2016 U.S. Presidential Elections: The Circus Is In Full Swing

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Right, so my concerns are nonsense while yours are justified and "we are gonna need to check".
Yes. Your concerns that recounting votes in several US states poses danger to democracy worldwide are nonsense.
You don't get to make ridiculous statements and expect them to be treated seriously.
you are talking to someone whose grand-grandfather actually died in Russia fighting for the fascist regime. I am concerned about the situation because this has all the red flags that were present in Italy right before the fascists took power.
How? How is USA the same as pre-war Italy? Are you high?
I would love to know precisely how you formed your opinion, because then maybe we could have an actual conversation about it.
As previously explained voting via mail, especially with rules so loose, is a practice extremely vulnerable to fraud.
There was weird dynamics observed in several states. The argument that only democrats voted via mail is a weak one.
There is merit in double checking just to sooth the concerns.

trump is a fascist because what he is doing is fascism
There were like 10 separate fascist governments in Europe and dozens of tiny organisations around now, but only one of them was defined by genocide. If your definition of fascism is just "genocidal government" then how do you categorise Franco or Mussolini or Imperial Japan? Does that make the British Empire fascist?
Well, let's see what fascist regimes have in common. Consolidation of absolute power in the country through violence. Imprisonment of political opponents, taking the judiciary and enforcement branches under firm control.
What no fascist dictator have ever done: risk losing in democratic elections.

What did Trump do? Built a few sections of the wall? Denounced the Paris accords? Scrapped the Iranian deal? Where is the actual fascism?
 
So this makes him an expert on fascism? Right,

You like reading Vox, eddie. Here, have a read. Their experts are not even impartial but as their careers are on the line at least they're not willing to make that last leap to stupidity/lies.
 
You like reading Vox, eddie. Here, have a read.
You literally came out on top of the discussion.

Their experts are not even impartial but as their careers are on the line at least they're not willing to make that last leap to stupidity/lies.
Do not ruin it by lying.
 
For crying out loud. You put several things in my mouth that I never said.

Yes. Your concerns that recounting votes in several US states poses danger to democracy worldwide are nonsense.

I have to wonder if you are pretending not to understand what I am saying on purpose. I said several times that I have no problem whatsoever with the recounting. I have a lot of problems with Trump stating that there was a fraud and spreading falsities. I have said this twice in the last few posts.

And it is the Republican's party right to look into it as much as they want, and request recounts in the ways that are designated by the law. Nobody has a problem with that. There are reasons why what you talk about happened and we can get into that if you want, but that is not even the issue.


^ this is what we have a problem with. The man is not saying "there's something that does not look quite right, we will resolve it in court". This man is saying that there WAS a fraud without a shadow of doubt. He is holding rallies called "Stop the Steal". And he and his goons are spreading misinformation, including actual lies and photoshopped pictures, to try and persuade as many people as possible that the vote is not valid. His Secretary of State just said, on camera, in an official meeting, that there will be a second Trump term despite the current election results stating the contrary. Do you not see the problem here?

Y'all, I think that we are getting a bit sidetracked here, which plays right into Trump's diversionary tactics.

@Weaver, let's focus on one thing please. Trump is unequivocally stating that he won the election and that there was a fraud. He is not flaunting the idea, he is not just asking for a recount (which would be fine and noone would have a problem with it). He is saying that there was a fraud, as if it was an indisputable fact.

Two questions:

1) Do you dispute my statement that that is what he is doing?

2) Assuming that you don't, and I don't think you will since that is one Twitter link away and there's literally screeshots of it in this thread, do you think that that is a reasonable stance?

I have not once called Trump a fascist in this thread. That is a conversation that you are having with other people. I think it is irrelevant myself, because the only real fascism is the Italian fascismo, which is whatever Mussolini wanted it to be. And that changed at any given day, just like Trumpism changes at any given day. Then you can use the term fascism to define other authoritarians, but it does not matter what you call them. What matters if what they are.

