this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2025
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[–] AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 116 points 3 months ago (6 children)

The only problem I have is with the whole "foreign backed" language. It's technically not wrong, but please, as a reminder: It was not simply manipulation from Russia and others, putting Trump into power and creating MAGA. It is a homegrown problem, fascism has been smouldering in the US for a long time, and just as another reminder, it is also glimmering in the EU as well.

The country is "occupied" by its ruling class, and in this case, a specific clique of them benefitting themselves even against other capitalists, but overall, this is much more about class-, than it is about nation-dynamics.

[–] eatCasserole@lemmy.world 38 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Well said. I would even go so far as to say that facism is the bones of America.

American colonialism served as inspiration for Hitler, and the history of America is packed solid with violent othering of various groups. To pretend that any of these problems are new or came from elsewhere is an incredibly naive and whitewashed point of view.

American colonialism served as inspiration for Hitler, and the history of America is packed solid with violent othering of various groups.

It's not wrong, although I would stress, that fascism is not just that, and there is a reason why we only call those systems starting in the 20th century fascist.

It is also class collaborationism, and trying to somehow have the advantages of capitalism without its utter destruction of social norms and traditions. It is intertwining state and capital with the ideological aim to create a "strong nation" in the fight against other nations. It is imagining society as a body with people being its organs, who should serve their allotted place in society, and not rebel against it. America also had non-fascist tendencies woven within into history, and the settler-colonial era was still too early to be called "fascist", lacking the kind of developed industrial capitalism and violent reaction to socialist class struggle 20th century fascism was born in.

[–] entwine413@lemm.ee 6 points 3 months ago

Yeah, we've rarely been the good guys in history.

[–] InvertedParallax@lemm.ee 2 points 3 months ago

No, Jim crow was the inspiration for Hitler, he wrote about it explicitly in mein kampf as the model that must be followed.

The Nuremberg Laws are actually, I shit you not, Jim crow but watered down as Germans wouldn't tolerate the 1 drop rule.

The south was so impossibly evil even the nazis blanched, and we never did anything to solve their unimaginable inhumanity.

[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

We (the USA) were smoldering fascists prior to WW2. Let's not kid ourselves.

The human race is a bunch of smouldering fascists. Balkans, Rwanda, Chechnya, Iraq, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Darfur. Nigeria, Mali, Sudan, and other countries in the Sahel region. Take a look at this list of ethnic cleansings.

World history is rife with people trying to gain power so they can kill all the people who don't look like them.

[–] AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 8 points 3 months ago (2 children)

We (the USA) were smoldering fascists prior to WW2. Let’s not kid ourselves.

Eh, I actually disagree. The US did a social democratic turn after the Great Depression, I think it was one of the eras where the US was furthest from fascism. It ultimately still created and maintained the conditions of fascist tendencies later on and only very partially did the work analysing their own history of imperialism, but I really dislike overuse of the word fascist, because it blunts the analytical edge. The implicit neoliberal social contract was different than the implicit fascist one (which was different than the more social democratic one solidified under FDR, etc.) - and the system no longer having to wear the mask of humanity has real life consequences and creates its own dynamics.

World history is rife with people trying to gain power so they can kill all the people who don’t look like them.

Indeed, but I think it is a fallacy to use that as an ideological framing of inevitability (unsure if that was your aim here). Ingroup-Outgroup thinking is one of the few things, that I think is indeed fundamental to the human condition, but the way it materialises is dependent on the interaction of that tendency with material and historical conditions. Without colonialism, the specific framing of race, for example, would not have existed in the same way. And universalism as a current within modernity is not just a fluke or illusion, but a proper potential tendency within human behaviour as well, one that relies on cultural and material conditions of its own.

Cynicism is in its own right an ideological distortion, where it leaves analysis and tries to impose its interpretation on reality.

[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Well you do sound like a pretty smart person. I don't think I can get on the intellectual playing field with you, but I think there was plenty of Nazi sympathizers prior to World war II in America. Here's just one example from NPR.

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/02/20/695941323/when-nazis-took-manhattan

As to ethnic strife and tribal warfare, I'm not saying it's inevitable, just that it's the default mode. Sort of like entropy, it asserts itself unless we actively act against it.

[–] AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That, I can agree with. There needs to be active work and conscious moulding of material dynamics, in order to allow for it to be overcome.

As to ethnic strife and tribal warfare, I’m not saying it’s inevitable, just that it’s the default mode

Funnily enough, there are huge parts of pre-historic mankind, where they were the exception instead of the rule (although, when it did happen, we have evidence it was often very genocidal and total).

