Are we now in full blown fascist totalitarianism?

[Loren Pechtel]

The problem with calling Trump a fascist is that it relatvises actual fascism. It's the "cry wolf" problem. It's the same thing with calling his policies racist. It relativises actual racism. Has he put in place any laws that limits people based on race? If not, then his policies aren't racist. He can be a racist while his policies aren't racist. To the rape accusation. He hasn't been convicted of rape. So calling him a rapist relativises rape.

The problem with all of this is that it will make us blind to being taken over by actual racist rapist fascist.

You don't need to like Trump to insist that we call him what he actually is, a lying orange clown

Huh?

How is he not a fascist? He's rapidly turning our government into fascism.

This is like calling someone who was rude to you once for a narcisist.

Fascism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It's just hyperbole. Yes, there's fascist traits. But he's right at the top of a slippery slope, that's not particularly slippery.

Pay more attention. He's gone a long way towards controlling society.

Not a racist? You realize some of his crowd have admitted they intend to purge the country of non-whites?

Where are the racist laws that he's passed?

Laws?! He doesn't care about the law! The Gestapo is stopping people on race alone.

Not a rapist? He's admitted to rape.

No, he hasn't. Don't relativise rape. It's a serious crime. Not cool.

Some places specifically limit rape to a penis, others define it as sexual penetration even without it being a penis. The state he did it in uses the strict definition and thus his actions are only sexual assault as the penetration was by a finger, not a penis. But he's basically admitted to doing it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The problem with calling Trump a fascist is that it relatvises actual fascism. It's the "cry wolf" problem.

Evidence of fascism (not an exhaustive list):

• Arrests and deportation of legal residents
• Consolidation of power & undermining checks and balances
• Attacks on media, speech, and dissent
• Purges of opposition
• Rhetoric, demagoguery, and scapegoating of groups
• Using the military against civilians

I also find it troubling. None of that is good. But he's not arguing against democracy.

He literally told Texas to re-gerrymander their maps to make the US House elections in that state even less democratic and help save the GOP majority in the US House. Said it out loud.

That sounds like he's working within the legal and democratic framework of USA. The opposite of fascism. An important feature of fascism is that they argue against democracy. Trump hasn't done that once. When he was crying about the election being stolen, that's a clue that he respects the democratic process. It's also a clue that he's fucking idiot. But that's another matter.

Just because he's working "within" the law doesn't mean he's not also working outside it.

He's not tried undermining free press.

He has pressured both WashPo, CBS, NBC, and ABC. Both verbally and dangling delays and rejections of corporate mergers that involved said companies.

Do you pay any attention to the news?

That's not what undermining the press means. He's more like a petulant child lashing out. I can't see any strategy involved.

The public discourse is heavily skewed to the left. Or was until quite recently. He wasn't wrong about that. That's what he is upset about.

Now it seems like the woke lunacy trend is finally over. It'll overcorrect in the opposite direction. Which will be bad for different reasons. But the basis for his complaints are not imaginary.

Reality is skewed to the left. While I certainly agree there is bias in the media the "news" on the right is far, far more biased than the news on the left.

What purges of opposition has he done?

They arrested a judge, does that count?

Are you referring to judge Hannah Dugan? As far as I can tell Trump had nothing to do with it. It seems to be FBI, because she did something naughty.

Except she didn't. What she did was "obstruct" an arrest that they were attempting to do without a proper warrant. She didn't go along with them breaking the rules.

United States, for all its problems is very married to democracy.

Was, "was very married to democracy". But you apparently don't pay attention to any of the news regarding the US to see the rather notable changes in the past 9 years.

Correct. I get limited news about USA. In Europe news is either glorifying or vilifying USA. We rarely get a sober account. So it's hard to evaluate general trends from over here.

You speak English, there's enough you can look at.

A fundamental aspect of fascism is that its got a violent fanclub, given special status, that are protected by the law to run rampant and terrorise people.

Sounds like you are talking about ICE. You know, the people racial profiling, sending some people to a torture prison in El Salvador or some country in Africa, many without due process.

Just stop it. They don't murder people and spread terror in the general population. It's not cool to relativise political violence like this.

Only in the population of people saying things he doesn't like. And any non-citizen listed in any criminal incident, no matter how minor, and whether or not they were even guilty of an offense at all. (They've grabbed someone for being with someone that kept a fish they should have thrown back.)

I suggest going to torture museums from around the world, set in the torture camps where the political tortures were committed. It'll give you some perspective on this.

Are you not aware of what that prison in El Salvador is?

That is just not happening today. The capitol rioters were arrested and sent to jail. And it was a one off.

They were pardoned.

Because Trump got re-elected. The QAnon Shaman isn't back to his old nonsense. He retired. The capitol rioters weren't trying to bring democracy down. They were trying to uphold democracy. You're completely confused about what fascism is

No, it was a coup attempt. Our Constitution spells out a fallback option for how to select a president if the election becomes impossible. The intent was to sabotage the certification of the election and thus trigger this fallback--which would have ended up putting him in office in 2020. It was ineptly done, though.

Actual fascism is much more sinister and brutal. Iran is a good current example. You cannot criticise the regime from inside Iran. Iran sends agents abroad to murder refugee Iranians who criticise the regime. Its on a whole different level

Correct, Kimmel and Colbert haven't been sent to a Mongolia Dung Mine. However, Trump tried to get both of them fired for not saying nice things. In America, that is somewhat unusual, as fascism hasn't been part of our ethos. Populism at times, but rarely fascism.

Agreed, it's not a great development. But that doesn't make him a fascist. It's more like he's just a regular guy who accidentaly became president and is in way over his head.

