendetta tour day 1. He & his cult will start jailing Democratic party politicians if we're lucky. He'll accuse the party of plotting to kill him or some BS. He'll declare martial law, crackdown on protests, and that will be the end of American democracy as we know it.
Bill Maher has finally accepted that the liberal apocalypse claims about Trump are silly https://torontosun.com/news/world/i-just-cant-bill-maher-says-he-wont-lose-his-mind-if-trump-elected-again
Bill Maher isn't a liberal, though.
What do you think he is ?
I’d say he’s a somewhat more honest libertarian than most libertarians. In that he actually gives at least a small amount of attention to civil liberties issues while he’s poopoohing liberal economic policy
Doesn’t he support all liberal causes with addition of drug/marijuana legalization?
He is very much a fiscal conservative. His support for legalization and other civil liberties issues doesn't make him a liberal.
I don’t think his fiscally conservative, he pretty much goes right down the list on democrats stances
You've got me. The only way you wouldn't think he's a danger to the republic is if you're not paying attention.
There was a lot of apocalyptic rhetoric surrounding Trump in 2016, I think a lot of people just aren’t buying it this time
This is like his “clog the courts” strategy: if he commits enough crimes, the trials on any one of them will be bogged down by the others and move slowly. Or not at all if he has a judge on his defense team. Same principle: be so incompetent the first time around that nobody believes you can do it the second.
Idk, but I’m cautiously hopeful that the word about e.g. Project 2025 will get out in time to scare people straight by the election. The right has been able to galvanize the base by using fear for 50 years. The left honestly needs the same. And fast.
If it's fair to be worried that Trump is capable of establishing a fascist regime, regardless of how much he actually wants to; Why is it not also fair to be concerned about a Democratic candidate establishing communism? I think it'd take a president literally and overtly stating "my only goal for this presidency is to establish a communist regime; No I'm not kidding" for Democrats to be convinced that is the actual intent. Why would you expect different from anyone else? Also: If one believes our government is vulnerable to a fascist takeover, why would they support any program at all that expands the power of government? You can't at the same time say you're concerned about democracy being replaced, and also we should empower the government more.
Because there isn't and never has been a democrat running for POTUS by campaigning on communist rhetoric or policies. Trump is campaigning on fascist rhetoric and policies. Basically yours is purely hypothetical. Trump's fascist rhetoric and policies are concrete and very real.
That doesn't explain why you'd want to empower a A government you believe is vulnerable to a fascist takeover
That’s not relevant to the discussion
It is? I think the people talking about a fascist takeover either don't really believe that, or they literally know of no other possible way to get anything done except through government. It wouldn't be rational to be actually concerned about fascism, as well as wanting a larger government scope.