Organised warfare can be traced to the beginnings of class society, where societies started to have the surplus necessary, so that risking a large part of their population could be "worth it" to acquire labour power (slaves) and surplus (property) of other societies. At least, that is my current understanding of archaeological and anthropological evidence (e.g. tracing when weapons of war, explicitly not just as tools, or palisades around settlements appear in the archaeological record).

Not necessarily disagreeing, just adding that, to highlight that defining a "default" is basically impossible. Mankind has always acted within its historical and material context.

[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I was tracking pretty well with you until the last line

Mankind has always acted within its historical and material context.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. People have an aspect that is dictated by historical and material context. But there are also natural abilities, like speech, and propensities, like social organization, that are part of being human itself.

Surely, to my way a thinking, it's the whole nature/nurture thing, and your last sentence seems to leave nature out of it.

Even if you view man as a machine it doesn't change that. A windshield wiper doesn't cook eggs.

Some things do what they do because of what they are, not their material and historical context.

[–] AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Ah, I can see how that reads. So, short answer: I agree, but with the caveat that that simple truth can be misrepresented.

Of course, there are things that are inherent in "our nature". You mention speech, which is a great example - the ability of language and being adapted to being born into a complex system of language is one of the main reasons why I think humanity is acting so much within a material and historical context - more so than more intuitively acting animals adapted to a biome.

It is indeed my thesis, that besides some smaller things, "human nature" is being adapted to "culture", adapted to dialectically interacting with reality around us, and creating a new context that then influences us again. We aren't specialised to one biome any more, for example, or one circumstance in climate, but naturally inclined to change ourselves and our surroundings. And I agree, that we are indeed specialised for complex social organisation, too.

My issue comes there, where very specific behaviours or systems are presented as human nature, where I would claim, they are better explained as "how something within human nature is filtered through its historical context." Think of how people may say "private property" is human nature. Or "racism" is human nature. No, both are dynamics of something within human nature in a very specific context.

A windshield wiper doesn’t cook eggs.

True, but for humanity specifically, it can be damn hard to clearly define if we are a windshield wiper, an egg-cooker, or whatever. Because everything we study about our nature, will always appear to us filtered through the surrounding context. So it is only through hard work and building up theories to ever be falsified again, that we come closer to the essentials. (Like language, social organisation of high complexity, etc.)

[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-023-09464-0

This study, and others like it, would be to my mind the right way to go about finding out what the baseline is for humans.

Look to the great apes, see what great apes do - because we are great apes. Old World monkeys would provide clues as well. We're absolutely going to be somewhat different, but that's where research comes in.

We don't have to guess.

PS. I know I was way out of my depth here. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me. It's always nice to talk to somebody brainy.

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[–] Back_it_up@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Where does one draw the line between cynicism and experience?

As a categorical answer: Where it conflicts with reality more generally.

As a more specific answer: Good ways to double check are - how does my perspective gel with historians, anthropologists and philosophers, that study that field? Do they also agree on a cynical view there? When they dissent, what are the ways they do so?

Where did I get that cynical view? Is the cynical interpretation one, that benefits the status quo, so it has a higher likelihood of being ideological instead of a proper analysis? Is it backed up not only in contemporary empirical social sciences, but also when processing that data through interpretation. (e.g.: A group committing more crimes can be fact in studies, but racists will interpret that completely differently, than communists for example, concerning causes and solutions.)

In addition to that - personal experience is always valid, take for example someone with PTSD, it would be ludicrous to claim, their outlook on things concerning their trauma is "wrong". However, when applied to larger reality, it may not describe it properly in the whole context. That does not take away the validity of their experience and how it shapes them, specifically.

[–] sasquatch7704@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

fascism has been smouldering in the US for a long time, and just as another reminder, it is also glimmering in the EU as well.

I'm pretty sure Russia help with that. It is about class but not only.

Oh, yes, that's also why I mentioned it being technically true, as in, Russia is very interested in helping anything that destabilises and hurts their enemies in mutual imperialist struggle, as well as help them establish the new world order of imperialist powers acting however they want in their spheres of influence, instead of international responsibilities and laws.

It's like: Technically the October Revolution in Tsarist Russia was also, because the German Empire really, really wanted a destabilised enemy on their Eastern Front (Thus sending Lenin with a generous packet of financial support to do some destabilising). That does not negate that at the core, it was already burning as a potential historic outcome, because of the squalor class relations had caused there - and the geopolitics were just additional fuel that got the tensions into explosion mode.