And then you completely ignore the evidence that I provided that Trump is spreading lies, and proceed to just ramble on things that you know nothing about (rules are loose? do you even know how in mail voting works in the US? I will answer for you, no you don't, because if you did you would not say that). Honestly Weaver, are you trolling here? Like what is going on here, are we having a conversation in good faith or not? Can we be honest please?

@Weaver
Eddie's family is from Italy. Pre-war.
Only democrats voted by mail is not a weak argument, it's the truth, admitted by both sides.

It's not just my family. I grew up in Italy, I was there until a few years ago. I speak the language, I know the culture, I have met actual Italian fascists who wanted to beat me up because I was wearing a red t-shirt. I studied in a university that still has the fascio littorio with the eagle and everything on the main entrance stairs when you come in. I have met people who fought against the regime as partigiani. What do you think Weaver, is that enough know how for you?
 
You literally came out on top of the discussion.
no, he really didn't

Well, let's see what fascist regimes have in common. Consolidation of absolute power in the country through violence. Imprisonment of political opponents, taking the judiciary and enforcement branches under firm control.
What no fascist dictator have ever done: risk losing in democratic elections.
i am begging you to read a book

>vox
yes, congrats you found an article sharing your view, just like i can find a bunch sharing mine. how utterly unsurprising on the 2020 internet.

they're all saying "well he's not doing hitler/mussolini things, i guess?"
again, nobody is saying trump is doing a hitler or a mussolini. he isn't, he's nothing close. but fascism is more than that (unless you subscribe to the incredibly useless belief that "only 1920s italy is fascism").
it'd be almost funny if it weren't so predictable; fascism didn't spring into existence in 1921 in italy and 1932 in germany.
 
no, he really didn't
At this point I'm like 80% sure Weaver is just a butthurt Trumplet, but he came out on top given the presented arguments. 8 different experts (inter alia, sociologist, political scientist, historian) weighed in. Almost all of the experts signal that he's a proto-fascist (''the fascist creep'') instead. Trump isn't fascist because he doesn't have the state apparatus.

However:
  1. Absent the checks and balances, Trump would 100% go fash. The blatant disregard for the checks and balances (misuse of executive powers, court-packing, antagonizing adversaries) is the erosion thereof.

  2. The fact that he's too dumb to know what fascism is doesn't matter as intelligence is not determinative of whether you can be a fascist or not. That he's more narcissistic than he is an ideologue doesn't matter either.

  3. You don't wait around until a proto-fascist has the opportunity to become a proper one. You have to be a ****ing retard to chill only up to the point that it's too late. You set the alarm off well before.

  4. Fascism needs to be interpreted in its modern context given the current social and cultural trends. Being a 40's-style fascist is no longer possible. You need to operate in a culture that despises nazis, so you rebrand, you dog-whistle, obfuscate, etc. But the sentiments are still the same. You do your authoritarian posturing, you antagonize non-natives and adversaries, you erode liberal and democratic institutions.
 
Well, let's see what fascist regimes have in common. Consolidation of absolute power in the country through violence. Imprisonment of political opponents, taking the judiciary and enforcement branches under firm control.
What no fascist dictator have ever done: risk losing in democratic elections.

Nobody is calling America a fascist regime.
This isn't all just semantics either. Trying to adequately define Fascism is important because of how complicated and often nonsensical it is. Boiling it down to imprisoning political opponents and taking power using the military is useless, because so many pre-fascist states fit the bill, and it prevents you from labelling anything other than a state as fascist.
 
Nobody is calling America a fascist regime.
This isn't all just semantics either. Trying to adequately define Fascism is important because of how complicated and often nonsensical it is. Boiling it down to imprisoning political opponents and taking power using the military is useless, because so many pre-fascist states fit the bill, and it prevents you from labelling anything other than a state as fascist.
More over, Mussolini and Hitler took the power almost legal. To define what makes one state fascist we must first agree on which states are undoubtedly fascist.
 

