• Birch@sh.itjust.works
    44·
    23 days ago

    “It happened, therefore it can happen again.” – Primo Levi

    Saw this written on a plaque at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin and it really gave me pause, reflecting on what is happening all around the world right now.

  • 58008@lemmy.worldEnglish
    44·
    23 days ago

    It should be pointed out that had the Holocaust and WWII not happened, Nazi Germany was still an unmitigated nightmare that no one but the Nazis themselves were enjoying very much. There were and are plenty of authoritarian and fascist states where genocides don’t happen, but which are nevertheless hell on earth for everyone who’s not a functionary of the state.

    So even if you think it’s hyperbole to worry about extermination camps in the US, there’s absolutely nothing hyperbolic about a dystopian state coming into existence in which dissent and difference are crimes. Donald Trump and his band of dead-eyed sadists like Stephen Miller will do whatever they can in a second Trump term to bring such a state to you.

    Nazi comparisons are completely justified.

    • CitizenKong@lemmy.world
      22·
      23 days ago

      Also notable is the fact that Hitler managed to gain power with only about 35 percent of the popular vote. Because regular conservatives formed a coalition with him, convinced they would be able to control and use him. Instead he used them.

      Also, he then needed a false flag operation to be able to declare martial law - gaining the same kind of absolute power that the US president now has automatically thanks to the Supreme Court.

    • spamfajitas@lemmy.world
      49·
      23 days ago

      There are really 2 Americas. The one that tries to do better and the other one that only exists because Sherman didn’t go far enough.

      • PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        23 days ago

        Fuck Andrew Johnson. I don’t believe in hell, but I hope he’s burning there anyway.

    • VubDapple@lemmy.world
      181·
      23 days ago

      USA has always been an ambivalent place, both committed to equality and liberty in an idealized manner and also committed to perpetuating inequality, particularly across racial, ethnic and religious lines. A child of the 1970s I like the version of America I was taught about in-between Saturday morning cartoons via School House Rock. No more kings!

      Edit: before anyone else points it out, the video depicts racism against native americans and the colonists were crazy religious zealots. But it’s also about rejection of the English king. So all the ambivalence seems to be there.

    • lennybird@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      23 days ago

      We’re all humans, nationality aside. Good ideas. Bad ideas. Such ideology can and has propagated in pretty much every corner of the world and at varying times in history in some respect.

  • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
    25·
    23 days ago

    True. The Nazi concentration camps were not constructed for Jews, but political dissidents. They were created to detain people that did not succumb to gleichschaltung, coordination or alignment with the Nazi agenda.

  • trek32@lemmy.worldOP
    19·
    23 days ago

    Insightful interview https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-trumps-rhetoric-compares-to-historic-fascist-language

    "I think Trump has been conditioning Americans since 2015 to see violence as something justified in certain cases and even patriotic.

    He’s been conditioning them to see other Americans as enemies, as diseased, as dirty. And what we have to remember is that authoritarians might initially target one group, and he’s been talking mostly about immigrants. But he’s also calling the enemy within the political opposition.

    […]

    And this is part of an authoritarian projection mechanism. I call it the upside-down world of authoritarianism, where, ever since Mussolini, he was the first to call democrats the real tyrants and fascism was going to be freedom. Fascism was going to make Italy great again. That was a slogan, as was drain the swamp. Trump took that from Mussolini as well."

  • Sam_Bass@lemmy.world
    144·
    23 days ago

    and less than a week away from a 4th reich if all the tightass tankies vote 3rd parties

      • Sam_Bass@lemmy.world
        51·
        23 days ago

        that would be no different than the angry oranges tactics. id leave em to stew in their own juices for a while but remain wary and thump em if they try anything

  • abbotsbury@lemmy.world
    31·
    21 days ago

    First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Communist.

  • Etterra@lemmy.world
    11·
    23 days ago

    I grew up with the whole JW things crammed down my throat before I, as a teenager, finally snapped at my abusive, alcoholic mother and told her off. My dad backed me up fortunately. I hate that cult. But I cannot condone even sending my worst enemies to a fucking concentration camp.

    They should, however, be investigated and arrested on a traditional, case-by-case basis. Most of those people are just idiots who really reject modern reality because real life is hard. The point is though, you can’t just paint a whole group as evil and round them up. It’s important to find the ones actually doing bad things and run their lives in particular.

  • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
    13·
    23 days ago

    That’s too much, even for Jehovah’s witnesses. JW’s deserve their freedom just as anyone else. But I should add, there should be a law that allows one to legally hose them down with cold garden water if they come to your house to bother you. If they come and you like it, all good. But if they come and I specifically tell them never to bother me again, they better write that somewhere cuz next time they get a legal watering. It would make a lot of people get a renewed sense of home ownership lol. But I mean, the JW’s could just stop pestering people.