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[–] Crikeste@lemm.ee 67 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Elon Musk also did a Nazi salute on the presidents stage.

I’m fucking sick of people acting like it was something else.

[–] klemptor@startrek.website 26 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] DougHolland@lemmy.world 24 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Three. The camera wasn't on him for the third Nazi salute.

[–] klemptor@startrek.website 5 points 3 months ago

Jesus christ 🤦🏻‍♀️

[–] YarHarSuperstar@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

No shit? Separate location/event or what?

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[–] LucidiaDiamond@lemm.ee 18 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It’s called a sieg heil. Salute makes it sound respectable.

[–] LeninOnAPrayer@lemm.ee 5 points 3 months ago

I mean it is respectful but just to Hitler.

[–] HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world 32 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

It's much worse than this

I too used to believe that Trump is getting some kind of kickback for his helping Russia, and maybe he still is

Until very recently I called Trump Putin's puppet

After seeing Vlad Vexler's video

I now understand the depths of Trump's narcissistic psychopathy

Trump separates people into two categories: People who have value to him and those who do not.

Trump will freely give the US and the west to Putin just because he wants to be in Putin's good graces because Trump requires validation from him.

To Trump, Putin belongs in the class of people that have value to him.

[–] Lumbardo@reddthat.com 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Post outlines quite possibly the worst-case scenario

HappySkullsplitter: it's actually much worse.

[–] HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] IceFoxX@lemm.ee 2 points 3 months ago

Rise further to become a pessimistic optimist.

[–] IceFoxX@lemm.ee 4 points 3 months ago

To make a long story short. Trump always claims that others do something before he has it done... He says others risk a ww3... which countries does he want to claim everything again?
It boils down to further consolidating his dictatorship regime and completely abolishing democracy. To then attack Europe together with the ally Russia... Trump is now making sure that money and everything will flow again and Russia can rearm on the side. Your judges or anyone else won't be able to do anything about it. The only thing that can change it are people who sacrifice themselves for their country and go and kill terrorists.

[–] AnjunaSouls@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

As someone who was raised by a narcissistic sociopath (and who was fucked up by it in countless ways), it's beyond terrifying seeing the same type of scumbag occupying the white house.

[–] barneypiccolo@lemm.ee 24 points 3 months ago (1 children)

By all objective measures, HitlerPig us the most prolific traitor in American history, wirse than all other American traitors COMBINED.

And yet, I've never heard an elected official or media outlet ever call him a Traitor. Until the left starts tying these traitors to their crimes, and hammers on it every single day, the Dems will NEVER wrest the power from the MAGA Traitors.

HitlerPig is a proven traitor, and anyone who still supports him, is also a traitor, and none of them should be allowed to forget it.

[–] Yerbouti@sh.itjust.works 24 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Doesn't sound fair to me. Musk is an oligrach, but he's also, at least, a nazi transphobe who disowned his own daughter. Donald is, at least again, a convicted felon and rapist who was best friend with the the most notorious pedophile of the past 50 years, and also tried to overthrow the government while being backed by a foreign country. Let get our facts straight.

[–] kreskin@lemmy.world 17 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

In the same vein, zionism is a far right philosophy of land theft and murder, and its not anti semitism when you object to it-- zionists are being antisemitic when they hide behind the entire jewish religion to commit their terrorism. Dont be afraid of pushing back on old school terrorism and war crimes. We're better than that. -- Or maybe we have been better than that in the past, and will be again.

[–] Brotha_Jaufrey@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (6 children)

Yes, I can’t believe I see dipshits that get angry and scream “antisemitism” even on Lemmy, in response to someone pointing out that massacring innocent civilians because you want their land is genocide. There’s no depth in the view of someone who got their feelings hurt when you pointed out the damage they’re causing.

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[–] Wilco@lemm.ee 10 points 3 months ago
[–] barkbarkbark@lemm.ee 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I don't see this post on their bluesky. Can anyone post a link, please?

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[–] MITM0@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Reminder Trump has arranged for "Illegal" Latino men (Venezuelan to be precise) to be sent to Slave/Rape Camps in El-Salvador

Instead of following protocol to sent them back to Venezuela & The fucking Right-Wing (can we call them Rightists ?) Scum-fucks are jerking off to this disgusting state-sponsored slavery.

[–] segabased@lemmy.zip 5 points 3 months ago

You can also just call them all pedophiles because that is also what they are

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