Unlike campaign funds, which have tight controls on how they can be spent, leadership PACs such as Save America carry few restrictions. Republicans and Democrats alike have drawn criticism for using them to pay family members and to fund luxury events in exotic locations. A 2018 report by the Campaign Legal Center and Issue One, two groups that advocate campaign finance reform, said some leadership PACs have been used as vehicles to “subsidize lavish lifestyles” of politicians “on their donors’ dimes.”
 
I mean... maybe. He was democratically elected and did **** legally for a while.

Hitler spent the 1920s and early 30s attempting military coups and literally leading the militias who were trading political assassinations with socialists and fighting them in the streets (guns, not fists). The idea that the nazis were democratically elected and only started misbehaving once they were in power is absurd. Even during the electoral runup to 1932 and 33 the SA was still openly murdering people on the streets. The fact that such an insane party managed to stay in the democratic process has more to do with the rotting corpse that was Weimar democracy in the post depression era, not how "legal" hitler's actions were.

I actually read that vox article and I get the impression that the experts (except the last one) were answering the question "Is Trump a fascist leader like Mussolini or Hitler" and not "can Trumpism as an ideology be called fascist". This isn't helped by the fact that the article writer seems to not know anything about fascism, calling it a "collectivist" ideology (what does this even mean? I've never heard anyone except rand objectivists use this terminology to categorise ideologies), and saying that because Trump hasn't declared state control of the economy he's not a fascist. Word for word I don't really disagree with them much, but I feel like they were answering a separate question.

What links fascist states and movements together isn't just violence, authoritarianism and civilian massacre. By that logic the USSR, Romanov Russia, the Mongol Empire and even the Kievan Rus are fascist, and the word becomes useless, allowing real fascism, which is extremely slippery at the best of times, to slip through. I do think that a lot of liberals labelling trump as fascist are just seeing his racist language and jumping the gun, but if you look at people like Mussolini and Hitler in the earlier stages in their rise to power you get the same kind of language, the same dogwhistling and flaunting of liberal democratic conventions, the same obsession with secret hidden power corrupting the nation, the same mystical cult of the nation. The big difference is that 1920s German democracy was extremely brittle and there was not much to stop Hitler, while the Americans and their dumbass constitution are actually quite effective bulwarks against radical change of any kind, and even in 4 years Trump hasn't come close to hacking his way through any of the reactionary institutions that Hitler never had to worry about.
 
Yeah, I can't quite put my finger on why I dislike the pedantry of the article either but I don't want to be arrogant. I can be swayed either way, I just don't think there's anything wrong with calling him a fash. The f-word is also just so powerful at making the alarm bells go off. Even if he might not fit the super technical definition, it's way more powerful than ''authoritarian populist'', authoritarian populists being equally capable of harm, so just call him a fash, jeez.
Thanks for the correction + info, I agree.
 
I said several times that I have no problem whatsoever with the recounting. I have a lot of problems with Trump stating that there was a fraud and spreading falsities. I have said this twice in the last few posts.
Sure, I'll cede you that.
It's not just my family. I grew up in Italy, I was there until a few years ago. I speak the language, I know the culture, I have met actual Italian fascists who wanted to beat me up because I was wearing a red t-shirt. I studied in a university that still has the fascio littorio with the eagle and everything on the main entrance stairs when you come in. I have met people who fought against the regime as partigiani. What do you think Weaver, is that enough know how for you?
Well, I was born in the USSR. Will you then trust me assessing if someone is a commie?

i am begging you to read a book
Now look who's being amusingly predictable. The guy who has no idea what he's talking about suggests that I educate myself.
Just to be charitable - which book(s) exactly do you suggest me to read?

Cut the bull****, kid. "Fascism is not only this or that, hence Trump is fascist" is a weak ass argument.
It's like saying that communism is not only about abolishment of private property, state-owned means of production and planned economy. Hence anyone who pushes for a more vigorous redistribution of wealth through taxes or fights for social equity is a legit commie.
Sort of a low hanging fruit, but you look dumb when you reach for it.
 