He's basically a puppet mostly doing what the P2025 puppetmasters want, although with his temper tantrums thrown in.

He's not even authoritarian.

He has been leading via declaration for a while. Including attacking law firms, media companies, illegally enacting tariffs, illegally impounding Congressional spending, pardoned the J6 rioters, having the DoJ target who he considers his political enemies. He isn't an authoritarian, he is acting authoritarian-lite at the moment.

Sure. It's still right at the top of the slippery slope.

He's bringing criminal cases against people who did nothing wrong except not obey illegal instructions.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I somehow doubt Trump is a machiavellian mastermind. I agree that it looked like an attempt of a coup or the start of a civil war. The reason it's not, is that he's got zero ground troops willing to fight for him. American conservatives are extremely enthusiastic about democracy. When they whine about liberals it's the non-democratic aspects of liberalism, ie the intolerance and lack of intellectual curiousity, that they react against. That's not a foundation upon which to build a dictatorship.

If Trump would call himself a dictator he's got zero powerbase to back him up.

Right now it's typically liberals who struggle with respecting the democratic principles. Not conservatives. That's not how it used to be. But that's how it is now.

edit: I'm not saying that a civil war can't happen. Trump may very well trigger a civil war. But the moment it gets going I can't see Trump leading anything. He's an entitled whiny populist. He's not Cromwell.

He's still replacing the control structures with those loyal to him rather than to the law. But he's not encountering any meaningful opposition in doing so.

 

[Politesse]

The fire is suspicious, that concludes all we know about the fire at this point.

Then why is it ridiculous to observe that the fire is, you know, obviously suspicious?

 

[bilby]

I suggest going to torture museums from around the world, set in the torture camps where the political tortures were committed. It'll give you some perspective on this.

Are you not aware of what that prison in El Salvador is?

Never mind El Salvador, there's a concentration camp in Florida too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alligator_Alcatraz

On July 12, Congressional and state lawmakers were given a tour of the facility. Lawmakers reportedly heard cries of libertad, meaning "freedom" in Spanish, from detainees. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz described the detainees as "essentially packed into cages, wall-to-wall humans, 32 detainees per cage". Lawmakers were not permitted to view the entire facility.
...
On July 22, people detained on site began a hunger strike to protest what they consider to be inhumane and dangerous living conditions. Some detainees reported maggots in the food and having to "dig the fecal matter out of the toilets with their bare hands" for lack of plumbing. The Florida Division of Emergency Management has denied the claims, but no independent inspections have been allowed.
...
In September 2025, the Miami Herald reported that it couldn't determine the whereabouts of about two-thirds of over 1,800 detainees held at Alligator Alcatraz in July.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I somehow doubt Trump is a machiavellian mastermind. I agree that it looked like an attempt of a coup or the start of a civil war. The reason it's not, is that he's got zero ground troops willing to fight for him. American conservatives are extremely enthusiastic about democracy. When they whine about liberals it's the non-democratic aspects of liberalism, ie the intolerance and lack of intellectual curiousity, that they react against. That's not a foundation upon which to build a dictatorship.

If Trump would call himself a dictator he's got zero powerbase to back him up.

Right now it's typically liberals who struggle with respecting the democratic principles. Not conservatives. That's not how it used to be. But that's how it is now.

edit: I'm not saying that a civil war can't happen. Trump may very well trigger a civil war. But the moment it gets going I can't see Trump leading anything. He's an entitled whiny populist. He's not Cromwell.

He's still replacing the control structures with those loyal to him rather than to the law. But he's not encountering any meaningful opposition in doing so.

How is he doing that? This is stuff I keep hearing but nobody has explained it to me

 

[DrZoidberg]

The problem with calling Trump a fascist is that it relatvises actual fascism. It's the "cry wolf" problem. It's the same thing with calling his policies racist. It relativises actual racism. Has he put in place any laws that limits people based on race? If not, then his policies aren't racist. He can be a racist while his policies aren't racist. To the rape accusation. He hasn't been convicted of rape. So calling him a rapist relativises rape.

The problem with all of this is that it will make us blind to being taken over by actual racist rapist fascist.

You don't need to like Trump to insist that we call him what he actually is, a lying orange clown

Huh?

How is he not a fascist? He's rapidly turning our government into fascism.

This is like calling someone who was rude to you once for a narcisist.

Fascism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It's just hyperbole. Yes, there's fascist traits. But he's right at the top of a slippery slope, that's not particularly slippery.

Pay more attention. He's gone a long way towards controlling society.

Yet you're able to post here without fear of reprisals. How come you are not afraid the FBI will come for you and make you disappear?

Not a racist? You realize some of his crowd have admitted they intend to purge the country of non-whites?

Where are the racist laws that he's passed?

Laws?! He doesn't care about the law! The Gestapo is stopping people on race alone.

ICE only stopping people who look Mexican is racial profiling. But its not irational. If they wouldn't do it they'd be retarded

Not a rapist? He's admitted to rape.

No, he hasn't. Don't relativise rape. It's a serious crime. Not cool.

Some places specifically limit rape to a penis, others define it as sexual penetration even without it being a penis. The state he did it in uses the strict definition and thus his actions are only sexual assault as the penetration was by a finger, not a penis. But he's basically admitted to doing it.

We reserve the term for "rape" for more serious types of sexual assault. But where the cutoff point is, is inherently arbitrary. New York isn't wrong putting that limit there.

Its important to separate any serious crime from less serious crime in order for us to be able to talk about it and judge it correctly.

I'm not saying Trump is a good person. But if he wasn't convicted of rape its simply incorrect to call him a rapist. He's a "sexual predator". Or possibly "rapey". Or whatever you'd call someone on the less serious rapist spectrum.