Well, I was born in the USSR. Will you then trust me assessing if someone is a commie?

I would if you were to do that in good faith. You haven't shown much of that in this conversation, or in any interaction I had with you on this forum really. You just keep selectively ignoring what people say and focus on whatever is convenient for pushing your vision.

This is how I know that this thing is a fabrication:



they plastered things like these all over the web, plus others that are not as obviously fake but still misleading/inaccurate. But we don't even need to go into that. They literally photoshopped pictures to make it look like what they say is true. And you want to give these people the benefit of the doubt???

Why did you completely ignore this?

by this logic, hitler wasn't a fascist until he was in charge either. very good analysis, 10/10

Renzo De Felice would answer you that Hitler was a nazi, not a fascist. I don't think it's even worth having the discussion about Trump being a fascist or not. Calling him a fascist does not change what he is or what he is doing, and it's not like people who like him will go like "oh you said he is a fascist, I am gonna change my mind on him". They will argue with you over it endlessly and it will take attention away from exposing his lies.
 
lol
Cut the bull****, kid. "Fascism is not only this or that, hence Trump is fascist" is a weak ass argument.
unfortunately for you, that isn't my argument. good strawman tho! 10/10

my argument is that trumpism fulfills wholly or partially all fourteen determining characteristics of fascism as described by umberto eco (which, while far from the only or most modern definitions of fascism, is one of the most well known and thus makes a convenient list for a forum such as this).

you could start by reading said eco. google "ur-fascism", it's not even particularly long, and available for free. or, if you don't feel like that, you could read jason stanley - "how fascism works: the politics of us and them". maybe you don't like that either. in that case go with "the anatomy of fascism" by robert paxton. all three are excellent reads.

by any of these, trump fulfills at least partially all of whichever determining characteristics of early stage fascism each author uses to define it. stanley in specific defines trump as "performing fascism" as opposed to "being a fascist", and admittedly that's a very compelling perspective. coincidentally, stanley is one of the experts quoted in the article you linked.

if you want one that more aligns with eddie's (wrong) take that fascism is only 20s and 30s italy, you could instead read "strongmen: mussolini to the present" by ruth ben-ghiat, which classifies trump, putin etc as a modern development related to but not identical with fascism. personally i disagree with this take, but in fairness there is something to learn from that perspective, too, and so it's a valuable read.

of course, you won't, because you already know i'm wrong and you're right and so forth, but that's ok. it is very funny though how you are so insistent on being so wrong while asserting i have no idea about a thing i literally studied (y)

and as a lovely bonus, communism is in fact neither "about" state-owned means of production nor planned economy at all, funnily enough (these being merely interpretations of one subbranch of the framework, and far, far from universal). colour me surprised that you'd get that wrong, you commie expert you.


Renzo De Felice would answer you that Hitler was a nazi, not a fascist
ah, yes, the famously uncontroversial de felice :razz:
while some of what he wrote on the subject has value (i find for instance quite chilling his thought of fascism's heritage being a fascist mindset in anti-fascist minds, that must be fought), and all of it is quite fascinating as a contemporary work (and the beautiful scandal around it), the idea that there is no comparison between fascists and nazis is rightly discredited - nazism is commonly accepted as a subform of broader fascism, and in my opinion rightly so.
 
Jesuit Karst, this was all such a mind-numbing slog to catch up with.

There's nothing wrong with calling fascistoid government x, y, or b, "Fascist." Nonno M just happened to be the first sack of **** to stick to that particular wall, so he gets the wonderful honour of being used as the umbrella term to all his little offshoots.
Complaining that that can't be the case because some precise minutiae involving precision naming makes you an annoying pedant that's needlesly obsessing over the trees, or an incredible ******* masquerading as one.
 
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